As Solomon said these words, his countenance was illuminated by such a light that our friends asked themselves if it were not worth having him share in their future discussions. It was the Poet who found the decisive argument: the fact that this Jew wanted to find in the kingdom of Prester John his language and his ten tribes should not disturb them. Prester John had to be so powerful that he could govern even the lost tribes of the Jews, and there seemed to be no reason why he should not also speak the language of Adam. The chief question was, first of all, how to construct that kingdom, and to that end a Jew could be as useful as a Christian.
Nevertheless, they still had not decided what John’s palace should be like. They resolved the question some nights later, the five of them in Baudolino’s room. Inspired by the genius of the place, Abdul made up his mind to reveal to his new friends the secret of the green honey, saying that it could help them not to imagine but, rather, to see Prester John’s palace directly.
Rabbi Solomon said at once that he knew far more mystical methods to provoke visions, and that at night he had only to murmur the multiple combinations of the letters of the secret name of the Lord, spinning them on his tongue, until a whirl of thoughts and of images was born, whereupon he plunged into a blissful exhaustion.
The Poet at first seemed suspicious, then he determined to try, but, wishing to temper the property of the honey with that of wine, in the end he lost all restraint and raved better than the others.
Having reached the proper state of intoxication, and helping himself with a few unsteady lines that he drew on the table, dipping his finger into the jar, he suggested that the palace had to be like the one the apostle Thomas had had built for Gondophorus, king of the Indians: ceilings and beams of Cyprus wood, roof of ebony, and a dome surmounted by two golden apples, on each of which gleamed two carbuncles, so that the gold shone during the day by the light of the sun and the gems at night in the glow of the moon.
Then he stopped relying on his memory and on the authority of Thomas, and began seeing doors of sardonyx mixed with horns of the cerastes, which prevent passersby from introducing poison into the building, and windows of crystal, tables of gold on columns of ivory, lights nourished with balsam, and the king’s bed of sapphire, to preserve chastity, becausethe Poet concluded—this John may be a king all right, but he is also a priest and so, as for women, nothing doing.
“It seems beautiful to me,” Baudolino said, “but for a king who rules over such a vast land, I would also put, in some hall, those automata that I’ve heard existed in Rome, that gave warning when one of the provinces was in revolt.”
“In the Priest’s kingdom, I don’t believe,” Abdul remarked, “that there can be revolts, because peace and harmony reign there.” However, the idea of the automata appealed to him, because everyone knows that a great emperor, whether Moor or Christian, had to have automata at court.
So he saw them, and with wonderful hypotyposis he made them visible also to his friends: “The palace stands on a mountain, and it’s the mountain that is made of onyx, with a peak so smooth that it shines like the moon. The temple is round, its dome is of gold, and the walls, too, are of gold, encrusted with gems so rutilant that they produce warmth in winter and coolness in summer. The ceiling is encrusted with sapphires that represent the sky and carbuncles that represent the stars.
A gilded sun and a silvered moon—these are the automata—travel through the heavenly vault, and mechanical birds sing every day, while at the corners four bronze angels accompany them with their trumpets. The palace rises over a hidden well, in which teams of horses move a grindstone, making it turn according to the changes of the seasons, so that it becomes the image of the cosmos. Beneath the crystal floor fish swim, and fabulous marine creatures. However, I have heard talk of mirrors from which you can see all the things that happen. One would be most useful, for John, to survey the extreme confines of his realm….”
The Poet, by now thinking in terms of architecture, began drawing the mirror, explaining: “It will be set very high, and can be reached by ascending a flight of one hundred twenty-five steps of porphyry….” “And alabaster,” Boron suggested, who until then had been silently cherishing the effect of the green honey.
“All right, we’ll add alabaster. And the highest steps will be of amber and panther.”
“What’s this panther? The father of Jesus?” Baudolino asked.
“Don’t be foolish. Pliny mentions it: it’s a multicolored stone. But actually the mirror rests on a single pilaster. Actually, no, it doesn’t. This pilaster supports a plinth on which stand two pilasters, and these support a base on which stand four pilasters, and so the pilasters increase until on the central base there are sixty-four. These support a base with thirty-two pilasters, which support a base with sixteen pilasters, and so they diminish until you come to a single pilaster that supports the mirror.”
“Listen,” Rabbi Solomon said, “with this pilaster business the mirror will fall down the moment you set it on its base.”
“You shut up: you’re as false as the soul of Judas. For you it’s fine when your Ezekiel sees a temple and we know nothing about its form; if a Christian mason comes and tells you it couldn’t stand up, you answer that Ezekiel heard voices and wasn’t paying attention to the figures, so then I have to make only mirrors that will stand on their feet? All right, I’ll also put twelve thousand armed guards around the mirror, at the base of the column, and they’ll see that it stands up. All right?”
“All right, all right, it’s your mirror,” Rabbi Solomon said, conciliatory. Abdul followed this talk, smiling, his eyes lost in empty space, and Baudolino realized that in the mirror Abdul would have liked to glimpse at least the shadow of his distant princess.
“In the days that followed we had to make haste because the Poet had to leave again, and he didn’t want to miss the rest of the story,” Baudolino said to Niketas. “But by now we were on the right track.”
“On the right track? But this Priest was, in my opinion, less credible than the Magi dressed as cardinals and Charlemagne amid the heavenly host….”
“The Priest would become credible if he made himself known, with a personal letter to Frederick.”
- Baudolino writes the letter of Prester John
The decision to write a letter of Prester John was inspired by a story that Rabbi Solomon had heard from the Arabs of Spain. A sailor, Sindbad, who lived in the time of the caliph Harun-al-Rashid, was shipwrecked one day on an island, along the line of the equinox, where both day and night last exactly twelve hours. Sindbad said he had seen many Indians on the island, and so the island was close to India. The Indians took him into the presence of the prince of Sarandib. This prince moved only on a throne, mounted on an elephant, eight cubits high, and on either side, in double file, marched his vassals and his ministers.
He was preceded by a herald with a golden javelin, and behind him came a second herald with a golden mace, an emerald at its apex. When the prince descended from the throne to continue on horseback, he was followed by a thousand horsemen dressed in silk and brocade, and yet another herald preceded him, crying that a king was arriving who possessed a crown such as Solomon had never had. The prince granted Sindbad audience, asking him many questions about the kingdom from whence he came.
Finally the prince asked him to bear a letter to Harun-al-Rashid, written on sheepskin parchment with ultramarine ink, which said: “I send you the greeting of peace, I, prince of Sarandib, before whom stand a thousand elephants, and in whose palace the battlements are made of jewels. We consider you a brother and we beg you to send us a reply. And we beg you to accept this humble gift.” The humble gift was an enormous ruby goblet, its bowl adorned with pearls. This gift and that letter increased throughout the Saracen world the veneration of the name of the great Harun-al-Rashid.”
“That sailor of yours was surely in the kingdom of Prester John,” Baudolino said. “Though in Arabic they call it by a different name. But he lied in saying that the Priest sent letters and gifts to the caliph, because John is Christian, even if a Nestorian, and if he had sent a letter, it would have been to the emperor Frederick.”
“Then let’s write that letter ourselves,” the Poet said.
In seeking any information that could enhance their construction of Prester John’s kingdom, our friends encountered Kyot. He was a young native of Champagne, who had just returned from a journey in Brittany, his spirit still aflame with stories of errant knights, wizards, fairies, and spells, which the inhabitants of those lands tell in the evening around the fire.
When Baudolino mentioned to him the wonders of Prester John’s palace, the youth cried out: “Why, in Brittany I
