“Now the horses will run,” explained the signora. “Many people like this part best, but I do not. Poor beasts! They are half drunk, and they are often hurt or killed. The fantini lash at each other with their hide whips. Once I saw the Montone strike the Lupa just as they passed here; the crimson flashed out across his face, and in his pain he pulled his horse aside, and it fell heavily against the palings and threw him so that the horse of the Bruco coming on behind could not avoid going over him. They said it was terrible to see that livid weal across his mouth as he lay in his coffin.”
“He died then?”
“Ma! Sicuro!”
Olive looked up at the window where the Menotti should have been, and saw strange faces there. They had not come then. They had not, and Astorre could not. Astorre was very ill ... the times were out of joint. Her cousin’s shame and sorrow and her friend’s pain seemed to come near again, and to be once more a part of her life, and she saw “gold tarnished, and the grey above the green.” When the horses came clattering by, urged by their riders, maddened by the roar of the crowd, she tried to shut her eyes, but she could not. The horse of the Dragone stumbled at the turn by San Martino and the rider was thrown, and another fell by the Chigi palace as they came round the second time. Olive covered her face with her hands. The thin, panting flanks, marked with half-healed scars and stained with sweat, the poor broken knees, the strained, suffering eyes ...
“Are you ill, signorina?” the old priest asked kindly.
“No, but the poor horses—I cannot look. Who has won?”
He rose to his feet. “The Oca!” he cried excitedly. A great roar of voices acclaimed the favourite’s victory, and when the spent horse came to a standstill the fantino slipped off its back and was instantly surrounded by men and boys of his contrada, dancing and shouting with joy, kissing him on both cheeks, pulling him this way and that, until the carabinieri came up and took him away amongst them.
“The Bruco hoped to win,” the priest said, “and the Oca’s fantino might get a knife in his back if he were not taken care of.”
Already the crowd was dispersing. The victorious contrada had been given the painted standard of the Palio, and were bearing it in triumph to the parish church, where it would remain until the next Ferragosto. The others were going their separate ways, pages and alfieri in silk doublets and parti-coloured hosen arm-in-arm with their friends in black broadcloth, standard-bearers smoking cigarettes, knights unhelmed and wiping heated brows with red cotton handkerchiefs.
“I will go down the Via Ricasoli with you,” Olive said.