Baudolino (24 page)

"O Baudolino," Trotti shouted down at him, "are you coming to join us?"

"Don't play the fool, Trotti, you already know I'm on the other side. But I'm surely not here with bad intentions. Let me come in: I want to speak to my father. I swear on the Virgin that I won't say a word about what I may see."

"I trust you. Open the gates, down there! Did you hear me, or are all of you weak in the head? This is a friend. Or almost. I mean he's with them, but he's one of ours. He's one of us but he's one of theirs. Hey, just open the gates or I'll kick your teeth in!"

"All right, all right," those wide-eyed fighters said. "No telling here who's in and who's out; yesterday that man went out dressed like a Pavese."

"Shut your mouth, you animal," Trotti shouted. And "Ha ha" Baudolino laughed, as he entered. "You've sent spies to our camp.... Don't worry. I told you: I won't see anything or hear anything."

And now Baudolino is embracing Gagliaudo—still vigorous and as if strengthened by enforced fasting—near the well of the little square just inside the walls. Then he finds Ghini and Scaccabarozzi opposite the church; and when he asks where Squarciafichi is, they weep and tell him that Squarciafichi took a Genoese dart in the throat in the last attack, and Baudolino also weeps, for he has never liked war and now less than ever, and he fears for his old father. Here is Baudolino in the beautiful main square, bright in the pale March sunshine; he sees children carrying big baskets of stones to reinforce the defenses, and skins of water for the sentries, and he is proud of the indomitable spirit that has gripped the citizens; here is Baudolino wondering who all these people are crowding into Alessandria as if for a wedding feast, and his friends tell him that this is their great misfortune, that fear of the imperial army has brought here people
fleeing all the surrounding villages, and, yes, the city has many hands, but also too many mouths to feed; here is Baudolino admiring the new cathedral, which may not be big but is well made, and he says: "Why, it even has a tympanum with a dwarf on the throne," and around him they say: "Oh yes," as if to say you see what we're able to do, but that isn't a dwarf, stupid, it's Our Lord, maybe not well done, but if Frederick had come a month later he would have found the whole Last Judgment with the oldsters of the Apocalypse; here is Baudolino asking for a glass of the good stuff, and they all look at him as if he came from the camp of the imperials, because it's clear that wine, bad or good, is not to be found, not even a drop; it's the first thing they give to the wounded to keep their spirits up, and to the families of the dead to keep their mind off their troubles; and here is Baudolino seeing around him wan faces and asking how long they can hold out, and they make superstitious gestures, raising their eyes as if to say these things are in the hands of the Lord; and finally here is Baudolino meeting Anselmo Medico, who commands five hundred foot soldiers from Piacenza, who have rushed to help the Civitas Nova, and Baudolino is pleased at this fine show of solidarity, and his friends Guasco, Trotti, Boidi, and Oberto del Foro say that this Anselmo is a man who knows how to fight, but the Piacenza men are the only ones; the League urged us to rebel but now they don't give a damn about us, the Italian communes are a fraud, if we come out of this siege alive, from now on we owe nothing to anyone, they can deal with the emperor on their own, and amen.

"But how is it that the Genoese are against you, when they helped you build the city, and gave you gold?"

"The Genoese know how to run their business, you can count on that, so now they're with the emperor because it's in their interest; everybody knows, and they know, that, once it's here, the city won't go away, not even if they knock it down, like Lodi or Milan. So they wait for the afterwards, and afterwards what remains of the city is still useful to them to control the trade routes, and maybe they'll pay to
rebuild what they helped destroy, but meanwhile money keeps changing hands, and the Genoese are always there."

"Baudolino," Ghini said to him, "you've just arrived and you didn't see the attacks in October and the ones in the last weeks. They're fighters, not just the Genoese crossbowmen, but those Bohemians with the mustaches almost white, who if they manage to set a ladder in place it's a real job knocking it down.... It's true that, in my opinion, more of their men died than ours because, even if they have the rams and the cats, they've taken plenty of clods on the head. Anyway, it's hard, and we tighten our belts."

"We've received a message," Trotti said, "that the League's troops are on the move, and they want to surprise the emperor from behind. Do you know anything about that?"

"We've heard the same thing, and that's why Frederick wants to make you surrender first. You ... you aren't thinking of giving up now, are you?"

"What an idea! Our head is harder than our cock."

And so, for some weeks, after every skirmish, Baudolino went home, to tally the dead more than for any other reason (Panizza, too? Yes, Panizza, too, and he was a good man), and then he returned to tell Frederick that those men ... surrender? Not a chance. Frederick no longer cursed, but confined himself to saying: "What can I do about it?" It was clear that by now he repented having got himself into this mess: his army was falling apart, the peasants were hiding the grain and their stock in the woods or, worse, in the swamps, he couldn't press forward to north or east, or he would encounter some vanguard of the League—in short, it wasn't that these rustics were better than the people of Crema, but bad luck is bad luck. However, he couldn't just go away, because he would be humiliated forever.

As for saving face, Baudolino realized, from something the emperor said one day, referring to his boyhood feat—the time he had persuaded the Terdona people to surrender—that if Frederick could
only exploit a sign from heaven, any sign, allowing him to announce
urbi et orbi
that heaven itself was suggesting they go back home, Frederick would seize the opportunity...

One day, while Baudolino was talking with the besieged, Gagliaudo said to him: "You're so intelligent and you've studied the books where everything is written—don't you have some idea that will make everybody leave, now that we've had to slaughter our cows, except for one, and your mother is going to die of suffocation, penned up in the city like this?"

And then Baudolino had a fine idea, and he immediately asked if they had actually invented that false tunnel Trotti had talked about a few years before, the tunnel the enemy was to believe led straight into the city, but really led the invader into a trap. "Of course," Trotti said, "come and see. Look. The tunnel opens over there, in that thicket two hundred feet from the walls, just below a kind of boundary stone that looks like it's been there for a thousand years but really we brought it from Villa del Foro. And anyone who enters there ends up here, beneath that grating, from which you can see the tavern and nothing else."

"And as one comes out, you do him in?"

"The fact is that, generally, with a tunnel that narrow, it would take days for all the besiegers to come through, so they send only one squad of men, who are supposed to reach the gates and open them. Now, apart from the fact that we don't know how to inform the enemy that there's a tunnel, after you've killed maybe twenty or, at most, thirty poor bastards, was it worth the effort to do all that work? It's nothing but a cheap trick."

"If it's only to hit them on the head. But listen to the scene I can almost see with these eyes of mine: the moment the men come in, a blast of trumpets sounds and, in the light of ten torches, from that corner appears a man with a long white beard and a white cloak, on
a white horse with a great white cross in his hand, and he shouts: Citizens, citizens, wake up, the enemy is here. Before the invaders have made up their mind to move a step, our people appear at the windows and on the rooftops. And after the enemies are captured, our people sink to their knees and cry that the man in white is Saint Peter, who is protecting the city, and they push the imperials back into the tunnel, saying, Thank God that we're sparing your lives; go to the camp of your Barbarossa and tell them that the New City of Pope Alexander is protected by Saint Peter in person...."

"And will Barbarossa believe a tale like that?"

"No, because he's not stupid, but since he's not stupid, he will pretend to believe it because he's more anxious to end this than you people are."

"Let's suppose you're right. Who'll arrange to have the tunnel discovered?"

"Me."

"And where are you going to find the asshole who falls for it?"

"I've already found him, and he's such an asshole that he'll fall right into the trap on his shitty face, as he deserves, but anyway we agree that nobody gets killed."

Baudolino had in mind that fop Count Ditpold, and to spur Ditpold into action it was enough to make him believe he was harming Baudolino. So all they had to do was let Ditpold find out that there was a tunnel and that Baudolino didn't want it discovered. How? Nothing easier, since Ditpold had his spies following Baudolino.

After nightfall, returning to the camp, Baudolino first passed through a little clearing, then entered the wood, but once he was among the trees, he stopped and looked back just in time to see, in the moonlight, an agile shadow slipping, almost on all fours, through the open space. It was the man Ditpold had put on his heels. Baudolino waited among the trees until the spy was about to fall on him, pointed his sword at the man's chest and, while the other was stammering in
fear, he said to him in Flemish: "I recognize you. You're one of the Brabantines. What were you doing outside the camp? Speak! I'm one of the emperor's ministerials!"

The man said something about a woman, and sounded almost convincing. "All right," Baudolino said. "In any case it's lucky you're here. I need someone to guard my back while I do something."

For the other man this was a blessing. Not only had he not been discovered, but he could continue his spying arm-in-arm with its object. Baudolino reached the thicket Trotti had mentioned. He didn't have to pretend, because he really did have to scratch around to find the stone, while he grumbled as if to himself about receiving word from one of his informers. He found the stone, which did look as if it had grown there with the bushes; he worked over it, scraping foliage away until he had uncovered a grating. He asked the Brabantine to help him lift it: there were three steps. "Now listen," he said to the Brabantine. "Go down these steps and move forward until you reach the end of the tunnel, where you may see some lights. Take a good look at what you see and don't forget any of it. Then come back and report. I'll stay here on guard."

To the soldier it seemed natural, however painful, that a gentleman should first ask him to stand guard and then should stand guard himself, while sending him into the unknown. Baudolino had brandished his sword, surely to cover his back, but with lords there was never any telling. The spy made the sign of the cross and set out. When he returned after about twenty minutes, gasping, he reported what Baudolino already knew: that at the end of the passage there was another grating, not very hard to lift, and beyond it was a solitary little square, and so this tunnel led right into the heart of the city.

Baudolino asked: "Were there some turns, or did you go straight forward?" "Straight," the man replied. And Baudolino, as if talking to himself, said: "So the exit is a few dozen meters from the gates. That traitor was right...." Then, to the Brabantine: "You realize what we've discovered. The first time there's an attack on the walls, a squad
of brave men can enter the city, fight their way to the gates and open them; we just have to have more troops outside, ready to enter. My fortune is made. But you must tell no one what you have seen tonight, because I don't want anyone taking advantage of my discovery." With a munificent air he handed him a coin, and the price of silence was so ridiculous that, if not out of loyalty to Ditpold, at least for revenge, the spy would immediately run and tell him everything.

It requires little imagination to picture what was to happen. Thinking that Baudolino wanted to keep the news secret, so as not to harm his besieged friends, Ditpold hurried to tell the emperor that his beloved son had discovered an entrance into the city but was taking care not to reveal it. The emperor raised his eyes to heaven as if to say: the dear boy, him too, then he said to Ditpold: very well, I offer you the glory; towards sunset I'll deploy for you a good attack force just outside the gate, I'll have some onagers and some rams placed near the thicket. When you slip into the tunnel with your men it will be almost dark and nobody will notice you, you enter the city, open the gates from inside, and overnight you become a hero."

The bishop of Speyer immediately claimed the command of the forces outside the gate, because Ditpold, he said, was like his own son. Imagine!

And so, on the afternoon of Good Friday, when Trotti saw the imperials waiting outside the gate, as always when darkness was falling, he understood it was a display to distract the besieged, and behind it there was the hand of Baudolino. So, discussing it with Guasco, Boidi, and Oberto del Foro, he took care to provide a credible Saint Peter; one of the original consuls, Rodolfo Nebia, volunteered, and had the suitable physique. They wasted only a half hour debating whether the apparition should hold the cross or the usual keys, deciding on the cross, which would be more visible in the gloaming.

Baudolino was a short distance from the gates, certain that there would be no battle, because someone would first emerge from the tunnel bearing the news of the celestial assistance. And, in fact, in the
time of three Paters, Aves, and Glorias, from inside the walls a great stir was heard, a voice that to all seemed superhuman shouted: "To arms, to arms, my faithful Alessandrians!" and a chorus of terrestrial voices cried: "It's Saint Peter! Oh, miracle! Miracle!"

But right at this point something went wrong. As they would later explain to Baudolino, Ditpold and his men had been promptly caught and everyone tried to convince them that Saint Peter had appeared. They would probably have fallen for it, the lot of them, except Ditpold, who knew very well from whom the revelation of the tunnel had come, and—stupid, but not that stupid—he realized that the idea had been conceived by Baudolino. He freed himself from his captors' grip, ran down a narrow street shouting in such a loud voice that nobody could understand what language he was talking, and in the twilight they believed he was one of them. But when he was on the wall, it was obvious that he was addressing the besiegers, to warn them of a trap—it wasn't clear what he was protecting them against, since those outside, if the gate wasn't opened, couldn't come in and therefore were hardly at risk. It made no difference that, precisely because of his stupidity, Ditpold had courage and was at the top of the wall waving his sword and challenging all the Alessandrians. They—as the rules of a siege demand—could not admit that an enemy had reached the wall, even if arriving from within. Above all, only a few were in on the plot, and the rest suddenly saw an Alaman in their midst as if nothing had happened. So someone decided to stick a pike into Ditpold's back, flinging him down from the bastion.