Baudolino (23 page)

Together, they relived the days of the letter, each complimenting the other on that great achievement. Considering a game as a game does not mean ceasing to play it. Baudolino still felt a yearning for the kingdom he had never seen, and from time to time, alone, he would recite the letter to himself, aloud, continuing to perfect the style.

***

"The proof that I couldn't forget the letter is that I managed to convince Frederick to invite my Parisian friends to court, all of them together, telling him that in the chancellery of an emperor it was good to have people who were familiar with other countries, their languages and their customs. To be truthful, since Frederick was employing me more and more as a confidential messenger in various situations, I wanted to create my little personal court, the Poet, Abdul, Boron, Kyot, and Rabbi Solomon."

"You don't mean to tell me the emperor brought a Jew to his court?"

"Why not? He didn't have to appear in the great ceremonies, or go to Mass with him and his archbishops. If the princes of all Europe and the pope himself have Jewish physicians, why not keep at hand a Jew who knew the life of the Moors in Spain and many other things about the countries of the Orient? Besides, the Germanic princes have always been more clement towards the Hebrews, more than all the other Christian kings. As Otto told me, when Edessa was reconquered by the infidels and many Christian princes again took up the cross, following the preaching of Bernard de Clairvaux (and that was when Frederick himself took up the cross), a monk by the name of Radulph incited the pilgrims to slaughter all the Jews in the cities they passed through. And it was truly a massacre. But many Jews sought the emperor's protection, and he allowed them to take refuge and live in the city of Nuremberg."

In short, Baudolino was reunited with all his cronies. Not that, at court, they had much to do. Solomon, in every city through which Frederick passed, got in touch with his fellow-Jews, and they were to be found everywhere ("like weeds," the Poet taunted him). Abdul discovered that the Provençal of his songs was understood better in Italy than in Paris. Boron and Kyot wore themselves out in dialectical battles: Boron tried to convince Kyot that the nonexistence of the vacuum was crucial in establishing the uniqueness of the Grasal, Kyot
obstinately believed that it was a stone fallen from the heavens,
lapis ex coelis,
and as far as he was concerned it could even have arrived from another universe, crossing totally empty spaces.

Apart from these weaknesses, they often discussed the letter of the Priest, and Baudolino's friends asked why he didn't press Frederick to make the journey they had worked so hard to prepare. One day, as Baudolino was trying to explain that, in those years, Frederick had too many problems still to be resolved, both in Lombardy and in Germany, the Poet said that perhaps it would be worthwhile for them to go off themselves in search of the kingdom, without awaiting the emperor's convenience. "The emperor could draw some dubious advantage from this enterprise. Suppose he reaches the land of John and does not come to an agreement with that monarch. He would return defeated, and we would have done him only harm. On the other hand, if we go on our own, however things turn out, we will surely return from such a rich and miraculous land with something extraordinary."

"That's the truth," Abdul said. "What are we waiting for? Let's set out; it is a long way...."

"Master Niketas, I felt sick at heart, as I saw them seized by the Poet's proposal, and I understood why. Both Boron and Kyot were hoping to find the kingdom of the Priest in order to take possession of the Grasal, which would have given them God knows what glory and power in those Northern lands where all were still searching for it. Rabbi Solomon would find the ten lost tribes, and would become the greatest and most honored, not only among the rabbis of Spain, but among all the sons of Israel. In the case of Abdul, there was little to say: he had by now identified the kingdom of Prester John as that of his princess, except that—growing in age and wisdom—distance satisfied him less and less, while the princess, may the god of lovers forgive him, was someone he wanted to be able to put his hands on. As for the Poet, who knows what he had been brooding over in Pavia?
Now, with a modest fortune of his own, he seemed to want John's kingdom for himself, not for the emperor. This explains why for some years, in my disappointment, I didn't speak to Frederick of the Priest's kingdom. If this was the game, it was better to leave that kingdom where it was, saving it from the desires of those who failed to understand its mystical greatness. The letter had thus become my personal dream, and I no longer wanted anyone else to enter it. I needed it to quell the sufferings of my unhappy love. One day, I told myself, I will forget all this because I will move towards the land of Prester John.... But now we should return to the affairs of Lombardy."

In the days of Alessandria's birth, Frederick had said that if Pavia were to go over to his enemies, that would be the last straw. And two years later Pavia did choose the anti-imperial League. It was a bitter blow for the emperor. He did not react at once, but in the course of the following years the situation in Italy became so murky that Frederick resolved to return, and it was clear to all that he was aiming precisely at Alessandria.

"Forgive me..." Niketas said, "so he was going back into Italy for the third time?"

"No, the fourth. Wait, let me remember.... It must have been the fifth, I think. Sometimes he stayed, maybe for four years, like that time of Crema and the destruction of Milan. Or had he gone back in the meantime? No, no, he spent more time in Italy than at his own home—but what was his home? Accustomed as he was to traveling, he felt at home, I had realized, only along the banks of a river: he was a good swimmer, the cold never frightened him, or deep water, or whirlpools. He flung himself into the water, swam, and he seemed to feel he was in his own element. In any case, the time I'm now talking about, he went down very angry, ready for a hard war. With him was the marquess of Monferrato, as well as the cities of Alba, Acqui, Pavia, and Como..."

"But you just said that Pavia had gone over to the League?"

"Did I? Oh, yes, before. But in the meantime it had come back to the emperor."

"Oh, Lord!" Niketas cried, "our emperors dig each other's eyes out, but at least, as long as they see, we know whose side they are on...."

"You people have no imagination. Anyway, in September of that year Frederick descended, through the Mont Cenis pass to Susa. The affront he had suffered seven years earlier was not forgotten, and he put the town to the sword and burned it. Asti surrendered at once, giving him free passage, and there he was encamped in Frascheta, along the Bormida, but he had deployed other men all around, even beyond the Tanaro. It was time to settle scores with Alessandria. I received letters from the Poet, who had followed the expedition, and it seems that Frederick was breathing flame and fire, and felt he was the very incarnation of divine justice."

"Why weren't you with him?"

"Because he was good, truly. He realized the anguish I could feel at witnessing the severe punishment he was going to inflict on the people of my land, and with some pretext he urged me to stay far away until Roboreto was nothing but a heap of ashes. You understand? He didn't call it Civitas Nova or Alessandria, because a new city, without his permission, couldn't exist. So he spoke of the old place, Roboreto, as if it had only expanded a little."

This was early November. But November, in that plain, meant deluge. It rained and rained, and even the cultivated fields became swamp. The marquess of Monferrato had assured Frederick that those walls were of earth, and behind them were some strays who would shit green at the very name of the emperor, but instead those vagabonds proved good defenders, and the walls turned out to be so solid that the cats, the imperial rams, broke their horns against them. The horses and the soldiers wallowed in the mud, and the besieged at
one point deviated the course of the Bormida, so the best of the Alaman cavalry was in mud up to its neck.

Finally, the Alessandrians sent out a machine like the ones seen at Crema: a scaffolding of wood that clung well to the ramparts, and projected a very long gangway, a slightly tilted bridge that permitted them to dominate the enemy beyond the walls. And along that gangway they rolled barrels filled with dry wood, impregnated with oil, lard, suet, and liquid pitch, to which they set fire. The barrels moved very fast, and they fell on the imperial machines, or else on the ground, where they resumed rolling like balls of fire, until they reached another machine and set fire to it.

At that point the besiegers' greatest task was transporting kegs of water to put out the fires. There was no lack of water, with the rivers, the swamp, and the water pouring down from heaven, but if all the soldiers were carrying water, who would kill the enemy?

The emperor had decided to devote the winter to reordering his army, because it is hard to attack walls when you're sliding on ice or sinking into the snow. Unfortunately that February was very severe, the army was disheartened, and the emperor even more so. Frederick, who had subjugated Terdona, Crema, and even Milan, ancient cities well-trained in the arts of war, was helpless against a mass of hovels that was a city only by miracle, and housed people that came from only God knew where. And only God knew why they were so attached to those walls, which, in any case, had never belonged to them.

Kept at a distance to prevent his seeing the destruction of his people, Baudolino decided to go to those places for fear that his people might harm the emperor.

So here he was, facing the plain where stood the city he had seen in its cradle, all bristling with banners sporting a great red cross on a white ground, as if the inhabitants wanted to muster their courage by displaying, newly born as they were, the quarterings of an ancient nobility. Facing the walls was a mushrooming field of cats, pulleys, catapults, and, among them, drawn by horses in front and pushed by
men behind, three towers advanced, teeming with rowdy people, shaking their weapons at the walls as if to say: "Here we come!"

Accompanying the towers, he saw the Poet, riding along with the mien of one making sure that everything is being done properly. "Who are those madmen on the towers?" Baudolino asked. "Genoese crossbowmen," the Poet replied, "the most fearsome assault troops in a well-ordered siege."

"The Genoese?" Baudolino was dumbfounded. "But they helped found the city!" The Poet laughed and said that in the mere four or five months since he had arrived in these parts, he had seen more than one city change its allegiance. In October, Terdona had sided with the communes, then saw that Alessandria was holding out too well against the emperor, and the Dertonesi began to suspect that the city could become too strong, and a good number of them were now insisting that their city should go over to Frederick. Cremona, at the time of Milan's surrender, was with the empire, in recent years it had passed to the League, but now for some mysterious reason of its own, it was dealing with the imperials.

"And how is the siege going?"

"It's proceeding badly. Either those inside the walls are defending themselves well or else we don't know how to attack. If you ask me, the mercenaries Frederick has brought with him this time are worn out. You can't trust them; they run off at the first difficulty. Many deserted this winter, only because it was cold and yet they were Flemings, so they didn't come from
hic sunt leones.
Finally, in the camp they're dying like flies, of a thousand diseases, and inside the walls I don't believe they're any better off, because they must have run out of provisions."

Baudolino at last presented himself to the emperor. "I've come here, dear Father," he said, "because I know these places and I could be of use to you."

"Yes," Barbarossa replied, "but you also know the people, and you won't want any harm done to them."

"And you know me: if you don't trust my heart, you know you can trust my words. I will not harm my people but I will not lie to you."

"On the contrary. You will lie to me, but you won't do me any harm either. You will lie and I'll pretend to believe you because you always lie for good ends."

He was a rough man, Baudolino explained to Niketas, but capable of great subtlety. "Can you understand what I felt then? I didn't want to destroy that city, but I loved him, and I wanted his glory."

"You had only to convince yourself," Niketas said, "that his glory would have shone even more if he were to spare the city."

"God bless you, Master Niketas, it's as if you read my soul at that time. This was the idea in my head as I moved back and forth between the camps and the walls. I had made it clear to Frederick that obviously I would establish some contact with the natives, as if I were a kind of ambassador, but evidently it wasn't clear to all that I could move without arousing any suspicion. At court some people envied my familiarity with the emperor, the bishop of Speyer, for example, and a certain Count Ditpold, whom everyone called the Bishopess, perhaps because he had the blond hair and rosy cheeks of a maiden. Perhaps he didn't give himself to the bishop; in fact he always talked about his Tecla, whom he had left behind up there in the north. Who knows?...He was handsome, but, happily, he was also stupid. It was those two who set their spies, even there in the camp, to follow me and then went and told the emperor that the night before I had been seen riding towards the walls and talking with people of the city. Fortunately the emperor sent them to the devil, because he knew I went towards the walls in the daytime and not at night."

So Baudolino did go to the walls, and even inside the walls. The first time was not easy because as he trotted towards the gates, he heard the whistle of a stone—a sign that in the city they were beginning to save their arrows and were using slingshots, which since the
time of David had proved effective and cheap. He had to shout in pure Frescheta dialect, making broad gestures with his weaponless arms, and fortunately he was recognized by Trotti.