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 the 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
