Getty 43r
The swordsman's low answer to the lance, and its counter. The pair repeats 42v's argument with the guards exchanged — and the two manuscript families narrate [10] from opposite saddles, which makes this the section's most instructive page for how the witnesses differ.
This one with the sword awaits this one with the lance, and he awaits him in the Boar's Tooth (dente di cenghiaro). As the man with the lance comes near him, the Master with the sword beats his lance outward, toward the right side. And so can the Master with the sword do: he can cover and strike in one turn of the sword (in un voltar di spada).
Flow of actions (the Getty's prose, from the swordsman's side).
- With the sword, await the man with the lance — this is a receiving plate, not a charging one.
- Wait in the Boar's Tooth: the sword carried low, the same guard the lance used at [Mounted 2].
- As he comes near — the tempo is stated, and it is late — beat his lance outward, toward your right side.
- Fiore then names the mechanic that makes it possible: cover and strike in one turn of the sword (in un voltar di spada). One motion does both; there is no time on horseback for two.
- Come in at half-lance (a meça lança) — gripping the shaft at its middle, closed up and short.
- Because the lance is short-gripped and low, the swordsman is too late to beat it aside; his beat is timed to a lance that arrives at full length.
- Strike the horse.
- The verse then points forward: "you will see my play completed here behind" — i.e. at [Mounted 11], the next plate.
The two families are not describing the same man. See the comparison.
the Getty and Morgan prose speak for the swordsman who waits in the Boar's Tooth; the Pisani Dossi and Paris verses speak for the lancer, gripping his lance at mid-shaft to strike the horse — anticipating the counter shown in [11]. In all versions one image of the pair carries no text.
This is the counter of the play of lance and sword that came before: the man with the lance strikes his enemy's horse — the enemy with the sword — in the head, because he cannot beat aside the lance so low with the sword.
- He waits in the Boar's Tooth with the sword ([Mounted 10]).
- Carry the lance low and strike his horse in the head.
- Fiore gives the same reason as at [Mounted 8], word for word: he cannot beat aside the lance so low with the sword.
- The verse adds the intent behind the carry: it is not only that he cannot beat — it is that he cannot cross (incrosar) at all. Deny the crossing and the swordsman has no play, because every sword play in this book begins from one.
The Getty's own [10] promised that the sword beats the lance "in one turn". This plate says: not if the lance never comes to the sword's height.
Glossological analysis
- a meça lança (PD, [10]) — "at half-lance": gripping the shaft at its middle rather than at the butt. Shortening the grip trades reach for control and, per the verse, beats the swordsman's timing. The Paris confirms the sense with iaculum complector… in medio ("I grip my spear at the middle").
- asserato (PD, [10]) — closed up, gathered tight; of the rider drawing himself and his weapon in. The Paris renders it stringens membra simul ("gathering my limbs together") — the two verse witnesses translating each other.
- in un voltar di spada ([10]) — "in one turn of the sword": one motion that covers and strikes together. This is the mounted statement of the art's central tactical claim, cover-and-strike in a single tempo (Tactical grouping §2). The Morgan drops the strike from it — see below.
- spettare / aspetare ([10]) — to await. The swordsman waits; the lancer comes. The distinction between awaiting and initiating that classes the longsword guards as stabile and pulsativa (Glossary) is alive here without the labels.
- incrosar (PD, [11]) — the crossing of the blades (Glossary). Its appearance in a lance couplet is telling: the lancer's aim is defined negatively, as preventing the sword's opening move.
- dente di cenghiaro ([10]) — the Boar's Tooth again, now holding a sword instead of a lance. Three plates, three weapons, one guard-name ([Mounted 2] lance, [Mounted 10] sword, and on foot [Grappling 3] bare hands).
Manuscript comparison
- A genuine reversal of voice at [10] — the section's clearest. The Getty and Morgan narrate the plate from the swordsman waiting in the Boar's Tooth to beat the lance. The Pisani Dossi and Paris narrate it from the lancer, gripping at mid-shaft and striking the horse before the beat can land. The two families put the same figures on the page and give the win to opposite riders. (Flagged in Mounted Fencing translation.) It is the mounted twin of the reversal at [Grappling 11], and it splits exactly along the prose/verse line drawn at Manuscript comparison §6.
- The verse family is internally consistent about it. The Pisani Dossi's lancer promises to "strike your horse without fail" and says "you will see my play completed here behind" — pointing to [11], where the horse is in fact struck. The Latin says the same ("your steed will go off, struck with a deadly wound"). The verse witnesses are not confused: they read [10] and [11] as one lancer's play in two plates, where the prose reads [10] as the swordsman's play and [11] as the answer to it.
- The Morgan loses the strike at [10]. Getty: "he can cover and strike in one turn of the sword" (covrir e ferir). Morgan: "he can cover in one turn of the sword" (covirre[!] — the transcription marks the word itself as corrupt). One prose copy states the cover-and-strike-in-one-tempo doctrine; the other, at a visibly damaged word, states only the cover.
- A blank plate in every witness. One image of the [10] pair carries no text in the Getty (43r-a), the Morgan (5r-a), the Pisani Dossi (31a-b), and the Paris (2v-d) alike. All four witnesses leave the same figure unglossed — a shared silence, not four separate losses.
- Illustrations. [10] pairs the Pisani Dossi (31a-a) with the Getty (43r-b) — worth comparing directly, since these are the two witnesses that disagree about whose play it is. [11] is shown from the Getty (43r-c, 43r-d).