But all that orgiastic equipment had been piled up in apparent haste in the darker corners, because that evening Zosimos had arranged to meet the basileus to make him speak with the dead and not with strumpets, because, as everyone knows, Baudolino said, people will believe anything provided it’s the dead who speak.
Beyond the room, some lights could be seen, and in fact they entered a circular crypt illuminated by two tripods, already alight. The crypt was surrounded by a colonnade, and behind the columns they could glimpse openings of passages, or tunnels, leading God knows where.
In the center of the crypt was a basin filled with water, its edge forming a kind of channel filled with an oily substance, which ran in a circle around the surface. Next to the basin, on a little column, was a vague object, covered by a red cloth. Baudolino realized that Andronicus, after having entrusted himself to ventriloquists and astrologers, and having tried in vain to find in Byzantium someone who, like the ancient Greeks, could foretell the future through the flight of birds, and with no faith in the wretches who boasted that they could interpret dreams, had by now given himself over to hydromants, who, like Zosimos, could draw presages by immersing in water something that had belonged to a deceased person.
Passing behind the altar, they turned and saw an iconostasis, dominated by a Christ Pantocrator, who stared at them with widened, stern eyes. Baudolino remarked that, if Boiamondo’s information was correct, in a little while someone would surely arrive, so they had best hide themselves. They chose a part of the colonnade where the tripods cast no light, and they placed themselves there just in time, because the steps of someone arriving could be heard.
From the left side of the iconostasis they saw Zosimos enter, wrapped in a cloak that looked like Rabbi Solomon’s. Baudolino had an instinctive reaction of anger and felt like going out into the open and laying hands on that traitor. Obsequiously the monk preceded a sumptuously dressed man, followed by two other figures. The respectful attitude of these two made it clear that the first man was the basileus Andronicus.
The monarch stopped short, struck by the scene. He blessed himself devoutly before the iconostasis, then asked Zosimos: “Why did you have me come here?”
“My lord,” Zosimos answered, “I had you come here because true hydromancy can be performed only in consecrated places, establishing the proper contact with the realm of the dead.”
“I am no coward,” the basileus said, crossing himself again, “but you— aren’t you afraid of calling up the dead?”
Zosimos laughed boldly. “My lord, I could raise these hands of mine and the sleepers of ten thousand graves in Constantinople would rush obediently to my feet. But I have no need to recall those bodies to life. I possess a portentous object that I will use to establish more rapid contact with the world of shadows.”
He lighted a firebrand at one of the tripods and held it out to the channel at the rim of the basin. The oil began to burn, and a little crown of flame, running all around the surface of the water, illuminated it with dancing glints.
“I still see nothing,” the basileus said, bending over the basin. “Ask this water of yours who is the man preparing to take my place. I sense unrest in the city, and I want to know whom I must destroy to dispel any fear.” Zosimos approached the object covered by the red cloth, lying on the little column.
With a histrionic gesture he removed the veil, and handed the basileus a round object he had held between his hands. Our friends couldn’t see what it was, but they saw the basileus draw back, trembling, as if trying to ward off an unbearable sight. “No, no,” he said, “not this! You asked it of me for your rites, but I didn’t know you would have it reappear before me!” Zosimos raised this trophy of his and was presenting it to an imaginary congregation like a monstrance, turning it towards every part of the cavern.
It was the head of a dead child, its features still intact, as if it had just been severed from the trunk: eyes closed, the nostrils of the slender nose dilated, the little lips barely parted, revealing a full set of tiny teeth. The immobility and the alien illusion of life in that face were made more hieratic by the fact that it appeared to be of a uniform gilded hue, and seemed almost to sparkle in the light of the little flames that Zosimos was now approaching.
“I had to use the head of your nephew Alexius,” Zosimos was saying to the basileus, “for the ritual to be achieved. Alexius was bound to you by blood ties, and his mediation will enable you to communicate with the realm of those who are no more.” Then, slowly, he immersed in the water that horrid little object, until it reached the bottom of the basin, over which Andronicus bent, as closely as the crown of flames would allow. “The water is turning murky,” he said in a whisper. “It has found in Alexius the terrestrial element it was awaiting, and it is questioning him,” Zosimos murmured. “We will wait until this cloud is dispersed.”
Our friends couldn’t see what was happening in the water, but they realized that at a certain point it became clear again and revealed, on the bottom, the face of the boy basileus. “By Hell’s power,” Andronicus stammered, “it is finding again its former colors, and I can read some signs that have appeared on his brow…. Oh, miracle!…Iota, Sigma…”
You didn’t have to be a hydromant to understand what had happened.
Zosimos had taken the head of the boy emperor, had incised some letters on the brow, then had covered them with a gilded substance, soluble in water. Now, as that artificial patina dissolved, the wretched victim was giving to the man who had hired his killer the message that obviously Zosimos, or whoever had inspired him, wanted the basileus to receive.
In fact, Andronicus went on spelling it out: “Iota, Sigma, IS … IS…” He straightened up, twisted the hairs of his beard several times in his fingers, seemed to shoot fire from his eyes, bowing his head as if to reflect, then raising it like a fiery horse, barely held in check. “Isaac!” he cried. “The enemy is Isaac Comnenus! What is he plotting there on Cyprus? I will send out a fleet and destroy him before he can move, the wretch!”
One of the two attendants emerged from the shadows, and Baudolino noted that he had the face of a man prepared to roast his own mother if she failed to put meat on the table. “My Lord,” the man said, “Cyprus is too far away, and your fleet would have to go beyond the Propontis, passing the area where now the army of the king of Sicily is spreading. But just as you cannot go to Isaac, so he cannot come to you. I would not think so much of Isaac Comnenus, but, rather of Isaac Angelus, who is here in the city, and you know how little love he has for you.”
“Stephen!” Andronicus laughed, with contempt. “You’d have me worry about Isaac Angelus? How can you think that such a broken-winded, inept, impotent good-for-nothing could even think of threatening me? Zosimos, Zosimos,” he said furiously to the necromancer, “this water and this head speak to me either of one who is too far away or of another who is too stupid! What good are your eyes if you can’t read in this pot full of piss?”
Zosimos realized that he was about to lose his eyes, but luckily for him, that Stephen who had spoken earlier now spoke up again. From the obvious pleasure with which the man was promising new crimes, Baudolino understood this was Stephen Agiochristoforites, the evil genius of Andronicus, the man who had strangled and decapitated the boy Alexius. “My lord, do not scorn portents. You yourself have seen how on the boy’s face signs have appeared that were surely not there when he was alive.
Isaac Angelus may be a petty weakling, but he hates you. Others, smaller and weaker than he, have made attempts on the life of men great and courageous as you, if ever there have been such…. Give me your consent, and this very night I will go and capture Angelus and tear out his eyes with my own hands, then I will hang him from a column of his palace. The people will be told that you received a message from heaven. Better to be rid at once of someone who does not yet threaten you, than leave him alive so that he may threaten you one day. Let us strike first.”
“You are trying to use me to satisfy some grudge of your own,” the basileus said, “but it may be that in doing evil you may also be favoring
good. Get rid of Isaac for me. I only regret…” and he gave Zosimos such a look that he shivered with fear, “for, with Isaac dead, we will never know if he really wanted to harm me, or if this monk has told the truth. But in the end he has aroused in me a just suspicion, and if you think the worst, you are always right. Stephen, we are obliged to show him our gratitude. See
that he has what he may ask.” He made
