“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.”
“A fine story,” the Poet said. “But what about the fireplace?”
“Perhaps it really was kindled by the rays from the mirror, but only after Frederick was already a corpse. The fire had nothing to do with it, it was not a part of your plan; but whoever did kindle it helped you confuse the situation. You killed Frederick, and only now have you helped me understand it. Curse you. How could you commit this crime, this parricide against the man who was your benefactor, only out of your thirst for glory?
Didn’t you realize that you were once again stealing another’s glory, as you had done with my poems?”
“That’s a fine one,” Boidi said, laughing, having now recovered from his fear. “The great poet had his poems written by somebody else!”
This humiliation, after the many frustrations of those days, along with the desperate determination to have the Grasal, drove the Poet to his last excess. He drew his sword and flung himself on Baudolino, shouting: “I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you!”
“I’ve always told you I was a man of peace, Master Niketas. I was flattering myself. In reality, I’m a coward; Frederick was right, that day. At that moment I hated the Poet with all my soul, I wanted him dead, and yet I didn’t think of killing him, I wanted only for him not to kill me. I leaped back towards the columns, then I took the passage by which I had come.
I was escaping in the darkness, and I heard his threats as he chased me. The passage had no light, groping your way ahead meant touching the corpses in the walls. When I came to a side passage to the left, I rushed in that direction. He followed the sound of my footsteps. Finally I saw a light, and I found myself below the shaft opening where I had passed before. It was
now evening, and miraculously I saw the moon over my head, illuminating the place where I was, and casting silvery glints on the faces of the dead. Perhaps it was they who told me it is impossible to deceive your own death, when it is panting at your heels.
I stopped. I saw the Poet arrive; he covered his eyes with his left hand, to block the sight of those unexpected guests. I grabbed one of the rotting robes and pulled hard. A corpse fell between me and the Poet, raising a cloud of dust and of tiny cloth fragments that dissolved as they touched the ground. The head of that corpse had snapped from the trunk and rolled at the feet of my pursuer, directly under the moon’s beam, displaying its horrid smile. The Poet stopped for an instant, terrified, then he gave the skull a kick. On the other side, I grabbed two more cadavers, pushing them straight at his face.
Get this death away from me, the Poet cried, as flakes of dried skin swirled around his head. I couldn’t keep up that game forever; I would have
