The Medici Return by Steve Berry

Author:Steve Berry [BERRY, STEVE]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2025-02-11T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 41

STEFANO REMAINED PERPLEXED WITH BOTH CARDINAL ASCOLANI’S presence here in Siena and his visit to the Palazzo Tempi. He’d gone back to La Soldano and spoken with Daniele, who informed him that an American and Cardinal Richter had spent most of the day with Camilla Baines at her horse farm.

“During the Palio we watch her day and night,” Daniele said. “She is the Golden Oakers’ capitano. A slippery one, too. Always up to something. The Porcupines and the Golden Oaks do not care for each other. Even worse, Golden Oak has a bad horse who cannot win. So they were paying their jockey to stop us from winning. We made a side deal with that jockey and paid him more to leave us alone.”

“The way of the Palio, right?”

“All part of the spectacle. That American I mentioned rode one of their horses bareback earlier at her track. She would not have done that, without a reason.”

“Which is?”

“We think she may have found out what we’ve done and is preparing to make a change in jockey.”

“With the American on their horse?”

“We are not sure. But it is a possibility.”

“And what worries you is that he cannot be bought.”

“Exactly.”

He was still at the café when a text came from Ascolani ordering him to head back to the cathedral, which remained open late today because of all the festivities related to tomorrow’s race.

So he hustled that way.

He entered through a side door, paying the admission fee once again, and found Ascolani at the far end of the nave near the octagonal pulpit.

A thirteenth-century marvel.

Eight granite-and-marble columns supported sculpted scenes that dramatically narrated the life of Christ. Ascolani stood among the visitors, still dressed casually, admiring the opulence. To their right hung this year’s pallium, the silk banner draped before one of the towering black-and-white-striped pillars, where it had been brought earlier for the archbishop’s blessing. Tomorrow it would be moved to the campo, behind the judge’s stand, where it would wait to be claimed by the winning contrada of this year’s race.

“This pulpit is one of the great wonders in Christendom,” Ascolani said in a low voice. “All in Carrara marble. The detail is astonishing. Such a richness of motion and narrative. See the central column. It is adorned with the figures of arts and crafts. Grammar, with a little boy reading a book placed on his knees. Dialectia, whose withered face is plunged in deep thought. Rhetoric, pointing out a word in a book. Philosophy, arrayed in sumptuous clothes with an illuminating torch in her hands.” Ascolani motioned. “Arithmetic, counting upon her fingers. Music, playing on a cithera. Astronomy, bearing the astrolabe.” His boss paused. “Amazing representations.”

People were moving all about, most there to admire this year’s banner. He noticed that many crossed themselves and were brought to tears in its presence. Odd, considering it was but a work of art upon silk, this year’s leaning toward the traditional with an image of the Madonna of Provenzano.

“There are things you must now know,” Ascolani said.

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