The Genoese would prepare some baskets with an entire pan of scripilita, their bread made of chickpea flour, thin and crusty, which they would cut into strips, wrapped in broad leaves; with a little pepper on top it would be delicious enough to nourish a lion; and broad slices of flat cake. With oil, sage, cheese, and onions.
These barbarian dishes didn’t appeal to Niketas, but, since they would have to wait another day, he decided he would devote it to savoring the final delicacies that Theophilus could still prepare and listen to the final adventures of Baudolino, because he didn’t want to leave just as the story was reaching its peak, and not knowing how it ended.
“My story is still too long,” Baudolino said. “In any case, I will go with you. Here in Constantinople I’ve nothing more to do, and every corner stirs nasty memories. You have become my parchment, Master Niketas, on which I write many things that I had forgotten, as if my hand proceeded on its own. I think that one who tells stories must always have another to whom he tells them, and only thus can he tell them to himself.
You remember when I wrote letters to the empress, but she didn’t see them? If I committed the foolishness of letting my friends read them, it was because otherwise my letters would have had no meaning. And later, there was that moment of the kiss with the empress—I could never tell anyone of that kiss, and I carried the memory of it inside me for years and years, sometimes savoring it as if it were your honeyed wine, and sometimes tasting a toxin in my mouth. It was only when I could tell it to you that I felt free.”
“And why could you tell it to me?”
“Because, now, when I tell you, all those who were connected with my
story are no more. Only I remain. Now you are as necessary to me as the air I breathe. I will come with you to Selymbria.”
As soon as he had recovered from the wounds suffered at Legnano, Frederick called for Baudolino, along with the imperial chancellor, Christian of Buch. If the letter of Prester John was to be taken seriously, it was best to begin at once. Christian read the parchment that Baudolino showed him, and, clever chancellor that he was, he voiced some objections.
The writing, to begin with, did not seem to him worthy of a chancellery. That letter was to circulate among the papal court, the courts of France and England, reach the basileus of Byzantium, and therefore it had to be formed as important documents are prepared throughout the Christian world.
Then, he said, it would take time to make seals that really looked like seals. If a serious job was to be done, it had to be done scrupulously.
How was the letter to be purveyed to the other chancelleries? If it was sent by the chancellery of the empire, it would not be credible. What?
Prester John writes you privately to enable you to find him in a land unknown to all, and you let it be known lippis et tonsoribus, so that someone else could arrive there before you? Rumors concerning the letter should certainly spread, not only to legitimize a future expedition, but above all to astound the whole Christian world but all this had to happen a little bit at a time, as if a profound secret were being divulged. Baudolino suggested using his friends.
They would be agents above suspicion, scholars of the studium of Paris and not Frederick’s men. Abdul could contraband the letter in the kingdoms of the Holy Land, Boron in England, Kyot in France, and Rabbi Solomon could see it reached the Jews living in the Byzantine empire.
So the following months were spent on these various tasks, and Baudolino found himself directing a scriptorium where all his old companions were at work. Frederick from time to time asked for news. He had ventured the suggestion that the offer of the Grasal be a bit more explicit. Baudolino explained the reasons why it was best left vague, but he realized that this symbol of royal and priestly power had fascinated the emperor.
As they were debating these matters, Frederick was again beset with new trials. He now had to resign himself to seeking an agreement with Pope Alexander III. Seeing that the rest of the world did not take very seriously the imperial antipopes, the emperor would agree to pay Alexander homage and acknowledge him as the sole and genuine Roman pontiff and this was a big step but in return the pope had to make up his mind to withdraw all support of the Lombard communes—and this was even bigger. Was it worthwhile both Frederick and Christian asked themselves at this point— while extremely cautious plots were being woven, to provoke the pope with a renewed call for the union of sacerdotium and imperium? These delays made Baudolino champ at the bit, but he could not protest.
Indeed, Frederick removed him from his plans, sending him on a very delicate mission to Venice, in April of 1177. It was a matter of organizing
with great care the various details of the meeting that, in July, would take place between pope and emperor. The reconciliation ceremony should be arranged in every detail and no untoward incident should disturb it. “Christian was particularly afraid that your basileus might want to
provoke some disturbance, to make the meeting fail. You must know that for some time Manuel Comnenius had been plotting with the pope, and certainly that agreement between Alexander and Frederick would foil his plans.”
“It scotched them forever. For ten years Manuel had been proposing to the pope the reunification of the two churches: he would recognize the religious primacy of the pope and the pope would recognize the basileus of Byzantium as the sole, authentic Roman emperor, of both East and West.
But with such a pact Alexander did not gain much power in Constantinople and he wouldn’t get Frederick out of his way in Italy and would perhaps alarm the other European sovereigns. So he was choosing the alliance most advantageous for himself.”
“But your basileus sent spies to Venice. They passed themselves off as monks….”
“Probably they were monks. In our empire the men of the Church work for their basileus, and not against him. But as far as I can understand—and remember, at that time I was not yet at court—they did not send anyone to stir up trouble. Manuel was resigned to the inevitable. Perhaps he wanted only to be informed about what was happening.”
“Master Niketas, surely you know, since you were logothete of countless secrets, that when spies from opposing sides meet on the same field of intrigue, the most natural thing is for them to maintain relations of cordial friendship, each confiding his own secrets to the others. Thus they run no risk of stealing them from one another, and they look very clever to those who have sent them. And so it happened between us and those monks: we immediately told one another why we were there, we to spy on them, and they to spy on us, and afterwards we spent some delightful days together.”
“These are things an astute statesman foresees, but what else should he do? If he questioned the foreign spies directly—and, for that matter, he doesn’t know them—they would tell him nothing. So he sends his own spies, with secrets of scant importance to reveal, and comes to know the things he should know, which usually are known already to everyone save himself,” Niketas said.
“Among these monks there was a certain Zosimos of Chalcedon. I was struck by his haggard face, a pair of eyes like carbuncles constantly rolling, illuminating a great black beard, and by his very long hair. When he spoke, he seemed to be talking with a crucified man, bleeding two palms’ length from his face.”
“I know the type. Our monasteries are full of them. They die very young, of consumption.”
“Not him. In my whole life I have never seen such a glutton.
One evening I even took him to the house of two Venetian courtesans, who, as you probably know, are specially famous among the practitioners of that art as old as the world. By three in the morning I was drunk and I left, but he stayed on and, some time later, one of the girls told me she had never had to deal with such a demon.”
“I know the type. Our monasteries are full of them. They die very young, of consumption.”
Baudolino and Zosimos had become, if not friends, companions in debauchery. Their association began when, after a first and generous drinking bout together, Zosimos uttered a horrible blasphemy and said that he would have given, that night, all the victims of the massacre of the innocents for a maid of indulgent morality.
Asked if that was what was taught in the monasteries of Byzantium, Zosimos replied: “As Saint Basil taught, there are two demons that can trouble the intellect, that of fornication and that of blasphemy.
But the second operates briefly and the first, if it does not agitate our thought with passion, does not prevent the contemplation of God.” They went immediately to demonstrate obedience, without passion, to the demon of fornication, and Baudolino realized that Zosimos had, for every situation in life, a maxim from some theologian or hermit that made him feel at peace with
