Baudolino (15 page)

Frederick had first tried to annihilate the rebel city by setting it on fire; then he had thought it better to leave the matter in the hands of the Italians, who hated Milan more than he did. He assigned the Lodi forces the task of destroying the whole quarter at the eastern gate known as Porta Renza, the Cremonesi were to destroy Porta Romana, the Pavese should raze to the ground Porta Vercellina, and the Co-masques should destroy Porta Comacina, while the men of Seprio and Martesana should reduce Porta Nuova to a single ruin. The task greatly pleased the men of those cities, who indeed had paid the emperor much money to enjoy the privilege of settling with their own hands their scores with defeated Milan.

The day after the beginning of the demolition, Baudolino ventured inside the girdle of the walls. In certain places nothing could be seen, except a great dust cloud. Entering the cloud, he could discern here a group of men, who had tied heavy ropes to a façade, pulling in unison until it collapsed; there, expert masons on the roof of a church swinging their picks until the roof was gone, and then with great mallets breaking the walls, or uprooting the columns by inserting wedges at their base.

Baudolino spent a few days wandering through the convulsed streets; he saw the spire of the main church crumble, the most beautiful and mighty of all Italy. The most zealous were the Lodigiani, who sought only revenge: they were the first to demolish their assigned area, then they rushed to assist the Cremonesi in leveling Porta Romana. But the Pavesi seemed the most expert. They struck no random blows, and they controlled their rage: they scraped away the
mortar wherever the stones were joined together, or else they dug at the foot of the walls until the rest collapsed.

In short, for anyone who did not understand what was going on, Milan seemed a merry workplace, where everyone labored with alacrity, praising the Lord. Except that it was as if time ran backwards: it seemed that from the void a new city was rising, when instead an ancient city was returning to dust and bare earth. Absorbed in these thoughts, Baudolino, on Easter day, when the emperor had decreed great celebrations in Pavia, hastened to discover the
mirabilia urbis Mediolani
while Milan still existed. So he happened to pass a splendid basilica still intact, and to see in the vicinity some Pavesi who were completing the demolition of a little palace, hard at work even on this holy day of obligation. He learned from them that this was the basilica of Sant'Eustorgio, and that the following day they would devote their attentions to it: "It's too beautiful to be left standing, isn't it?" one of the destroyers said to him persuasively.

Baudolino entered the nave of the basilica, cool, silent, and empty. The altars and the side chapels had already been demolished. Some dogs had arrived from God knows where to find this welcoming place, and had made it their inn, pissing at the base of the columns. Beside the main altar a cow roamed, moaning. She was a handsome animal, and Baudolino was led to ponder the hatred that drove the destroyers of the city to overlook such appetizing booty in their haste to level the city.

In a side chapel, beside a stone sarcophagus, he saw an old priest emitting sobs of despair, or, rather, chirps like a wounded animal; his face was whiter than the white of his eyes, and his wasted body twitched at every lament. Baudolino tried to help, offering him the flask of water he was carrying. "Thank you, good Christian," the old man said, "but now I can only wait for death."

"They won't kill you," Baudolino said to him. "The siege is over, the peace has been signed. Those men outside want only to knock down your church, not take your life."

"And what will my life be without my church? This is heaven's just punishment, because in my ambition, many years ago, I wanted my church to be the most famous and most beautiful of all, and I committed a sin."

What sin could that poor old man have committed? Baudolino asked him.

"Years ago an Oriental traveler suggested I buy from him the most splendid relics of Christianity, the uncorrupted bodies of the three Magi."

"The Magi? All three of them? Intact?"

"Three, Magi, and intact. They seem alive; that is, I mean they seem barely dead. I knew it couldn't be true, because the Magi are spoken of in only one Gospel, the Gospel of Matthew, and he says very little about them. He doesn't say how many there were, where they came from, whether they were kings or wise men.... He says only that they reached Jerusalem following a star. No Christian knows what their origin was or where they returned to. Who could have found their grave? For this reason I never dared tell the Milanese I was concealing this treasure. I was afraid that, out of greed, they would seize the opportunity to attract the faithful from all Italy, gaining money from a false relic...."

"Therefore you didn't sin."

"I sinned because I kept them hidden in this consecrated place. I kept waiting for a sign from heaven, and it did not come. Now I don't want these vandals to find them. They might divide up the treasure to confer an extraordinary dignity on some of the very cities that today are destroying us. Please, get rid of every trace of my past weakness. Seek help, come before evening and take away these dubious relics. With little effort you can surely win Paradise, and to me that seems no small thing."

"You see, Master Niketas, I remembered then that Otto had spoken to me about the Magi in connection with Prester John. To be
sure, if that poor old priest had displayed them as if they had appeared from nowhere, nobody would have believed him. But does a relic, to be true, have to date back to the saint or to the event of which it was part?"

"No, of course not. Many relics that are preserved here in Constantinople are of very suspect origin, but the worshiper who kisses them perceives supernatural aromas wafting from them. It is faith that makes them true, not they who make faith true."

"Precisely. I also thought that a relic is valid if it finds its proper place in a true story. Outside the story of Prester John, those Magi could have been the trick of some rug merchant; within the true story of John they became genuine testimony. A door is not a door if it does not have a building around it; otherwise it would be only a hole—no, what am I saying?—not even a hole, because a void without something surrounding it is not a void. I understood then that I had the story in which the Magi could have a meaning. I thought that if I said something about Prester John to the emperor to lure him to the Orient, having the confirmation of the Magi, who surely came from the Orient, would support my argument. These poor three kings were asleep in their sarcophagus, letting the Pavesi and the Lodigiani tear to pieces the city that unwittingly housed them. They owed it nothing, they were only there in transit, as at an inn, waiting to go elsewhere; after all, they were rovers by nature—hadn't they set out from God knows where to follow a star? It was up to me to give those three bodies a new Bethlehem."

Baudolino knew that a good relic could change the fate of a city, cause it to become the destination of uninterrupted pilgrimage, transform a simple church into a shrine. Who might be interested in the Magi? Rainald came to mind: he had been given the archbishopric of Cologne, but he had still to go there for his official consecration. To enter one's own cathedral with the three Magi would be a great deed. Was Rainald looking for symbols of imperial power?
Here he had, within reach, not one but three kings, who had also been priests.

He asked the old man if he could see the bodies. The priest required Baudolino's help, because they had to shift the lid of the sarcophagus until they had uncovered the box in which the bodies were kept.

It was hard work, but it was worth it. O wonder! The bodies of the three kings seemed still alive, even though the skin had dried and become like parchment. But it had not darkened, as happens with mummified bodies. Two of the Magi had faces almost milky, one with a great white beard down to his chest, the beard still intact even if stiffened, like spun sugar; the second was beardless. The third was the color of ebony, not because of the passing of time, but because he must have had dark skin while still alive: he seemed a wooden statue, and even had a kind of crack in his left cheek. He had a short beard and a pair of fleshy lips, bared to reveal only two teeth, feral and white. All three were staring, their great, dazed eyes wide, the pupils glistening like glass. They were enfolded in cloaks, one white, one green, and one purple, and from the cloaks trousers emerged, in barbarian style, but of pure damask embroidered with rows of pearls.

Baudolino quickly returned to the imperial encampment, and rushed to speak with Rainald. The chancellor realized at once the value of Baudolino's discovery, and said: "It must all be done in secret, and quickly. We can't carry away the box; it would be too noticeable. If someone else here were to be aware of what you have found, he wouldn't hesitate to steal it from us, to take it to his own city. I'll have three coffins made, of plain wood, and during the night we'll carry them outside the walls, saying they contain the bodies of three dear friends fallen in the siege. There will be just you, the Poet, and a servant of mine. Then we'll leave them where we put them, without haste. Before I can take them to Cologne, authentic documentation will have to be produced, regarding the origin of the relics
and of the Magi themselves. Tomorrow you will return to Paris, where you know learned people, and you will find out whatever you can about their story."

During the night the three kings were carried to a crypt in the church of San Giorgio, outside the walls. Rainald wanted to see them, and he then exploded in a series of imprecations unworthy of an archbishop: "With these breeches? And this cap that looks a jester's!"

"Lord Rainald, apparently this is how they dressed then, the wise men of the Orient. Years ago I was in Ravenna and I saw a mosaic where on the robe of the empress Theodora the three Magi are depicted more or less like this."

"Exactly. Things that can convince the Greeklings of Byzantium. But can you imagine me presenting myself in Cologne with the Magi dressed like buffoons? We must change their clothes."

"How?" the Poet asked.

"How? I've allowed you to eat and drink like a feudal lord for writing two or three verses a year, and you don't know how to dress those who first adored Our Lord Jesus Christ? Dress them the way people imagine they were dressed, like bishops, like a pope, an archimandrite. Do it!"

"The cathedral and the bishopric have been sacked. Maybe we can recover some holy vestments. I'll try," the Poet said.

It was a terrible night. The vestments were found, and also something resembling three tiaras, but the problem was to strip the three mummies. While the faces seemed still alive, the bodies—except the hands, totally desiccated—were reduced to a framework of withes and straw, which came apart at every attempt to remove the clothing. "No matter," Rainald said, "once the box is in Cologne, nobody will open it. Put some sticks inside, anything that will keep them straight, the way you do with scarecrows. With all due reverence, mind you."

"Dear Lord Jesus," the Poet complained, "even in my most
drunken state would I ever have imagined I'd be sticking anything up a Magi's ass?"

"Shut up and dress them," Baudolino said. "We're working for the glory of the empire." The Poet let out some horrible blasphemies, but the Magi finally looked like cardinals of the Holy Roman Apostolic Church.

The next day Baudolino set forth on his journey. In Paris, Abdul, who knew a great deal about matters of the Orient, put him in touch with a canon of Saint Victoire, who knew even more.

"Eh, the Magi!" he said. "Tradition refers to them constantly, and many of the Fathers have spoken of them, but three of the Gospels are silent on the subject, and the quotations from Isaiah and other prophets are unrevealing: some have read them as referring to the Magi, but they could have been referring to something else. Who were they? What were their real names? Some say Hormizd of Seleucia, king of Persia; Jazdegerd and Peroz, kings of Sheba. Others say Hor, Basander, Karundas. But according to other, highly credible authors, they are called Melkon, Gaspar, and Balthasar, or else Melco, Caspare, and Fadizzarda. Or even Magalath, Galgalath, and Saracin. Or perhaps Appelius, Amrus, and Damascus..."

"Appelius and Damascus are beautiful; they suggest distant lands," Abdul said, looking vaguely into space.

"And why not Karundas?" Baudolino rebutted. "We're not here to find three names that please you; we want three real names."

The canon continued: "I would tend towards Bithisarea, Melichior, and Gastapha: the first was king of Godolia and Sheba; the second, king of Nubia and Arabia; the third, king of Tharsis and the island of Egriseula. Did they know one another before undertaking the journey? No; they met in Jerusalem and miraculously recognized one another. But some say they were wise men who lived on Mount Victorial or Mount Vaus, from whose peak they studied the signs in the heavens, and to Mount Victorial they returned after the visit to
Jesus, and later they joined the apostle Thomas to evangelize the Indies, except that they were twelve, not three."

"Twelve Magi? Isn't that too many?"

"Even John Chrysostom says as much. According to others, their names would be Zhrwndd, Hwrmzd, Awstsp, Arsk, Zrwnd, Aryhw, Arthsyst, Astnbwzn, Mhrwq, Ahsrs, Nsrdyh, and Mrwdk. But you have to be careful, because Origen says that there were three of them, like the sons of Noah, and three like the three Indias from which they came."

"There may well have been twelve Magi," Baudolino remarked, "but in Milan three were found, and we have to construct an acceptable story based on three. Let's say they were called Balthasar, Melchior, and Caspar, which seem to me names more easily pronounced than those awful sneezes our venerable master emitted just now. The problem is: how did they arrive in Milan."

"It doesn't seem a problem to me," the canon said, "since they did arrive there. I'm convinced that their grave was found on Mount Victorial by Queen Helen, the mother of Constantine. A woman capable of finding the True Cross would also have been able to discover the true Magi. And Helen took the bodies to Constantinople, to Saint Sophia."