Accompanying the towers, he saw the Poet, riding along with the mien of one making sure that everything is being done properly. “Who are those madmen on the towers?” Baudolino asked. “Genoese crossbowmen,” the Poet replied, “the most fearsome assault troops in a well-ordered siege.” “The Genoese?” Baudolino was dumbfounded. “But they helped found the city!”
The Poet laughed and said that in the mere four or five months since he had arrived in these parts, he had seen more than one city change its allegiance. In October, Terdona had sided with the communes, then saw that Alessandria was holding out too well against the emperor, and the Dertonesi began to suspect that the city could become too strong, and a good number of them were now insisting that their city should go over to Frederick. Cremona, at the time of Milan’s surrender, was with the empire, in recent years it had passed to the League, but now for some mysterious reason of its own, it was dealing with the imperials.
“And how is the siege going?”
“It’s proceeding badly. Either those inside the walls are defending themselves well or else we don’t know how to attack. If you ask me, the mercenaries Frederick has brought with him this time are worn out.
You can’t trust them; they run off at the first difficulty. Many deserted this winter, only because it was cold and yet they were Flemings, so they didn’t come from hic sunt leones.
Finally, in the camp they’re dying like flies, of a thousand diseases, and inside the walls I don’t believe they’re any better off, because they must have run out of provisions.”
Baudolino at last presented himself to the emperor. “I’ve come here, dear Father,” he said, “because I know these places and I could be of use to you.”
“Yes,” Barbarossa replied, “but you also know the people, and you won’t want any harm done to them.”
“And you know me: if you don’t trust my heart, you know you can trust my words. I will not harm my people but I will not lie to you.”
“On the contrary. You will lie to me, but you won’t do me any harm either. You will lie and I’ll pretend to believe you because you always lie for good ends.”
He was a rough man, Baudolino explained to Niketas, but capable of great subtlety. “Can you understand what I felt then? I didn’t want to destroy that city, but I loved him, and I wanted his glory.”
“You had only to convince yourself,” Niketas said, “that his glory would have shone even more if he were to spare the city.”
“God bless you, Master Niketas, it’s as if you read my soul at that time. This was the idea in my head as I moved back and forth between the camps and the walls. I had made it clear to Frederick that obviously I would establish some contact with the natives, as if I were a kind of ambassador, but evidently it wasn’t clear to all that I could move without arousing any suspicion. At court some people envied my familiarity with the emperor, the bishop of Speyer, for example, and a certain Count Ditpold, whom everyone called the Bishopess, perhaps because he had the blond hair and rosy cheeks of a maiden.
Perhaps he didn’t give himself to the bishop; in fact he always talked about his Tecla, whom he had left behind up there in the north. Who knows?…He was handsome, but, happily, he was also stupid. It was those two who set their spies, even there in the camp, to follow me and then went and told the emperor that the night before I had been seen riding towards the walls and talking with people of the city. Fortunately the emperor sent them to the devil, because he knew I went towards the walls in the daytime and not at night.”
So Baudolino did go to the walls, and even inside the walls. The first time was not easy because as he trotted towards the gates, he heard the whistle of a stone—a sign that in the city they were beginning to save their arrows and were using slingshots, which since the time of David had proved effective and cheap. He had to shout in pure Frescheta dialect, making broad gestures with his weaponless arms, and fortunately he was recognized by Trotti.
“O Baudolino,” Trotti shouted down at him, “are you coming to join us?”
“Don’t play the fool, Trotti, you already know I’m on the other side. But I’m surely not here with bad intentions. Let me come in: I want to speak to my father. I swear on the Virgin that I won’t say a word about what I may see.”
“I trust you. Open the gates, down there! Did you hear me, or are all of you weak in the head? This is a friend. Or almost. I mean he’s with them, but he’s one of ours. He’s one of us but he’s one of theirs. Hey, just open the gates or I’ll kick your teeth in!”
“All right, all right,” those wide-eyed fighters said. “No telling here who’s in and who’s out; yesterday that man went out dressed like a Pavese.” “Shut your mouth, you animal,” Trotti shouted. And “Ha ha” Baudolino laughed, as he entered. “You’ve sent spies to our camp…. Don’t worry. I told you: I won’t see anything or hear anything.”
And now Baudolino is embracing Gagliaudo—still vigorous and as if strengthened by enforced fasting—near the well of the little square just inside the walls. Then he finds Ghini and Scaccabarozzi opposite the church; and when he asks where Squarciafichi is, they weep and tell him that Squarciafichi took a Genoese dart in the throat in the last attack, and Baudolino also weeps, for he has never liked war and now less than ever, and he fears for his old father.
Here is Baudolino in the beautiful main square, bright in the pale March sunshine; he sees children carrying big baskets of stones to reinforce the defenses, and skins of water for the sentries, and he is proud of the indomitable spirit that has gripped the citizens; here is Baudolino wondering who all these people are crowding into Alessandria as if for a wedding feast, and his friends tell him that this is their great misfortune, that fear of the imperial army has brought here people fleeing all the surrounding villages, and, yes, the city has many hands, but also too many mouths to feed; here is Baudolino admiring the new cathedral, which may not be big but is well made, and he says: “Why, it even has a tympanum with a dwarf on the throne,” and around him they say: “Oh yes,” as if to say you see what we’re able to do, but that isn’t a dwarf, stupid, it’s Our Lord, maybe not well done, but if Frederick had come a month later he would have found the whole Last Judgment with the oldsters of the Apocalypse; here is Baudolino asking for a glass of the good stuff, and they all look at him as if he came from the camp of the imperials, because it’s clear that wine, bad or good, is not to be found, not even a drop; it’s the first thing they give to the wounded to keep their spirits up, and to the families of the dead to keep their mind off their troubles; and here is Baudolino seeing around him wan faces and asking how long they can hold out, and they make superstitious gestures, raising their eyes as if to say these things are in the hands of the Lord; and finally here is Baudolino meeting Anselmo Medico, who commands five hundred foot soldiers from Piacenza, who have rushed to help the Civitas Nova, and Baudolino is pleased at this fine show of solidarity, and his friends Guasco, Trotti, Boidi, and Oberto del Foro say that this Anselmo is a man who knows how to fight, but the Piacenza men are the only ones; the League urged us to rebel but now they don’t give a damn about us, the Italian communes are a fraud, if we come out of this siege alive, from now on we owe nothing to anyone, they can deal with the emperor on their own, and amen.
“But how is it that the Genoese are against you, when they helped you build the city, and gave you gold?”
“The Genoese know how to run their business, you can count on that, so now they’re with the emperor because it’s in their interest; everybody knows, and they know, that, once it’s here, the city won’t go away, not even if they knock it down, like Lodi or Milan. So they wait for the afterwards, and afterwards what remains of the city is still useful to them to control the trade routes, and maybe they’ll pay to rebuild what they helped destroy, but meanwhile money keeps changing hands, and the Genoese are always
there.”
“Baudolino,” Ghini said to him, “you’ve just arrived and you
