Baudolino (35 page)

"This is the most shameless of all the shameless creatures I've met in my life," Boron said, and the others agreed. Zosimos waited, composed, in silence. Rabbi Solomon ventured to say: "The Holy One, be his name always blessed..." but Baudolino wouldn't let him finish: "No more proverbs; this rogue says enough of them. He's a rogue, but he's right. We have to take him along. Otherwise Frederick will see us return empty-handed and will think we've spent his money wallowing in Oriental orgies. We'll at least return with a prisoner. But you, Zosimos, swear: swear that you won't try some other trick on us...."

"I swear by all twelve of the holy apostles," Zosimos said.

"Eleven! Eleven, you wretch," Baudolino shouted at him, seizing his clothes, "If you say twelve, you're including Judas!"

"All right then, eleven."

"And so," Niketas said, "this was your first journey to Byzantium. I wouldn't be surprised, after what you saw, if you considered what's happening now a purification."

"You see, Master Niketas," Baudolino said, "purification, as you call it, has never appealed to me. Alessandria may be a miserable town, but where I come from, when someone in command arouses our dislike, we say good-bye to him and choose a new consul. And even Frederick, choleric as he may have been, when his cousins bothered him, he didn't castrate them, he gave them another duchy. But this isn't the story. I was aleady at the extreme confines of Christendom, I could have continued towards the east, or to the south, and I would have found the Indias. But by then we had spent all our money, and to be able to go to the Orient, I had to return to the Occident. By then I was forty-three. I have been on the trail of Prester John since I was sixteen, or even younger, and once again I was forced to postpone my journey."

The Genoese sent Boiamondo out with Theophilus to make a preliminary inspection of the city, to see if the situation was favorable. It was, more or less, they reported on their return, because a great number of the pilgrims were in the taverns, and the rest seemed to have gathered in Saint Sophia, to gaze with greedy eyes on the hoard of relics that had been accumulated there.

"It was enough to blind you!" Boiamondo said. But he added that the accumulation of loot had turned into a filthy game. Some pretended to deposit their prey, putting a bit of gimcrackery in the pile, while covertly they slipped a saint's bone into their tunic. Since nobody wanted to be caught with a relic on his person, immediately outside the church a kind of market had grown, with still-wealthy citizens and Armenian traders.

"And so," Boiamondo snickered, "the Greeks who saved a Byzantine coin, shoving it up a hole, have pulled it out to trade for a shin-bone of Saint Somebody. Which maybe had been in the church next door all along. Maybe they then will sell it back to the church, because the Greeks are smart. It's all a big feeding trough, and then they say we Genoese are the ones who think only of cash."

"What are they bringing into the church?" Niketas asked.
Theophilus gave him a more precise account. He had seen the casket containing the purple cloak of Christ, a piece of reed used in the flagellation, the sponge held up to Our Lord on the cross, the crown of thorns, a case containing a piece of the bread consecrated at the Last Supper, the one Jesus offered to Judas. Then a glass box arrived with hairs from the beard of the Crucified, torn out by the Jews after the deposition from the cross, and the case was wrapped in the Lord's garments, which the soldiers had gambled over at the foot of the cross. And then the flagellation stake, intact.

"I also saw them bring in a piece of the Madonna's mantle," Boiamondo said.

"How sad!" Niketas sighed. "If you saw only a piece that means they have already divided it up. It existed whole, in the Blachernae palace. Long, long ago two men named Galbius and Candidus went on a pilgrimage to Palestine and in Capernaum they learned that the Virgin's
pallion
was preserved in the house of a Jew. They made friends with him, spent the night with him, secretly took the measurements of the wooden case that contained the garment, then in Jerusalem they had an identical case made, went back to Capernaum, switched the cases at night, and brought the cloak to Constantinople, where the church of Saints Peter and Mark was built to house it."

Boiamondo also reported a rumor that two Christian knights had taken, and not yet handed over, two heads of Saint John the Baptist, one each, and all were wondering which one was the good one. Niketas smiled, tolerantly: "I knew that two were being venerated here in the city. The first was brought by Theodosius the Great, and was placed in the church of the Precursor. Then Justininan found another at Emmaus. I believe he donated it to some cenobium; people said it had been brought here, but nobody knew any longer where it was."

"But how is it possible to forget a relic, considering what one is worth?" Baudolino asked.

"The piety of the populace is fickle. For years they are excited by
a sacred memento, and then something even more miraculous arrives and they become enthusiastic about that, while the earlier one is forgotten."

"Which head is the right one?" Boiamondo asked.

"Holy things must not be spoken of in human terms. Whichever of the two relics was given me, I assure you that in bending to kiss it, I would sense the mystical perfume that it emanates, and I would know it was the true head."

At that moment Pevere also arrived from the city. Extraordinary things were happening. To prevent the soldiery, too, from stealing from the heap in Saint Sophia, the Doge had ordered a first rapid listing of the things collected, and they had also brought in some Greek monks to identify the various relics. Here it was discovered that, after the majority of the pilgrims had been forced to return what they had taken, now in the church there were not only two heads of the Baptist, which they already knew, but two sponges for the gall and wormwood and two crowns of thorns, not to mention other duplications. A miracle, said Pevere, laughing, with a glance at Baudolino: the most precious among Byzantium's relics had multiplied, like the loaves and fishes. Some of the pilgrims saw the event as a favorable sign from heaven, and they shouted that, if there was such a wealth of these valuable things, the Doge should allow each man to carry home what he had taken.

"No, it's a miracle favorable to us," Theophilus said, "because the Latins will never know which relics are genuine, and they'll be obliged to leave everything here."

"I'm not so sure," Baudolino said. "Each prince or marquess or vassal will be content to take home some holy relic, which will attract crowds of the devout, and donations. But then if there's a rumor that another, similar relic exists a thousand miles away, they'll say that one is fake."

Niketas turned pensive. "I don't believe in this miracle. The Lord doesn't confound our minds with the relics of his saints.... Baudolino,
in these past months, since your arrival in the city, you haven't invented some trick with relics, have you?"

"Master Niketas!" Baudolino tried to say in an offended tone. Then he held his hands out, as if to impose calm on his interlocutor. "All right, if I have to tell you everything, the moment will come when I'll have to tell you a story about relics. I'll tell it to you later. Anyway, you yourself said just now that holy things mustn't be spoken of in human terms. But it's late, and I think that in an hour, under cover of darkness, we can set out. We must be ready."

Wanting to set out well refreshed, Niketas had, a while ago, ordered Theophilus to prepare a
monokythron,
which required some time to be cooked properly. It was a bronze pot full of beef and pork, bones not entirely stripped and Phrygian cabbage, saturated with fat. Since there was little time remaining for a lengthy supper, the logothete had abandoned his good habits and was dipping into the pan not with three fingers, but with open hands. It was as if he were consummating his last night of love with the beloved city, virgin, prostitute, and martyr. Baudolino had no appetite and confined himself to sipping the resinous wine, for who knows what he would find in Selymbria.

Niketas asked him if Zosimos played a role in this story of relics, and Baudolino said that he preferred to proceed in order.

"After the horrible things we saw in the city we returned overland, because there wasn't enough money to pay for the voyage by ship. The confusion of those days allowed Zosimos, with the help of one of those acolytes he was about to abandon, to lay hands on some mules, no telling how. During the journey, after hunting in some forest and with the hospitality of some monasteries along the way, we finally arrived in Venice, and then in the Lombard plain...."

"And Zosimos never tried to escape?"

"He couldn't. From that time on, even after our return, and always at Frederick's court and on the journey to Jerusalem we made later, for more than four years he remained in chains. That is, when he was with us, he was free to move, but when we had to leave him
alone, he was chained to his bed, to a stake, to a tree, according to where we were, and if we were on horseback, he was tied to the reins in such a way that if he tried to dismount the horse would rear up. Afraid that this would make him forget his obligations, every evening, before he went to sleep, I gave him a slap. By then he knew it was coming and awaited it, like a mother's kiss, before sleeping."

During their march the friends had, above all, never ceased prodding Zosimos to reconstruct the map, and he displayed willingness, every day recalling a detail, so that he had already succeeded in calculating the true distances.

"Roughly," he said, drawing in the dust with one finger, "from Tzinista, the land of silk, to Persia it is fifty days' march, crossing Persia takes a hundred and fifty days more, from the Persian border to Seleucia thirteen days, from Seleucia to Rome and then to the Iberian land, a hundred and fifty days. More or less, to go from one end of the world to the other, four hundred days' march, if you do thirty miles a day. Earth, moreover, is more long than wide—and you will recall that in Exodus it is said that in the tabernacle the table must be two cubits long and one cubit wide. So from north to south you can calculate fifty days from the northern regions to Constantinople, from Constantinople to Alexandria another fifty days, from Alexandria to Ethiopia on the Arabic Gulf, seventy days. In short, more or less two hundred days. Therefore, if you set out from Constantinople towards farthest Indias, calculating that you are proceeding obliquely and will have to stop often to find your way, and who knows how many times you will have to turn back, I reckon you would find Prester John after a year's journey."

Speaking of relics, Kyot asked Zosimos if he had heard the Grasal spoken of. He had heard it mentioned, to be sure, and by the Galatians, who lived around Constantinople, people who traditionally knew the stories of the very ancient priests of the extreme north. Kyot asked if he had heard of that Feirefiz who supposedly took the
Grasal to Prester John, and Zosimos said that certainly he had heard of him, but Baudolino remained skeptical. "What is this Grasal then?" he asked. "The cup, the cup in which Christ consecrated the bread and the wine; you've said that yourself." Bread in a cup? No, wine: the bread was on a plate, a
patena,
a little tray. But what was the Grasal then, the plate or the cup? Both, Zosimos attempted to equivocate. If you thought about it, the Poet suggested, with a fearsome expression, it was the spear with which Longinus had pierced the ribs. Yes, of course, that must be it. At this point Baudolino gave him a slap, even if it wasn't yet time to go to bed, but Zosimos defended himself: the stories were vague, yes, but the fact that they circulated also among the Galatians of Byzantium was the proof that this Grasal really existed. And so it went on: of the Grasal the knowledge was always the same, that there was very little knowledge.

"Of course," Baudolino said, "if we were the ones who bring Frederick the Grasal, and not a gallows-bird like you...."

"You can still take it to him," Zosimos suggested. "Just find the proper vessel...."

"Ah, so now it's also a vessel? I'll put you in that vessel! I'm not a counterfeiter like you!"

Zosimos shrugged and stroked his chin, testing the regrowth of his beard, but it was all the uglier now, for he looked like a catfish, whereas, before, the chin had been shiny and smooth like a ball.

"Furthermore," Baudolino muttered, "even if we know it's a chalice or a vase, how can we recognize it when we find it?"

"Oh, you can rest assured," Kyot spoke up, his eyes lost in the world of his legends, "you'll see the glow, you'll sense the perfume...."

"Let's hope so," Baudolino said. Rabbi Solomon shook his head: "It must be something you gentiles stole from the Temple in Jerusalem when you sacked it and scattered us through the world."

They arrived just in time for Henry's wedding. The second son of Frederick, crowned king of the Romans, was to marry Constance of
Altavilla. The emperor now placed all his hopes in this junior son. Not that he didn't cherish the older boy. He did. He had even named him king of Swabia, but it was obvious that Frederick loved him with sadness, as happens with children who are born ill. Baudolino saw him: pale, coughing, always blinking his left eyelid as if to chase away a gnat. Even during regal celebrations he often went off by himself, and Baudolino had seen him riding in the countryside, nervously slashing bushes with his crop, as if to calm something that was gnawing him inside.

"It's an effort for him to live," Frederick said to Baudolino one evening. He himself was aging, old White-beard; he moved as if he had a crick in his neck. He wouldn't give up hunting, and as soon as he saw a river, he would throw himself into the water, swimming as of old. But Baudolino was afraid that one of these days, caught in the clutch of cold water, he would have a stroke, and he told him to be careful.

To console Frederick, Baudolino told of the success of their mission, how they had captured that faithless monk and soon they would have a map that would lead them to the land of the Priest, and how the Grasal was not a fable and one of these days Baudolino would place it in his hands. Frederick nodded. "The Grasal, ah, the Grasal," he murmured, his eyes lost in some unknown place, "to be sure, with that I could..." Then he would be distracted by some important message, sigh again, and with effort prepare to fulfill his duty.