This story tells of a pilgrimage that truly took place — though with a few poetic liberties.
One October day, I boarded a train to Siena, neither for tourism nor blind devotion, but to test a hypothesis: that praying, today, might still be a political act.
I had decided to pay homage to Saint Catherine — not as a martyr of the Papacy, but as an ally — to ask for her support in my personal dispute with the European Union, of which she is the patron saint.
I travelled alone, carrying only the specter of Salimbene de Adam with me, through a copy of the director’s notebook from Enzo Re, which made the journey by my side.
Everything else came of its own accord — through coincidences and chance encounters; as in every true ritual, where “chance” is merely the name we give to an ancient game of dice with destiny.
The train speeds through copper-colored hills and rows of vines, on an October day so warm and bright it nearly brushes against May, while James Hetfield sings in my headphones.
I sit by the window, my notebook open on my knees, watching the landscape pass by like a dream that has decided to take on substance.
Across from me sits a Franciscan friar, gentle-faced and broad-handed like a scribe — Brother Salimbene de Adam, the medieval chronicler miraculously risen from time itself, reborn for me in memory of my father, Arnaldo Picchi, who once brought him to life on stage in Piazza Santo Stefano, in a Bologna that belonged to another life.
He reads a book whose title I can’t make out, with the calm of one who knows the secret of every story.
“Brother,” I ask after a long silence, “I’d like to ask you something. If women truly held power, what would remain of men? My favorite writer, Ursula Le Guin, asks this in Tehanu.”
Salimbene raises his eyes, amused, a glint of gold dancing over his tonsure.
“A great question, my daughter. If you asked God, He would tell you that neither can exist without the other.
A deuteropauline verse — 1 Timothy 2:11 — says:
Let a woman learn in silence with full submission; I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be quiet.
But if you ask the world… the world fears the powers it cannot understand.”
I close the notebook, stroking it as if it were a cat.
“Yet there have been queens,” I insist. “Were they not powerful?”
“A queen,” he replies, “is a woman who reigns like a man. Men give her the throne, but not freedom. It’s a borrowed power — like a cloak too large: it covers, but does not warm.”
Outside the window, the cypresses bend to the wind. I watch the calm movement of the fields and murmur:
“Perhaps that’s why so many women chose fasting, silence, renunciation — to find a power that depended on no one.”
The friar looks at me with a shadow of melancholy.
“You speak of Saint Catherine,” he says softly.
“I speak of all the women who turned the mortification of the body into their language,” I answer.
“And of those who had to disappear in order to be heard.”
The train slows. A voice announces:
“Next stop: Siena. This train terminates here.”
Salimbene gives me a look that is already a promise.
“Then let us go to meet her,” he says. “Perhaps the Empress is not the one who rules, but the one who knows how to turn hunger into speech.”
The train stops with a long, metallic sigh.
I step onto the platform, dazzled by a golden light that seems to pour straight out of a fresco. The air smells of tufa and young wine, and the passengers’ voices intertwine like silk threads.
I lose sight of Salimbene, and while I’m still searching for him in the crowd, a sharp, familiar laugh cuts through the air like an arrow from the past.
“Margherita!”
I turn — and there she is, Camila, my Catalan friend, her blond hair loose down her back, her eyes still bright with all the adventures we never shared.
For an instant I freeze: joy and surprise mingle with an old wound, the one left by a name I haven’t spoken in years — Massimiliano.
She doesn’t seem to carry that weight anymore. She smiles as if nothing had happened, as if we’d said goodbye only yesterday.
“I’ve been waiting for you,” she says. “I thought a pilgrimage to Siena deserved company worthy of you.”
Only then do I notice the man beside her — tall, athletic, with a sharp nose and eyes both ironic and profound, dressed in a crimson velvet tunic.
I am speechless.
“Allow me to introduce my travel companion,” says Camila, amused. “Lorenzo de’ Medici. You may have heard of him — some call him the Magnificent.”
He bows gracefully.
“Lady Margherita,” he says, “Camila has told me of your journeys among the living and the spirits. Siena is a city of dreams and politics, but also of visions. Perhaps destiny has decided our paths should cross here.”
Salimbene, who had stayed a step behind, watches the scene with curiosity and a hint of suspicion.
“The Medici and the Franciscans have never spoken the same language,” he mutters.
“And yet,” Lorenzo replies with a smile worth a madrigal, “the language of the soul knows no factions. We are all here in search of the same thing: the meaning of a power that does not corrupt, but fertilizes.”
Camila slips her arm through mine, as if the years of silence had never existed.
“Come,” she whispers. “I’ll take you to Catherine. The Empress awaits.”
We leave the station and head toward Porta Camollia. The air of Siena vibrates like ancient fabric: every stone has its own scent — iron, bread, sun made brittle.
Camila walks beside me, determined; Lorenzo follows, reciting verses — his own, and others’ — like a minstrel reborn.
Salimbene jots everything down in his notebook, fascinated by this strange company that shuffles centuries as though they were cards in a divine deck.
We climb toward the Medicean Fortress. From its height, the city unfurls like a spiral of roofs scorched by time.
Camila stops, resting her hands on the warm stone railing.
“You know, Margherita,” she says, “every time I return to Siena, I think of Pope Joan.”
Lorenzo looks at her with a smile that smells faintly of heresy.
“The woman who wanted to be Pope? A fable Rome would have liked to burn.”
“Or an unwritten Gospel,” Camila replies.
I stay silent, listening. The sun stains the fortress gold.
Camila continues:
“They say Joan was as learned as a Doctor of the Church. But her knowledge didn’t come only from books. It rose from her entrails — like the song of a mother giving birth to the world.”
Salimbene shakes his head. “Blasphemy! Childbirth is not the place of theology, but of flesh and blood.”
Camila smiles softly. “And yet, brother — what is the Incarnation, if not God agreeing to bleed?”
Lorenzo nods, moved.
“Joan’s childbirth was an apocalypse — a revelation of the power that lies within the female body. That’s why the Church erased her: it could not bear that the Word had a womb.”
We continue in silence along Via di Camollia, through crowded shops and the Babel of tourists’ voices. Siena seems suspended between two verdicts — that of mysticism, and that of history.
Then, almost by chance, we speak of Catherine.
“The saint who did not eat,” I murmur. “Who turned fasting into language.”
“The High Priestess and Catherine,” says Camila, “are the two halves of the Empress. One speaks with blood, the other with hunger. Both create. One bore a child, the other a voice.”
At the curve leading to the Basilica of San Domenico, the sun begins to set. The church walls turn the color of honey and ash.
I sense two presences beside us — one, a severe-faced woman holding a papal tiara in her hand; the other, frail, dressed in white, clutching a wilted lily.
Camila stops and closes her eyes.
“You feel them too, don’t you?” she asks.
I nod.
“The High Priestess is speaking to Catherine,” she whispers. “She says: I did not sin by giving birth, sister. I showed what no man dares — that even the Word bleeds.”
“And Catherine replies,” I add, “I consumed my flesh to make it light. You made it word; I made it silence. But it’s the same power.”
Lorenzo bares his head, as before a mystery greater than dogma. Salimbene kneels, weeping — not in fear, but in recognition.
“I will write this chronicle,” he murmurs. “I will call it Historia Imperatricis.”
When we reach the Basilica, the bells begin to ring.
Inside, the church is bathed in golden half-light. The air smells of wax, incense, and old roses. Every step echoes as in a sacred cavern.
Camila enters first, pushing open the door with a gesture both decisive and theatrical. The Magnificent follows, with the slightly decadent grace of a man used to commanding every space — even God’s.
Salimbene and I come last.
Beneath a side altar, in a crystal reliquary, glimmers the relic — the true head of Saint Catherine. It is small, dark, fragile as a walnut. We gaze at it in silence.
Camila turns to me and whispers:
“This is the only immortality the Church grants women: preservation in a reliquary.”
I smile, a little tired. “Better memory than refrigeration,” I reply.
Salimbene shudders. “Sisters, do not speak so of the saints!”
“Oh, but we do not offend her,” says Camila, with tender irony. “If she truly lives, she’ll hear us as free women.”
Lorenzo approaches the relic, murmuring in a tone half prayer, half desire:
“If only beauty could save us from fanaticism…”
Camila’s gaze cuts sharp. “It’s not beauty that saves, Lorenzo. It’s the courage to face one’s own ruin.”
A ray of sun filters through the stained glass, striking the reliquary.
For an instant, the head seems to move — a shadow of a smile, or perhaps only a fold of light.
I think I hear a faint voice, like wind through harp strings:
Fate vobis.
Camila hears it too. “She spoke to us,” she whispers.
“What does it mean?” asks Lorenzo.
“It means there isn’t just one way to pray. I do it with holy water, Margherita with the Qur’an, you with your verses. What matters is that there’s music.”
Without thinking, I unlock my phone and play Whiskey in the Jar.
The first notes drift between the pillars, and for a moment it feels as though the Basilica itself breathes — shadows shifting like veils, the gold of the frescoes trembling, the relic almost smiling for real.
Salimbene kneels. “Forgive us, Saint Catherine. We no longer know how to tell the sacred from the profane.”
Camila lays a hand on his shoulder. “Maybe that’s how one prays today, brother — by blurring the line.”
Lorenzo laughs softly. “Then let’s drink to ambiguity,” he says. “To life becoming prayer, even when it wavers.”
Camila nods. “And to drunkards, pirates, and the Irish!” she adds.
“And to women who refuse to become relics,” I conclude.
In the silence that follows, a bell tolls in the distance.
It feels as if all of Siena breathes with us, keeping time to a profane song turned litany.
Siena slowly dissolves into the sunset.
The bells of San Domenico toll low and slow, and the company scatters like after a profane Mass: Camila and Lorenzo walking off laughing toward the Fortress, where the Magnificent’s shadow merges with that of the cypresses; Salimbene lingering behind, jotting notes in tiny script — perhaps an impossible chronicle, or a prayer for the living.
I remain alone, walking slowly, still trying to understand what I’ve learned.
I descend through narrow alleys, following the city’s warm breath. I reach Via di Salicotto, in the Contrada della Torre.
The windows are shuttered, but the scent of bread and smoke seeps through the cracks — Siena, as always, keeps something medieval even in its dreams.
There, leaning against a wall, stands a young man. His jacket is worn, a red scarf tied at his throat, his gaze a mix of fire and gentleness. He looks at me as if he’s been waiting a long time.
“Are you the traveller among the dead?” he asks.
“Maybe,” I say. “And who are you?”
He smiles. “My name is Bruno Fanciullacci. Partisan. I stayed here, halfway between escape and legend.”
We sit on a stone step. The wind carries a scent of iron and ripe grapes.
“I’ve read about you,” I say. “You killed Giovanni Gentile.”
“Yes. But that’s not what I want to talk about.”
He lights a cigarette he doesn’t really smoke — just to have some smoke to look at.
“Let’s talk about freedom. The real kind, not the kind carved on monuments.”
I nod. “I’m listening.”
“Anarchy,” he says, “isn’t chaos. It’s trust. It’s believing that human beings can live together without masters, if they learn to have conscience.”
“It’s hard,” I say.
“I know. So is love. And yet no one stops searching for it.”
We walk together to the bus stop.
The sky has turned violet. The hills around Siena seem to burn in silence.
We board an old bus bound for Florence: the seats smell of plastic and nostalgia. Bruno sits beside me, his gaze lost in the reflections of the window.
“I won’t go past the Fortress,” he says. “Every ghost has its border. But play me something before I leave.”
I smile. I take out my phone, put on my headphones, and let Zombie by the Cranberries fill the bus.
The notes mingle with the hum of the engine, the low voices of passengers — and for a moment, it feels as if everything — the living and the dead, history and dream — breathes in the same rhythm.
When I arrive in Florence, it’s night.
The city sleeps, but its stones remember.
I walk to the Medici Chapels — the door closed, the marble reflecting the moon. I place my phone on the ground and play Zombie again. The first notes bounce between the columns, like a secret invocation.
And then it happens.
The mummies of the Medici reply — with Dreams. Dolores’s voice rises, clear, young, immortal. A choir of ghosts sings with her, and the Florentine night becomes a cathedral of sound.
I laugh, a lump in my throat.
“This,” I murmur, “is the work of the living.”
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