The Daughter of Siena by Marina Fiorato

bodice to hang outside the beautiful, terrible, dreaded white dress. It was the only thing left of Pia of the Tolomei.
    Today’s procession was a little different from yesterday’s. This time they walked, not to the Eagles’ church, but up the stony streets to the basilica, the bells bawling out across the towers. The formidable Nicoletta, in her best fustian, was Pia’s bridesmaid, and behind her straggled a company of minstrels, actors and jugglers in bright motley. Tuneless trumpets and accordions anticipated the discord to come as they followed her up the Via del Capitano.
    In the Piazza del Duomo, huddled in the sheltering shadow cast by the vast black-and-white building, a crowd gathered. All contrade , in their different colours, had come to witness this strange mixed marriage: an Owlet wed to an Eagle.
    Inside, in the dimness of plainsong and frankincense, the families of the Civetta and the Aquila flanked the nave. Pia’s father, standing at the altar, could spare her a nod, but not a smile, as he took her hand for the fasting. Salvatore had found himself a shaft of light to stand in, but he shared it with another – Nello Caprimulgo – her intended, turned to a wraith of light. His pale hair and
skin glowed, he wore silks as white as her malign dress, but his red eyes were demonic. Pia’s fantasy of a kindly man crumbled. Salvatore put her hand into Nello’s, and the Eagles’ heir grasped it as brutally as he had held her arm after the Palio. Those bruises were fading to yellow under the sleeve of her white dress, but there would be more.
    Pia listened to the marriage mass as if it were happening to someone else. Unable to look at her groom, she slid her dry eyes east to the facciatone , the huge unfinished wall of the nave, begun in the days of the Nine and abandoned when they ran out of money. It was a monument to waste, built in stone. She herself was the human embodiment of waste. Nineteen years of promise, reared and schooled and protected as the daughter of the Civetta, ended here, unfinished, on the day of the white dress.
    She began to panic. Trembling, she kept her lips tight for all the responses. And when it came to the vows, she refused to speak. A dreadful scene ensued, her father and Nicoletta cajoling, threatening, trying to prise her lips apart with fingers and nails, as the spittle ran down her chin, as if she were an animal.
    Finally, Nello leaned close and whispered in her ear, his breath warming her as his brother’s had. ‘Vicenzo said you were frighted by the story of the Benedetto slut.’
    She was so shocked, she stilled herself to listen. The girl had not been thirteen years old.
    ‘I cannot besmirch his memory. It was I who hung her from the butcher’s hook. We shared everything, you see, Vicenzo and I. Everything.’

    Pia lurched backwards and searched his awful eyes for a jest. But he merely nodded.
    ‘Ah yes, you understand me now, don’t you? We could not have her blabbing, you see. But there is a time to stay silent, and a time to speak.’
    After that Pia did as she was bidden. She let Nello put his ring upon her finger: an eagle bearing a bloody jewel in his mouth. She suffered his kiss, for the applauding congregation. She threw coins for the cheering crowds in the square. She even took her new husband’s hand as they walked back to the Caprimulgo house.
    She was given leave to return to her chamber to prepare for the feast, and there she collapsed. Her knees buckled and sobs racked her, shook her to the very core, frightening her with their violence. After a time she pressed her hands to her mouth, calming herself. She sought the looking-glass. If she appeared dishevelled at dinner she knew she would suffer for it. But Nicoletta had taken the mirror, perhaps in case her mistress smashed the glass and damaged herself with the shards. This gave Pia an idea.
    Before she went to dinner, she took a pearl pin from her hair and drove it, again and again, into her wrist.