The Daughter of Siena Read Online Free PDF Page B

things she had seen in this dour house, the first manifestation she had seen of the Eagles’ great wealth.
    ‘Black for tomorrow,’ said the maid, ‘white t’day after.’
    She bustled to the door, knocking the oil lamp to the floor with her ample hips as she went. The flame hissed and died at once. The maid smiled and smiled. ‘Now rest ye. Much to do domani .’
    The door closed and a heartbeat later came the unmistakable turn of a key. To Pia, who had grown up with a morbid fear of being imprisoned, it was a dreadful sound. Perhaps it was because her famous ancestress, another Pia of the Tolomei, a woman who had been immortalized in Dante’s Purgatory , had spent her last days shut in a tower. Perhaps it was because Pia had grown up in a city encircled by walls and had barely left it, not even to see the sea. Either way, she had to clench her fists to stem the wave of panic and stuff one of them in her mouth to stop herself from crying out.

    Trying to be calm, Pia watched the day bleed to death outside her new chamber window. Alone except for the two gowns hanging in her wardrobe, their silks whispering a threat as they turned on their hooks. Black for tomorrow, white the day after.

3
    The Eagle

    T he horseman of Siena had ridden under the eye of an eagle once before.
    He was seven and was already obsessed with horses. He used to ride out at dawn, be gone for the day in the Tuscan hills, and come back at night to the Tower contrada for dinner, touched with sun, dropping in his saddle and covered in white tufa dust like a little ghost.
    One morning he saw an incredible thing in those hills. As the sun rose, an eagle blotted out the light and dived like a stone, taking a lamb from a grazing flock in his great talons. With a giant beat of wings that stirred the boy’s hair, he took off over the hills, disappearing over the pink and gold towers of the city with his bleating burden, like a Bible illustration. The boy was still staring, open-mouthed, when there was another flutter of wings from a nearby cypress. A smaller bird burst forth and, as if it had witnessed the capture of the lamb, landed on the back
of the largest ram. There the foolish bird fluttered around with a whirr of wings, leaping and flapping and attempting to carry the ram off. Soon his claws became entangled in the ram’s wool and he could not free himself.
    Laughing at the spectacle, which had shifted from drama to comedy in one short moment, the little horseman slid from his saddle and ran to the ram. He arrived at the same time as the shepherd, who took his knife and cut the bird free from the greasy wool. Seeing the boy hovering close, he spread and cut the prime feathers, clipping the wings. He handed the bird to the little horseman, figuring, rightly, that the boy would not mind the black blood.
    ‘He’s yours,’ said the shepherd, in thick Sienese. ‘Take him home for a pet.’
    Boy and bird regarded each other, the boy’s eyes glittering with delight, the bird’s button eyes holding an expression that was at the same time foolish and free. The boy stroked the small blue-black head with nail-bitten fingers.
    ‘What kind of bird is he?’ he called, for the shepherd had already headed back down the hill to his flock, shaking his head over the loss of the lamb. The fellow turned at the question and half his mouth smiled.
    ‘To my certain knowledge he is a daw,’ he replied. ‘But he would like you to think him an eagle.’
     
     
    The horseman of the Tower contrada had been so shaken by the events of the Palio that he slept in his father’s stable with Taccola, the stallion he had ridden that day.
He could not explain, even to himself, why he would feel more comforted here than in the house and he would have been better off in his bed, for in the warm close straw, hooves galloped through his dreams and the parched bedding, which tickled his nose, merely served to remind him of the racetrack and the flood of blood that had soaked