Gaudenzia: Pride of the Palio
9781465670717
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
In a hill town of Italy, close by the Tyrrhenian Sea, lives the boy, Giorgio Terni. He is slight of build but hard-muscled and lithe, with dark wavy hair and amber eyes the color of a young fox's. His town, Monticello Amiata, is named for nearby Mount Amiata. But the countryside that dips down to the sea is known as the Maremma, or "marshy place." It was once wild and desolate, and it bred strong, earthy men who grappled their living from the wetlands. In the rest of Italy, people still think of the Maremma as a savage, wind-blown place where land and sea are not yet separated. They have heard that only work horses and bullocks are reared there, and the people who survive the fever-laden mosquitoes are wild as the sea that goes to meet the sky. But now things are changing. The bogs and sea ponds are being ditched and drained, and the tangle of brown swamp grass is giving way to fields of golden wheat, and to olive groves and vineyards. Giorgio's father is one of the new farmers. He cultivates a narrow strip of land, and at harvest time pays a little money to the state so that in twenty or thirty years it will be his. But at heart the new farmers remain unchanged. The love of animals is strong in their blood, and they tell with pride that the horses of the Maremma stand taller and and show more stamina than those bred elsewhere. It was in Giorgio's thirteenth year that he resolved to make animals his life. Two experiences came to him in swift succession—one brutal, one tantalizing. When he thought about them later, he knew they were signposts, pointing the way to his future. Work-hardened and tough as he was, the first one shook him like a thunderbolt. He was driving Pippa, his donkey, from the hilltop village of Monticello down to the valley of his father's farmland. It was a clear, bright day, with only a capful of wind. Spring was in the air—grapevines sending out new runners, swallows hunting straws. Then all at once the bright morning went black with horror. Near a wayside shrine Giorgio came upon a swineherd mercilessly beating a small, shaggy donkey. With each blow the dust rose in little clouds from the donkey's back. As Giorgio drove up, he saw that the creature was trying to lunge away, but he was tied fast to a tree. The sight threw the boy into a blinding rage. He jumped from the cart and caught at the rope.
