Baudolino (25 page)

At the sight of his best-beloved comrade falling lifeless at the foot of the keep, the bishop of Speyer lost his head completely and ordered the attack. In a normal situation, the Alessandrians would have behaved as usual, firing on the attackers from the top of the fortifications, but as the enemy pressed at the gates, a rumor was spreading that Saint Peter had appeared, to save the city from danger, and he was preparing to lead a victorious sortie. Meanwhile, Trotti had
thought to exploit this misunderstanding, and had sent his bogus Saint Peter to go out first, drawing all the others after him.

In short, Baudolino's trick, which should have clouded the minds of the assailants, clouded instead those of the assailed: the Alessandrians, gripped by mystic furor and by the most bellicose ecstasy, were flinging themselves like beasts against the imperials—and in such a disordered way, contrary to the rules of the art of war, that the bishop of Speyer and his knights, bewildered, fell back, imitated by those who were meant to push the crossbowmen's towers, leaving them at the very edge of the fatal thicket. For the Alessandrians it was an open invitation: immediately Anselmo Medico with his Piacentines slipped into the tunnel, which now was truly helpful, and emerged behind the Genoese, with a group of bold men carrying poles on which they had stuck balls of burning pitch. And so the Genoese towers caught fire like kindling. The crossbowmen jumped off, but as they hit the ground, the Alessandrians were there to strike their heads with clubs; one tower first tilted, then crumbled, spreading flames among the bishop's cavalry, the horses seemed crazed, upsetting the ranks of the imperials even more, and those not on horseback contributed to the disorder, because they ran through the ranks of the riders shouting that Saint Peter in person was arriving, and perhaps also Saint Paul, and some had even seen Saint Sebastian and Saint Tarcisius—the whole Christian Olympus, in other words, had joined that loathsome city.

At night, some men brought to the imperial camp, already in deep mourning, the corpse of the bishop of Speyer, struck in the back as he was fleeing. Frederick sent for Baudolino and asked what his part in this story was and what he knew of it, and Baudolino wanted to sink through the ground, because that evening many brave men had died, including Anselmo Medico of Piacenza, and valorous sergeants, and poor foot soldiers, and all for that fine plan of his—which should have resolved everything without a hair of anyone's
head being touched. He threw himself at Frederick's feet, telling him the whole truth, how he had thought to offer him a credible pretext for raising the siege and instead things had gone as they had.

"I'm a wretch, dear Father," he said. "Blood revolts me, and I wanted to keep my hands clean, and spare many other deaths, and look at the slaughter I've wrought. All these deaths are on my conscience!"

"Curse you, or curse those who botched the plan," Frederick replied, apparently more saddened than angered, "because—don't tell this to anyone—that pretext would have indeed been a help to me. I have had fresh news: the League is on the move, perhaps as soon as tomorrow we'll have to fight on two fronts. Your Saint Peter would have convinced the soldiers, but now too many have died, and my barons are demanding revenge. They're going around saying that this is the right moment to teach the people of this city a lesson. It was enough to see those people when they came out: thinner than we are, and they were really making their final effort."

By then it was Holy Saturday. The air was tepid, the fields were decked with flowers, and the trees were joyously sprouting. The people were sad as at a funeral, the imperials because each said it was time to attack and nobody felt like doing it, the Alessandrians because, after the effort of the last sortie, their spirits were high, though their bellies were hanging between their legs. Thus it was that Baudolino's fertile mind set to work again.

He rode once more towards the walls, and found Trotti, Guasco, and the other leaders grave and frowning. They also knew about the arrival of the League, but they had heard from a reliable source that the various communes were deeply divided as to how to proceed, and very uncertain as to whether they should actually attack Frederick.

"Because it's one thing, Master Niketas—now mind you, this is a very fine point that maybe Byzantines aren't subtle enough to grasp—it's one thing to defend yourselves when the emperor is besieging you, and another thing to start a battle on your own initiative.
I mean: if your father hits you with his belt, you have the right to try to grab it and tear it from his hands—that's self-defense—but if you're the one who raises his hand to strike your father, then it's patricide. Once you have definitively shown disrespect to the holy and Roman emperor, what do you have left to keep the Italian communes together? You understand, Master Niketas, there they were, having just torn Frederick's troops to pieces, but they continued to recognize him as their sole lord. They didn't want him underfoot, but it would have been awful if he no longer existed: they would have massacred one another not even knowing if they were acting well or badly, because the criterion of right and wrong was, in the end, the emperor."

"So," Guasco said, "the best thing would be for the emperor to abandon immediately the siege of Alessandria, and I assure you the communes would allow him passage to reach Pavia." But how could he be permitted to save appearances? We had already tried the sign from heaven, and the Alessandrians had gained a great satisfaction, but they were again back where they started from. Saint Peter had been too ambitious, Baudolino then remarked, and a vision or an apparition, whatever you choose to call it, is something that's there and isn't there. Besides, the next day it's easy to deny it. Finally, why trouble the saints? Those mercenaries were people who didn't believe even in the Father Almighty; the only thing they believed in was a full belly and a hard cock...."

"Let's suppose..." Gagliaudo said then, with the wisdom that God—as all know—gives only to poor folk, "let's suppose that the imperials capture one of our cows, and they find her so stuffed with wheat that her belly's about to explode. Then Barbarossa and his men will think that we still have so much food that we can hold out in
sculasculorum,
and so it'll be those very same lords and soldiers who'll say let's clear out, otherwise we'll still be here for next Easter...."

"I've never heard such a stupid idea," Guasco said, and Trotti agreed with him, tapping his brow with one finger, as if to say the old
man was by now weak in the head. "And if there was still a cow alive, we'd have already eaten her, even raw," Boidi added.

"Not because this man's my father, but the idea doesn't seem to me something to be disregarded," Baudolino said. "Maybe you've forgotten it, but there
is
one cow left, and it's Gagliaudo's very own Rosina. The only problem is whether, even if you scrape every corner of the city, you'll find enough wheat to make the animal burst."

"The problem is that you're a dumb animal yourself, you animal!" Gagliaudo leaped to his feet. "Because obviously to understand that she's full of wheat, the imperials have not only to find her, but also cut her open, and we haven't slaughtered my Rosina because for me and your mother she's like the daughter the Lord never granted us, so nobody's going to touch her: I'd sooner send you to the shambles, after you stay thirty years away from home, while she's stayed here with us, without any bees in her bonnet."

Guasco and the others, who until a moment before were thinking this idea worthy of a madman, once Gagliaudo opposed it became instantly convinced that it was the best conceivable plan, and they bent every effort to convince the old man that, when the fate of the city is involved, you sacrifice even your personal cow, and it was useless for him to say he'd rather give up Baudolino, because cutting open Baudolino wouldn't convince anyone, whereas cutting open the cow might make Barbarossa drop everything. As for the wheat, they didn't have any to squander, but by scratching around, a bit here and a bit there, they should collect enough to fatten Rosina, and without being over-fussy, because once it was in the stomach, it was hard for anyone to say if it was wheat or chaff, and without bothering to remove the weevils, or roaches, or whatever you call them, for in wartime you found them even in the bread.

"Come now, Baudolino," Niketas said, "you're not going to tell me that everyone was seriously considering such a piece of nonsense."

"Not only did we consider it seriously, but—as you'll see subsequently—the emperor took it seriously, too."

In fact, this is how the story went. Towards the third hour of that Holy Saturday all the consuls and the persons of greatest authority in Alessandria were under a shed where a cow was lying, and a more skinny and moribund cow it would be hard to imagine, the hide blotchy, the legs like sticks, the teats seemed ears, the ears seemed nipples, a stunned gaze, even her horns drooping, and the rest more carcass than body, not so much a cow as the ghost of a cow, a
Totentanz
cow, lovingly tended by Baudolino's mother, who stroked Rosina's head, saying that after all this may be for the best, her sufferings would end, and after a hearty meal, and hence she was better off than her master and mistress.

Nearby, sacks of wheat and seeds kept arriving, collected as best anyone could, and Gagliaudo put the food under the muzzle of the poor creature, urging her to eat. But the cow now looked upon the world with moaning detachment, and no longer even recalled what ruminating meant. So, finally, some hardy souls held her legs fast, others her head, and still others forced her mouth open, and as she was weakly mooing her refusal, they thrust the wheat down her throat, as is done with geese. Then, perhaps out of an instinct for self-preservation, or stirred by the memory of better days, the animal began moving with her tongue all that plenty, and a bit through her own will and a bit through the help of the bystanders, she started to swallow.

It was not a joyous meal, and more than once it seemed to all that Rosina was about to give up her animal soul to God, for she ate as if she were giving birth, between one moan and the next. But then the life force took the upper hand, the cow struggled to her four hoofs and went on eating by herself, sticking her muzzle directly into the sacks that were offered her. In the end what they were all seeing was a quite odd cow, very skinny and melancholy, with her spine protruding
and marked as if the bones wanted to escape the hide imprisoning them, while the belly, on the contrary, was opulent, rotund, hydropsical, and taut as if she were heavy with ten calves.

"It won't work, it won't work." Boidi shook his head, in the face of this profoundly sad portent. "Even a fool can see that this animal isn't fat: she's just a cow hide that's been stuffed...."

"And even if they do believe she's fat," Guasco said, "how could they accept the idea that her master still takes her out to pasture, risking the loss of both his life and his precious animal?"

"My friends," Baudolino said, "don't forget that, whoever the men who find her are, they'll be so hungry that they won't stop to see if she's fat here and thin there."

Baudolino was right. Towards the ninth hour Gagliaudo had barely ventured out the gate, to a meadow half a league from the walls, when from the woods came a band of Bohemians, who were surely out hunting for birds, if there was still a bird alive in those parts. They saw the cow, unable to believe their ravenous eyes, they flung themselves on Gagliaudo. He promptly held up his hands, and they dragged him and the animal towards the camp. Soon a crowd had gathered around them, warriors with hollow cheeks and bulging eyes, and poor Rosina's throat was soon slashed by a Como man who seemed to know the art, because he did it with one stroke, and Rosina, in the time it takes to utter an amen, was alive one moment and dead the next. Gagliaudo really did cry, and so the scene appeared convincing to all.

When the animal's belly was cut open, what was to happen happened: all that food that had been so hastily forced into her now poured out on the ground as if it were still intact, and to all it seemed indubitable that it was wheat. The amazement was such that it prevailed over appetite, and in any case hunger had not robbed those armed men of an elementary ratiocination: if, in a besieged city, the cows could feast to this degree, it went against every rule, human and divine. A sergeant, among the bystanders, was able to repress his own
instincts, and decided that his commanders should be informed of the wonder. Shortly the news reached the ear of the emperor, with whom Baudolino was lingering, with apparent indolence, while tense and nervously awaiting events.

The carcass of Rosina, a canvas sheet in which the overflowing grain had been gathered, and Gagliaudo in irons were brought before Frederick. Dead and split in two, the cow no longer seemed fat or thin, and the only thing that could be seen was all that stuff inside and outside her belly. A sign that Frederick did not underestimate, as he immediately asked the peasant: "Who are you? Where are you from? Whose cow is that?" And Gagliaudo, even without understanding a word, replied in the purest dialect, I don't know, I wasn't there, I have nothing to do with this, I was just passing by chance, and this is the first time I've ever seen this cow, and if you hadn't told me yourself, I wouldn't even have known it's a cow. Naturally Frederick did not understand, and he turned to Baudolino; "You know this bestial language, tell me what he's saying."

Scene between Baudolino and Gagliaudo (translation): "He says he knows nothing about the cow, that a rich peasant in the city gave her to him to take out to pasture, and that's all."

"Ask him how that happened."

"He says that all cows, after they've eaten and before they've digested, are full of what they've eaten."

"Tell him not to play dumb, or I'll tie his neck to that tree! In this town, in this city of bandits, do they always give wheat to their cows?"

Gagliaudo: "With lack of hay and lack of straw, we feed the stock on wheat ... and
arbioni.
"