The bishop of Speyer immediately claimed the command of the forces outside the gate, because Ditpold, he said, was like his own son. Imagine! And so, on the afternoon of Good Friday, when Trotti saw the imperials waiting outside the gate, as always when darkness was falling, he understood it was a display to distract the besieged, and behind it there was the hand of Baudolino. So, discussing it with Guasco, Boidi, and Oberto del Foro, he took care to provide a credible Saint Peter; one of the original consuls, Rodolfo Nebia, volunteered, and had the suitable physique. They wasted only a half hour debating whether the apparition should hold the cross or the usual keys, deciding on the cross, which would be more visible in the gloaming.
Baudolino was a short distance from the gates, certain that there would be no battle, because someone would first emerge from the tunnel bearing the news of the celestial assistance. And, in fact, in the time of three Paters, Aves, and Glorias, from inside the walls a great stir was heard, a voice that to all seemed superhuman shouted: “To arms, to arms, my faithful Alessandrians!” and a chorus of terrestrial voices cried: “It’s Saint Peter! Oh, miracle! Miracle!”
But right at this point something went wrong.
As they would later explain to Baudolino, Ditpold and his men had been promptly caught and everyone tried to convince them that Saint Peter had appeared. They would probably have fallen for it, the lot of them, except Ditpold, who knew very well from whom the revelation of the tunnel had come, and—stupid, but not that stupid—he realized that the idea had been conceived by Baudolino. He freed himself from his captors’ grip, ran down a narrow street shouting in such a loud voice that nobody could understand what language he was talking, and in the twilight they believed he was one of them.
But when he was on the wall, it was obvious that he was addressing the besiegers, to warn them of a trap—it wasn’t clear what he was protecting them against, since those outside, if the gate wasn’t opened, couldn’t come in and therefore were hardly at risk.
It made no difference that, precisely because of his stupidity, Ditpold had courage and was at the top of the wall waving his sword and challenging all the Alessandrians. They—as the rules of a siege demand—could not admit that an enemy had reached the wall, even if arriving from within. Above all, only a few were in on the plot, and the rest suddenly saw an Alaman in their midst as if nothing had happened. So someone decided to stick a pike into Ditpold’s back, flinging him down from the bastion.
At the sight of his best-beloved comrade falling lifeless at the foot of the keep, the bishop of Speyer lost his head completely and ordered the attack. In a normal situation, the Alessandrians would have behaved as usual, firing on the attackers from the top of the fortifications, but as the enemy pressed at the gates, a rumor was spreading that Saint Peter had appeared, to save the city from danger, and he was preparing to lead a victorious sortie. Meanwhile, Trotti had thought to exploit this misunderstanding, and had sent his bogus Saint Peter to go out first, drawing all the others after him.
In short, Baudolino’s trick, which should have clouded the minds of the assailants, clouded instead those of the assailed: the Alessandrians, gripped by mystic furor and by the most bellicose ecstasy, were flinging themselves like beasts against the imperials—and in such a disordered way, contrary to the rules of the art of war, that the bishop of Speyer and his knights, bewildered, fell back, imitated by those who were meant to push the crossbowmen’s towers, leaving them at the very edge of the fatal thicket.
For the Alessandrians it was an open invitation: immediately Anselmo Medico with his Piacentines slipped into the tunnel, which now was truly helpful, and emerged behind the Genoese, with a group of bold men carrying poles on which they had stuck balls of burning pitch. And so the Genoese towers caught fire like kindling.
The crossbowmen jumped off, but as they hit the ground, the Alessandrians were there to strike their heads with clubs; one tower first tilted, then crumbled, spreading flames among the bishop’s cavalry, the horses seemed crazed, upsetting the ranks of the imperials even more, and those not on horseback contributed to the disorder, because they ran through the ranks of the riders shouting that Saint Peter in person was arriving, and perhaps also Saint Paul, and some had even seen Saint Sebastian and Saint Tarcisius—the whole Christian Olympus, in other words, had joined that loathsome city.
At night, some men brought to the imperial camp, already in deep mourning, the corpse of the bishop of Speyer, struck in the back as he was fleeing. Frederick sent for Baudolino and asked what his part in this story was and what he knew of it, and Baudolino wanted to sink through the ground, because that evening many brave men had died, including Anselmo Medico of Piacenza, and valorous sergeants, and poor foot soldiers, and all for that fine plan of his—which should have resolved everything without a hair of anyone’s head being touched. He threw himself at Frederick’s feet, telling him the whole truth, how he had thought to offer him a credible pretext for raising the siege and instead things had gone as they had.
“I’m a wretch, dear Father,” he said. “Blood revolts me, and I wanted to keep my hands clean, and spare many other deaths, and look at the slaughter I’ve wrought. All these deaths are on my conscience!”
“Curse you, or curse those who botched the plan,” Frederick replied, apparently more saddened than angered, “because—don’t tell this to anyone —that pretext would have indeed been a help to me. I have had fresh news: the League is on the move, perhaps as soon as tomorrow we’ll have to fight on two fronts. Your Saint Peter would have convinced the soldiers, but now too many have died, and my barons are demanding revenge. They’re going around saying that this is the right moment to teach the people of this city a lesson. It was enough to see those people when they came out: thinner than we are, and they were really making their final effort.”
By then it was Holy Saturday. The air was tepid, the fields were decked with flowers, and the trees were joyously sprouting. The people were sad as at a funeral, the imperials because each said it was time to attack and nobody felt like doing it, the Alessandrians because, after the effort of the last sortie, their spirits were high, though their bellies were hanging between their legs. Thus it was that Baudolino’s fertile mind set to work again.
He rode once more towards the walls, and found Trotti, Guasco, and the other leaders grave and frowning. They also knew about the arrival of the League, but they had heard from a reliable source that the various communes were deeply divided as to how to proceed, and very uncertain as to whether they should actually attack Frederick.
“Because it’s one thing, Master Niketas—now mind you, this is a very fine point that maybe Byzantines aren’t subtle enough to grasp it’s one thing to defend yourselves when the emperor is besieging you, and another thing to start a battle on your own initiative. I mean: if your father hits you with his belt, you have the right to try to grab it and tear it from his hands— that’s self-defense but if you’re the one who raises his hand to strike your father, then it’s patricide.
Once you have definitively shown disrespect to the holy and Roman emperor, what do you have left to keep the Italian communes together? You understand, Master Niketas, there they were, having just torn Frederick’s troops to pieces, but they continued to recognize him as their sole lord. They didn’t want him underfoot, but it would have been awful if he no longer existed: they would have massacred one another not even knowing if they were acting well or badly, because the criterion of right and wrong was, in the end, the emperor.”
“So,” Guasco said, “the best thing would be for the emperor to abandon immediately the siege of Alessandria, and I assure you the communes would allow him passage to reach Pavia.” But how could he be permitted to save appearances? We had already tried the sign from heaven, and the Alessandrians had gained a great satisfaction, but they were again back where they started from. Saint Peter had been too ambitious, Baudolino then remarked, and a vision or an apparition, whatever you choose to call it, is something that’s there and isn’t there. Besides, the next day it’s easy to deny it. Finally, why trouble the saints? Those mercenaries were people who didn’t believe even in the Father Almighty; the only thing they believed in was a full belly and a hard cock….”
“Let’s suppose…” Gagliaudo said then, with the wisdom that God as all know—gives only to poor folk, “let’s suppose that the imperials capture one of our cows, and they find her so stuffed with wheat that her belly’s about to explode. Then Barbarossa and his men will think that we still have so much food that we can hold out in sculasculorum, and so
