Free The Daughter of Siena by Marina Fiorato Page A

doomed to die, but still defiant. The boy was
struck, too, by the attitude of the shepherds, good and bad, offering both death and life. He asked his father what the painting meant.
    His father, looking down at his son and considering his tender age, told the tale simply. The panther had fallen into the pit by some mischance, he said. The shepherds discovered him and were sure he was going to die. Some tortured him for his last hours, but others chose to relieve his final moments with food.
    ‘Did he die?’ asked the boy.
    ‘He did not,’ answered the father. ‘The food revived him, and he leaped from his trap and sought out the shepherds. He slaughtered the ones who had taunted him, but, seeing the good shepherds cowering, he reassured them, saying: “I remember those who sought my death with stones, and I remember those who gave me succour. Set aside your fears. I return as an enemy only to those who injured me.”’
    The boy seemed satisfied. There was plenty of time, his father thought, to apprise his son of the deeper meanings of the painting, of the Panthers’ position in Siena, their relative relationships, their alliances with the Tower, their rivalry with the Eagles, the implications for trade and politics. Time enough for that.
    He never got a chance.
     
     
    Riccardo Bruni woke convinced that the dying Panther was with him. He blinked enough times to convince himself that the stable was empty of any soul save his, and
scratched his skin in the places where the straw had printed its shapes into his flesh. He closed his eyes and listened as the bells rang seven.
    He opened them again to see Zebra ducking under the half-door and handing him the duchess’s seal.
    ‘You are summoned to the palace,’ said the boy, eyes round.
    Riccardo turned the seal over in his hands, saying nothing, studying the Medici cognizance of the circle of red balls on a gold shield. He imagined what it would be like to be part of a family so exalted that they had their own arms. He supposed the duchess wished to acknowledge his chivalry yesterday, although it had seemed a small enough gesture among the surly captains.
    Uncharacteristically, he took a moment to consider his appearance. His stockings were less than white, his jerkin was covered in straw; one of his cuffs was missing a button, one of his shoes a buckle. Riccardo retied his hair and crammed his tricorne on his head. Sighing inwardly, he cuffed Zebra gently about the head, smiled to mitigate the offence and flipped him a ruspo , the coin spinning in the air.
    ‘Am I to spend this day too doing your bidding? My pockets will be empty.’
    He walked the short distance to the palazzo . He had lived under the shadow of its tower all his life, the tower that had numbered his hours and days as he grew up like the gnomon of a sundial. This was the very tower that gave his contrada its name, for it stood sentinel at the edge of his ward, yet he had never been within the palace. The
curiosity that he had felt the day before, when summoned to Faustino, returned.
    After giving his name at the great doors, Riccardo was shown into a vast chamber where paintings crawled over every inch of the walls – paintings of places he knew well, so cunningly rendered it was as if he looked through a window. There was the duomo, the Chigi palace, the Loggia del Papa. There was the Colle Malamerenda – the Hill of Bad Meals – just outside the city, where twenty people were killed in a brawl between the Salimbeni and Tolomei families when there were too few thrushes brought to a feast. Raised to think of nothing but horses, he picked out a great horseback procession and saw, among the noblemen, a noble lady riding astride, her robes falling either side of her horse’s back, almost down to his hocks. As he stood, gazing at her unmoving figure, the double doors at the end of the hall opened.
    The duchess was dressed from head to toe in violet, just as she had been yesterday. It was a strange