Baudolino

  "This is the story of Zosimos," the Poet's voice said. "His condition bears witness that, at least this once, he is sincere. So another one of you, seeing where Zosimos had hidden the Grasal, changed the position of the heads, to allow Zosimos to hasten to his ruin, and to deviate any suspicion. But he who has taken the correct head is the same who killed Frederick. And I know who it is."

  "Poet!" Kyot cried. "Why are you saying this? Why have you summoned only us three, and not also Baudolino? Why didn't you tell us anything up there at the house of the Genoese?"

  "I called you here because, through a city invaded by the enemy, I couldn't drag along with me this excuse for a man. Because I didn't want to speak in front of the Genoese, and especially not in front of Baudolino. Baudolino is no longer a part of our story. One of you will give me the Grasal, and then the rest will be up to me."

  "What makes you think Baudolino doesn't have the Grasal?"

  "Baudolino can't have killed Frederick. He loved him. Baudolino had no interest in stealing the Grasal, he was the only one among us who really wanted to take it to the Priest in the name of the emperor. Finally, try to remember what happened to the six heads that remained after Zosimos ran away. We took one each: I, Boron, Kyot, Boidi, Abdul, and Baudolino. Yesterday, after I found Zosimos, I opened mine. Inside was a smoked skull. As for Abdul's, as you will recall, Ardzrouni had opened it to put the skull between his hands as an amulet, or whatever, at the moment Abdul was dying, and now it's with him in the grave. Baudolino gave his to Praxeas; he opened it in front of us, and there was a skull inside. So three reliquaries remain, and those are yours. The three of you. Now I know which of you has the Grasal, and I know he knows. I also know that the possessor does not possess it by chance, but because he planned everything from the moment he killed Frederick. But I want him to have the courage to confess to us all that he has deceived us for years and years. After he has confessed, I will kill him. So make up your minds. Let him who must speak, speak. We have reached the end of our journey."

  "Here something strange happens, Master Niketas. From my hiding place, I was trying to put myself in the place of my three friends. Let us suppose that one of them, whom we will call Ego, knew he had the Grasal, and was guilty of something. He would have told himself that, at this point, the best thing was to risk all, seize his sword or his dagger, dash off in the direction from which he had come, flee until he reached the cistern, and then the sunlight. This, I believe, is what the Poet was expecting. Perhaps he didn't yet know which of the three had the Grasal, but that escape would reveal it. Now let us imagine that Ego was not sure of having the Grasal, because he had never looked into his reliquary, and yet he did have something on his conscience concerning the death of Frederick. Ego therefore would have waited, to see if someone else who knew he had the Grasal would make a leap towards flight. Ego therefore was waiting, without making a move. But he could see that the others weren't moving either. So, he thought, none of them has the Grasal, and none of them feels he is at all worthy of suspicion. Therefore, he had to conclude, the one the Poet has in mind is me, and I must escape. Puzzled, he put his hand to his sword, or dagger, and started to take a first step. But then he saw that each of the others was doing the same thing. He stopped again, suspecting that the other two felt more guilty than he. This is what happened in that crypt. Each of the three, each thinking like the one I have called Ego, first remained still, then took one step, then stopped again. And this was the obvious sign that none of them was sure of having the Grasal, but that all three had something with which to reproach themselves. The Poet understood this perfectly, and explained to them what I had understood and have now explained to you."

  The voice of the Poet said: "Wretches, all three of you! Each of you knows he is guilty. I know—I have always known—that all three of you tried to kill Frederick, and perhaps all three of you killed him, so the man died three times. That night I left the guardroom very early, and was the last to come back in. I was unable to sleep, perhaps I had had too much to drink. I urinated three times in the courtyard, I stayed outside so as not to disturb all of you. While I was outside, I heard Boron come out. He took the steps towards the lower level, and I followed him. He went into the room with the machines, approached the cylinder that produces the vacuum, worked its lever, a number of times. I couldn't understand what he wanted, but I understood the next day. Either Ardzrouni had confided something to him, or he had understood on his own, but obviously the room in which the cylinder created the vacuum, the room in which the chicken had been sacrificed, was the very one where Frederick was sleeping, where Ardzrouni used to rid himself of the enemies he hypocritically received as guests. You, Boron, turned that lever until in the emperor's room the vacuum had been created, or, at least, since you didn't believe in the vacuum, until that air was dense, where you knew candles were extinguished and animals were suffocated. Frederick felt unable to breathe; at first he thought of a poison, and took the Grasal to drink the antidote it contained. But he fell to the ground lifeless. The next day you were ready to steal the Grasal, exploiting the confusion, but Zosimos was ahead of you. You saw him, and you saw where he hid it. It was easy for you to change the position of the heads and, at the moment of leaving, you took the right one."

  Boron was covered with sweat. "Poet," he said, "you saw clearly. I was in the room with the pump. The debate with Ardzrouni had aroused my curiosity. I tried to work it, not knowing—I swear—what room it affected. But, for that matter, I was convinced that the pump couldn't function. I gambled, true, but it was all in play, with no murderous intentions. And anyway, if I had done what you say I did, how can you explain the fact that in Frederick's room the wood in the fireplace had all burned to ashes? If the vacuum could actually be created, and kill someone, in the vacuum no flame would burn...."

  "Forget the fireplace," the stern voice of the Poet said. "For that there is another explanation. Just open your reliquary, if you're so sure it doesn't contain the Grasal."

  Boron, muttering that God could strike him if he had ever had any thought of having the Grasal, furiously cut the seal with his dagger, and from the case a skull rolled to the floor, smaller than those which had been seen so far, perhaps because Ardzrouni had not hesitated to violate the graves even of children.

  "You don't have the Grasal. Very well," the Poet's voice said, "but this does not absolve you of what you have done. Now we come to you, Kyot. You went out just afterwards, with the manner of someone who needs some air. But you needed quite a lot, since you went all the way to the ramparts, where the mirrors of Archimedes were. I followed you, and I saw you. You touched them, you operated the short-distance one, as Ardzrouni had explained to us, you tilted it in a way that was not random, because you devoted great attention to it. You set the mirror so that, with the sun's first appearance, it would concentrate those rays on the window of Frederick's chamber. So it went, and those rays kindled the wood in the fireplace. By then the vacuum created by Boron had given way to new air, after so much time, and the flame could be fed. You knew what Frederick would do, waking half-stifled by the smoke from the fireplace. He would believe himself poisoned and would drink from the Grasal. I know, you also drank from it, that evening, but we didn't watch you carefully enough as you were replacing it in the ark. Somehow you had bought poison at the Gallipolis market, and you let a few drops fall into the cup. The plan was perfect. Only you didn't know what Boron had done. Frederick had drunk from your poisoned cup, but not when the fire was kindled. It was much earlier, when Boron was cutting off his air."

  "You're mad, Poet," Kyot cried, pale as a corpse. "I know nothing of the Grasal. Look, now I'll open my head. ... Here, you see? There's a skull!"

  "No, you don't have the Grasal. All right," the Poet's voice said, "but you don't deny having moved the mirrors."

  "I wasn't feeling well, as you said, and I wanted to breathe the night air. I played with the mirrors, but may God strike me here and now if I knew they would light th
e fire in that room! You mustn't think that in these long years I have never thought of that imprudence of mine, wondering if it were not my fault that the fire was lighted and if this didn't have something to do with the emperor's death. Years of horrible doubt. In a way you have relieved me, because you tell me that in any case at that point Frederick was already dead! But as for the poison: how can you say such an outrageous thing? That evening I drank in good faith, I felt like a sacrificial victim...."

  "You're all a flock of innocent lambs, eh? Innocent lambs who for fifteen years have lived with the suspicion of having killed Frederick. Isn't that true also for you, Boron? But let's come to our Biodi. At this point you're the only one who can have the Grasal. That evening you didn't go outside. Like all the others, you found Frederick lying on the floor in his room the next morning. You weren't expecting it, but you seized the occasion. You had been brooding over it for some time. For that matter, you were the only one who had a reason to hate Frederick, who, before the walls of Alessandria, had killed so many of your companions. At Gallipolis you said you had bought that ring with cordial in its mount. But no one saw you while you were dealing with the merchant. Who can say it really contained a cordial? You had long been ready with your poison, and you realized this was the right moment. Perhaps, you thought, Frederick is only unconscious. You poured the poison into his mouth, saying you wanted to bring him round, and only afterwards—afterwards, mind you—did Solomon realize he was dead."

  "Poet," Boidi said, sinking to his knees, "if you only knew how many times over these years I have asked myself if that cordial of mine was by chance poisonous. But now you tell me Frederick was already dead, killed by one of these two, or by both. Thank God."

  "It doesn't matter," the Poet's voice said, "what matters is the intent. But as far as I'm concerned, you will answer to God for your intentions. I want only the Grasal. Open the case,"

  Boidi tried to open the reliquary, trembling; three times the sealing wax resisted his efforts. As he bent over that fatal receptacle, Boron and Kyot moved away from him, as if he were by now the designated victim. At his fourth try the case opened, and once again a skull appeared.

  "By all the damned saints!" the Poet cried, emerging from behind the iconostasis.

  "He was the very portrait of rage and madness, Master Niketas, and I no longer recognized him as my old friend of the past. But at that moment I remembered the day when I went to look at the reliquaries, after Ardzrouni had suggested we take them with us, and after Zosimos, unknown to us, had already hidden the Grasal in one of them. I took a head in my hand, the first from the left if I recall properly, and I observed it carefully. Then I set it down. Now I was reliving that moment of almost fifteen years before, and I saw myself as I placed the head to the right, the last of the seven. When Zosimos came down to flee with the Grasal, remembering he had put it in the first head to the left, he had taken that one, which was actually the second. When we divided the heads on leaving, I was the last to take mine. Obviously it was Zosimos's. You will remember that, not saying anything to the others, I had kept with me Abdul's head after his death. Later, when I gave one of the heads to Praxeas, apparently I gave him Abdul's, and I realized it even then, because it opened easily, since the seal had already been broken by Ardzrouni. So, for almost fifteen years, I had carried the Grasal with me, not knowing it. By then I was so sure that I didn't even need to open my head. But I did, trying not to make any noise. Even behind the column in the darkness I could see that the Grasal was there, set in the case, with the cup facing forward and the base emerging, rounded like a skull."

  Now, as if he had been possessed by a demon, the Poet was grabbing each of the other three by his clothes, covering them with insults, shouting that they were not to try to make a fool of him. Baudolino then left his reliquary behind the column and emerged from his hiding place. "I am the one who has the Grasal," he said.

  The Poet was taken by surprise. He blushed violently and said: "You've lied to us, all this time. And I believed you were the purest of us all!"

  "I haven't lied. I didn't know, not until this evening. You are the one who mistook the counting of the heads."

  The Poet stretched his hands towards his friend and said, his mouth foaming: "Give it to me!"

  "Why to you?" Baudolino asked.

  "The journey ends here," the Poet repeated. "It has been an unfortunate journey, and this is my last chance. Give it to me, or I'll kill you."

  Baudolino took a step back, clutching his hands around the hilts of his two Arabian daggers. "You would be capable of that—for this object you killed Frederick."

  "Nonsense," the Poet said. "You just heard these three confess."

  "Three confessions are too many for one murder," Baudolino said. "I could say that, even if each of them had done what he said, you let them do it. It would have been enough if, when you saw that Boron was about to turn the vacuum lever, you had prevented him. It would have been enough if, when Kyot moved the mirrors, you had warned Frederick before sunrise. You didn't. You wanted someone to kill Frederick so you could then profit from it. But I don't believe that any of these three poor friends caused the death of the emperor. Hearing you speak behind the iconostasis, I remembered the head of Medusa that made audible in Frederick's chamber what was being murmured in the stairwell below. Now I will tell you what happened. Even before we set out on the expedition to Jerusalem, you were chomping at the bit and wanted to leave for the kingdom of the Priest, with the Grasal, by yourself. You were only awaiting the right opportunity to be rid of the emperor. Then, of course, we would have gone with you, but obviously for you we didn't represent a concern. Or perhaps you thought you could do what Zosimos, ahead of you, did. I don't know. For some time I should have realized that you were dreaming on your own, but friendship had clouded my intellect."

  "Go on." The Poet sneered.

  "I will go on. In Gallipolis, when Solomon bought the antidote, I remember very well that the merchant offered us also an identical phial that, however, contained poison. Coming out of that emporium, we lost sight of you for a bit. Then you reappeared, but you were without money, and you told us you had been robbed. Instead, while we were wandering about the market, you had gone back there and bought the poison. It can't have been difficult for you to exchange Solomon's phial with yours, during the long journey through the land of the sultan of Iconium. The evening before Frederick's death it was you who, in a loud voice, advised him to provide himself with the antidote. So you prompted our good Solomon, who offered his—or, rather, your—poison. You must have had a moment of terror when Kyot offered to taste it, but perhaps you already knew that the liquid, taken in a small dose, had no effect, and it was necessary to drink it all in order to die. I believe that during the night Kyot had such need of air because that tiny sip had upset him, but of this I'm not sure."

  "And what are you sure of?" the Poet asked, still sneering.

  "I am sure that, before you saw Boron and Kyot in action, you already had your plan in mind. You went into the hall where the circular stair was, in whose central aperture one spoke to be heard in Frederick's room. For that matter, you yourself have demonstrated again this evening the fact that this game pleased you, and as I heard you speak from behind there, I began to understand. You approached the ear of Dionysus and called Frederick. I believe you passed yourself off as me, trusting in the fact that a voice, moving from one floor to another, would arrive distorted. You said you were me, to be more credible. You warned Frederick: we had discovered that someone had put poison in the food, perhaps you said one of us was beginning to suffer horrible pains and Ardzrouni had already unleashed his killers. You told him to open the ark and drink Solomon's antidote immediately. My poor father believed you, he drank, and he died."