“Dear Lord Jesus,” the Poet complained, “even in my most drunken state would I ever have imagined I’d be sticking anything up a Magi’s ass?” “Shut up and dress them,” Baudolino said. “We’re working for the glory of the empire.” The Poet let out some horrible blasphemies, but the Magi finally looked like cardinals of the Holy Roman Apostolic Church.
The next day Baudolino set forth on his journey. In Paris, Abdul, who knew a great deal about matters of the Orient, put him in touch with a canon of Saint Victoire, who knew even more.
“Eh, the Magi!” he said. “Tradition refers to them constantly, and many of the Fathers have spoken of them, but three of the Gospels are silent on the subject, and the quotations from Isaiah and other prophets are unrevealing: some have read them as referring to the Magi, but they could have been referring to something else. Who were they? What were their real names?
Some say Hormizd of Seleucia, king of Persia; Jazdegerd and Peroz, kings of Sheba. Others say Hor, Basander, Karundas. But according to other, highly credible authors, they are called Melkon, Gaspar, and Balthasar, or else Melco, Caspare, and Fadizzarda. Or even Magalath, Galgalath, and Saracin. Or perhaps Appelius, Amrus, and Damascus…” “Appelius and Damascus are beautiful; they suggest distant lands,” Abdul said, looking vaguely into space.
“And why not Karundas?” Baudolino rebutted. “We’re not here to find three names that please you; we want three real names.”
The canon continued: “I would tend towards Bithisarea, Melichior, and Gastapha: the first was king of Godolia and Sheba; the second, king of Nubia and Arabia; the third, king of Tharsis and the island of Egriseula. Did they know one another before undertaking the journey? No; they met in Jerusalem and miraculously recognized one another.
But some say they were wise men who lived on Mount Victorial or Mount Vaus, from whose peak they studied the signs in the heavens, and to Mount Victorial they returned after the visit to Jesus, and later they joined the apostle Thomas to evangelize the Indies, except that they were twelve, not three.”
“Twelve Magi? Isn’t that too many?”
“Even John Chrysostom says as much. According to others, their names would be Zhrwndd, Hwrmzd, Awstsp, Arsk, Zrwnd, Aryhw, Arthsyst, Astnbwzn, Mhrwq, Ahsrs, Nsrdyh, and Mrwdk. But you have to be careful, because Origen says that there were three of them, like the sons of Noah, and three like the three Indias from which they came.”
“There may well have been twelve Magi,” Baudolino remarked, “but in Milan three were found, and we have to construct an acceptable story based on three. Let’s say they were called Balthasar, Melchior, and Caspar, which seem to me names more easily pronounced than those awful sneezes our venerable master emitted just now. The problem is: how did they arrive in Milan.”
“It doesn’t seem a problem to me,” the canon said, “since they did arrive there. I’m convinced that their grave was found on Mount Victorial by Queen Helen, the mother of Constantine. A woman capable of finding the True Cross would also have been able to discover the true Magi. And Helen took the bodies to Constantinople, to Saint Sophia.”
“No, no. Otherwise the emperor of the Orient will want to know how we took them away from him,” said Abdul.
“Never fear,” said the canon. “If they were in the basilica of Sant’Eustorgio, surely that sainted man had brought them there, when he set out from Byzantium to occupy the bishop’s seat in Milan at the time of the emperor Mauritius, and long before Charlemagne lived in our land.
Eustorgio couldn’t have stolen the Magi, so he must have received them as a gift from the basileus of the empire of the Orient.”
With such a well-constructed story, Baudolino returned at the year’s end to Rainald, and reminded him that, according to Otto, the Magi were surely ancestors of Prester John, whom they had invested with their dignity and function. Whence came the power of Prester John over all three Indias, or at least over one of them.
Rainald had completely forgotten those words of Otto, but on hearing mention of a priest who ruled over an empire, a king with priestly functions, pope and monarch at the same time, he was now convinced he had put Alexander III in difficulties: the Magi kings and priests; king and priest John: what a wondrous figure, allegory, augury, prophecy, herald of that imperial dignity that Rainald, step by step, was creating around Frederick! “Baudolino,” he said at once, “I’ll deal with the Magi now; you must think about Prester John. From what you tell me, for the moment we have only rumors, and that’s not enough. We need a document that will attest to his existence, that says who he is, where he is, how he lives.”
“And where will I find that?”
“If you can’t find it, make it. The emperor has allowed you to study, and this is the moment to put your talents to use. And to win yourself knighthood, just as soon as you have ended your studies, which, if you ask me, have gone on too long.”
“You understand, Master Niketas?” Baudolino said. “Now Prester John for me had become a duty, not a game. And I was to seek him no longer in memory of Otto, but to obey an order of Rainald’s. As my father, Gagliaudo, used to say, I’ve always been contrary by nature. If I’m ordered to do something, I promptly lose any desire to do it.
I obeyed Rainald and went immediately back to Paris, but it was to avoid having to encounter the empress. Abdul had resumed writing songs, and I noticed the pot of green honey was now half empty. I talked to him again about the adventure of the Magi, and he strummed his instrument and chanted: Let no one be amazed if I, you know—love her who will never see me—my heart knows no other-love—except for what I have never seen—nor can any other joy make me laugh—and I know not what good will come to me—ha, ha. Ha ha, I gave up arguing with him about my plans and, as far as Prester John was concerned, for about a year I did nothing more.”
“And the Magi?”
“Rainald took the relics to Cologne two years later, but he was generous. Some time back he had been provost of the cathedral of Hildesheim, and so before sealing the remains of the kings in their box in Cologne, he had a finger cut from each one and sent them, as a donation, to his old church. However, in that same period, Rainald had to resolve other problems, and not small ones. Just two months before he could celebrate his triumph in Cologne, the antipope, Victor, died.
Almost everyone heaved a sigh of relief: this would automatically put things back in order, and perhaps Frederick would have a reconciliation with Alexander. But it was that schism that kept Rainald alive. You understand, Master Niketas? With two popes he counted for more than with one pope. So he invented a new antipope, Paschal III, organizing a parody of a conclave with a few ecclesiastics he collected practically off the street. Frederick wasn’t convinced. He said to me—”
“You had gone back to him?”
Baudolino sighed. “Yes, for a few days. In that same year the empress had borne Frederick a son.”
“What did you feel?”
“I realized I had to forget her definitively. I fasted for seven days, drinking only water, because I had read somewhere that it purifies the spirit, and in the end provokes visions.”
“Is that true?”
“Very true. But the visions were of her. Then I decided I had to see that baby, to establish the difference between the dream and the vision. So I went back to court. More than two years had gone by since that magnificent and awful day, and since then we had never seen each other. I told myself then that, even if I couldn’t resign myself to loving Beatrice as a mother, I would consider that child a brother. But I looked at that little thing in the cradle, and I couldn’t dispel the thought that, if matters had gone just a little differently, he could have been my son. In any case I still risked feeling incestuous.”
Frederick meanwhile was troubled by quite different problems. He said to Rainald that half a pope was scant guaranty of his rights, that the Magi were all well and good, but they weren’t enough, because having found the Magi did not necessarily mean being descended from them. The pope, lucky man, could trace his origins back to Peter, and Peter had been designated by Jesus himself, but what could the holy and Roman emperor do? Trace his origins to Caesar, who was, after all, a pagan?
Baudolino then pulled out the first idea that came into his head, namely, that Frederick could have his origins date back to Charlemagne. “But Charlemagne was anointed by the pope: so we’re back where we started,” Frederick replied.
“Unless you have him made a saint,” Baudolino said. Frederick admonished him to think before he uttered nonsense. “It’s not nonsense,” replied Baudolino, who had not so much thought as visualized the scene that his idea could engender. “Listen: you go to Aix-la-Chapelle, to Charlemagne’s tomb, you have his remains exhumed, you put them in a fine reliquary in the midst of the Palatine Chapel and, in your presence, with a suite of loyal bishops, including Master Rainald, who as archbishop of Cologne is also the metropolitan of
