The Daughter of Siena by Marina Fiorato Read Free Book Online

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    Riccardo met his raptor’s eyes. ‘I like to fight.’
    The captain’s expression told him that on another day he would have smiled. ‘ Do you.’ It was not a question. ‘You were looking for a war.’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘And you found one.’
    ‘Yes.’
    There was a silence, long enough for Riccardo to reflect that this tragedy had truncated the usual processes of acquaintance. Having just met, they had nonetheless travelled, somehow, some distance to this place where he and Faustino completely understood each other.
    ‘You are quite a rider.’
    Riccardo, knowing that he was, did not gainsay the older man.
    ‘If you had not leaped to save my son, you would have won the Palio.’
    This was also true. Riccardo remained silent. There was a thoughtful pause and then, as if consciously changing tack, the captain brought his hands together with a clap that sounded hollow through the chamber.
    ‘Today, I bury my son.’
    It was said with a businesslike dispatch that belied the words. But there was a clue here to real feeling, which had come and gone across the captain’s face moments before; still, he could not say the boy’s name.
    He continued, ‘Tomorrow, in the evening, you will feast with us here. Although you are not of our contrada , I owe you a debt of honour.’

    Riccardo’s eyes widened. He had expected censure, perhaps punishment, and had walked to the Eagle’s lair to meet it willingly. His life was cheap to him. Perhaps that was why he rode faster than any other, perhaps that was why he had walked into the house of Aquila without the quickening of a heartbeat: because at the heart of his courage was the fact that he really did not care if he died. Such courage is not true courage. True courage is when a man quakes with fear in the face of death, yet still risks his life for something he cares about. Riccardo Bruni did not know this yet, but he was to learn it soon.
    ‘Here at sundown, tomorrow,’ stated Faustino.
    Riccardo did not accept nor refuse; nor, it seemed, was he expected to. Faustino was well used to being obeyed without question.
    ‘Before you go,’ said the captain, now almost conversationally casual, ‘I have another dead man to show you.’
    Faustino swiped aside a tapestry of the Eagle arms and passed through a dark door. As he trod smoothly down a steep turn of stone stairs, Riccardo, curious, followed. The tapestry, the stair, once again gave him the strong impression that he was entering the past, reverting to a time that respected brutality and shunned civilization. Once, in Milazzo, he and his troop had come upon a blackened village where no crickets chirped and no birds sang. He walked the streets with his fellow and realized that every soul was dead, put to the fire by the Spanish. Heavy wooden bars had been placed across each doorway to trap the villagers, the women and children too. He had felt the same prickling then, coming over the hill
of parched grass and down into that damned village, as he felt now. With every step he knew he was about to witness a horror to which the boy in the box up above was but a prelude.
    There was the glow of a guttering torch below and a sharp fierce odour of metal. Riccardo’s eyes adjusted slowly and he became aware of what he saw, only seconds after he knew why his shoes were stuck to the floor. The beast before him was a man: the metallic smell was the well-remembered scent of blood.
    A man lay face-up on an iron grid that resembled a rack. His body was horribly beaten and broken. This was retribution. Faustino, unmoved, reached over the horror to grasp a chunk of the unfortunate’s hair and raise the head – so Riccardo could better see, better understand. Below the swellings of flesh and the bulgings of eyes and the breakings of teeth, he could just make out the features of the rider of the Panther contrada , limitless suffering writ there, his hair soaked with sweat of unbelievable pain. This was a man who had not known