22

I don’t remember sleeping. There were just gaps in time between periods of cold. There was a moment when I stamped up and down blowing on my hands, so stiff and numb that I nearly crept for shelter within the comparative warmth of Professor Elia’s portico, but did not do so because my vigil in the open was, in its strange way, a sort of test. Aldo had done this in the past, night after night, among his partisans. Romano, Antonio, Roberto… the boys brought up in the hills during the Resistance years, they had lived thus as children, but not I. The sleazy furnishing of second-rate hotels, not mountains, formed my background. My ceiling was an apartment room, cramped, confining, not the sky. The adults who spoiled and petted me to win favor from my mother spoke an alien tongue. Their uniforms stank, not of sweat and the clean earth as the torn clothes of the partisans would have done, but of yesterday’s spilled wine, of perspiration dribbled out in lust instead of in war. Aldo and his comrades, the orphaned boys and theirs, had the hard ground for bed, or at most a sleeping bag, while I lay stifled with eiderdowns and coverlets in a small room next my mother’s, the partition thin; and the night-cries of the hills were never mine, nor the sound of mountain streams, nor the echo of storms, only the sighs of pleasure’s aftermath.

Therefore tonight, at least, I would share in fantasy the beauty and the hardship of a reality I had not known. However cold I became, however numb, these sensations made me a partner in what had been. The stiffness of my limbs became an offering, my body’s chill belated sacrifice.

As I have said, there was a gap in time between sleeping and waking, and then when the temperature was lowest I awoke and went and stood close to the orphanage gate, and watched the dawn break on Ruffano. First light was gray and cold, a phantom day, a temporary shifting of night’s shadows, and then the sky hardened, becoming white, and the shrouded city turned to rose. The sun came up over the sleeping hills. Arrows of gold broke up the patterned valleys, then struck the shuttered windows of the city. The trees in the municipal gardens rustled, and the hesitant birds, waking to another day, stirred and murmured, then, as the light strengthened and the sunlight touched them, sang.

Day after day I had awakened as a child to Aldo’s voice, or to Marta calling from the kitchen, but not to this. Then there had seemed security and certainty, morning promised an eternity. Now as the sun turned the city’s spires to swords and the rounded Duomo to a ball of fire, I knew there was no promise and no eternity, or if eternity only a repetition of a million ages gone with none to care and all the dead extinguished. The men who had built Ruffano lived in memory alone. This was their epitaph. They had created beauty, and it was enough. They lived for a brief span to burn and die.

I wondered then why we should desire more, why we should yearn to perpetuate ourselves in some everlasting paradise. Man was Prometheus, bound to his symbol rock the earth and all the other undiscovered stars that shamed the dark. The challenge was to dare. To brave extinction.

I went on standing there, watching the sun bring warmth and life to my city of Ruffano. I thought, not only of Aldo but of all those students, now asleep, who in a few hours would be fighting in the streets. This Festival was neither play nor pageant, nor a mock representation of medieval splendor, but a summons to destroy. I could no more stop it than any single man could stop a war. Even if the order came at the last moment to cancel the Festival display, the students would disregard it. They wanted to fight. They wanted to kill. Just as their forebears had done through centuries in the same haunted, bloody streets. This time I should not escape, I should be one of them.

It was nearing seven when I heard the horses first. The steady clopping sound came from the piazza behind me, and turning I walked back to the statue and I saw the leading string climb the summit of the hill. They came in pairs, each rider leading a second horse, and they were approaching from the long road leading up to Ruffano from the valley below.

Then I remembered how last night, when we were circling the city on our vespas, I had seen lights in the sports stadium to the right of us, which in the excitement of our ride I had soon forgotten. The horses and their escort must have camped there before sundown, and were now arriving in the piazza to take part in the display. This was the cortège mentioned by Aldo in the ducal palace on Wednesday night.

The riders dismounted, leading their horses to the shelter of the trees. The sun was drawing the moisture from the ground, and it rose like steam from the soaking grass about Duke Carlo’s statue, filling the morning air with scent like hay.

I drew nearer and counted the horses. There were eighteen of them, sleek and beautiful, their proud heads lifted curiously to stare about them. None of them was saddled. Their coats shone as though polished, and their tails, whisking at the first flies of the day, were like the proud plumes of conquerors. I went up and spoke to one of the men.

“Where do they come from?” I inquired.

“From Senigallia,” he said.

I stared at him, disbelieving. “You mean these are racehorses?” I asked.

“Yes,” he answered, smiling, “every one of them. Lent for the Festival, each horse specially trained for this display. They’ve been training in the hills all winter.”

“Training for what?” I asked.

This time it was he who stared. “Why, for this morning’s run, what else?” he said. “Don’t they tell you what’s to happen in your own city?”

“No,” I said, “no. All we’ve been told is that a cortège leaves here at ten for the ducal palace.”

“A cortège?” he repeated. “Well, you can call it that, but it’s a poor description of what you are going to see.” He laughed, and called to one of his companions. “Here’s a student from Ruffano,” he said, “wants to know what’s going to happen. Break it gently.”

“Keep out of the way,” said the second man, “that’s all. The horses are insured, that’s what matters to their owners.” And then he added, “It was tried out, so they told us, some five hundred years ago, and never since. They must breed madmen in your city. But if he breaks his neck it’s his affair, not ours. Here, look at this.”

A van had now drawn up by the side of the piazza, and the man beside the driver jumped out and opened the rear doors. They let down a ramp and then, with great care, two men to the shaft and two to the wheels, they lowered a small vehicle painted red and gold. It was a perfect replica of a Roman chariot, and bore upon the front and above each wheel the insignia of the Malebranche, the Falcon with spread wings.

So it was true. The crazy, fantastic feat attempted by Duke Claudio more than five centuries ago was to be repeated now. The pages I had quoted mockingly from the German history to Aldo last Sunday as Jehu’s feat, never for one moment thinking that any representation of the event would be other than a staged affair with perhaps two horses—and he himself on Wednesday had spoken of it simply as a cortège—would be translated into fact. Duke Claudio had driven eighteen horses from the northern to the southern hill. There were eighteen horses before me now. It was not possible. It could not be. I tried to remember what the history said. “He was set upon and pursued by almost the entire populace, after having trampled many of them to death beneath his horses’ hooves.”

Now a second van drew into the piazza, smaller than the first, and from this they lowered harness, traces, collars, ornamented with studs bearing the Falcon’s head, and carried these things to the shelter of the trees where the horses stood, and the smell of the leather, polished and bittersweet like spice, mingled with the warm horse flesh and the scent of trees.

The grooms in attendance upon the horses began to sort the harness and the other appurtenances, quietly, methodically, chatting among themselves. The very orderliness of the sight, the absence of fuss, as if what they did was just part of a regular morning routine, made it the more fantastic, and as the sun rose higher and the horror of what was to happen became more imminent, I felt a sort of terror invade my whole being. It started in my guts and seized my heart, at the same time paralyzing thought. Hearing was keener. Every sound was magnified. The church bells had sounded for first Mass at six, then once more at seven, then at eight. They seemed, to my imagination now in turmoil, to be the summons to a city’s doom, until I remembered that it was Passion week, and this the Friday dedicated to the Mother of God. When we were young Marta had escorted us to San Cipriano and we had laid bunches of wild flowers before the statuette, which, its painted prettiness veiled, symbolized the seven sorrows that pierced the heart. It seemed to me then, kneeling in bewilderment, that the Mother played a sorry part in her Son’s story, first goading Him to change the water into wine, and later standing with relatives on the crowd’s fringe, calling to Him in vain, receiving no answer. Perhaps this was the seventh sorrow that struck her down, which the priests in Ruffano’s churches were now commemorating. If so, they would do better to forget one woman’s pain and go out into the streets and prevent mass murder.

Now a cordon was being formed around the piazza by uniformed police to keep away the traffic and the early crowd. They smiled and joked, good-natured for this day of Festival, and now and again called out laughing instructions to the grooms, busy with their dressing of the horses.

The nightmare scene became more vivid, more appalling. None of them knew, none of them understood. I went up to one of the policemen and touched him on the shoulder.

“Can’t it be stopped?” I said. “Can’t it be prevented? It’s not too late, even now.”

He looked down at me, a big cheerful fellow, wiping the sweat from his brow. “If you’ve got a seat in a window along the route get to it,” he said. “There’ll be no one on the streets after nine, except performers.”

He had not heard what I said. He was not interested. His job was to see that the piazza was kept clear for the horses and the chariot. He moved away. Panic enveloped me. I did not know where to go, what to do. This must be the fear that comes upon men before a battle when only discipline and training saves them. I had no such discipline, no such training. The desire of a child to flee, to hide himself, to stifle sight and sound, was paramount. I began to run towards the trees in the municipal gardens, thinking that if I flung myself head downward among the shrubs and grass the world would be blotted out. Then as I blundered forward into the splurge of color made up by the horses and the jingling harness, the gaily-painted chariot and the heedless grooms, I saw the Alfa-Romeo come up into the piazza. The driver must have seen me too, for the car braked suddenly and stopped, and I altered my useless panic course and ran towards it. The door opened, and Aldo sprang out and caught me as I fell.

He jerked me to my feet and I clung to him, stammering, incoherent. “Don’t let it happen,” I heard myself saying. “Don’t let it happen, please, God no…”

He hit me, and the oblivion I had sought for came. Pain brought darkness and release. When I opened my eyes, dizzy and sick, my head swimming, I found myself propped against a tree. Aldo was squatting by me, pouring steaming coffee from a thermos jug.

“Drink this,” he said, “then eat.”

He gave me the cup and I drank. Then he broke a roll in half and forced it into my mouth. Mechanically I did what I was told.

“You disobeyed orders,” he said. “If a partisan did that we shot him instantly. That is, if we found him. Otherwise he was left to rot alone up in the hills.”

The coffee warmed me. The dry bread tasted crisp and good. I snatched at a second roll, and then a third.

“Orders disobeyed put other men to inconvenience,” he continued. “Time is wasted. Plans are disrupted. Go on, drink some more.”

The preparations went on about us, the horses stamped, the harness jingled.

“Cesare gave me your message,” he said. “When I got it I telephoned the café at Fano and asked them to fetch Marco to speak to me. When he told me you hadn’t turned up at the boat I guessed something of this sort might happen. But I didn’t think you would come here.”

The panic had gone, whether because of the blow he had struck me, or because the food and drink he had given me filled my craving belly, I did not know.

“Where else should I go?” I asked him.

“To the police, possibly,” he shrugged, “thinking by accusing me to clear yourself. It wouldn’t have worked, you know. They would never have believed you.” He got up, and crossing to one of the grooms picked up a wash-leather, soaked it in a pail of water and came back. “Wash your face with this,” he said. “There’s blood on your mouth.”

I cleaned myself after a fashion, then ate another roll and had a second drink of coffee.

“I know why you killed Marta,” I said. “I came back, not with any idea of going to the police—they can arrest me if they want to—but to tell you that I understand.”

I stood up, throwing the soaking leather back to him and brushing the earth off my clothes. I had forgotten until then how insignificant I must look, scruffy and unshaven in my black jeans with the jade green shirt, my hair with the new cut shaped like a convict. Aldo, dressed as I had seen him at the ducal palace on Wednesday night in doublet and hose, with a short cape slung from his shoulders, resplendent, elegant, looked part of the background, just as the horses did, parading now beneath Duke Carlo’s statue.

“There are two baptismal entries in the San Cipriano records,” I said. “One for a son that died, the second for you. The double entries made no sense to me when I read them for the first time last week, nor your sponsor’s name, Luigi Speca, nor even the letter I gave you on Wednesday night. It was only yesterday on the beach at Fano that I guessed the truth. There was a nun there, with a little group of orphan boys. She told me the Superintendent of Ruffano foundling hospital, some forty years ago, was called Luigi Speca.”

Aldo stared down at me, unsmiling. Then, abruptly, he turned on his heel and left me. He walked over to the horses and began giving orders to the grooms. I watched and waited. The long preliminaries of harnessing began. Each horse was fitted with its own decorated collar, scarlet with golden flanges, and the bridles they had been wearing up to now were changed to others, decorated as the collars were, bearing across the headstrap a medallion of a Falcon’s head. Two of the horses were fitted with small saddles close to their collars, fastened by broad bands of scarlet round their chests. The chariot was then drawn up to them and the pole attached to the saddles by golden chains. These yoked horses were the center pair, bearing the chariot between them, but then I saw that two more horses were being coupled to the center pair on either side, making six in all, their traces fastened to the chariot front. The twelve remaining horses in groups of four were harnessed in turn, some distance ahead of the chariot bearers and their fellows, their reins leading back to the arched chariot top. The chariot itself, a featherweight above the rubber mounted wheels, had a semicircular guard around the front and sides and a floor to stand upon. There was space upon the floor for two, no more, and the rear was open without rail or step. Chains, fastened to the front and side like aircraft safety-straps would bind the riders to the chariot sides. Once fastened and in motion the riders could not fall unless the chariot itself upturned, when the galloping horses would drag vehicle and passengers in their wake, and so to instant death.

Now that the horses were harnessed, and the chariot in place, all movement ceased. The grooms, standing at the horses’ heads, were silent, as were the police cordoning off the piazza. Then Aldo moved from the chariot and came towards me. His face was pale, inscrutable, as it had been in the car on Wednesday night.

“I sent you to Fano believing it best for both of us,” he said, “but since you are here you may as well play your part. The role of the Falcon is still yours. That is, if you have nerve enough to accept it.”

The voice took me back to boyhood days. It was the old challenge, given with the same contemptuous grace, the same tacit suggestion of my own inferiority. Yet, strangely, the mocking tone no longer stung.

“Who would have played the Falcon if I had sailed with Marco?” I asked.

“I intended to drive alone,” he said. “There were no couriers five centuries ago. The Falcon was his own charioteer.”

“Very well,” I said, “then today you can be mine.”

My retort, as surprising to myself as it was to him, caught him momentarily off guard. He must have expected my boyhood plea to be spared participation in his adventures. Then he smiled.

“You’ll find Duke Claudio’s robe in the car,” he said, “and the flaxen wig. Jacopo’s there. He’ll give them to you.”

I was no longer conscious of feeling, or of fear. I was predestined to what must be. The decision had been taken. I walked over to the car, and Jacopo was standing there. I had not noticed him earlier when the car arrived, but he must have been beside Aldo all the time.

“I’m going with him,” I said.

“Yes, Signor Beo,” he replied.

There was an expression in his eyes I had not seen before. Surprise, yes, but it was also respect, even admiration.

“I’m to be Duke Claudio,” I said, “and Aldo the charioteer.”

He did not comment, but opened the door of the car and handed out the robe. He helped me into it and tied the girdle round my waist. Then he gave me the wig, and I put it over my cropped hair and stared at myself in the mirror.

There was a cut on my mouth where Aldo had struck me, and the blood had dried. The blonde wig framed my white, unshaven face, and my eyes confronted me, pale and staring, like the eyes of Claudio in the ducal palace picture. They were also the eyes of Lazarus in the church of San Cipriano.

I turned to Jacopo. “How do I look?” I said.

He considered me gravely, his head a little on one side. “You look just like your mother, Signora Donati,” he replied.

He meant it kindly, but it was the final insult. The humiliation of the years returned. The foolish figure that pattered in bare feet back to the chariot and mounted beside Aldo was not Duke Claudio, not the Falcon it was supposed to represent, but a scarecrow effigy of the woman I had rejected and despised for twenty years.

I stood motionless, allowing Aldo to bind me to the chariot with the safety chains. Then he shackled himself. The guide reins of the center horses, the guide reins of the leaders, were passed up to him by the attendants across the chariot front. The attendants released their hold upon the bridles as Aldo gathered the myriad reins in his two hands. The horses, feeling the strain, moved forward. The distant campanile by the Duomo sounded ten, echoed by all the churches of Ruffano. The flight of the Falcon had begun.