«And what is the connection between me, emperor of the holy and Roman empire, and this Priest John, may the Lord long keep him king and priest down there wherever the devil he may be, among his Moors?»
«You see, my illustrious nephew, that you say ‘Moors’ and think as the other Christian kings do, while they exhaust themselves in the defense of Jerusalem—a most pious enterprise, I won’t deny that, but let’s leave it to the king of France, since in any case the Franks now command in Jerusalem.
The destiny of Christianity, and of every empire that wants to be holy and Roman, lies beyond the Moors. There is a Christian realm beyond Jerusalem and the lands of the infidel. An emperor capable of joining the two reigns would reduce the infidel empire and the empire of Byzantium itself to a pair of abandoned islands, lost in the vast sea of his glory!» «Fantasies, dear uncle. Let’s keep our feet on the ground, if you please.
And let’s get back to those Italian cities. Explain to me, dearest uncle, why, if their condition is so desirable, some of them become my allies against the others, instead of uniting, all together, against me.»
«Not yet, at least,» Rainald prudently remarked.
«I repeat,» Otto explained, «they don’t mean to deny their position as subjects of the empire. That’s why they seek your help when another city oppresses them, as Milan does Lodi.»
«But if the condition of being a city is the ideal, why does each try to oppress its neighboring city, as if it wanted to engulf that territory and transform it into a realm?»
Then Baudolino spoke up, with his wisdom as local informant.
«My dear father, the question is why not only the cities but also the hamlets beyond the Alps feel the greatest pleasure in screw—ouch!» (Otto also used pinching as an educational tool.) «…I mean to say, one likes to humiliate the other. That’s how it is in our parts. You may hate the foreigner, but most of all you hate your neighbor. And if the foreigner helps us harm our neighbor, then he’s welcome.»
«But why?»
«Because people are wicked, as my father always said, but the people of Asti are worse than Barbarossa.»
«And who is Barbarossa?» The emperor Frederick was furious.
«You are, dear father; that’s what they call you there, and for that matter I don’t see anything bad about it, because your beard really is red, and the name suits you well. And if they wanted to say that your beard was the color of copper, would Copperbeard suit you? Barbadirame?.
I would love and revere you all the same if your beard were black, but since it’s red, I don’t see why you should make such a fuss about being called Barbarossa. What I wanted to say, if you hadn’t got angry about the beard, is that you should be calm, because, in my opinion, they’ll never join all together against you. They’re afraid that if they win, one city will become stronger than the others. And so they prefer you, provided you don’t make them pay too much.»
«Don’t believe everything Baudolino tells you.» Otto was smiling. «The boy’s a liar by nature.»
«No, sir,» Frederick replied. «When he talks about Italy, the boy as a rule says things that are absolutely right. For example, now he teaches us that our only chance, with the Italian cities, is to divide them as much as possible. Only then you never know who’s with you and who’s against you!»
«If our Baudolino is right,» Rainald of Dassel said, sneering, «whether they’re with you or against you doesn’t depend on you, but on the city they want to harm at that moment.»
Baudolino felt a little sorry for this Frederick, so big and grand and powerful, who couldn’t accept the reasoning of his subjects. And to think that he spent more time on the Italian peninsula than in his own lands. He, Baudolino said to himself, loves our people and doesn’t understand why they betray him. Maybe that’s why he kills them like a jealous husband. In the months after their return Baudolino had had few opportunities to see Frederick, who was preparing a diet at Ratisbon, then another at Worms. He had to maintain the friendship of two quite fearsome relatives, Henry the Lion, to whom he had finally given the dukedom of Bavaria, and Henry Jasomirgott, for whom he had actually invented a dukedom of Austria.
Early the next spring, Otto announced to Baudolino that in June they would all be leaving for Herbipolis, where Frederick was happily to be married. The emperor had already had a wife, from whom he had been separated a few years before, and now he was about to wed Beatrice of Burgundy, who brought him as her dowry that county, as far as Provence.
With such a dowry, Otto and Rahewin thought the marriage was inspired by material interest, and in this spirit Baudolino, supplied with new clothing as the auspicious occasion demanded, was prepared to see his adopted father on the arm of a Burgundian spinster more appealing on account of the possessions of her ancestors than for any personal beauty.
«I was jealous, I confess,» Baudolino said to Niketas. «After all, I had only recently found a second father, and now he was being taken away from me, at least in part, by a stepmother.»
Here Baudolino paused, displaying some embarrassment; he ran a finger over his scar, then he revealed the terrible truth. He arrived at the wedding and discovered that Beatrice of Burgundy was a twenty-year-old maiden of extraordinary beauty—or at least so she seemed to him, who, once he had seen her, was unable to move a muscle, as he looked at her wide-eyed.
Her hair was a tawny gold, the face was lovely, the mouth small and red as a ripe fruit, teeth white and neatly aligned, erect of posture, a demure gaze, clear eyes. Her smooth speech was modest, the body slender.
She seemed to dominate in her dazzling grace all those surrounding her. She knew how to appear (supreme virtue in a future queen) submissive to her husband, whom she apparently feared as a master, but she was his mistress in making clear to him her own will as his wife, with such graceful manners that her every wish was promptly taken as a command.
If one then needed to add something further in her praise, it was said she was versed in letters, skilled at making music, and sweet in singing it. Thus, Baudolino concluded, being called Beatrice, she was truly beatified.
It took little time for Niketas to understand that the youth had fallen in love with his stepmother, but—since he was falling in love for the first time —he didn’t yet know what was happening to him. To fall in love for the first time is a devastating, unbearable event for any peasant enamored of a milkmaid with pimples; so imagine what it can mean for a peasant to fall in love for the first time with a twenty-year-old empress with skin as white as milk.
Baudolino realized immediately that what he was feeling represented a kind of theft with respect to his father, and he tried to convince himself that, because of the stepmother’s young age, he was seeing her as a sister.
Butthen, even if he had studied little moral theology, he became aware that it was not even licit for him to love a sister—at least not with the tremors and the intensity of passion that the sight of Beatrice inspired in him. He bowed his head, blushing, and just then Beatrice, to whom Frederick was introducing his little Baudolino (a strange and beloved imp of the Po plain, as he was saying), tenderly extended her hand and stroked him first on the cheek and then on the head.
Baudolino was about to lose consciousness; he felt the light failing around him and his ears rang like the Easter bells.
He was awakened by the heavy hand of Otto, who struck his nape and muttered: «On your knees, jackass!» He remembered that before him stood the holy Roman empress and also the queen of Italy, and he bent his knees, and from that moment on he behaved like the perfect courtier, except that at night he was unable to sleep and, instead of rejoicing at this inexplicable road to Damascus, he wept for the intolerable ardor of his unknown passion.
Niketas looked at his leonine interlocutor, appreciating the delicacy of his expression, the restrained rhetoric in an almost literary Greek, and asked himself what sort of creature he was facing, capable as he was of using the language of rustics when he spoke of farmers, and that of kings when he spoke of monarchs. Can he have a soul, Niketas wondered, this character
who can bend his narrative to express different souls? And if he has different souls, through which mouth, as he speaks, will he tell me the truth?
- Baudolino gives Frederick some wise advice
The next morning the city was still covered with a single cloud of smoke. Niketas savored some fruit, moving about the room in a restless manner, then asked Baudolino if he could send one of the
