“We’ve heard the same thing, and that’s why Frederick wants to make you surrender first. You … you aren’t thinking of giving up now, are you?” “What an idea! Our head is harder than our cock.”
And so, for some weeks, after every skirmish, Baudolino went home, to tally the dead more than for any other reason (Panizza, too? Yes, Panizza, too, and he was a good man), and then he returned to tell Frederick that those men … surrender? Not a chance. Frederick no longer cursed, but confined himself to saying: “What can I do about it?” It was clear that by now he repented having got himself into this mess: his army was falling apart, the peasants were hiding the grain and their stock in the woods or, worse, in the swamps, he couldn’t press forward to north or east, or he would encounter some vanguard of the League in short, it wasn’t that these rustics were better than the people of Crema, but bad luck is bad luck. However, he couldn’t just go away, because he would be humiliated forever.
As for saving face, Baudolino realized, from something the emperor said one day, referring to his boyhood feat—the time he had persuaded the Terdona people to surrender—that if Frederick could only exploit a sign from heaven, any sign, allowing him to announce urbi et orbi that heaven itself was suggesting they go back home, Frederick would seize the opportunity…
One day, while Baudolino was talking with the besieged, Gagliaudo said to him: “You’re so intelligent and you’ve studied the books where everything is written—don’t you have some idea that will make everybody leave, now that we’ve had to slaughter our cows, except for one, and your mother is going to die of suffocation, penned up in the city like this?” And then Baudolino had a fine idea, and he immediately asked if they had actually invented that false tunnel Trotti had talked about a few years before, the tunnel the enemy was to believe led straight into the city, but really led the invader into a trap.
“Of course,” Trotti said, “come and see. Look. The tunnel opens over there, in that thicket two hundred feet from the walls, just below a kind of boundary stone that looks like it’s been there for a thousand years but really we brought it from Villa del Foro. And anyone who enters there ends up here, beneath that grating, from which you can see the tavern and nothing else.”
“And as one comes out, you do him in?”
“The fact is that, generally, with a tunnel that narrow, it would take days for all the besiegers to come through, so they send only one squad of men, who are supposed to reach the gates and open them. Now, apart from the fact that we don’t know how to inform the enemy that there’s a tunnel, after you’ve killed maybe twenty or, at most, thirty poor bastards, was it worth the effort to do all that work? It’s nothing but a cheap trick.”
“If it’s only to hit them on the head. But listen to the scene I can almost see with these eyes of mine: the moment the men come in, a blast of trumpets sounds and, in the light of ten torches, from that corner appears a man with a long white beard and a white cloak, on a white horse with a great white cross in his hand, and he shouts: Citizens, citizens, wake up, the enemy is here. Before the invaders have made up their mind to move a step, our people appear at the windows and on the rooftops.
And after the enemies are captured, our people sink to their knees and cry that the man in white is Saint Peter, who is protecting the city, and they push the imperials back into the tunnel, saying, Thank God that we’re sparing your lives; go to the camp of your Barbarossa and tell them that the New City of Pope Alexander is protected by Saint Peter in person….” “And will Barbarossa believe a tale like that?”
“No, because he’s not stupid, but since he’s not stupid, he will pretend to believe it because he’s more anxious to end this than you people are.” “Let’s suppose you’re right. Who’ll arrange to have the tunnel discovered?” “Me.”
“And where are you going to find the asshole who falls for it?”
“I’ve already found him, and he’s such an asshole that he’ll fall right into the trap on his shitty face, as he deserves, but anyway we agree that nobody gets killed.”
Baudolino had in mind that fop Count Ditpold, and to spur Ditpold into action it was enough to make him believe he was harming Baudolino. So all they had to do was let Ditpold find out that there was a tunnel and that Baudolino didn’t want it discovered. How? Nothing easier, since Ditpold had his spies following Baudolino.
After nightfall, returning to the camp, Baudolino first passed through a little clearing, then entered the wood, but once he was among the trees, he stopped and looked back just in time to see, in the moonlight, an agile shadow slipping, almost on all fours, through the open space. It was the man Ditpold had put on his heels. Baudolino waited among the trees until the spy was about to fall on him, pointed his sword at the man’s chest and, while the other was stammering in fear, he said to him in Flemish: “I recognize you. You’re one of the Brabantines. What were you doing outside the camp? Speak! I’m one of the emperor’s ministerials!”
The man said something about a woman, and sounded almost convincing. “All right,” Baudolino said. “In any case it’s lucky you’re here. I need someone to guard my back while I do something.”
For the other man this was a blessing. Not only had he not been discovered, but he could continue his spying arm-in-arm with its object. Baudolino reached the thicket Trotti had mentioned. He didn’t have to pretend, because he really did have to scratch around to find the stone, while he grumbled as if to himself about receiving word from one of his informers.
He found the stone, which did look as if it had grown there with the bushes; he worked over it, scraping foliage away until he had uncovered a grating. He asked the Brabantine to help him lift it: there were three steps. “Now listen,” he said to the Brabantine. “Go down these steps and move forward until you reach the end of the tunnel, where you may see some lights. Take a good look at what you see and don’t forget any of it. Then come back and report. I’ll stay here on guard.”
To the soldier it seemed natural, however painful, that a gentleman should first ask him to stand guard and then should stand guard himself, while sending him into the unknown. Baudolino had brandished his sword, surely to cover his back, but with lords there was never any telling. The spy made the sign of the cross and set out. When he returned after about twenty minutes, gasping, he reported what Baudolino already knew: that at the end of the passage there was another grating, not very hard to lift, and beyond it was a solitary little square, and so this tunnel led right into the heart of the city.
Baudolino asked: “Were there some turns, or did you go straight forward?” “Straight,” the man replied. And Baudolino, as if talking to himself, said: “So the exit is a few dozen meters from the gates. That traitor was right….” Then, to the Brabantine: “You realize what we’ve discovered. The first time there’s an attack on the walls, a squad of brave men can enter the city, fight their way to the gates and open them; we just have to have more troops outside, ready to enter. My fortune is made. But you must tell no one what you have seen tonight, because I don’t want anyone taking advantage of my discovery.” With a munificent air he handed him a coin, and the price of silence was so ridiculous that, if not out of loyalty to Ditpold, at least for revenge, the spy would immediately run and tell him everything.
It requires little imagination to picture what was to happen. Thinking that Baudolino wanted to keep the news secret, so as not to harm his besieged friends, Ditpold hurried to tell the emperor that his beloved son had discovered an entrance into the city but was taking care not to reveal it. The emperor raised his eyes to heaven as if to say: the dear boy, him too, then he said to Ditpold: very well, I offer you the glory; towards sunset I’ll deploy for you a good attack force just outside the gate, I’ll have some onagers and some rams placed near the thicket. When you slip into the tunnel with
