Frederick said that Ardzrouni should teach him that secret, because then the walls of Jerusalem would fall better than those of Jericho, not through the sound of trumpets but through the rays of the sun. Ardzrouni said he was there to serve the emperor. Then he closed the window and said: “Air doesn’t enter here, but through other fissures. Despite the season, since the walls are thick, you might feel cold tonight. Rather than light the fire, which smokes annoyingly, I advise you to cover yourself with these furs you see on the bed.
I apologize for my vulgarity, but the Lord created us with a body: behind this little door there is a cubbyhole, with a less than royal seat, but anything your body wants to expel will fall into a cistern undergound, without infecting this space. This room can be entered only by the door we have just passed through; beyond that, once you have fastened it from inside with the latch, your courtiers will be sleeping on those benches, perhaps not comfortably, but they will guarantee your serenity.”
They noticed on the breast of the fireplace a circular relief. It was a Medusa head, the hair twisted like snakes, eyes closed, and an open fleshy mouth, which displayed a dark cavity whose bottom could not be seen (“like the one I saw with you in the cistern, Master Niketas”). Frederick became curious and asked what it was.
Ardzrouni said that it was a Dionysius ear: “It is one of my magic devices. In Constantinople there are still old stones of this sort; it was enough simply to carve the mouth better. There is a room, below, where as a rule my little garrison stays, but as long as you, Emperor, are here it will be left empty. Everything that is said down there comes forth from this mouth,
as if the speaker were just behind the sculpture. So if I choose, I can hear what my men are talking about.”
“If only I could know what my cousins are talking about,” Frederick said. “Ardzrouni, you are invaluable. We will talk further also of this. Now let us make our plans for tomorrow. In the morning I want to bathe in the river.”
“You can reach it easily, by horse or on foot,” Ardzrouni said, “and without even passing through the courtyard where you entered. In fact, beyond the door of the salle d’armes there is a little stairway that leads to a second court. From there you can find the main path again.”
“Baudolino,” Frederick said, “have some horses ready in that court for tomorrow morning.”
“Dear Father,” Baudolino said, “I know very well how much you like to face the most turbulent waters. But now you are tired from your journey and from all the trials you have undergone. You are unfamiliar with the waters of this river, which seems to me full of whirlpools. Why do you want to risk this?”
“Because I am not so old as you think, my son, and because, if it weren’t late, I would go to the river at once; I feel filthy with dust. An emperor must not stink, unless it be with the oil of holy unctions. Arrange for the horses.” “As Ecclesiastes tells us,” Rabbi Solomon said timidly, “thou shalt not swim against the river’s current.”
“And who says I will swim against it?” Frederick laughed. “I’ll follow it.”
“It is not good to wash oneself too often,” Ardzrouni said, “unless under the guidance of an expert physician, but here you are master. Now it is still early; for me it would be an undeserved honor to show you around my castle.”
He led them back down the grand staircase. On the lower floor they crossed a hall reserved for the evening banquet, already alight with many candelabra. Then they passed through a saloon full of stools, on some of which was carved a great overturned snail, a spiral structure that closed into a funnel, with a central hole. “This is the guards’ room I told you about,” he said, and those who speak with their mouths to this aperture can be heard in your chamber.”
“I would like to hear how it works,” Frederick said. Baudolino, in jest, said that during the night he would come here to greet him as he was sleeping. Frederick laughed and said no, because that night he wanted to rest peacefully. “Unless,” he added, “you have to warn me that the sultan of Iconium is entering through the fireplace flue.”
Ardzrouni led them along a corridor, and they entered a hall with vast vaults, which glowed and was smoky with swirls of steam. There were some cauldrons in which a molten matter was boiling, retorts and alembics, and other curious receptacles. Frederick asked if Ardzrouni produced gold. Ardzrouni smiled, saying that such were the tall tales of alchemists. But he knew how to gild metals and produce elixirs that, if they did not grant long life, at least extended the very brief life that is our lot.
Frederick said he didn’t want to taste them: “God has set the length of our life, and we must resign ourselves to his will. Perhaps I’ll die tomorrow, perhaps I’ll live to be a hundred. It’s all in the hands of the Lord.” Rabbi Solomon observed that his words were very wise, and the two conversed a while on the matter of divine decrees, and it was the first time that Baudolino heard Frederick speak of these things.
While the two were talking, out of the corner of his eye Baudolino saw Zosimos, stepping through a little door into an adjoining room, with Ardzrouni, looking concerned, immediately after him. Fearing that Zosimos knew some passage that would allow him to escape, Baudolino followed the two and found himself in a little room where there was only a kneading trough, and, on top of it, seven gilded heads. All of them portrayed the same bearded countenance, and were set on pedestals. They were obviously reliquaries, because it was clear that the heads could be opened like containers, but the edges of the lids, on which the face was drawn, were fixed to the rear part by a seal of dark wax.
“What are you looking for?” Ardzrouni was asking Zosimos, not noticing Baudolino.
Zosimos replied: “I have heard that you make relics, and for them you use your diabolical skill in gilding metals. They’re heads of the Baptist, aren’t they? I have seen others, and now I know for sure where they come from.”
Baudolino delicately cleared his throat. Ardzrouni wheeled around and put his hands to his mouth, his eyes rolling with fear. “I beseech you, Baudolino, say nothing to the emperor, or he’ll have me hanged,” he said in a low voice. “Well, yes, these are reliquaries with the true head of Saint John the Baptist. Each of them contains a skull, treated with fumigations so that it shrinks and seems very ancient. I live in this land without any resources of nature, without fields to sow, and without livestock, and my wealth is limited.
I fabricate relics, true, and they are much in demand both in Asia and in Europe. I have only to sell one of these heads at a great distance from the other: for instance, one in Antioch and the other in Italy, and nobody realizes that there are two of them.” He smiled with oily humility, as if asking indulgence for a sin that was, after all, venial.
“I never took you for a virtuous man, Ardzrouni,” Baudolino said, laughing. “Keep your heads, but let’s leave here at once; else we’ll arouse the suspicions of the others, including the emperor.” As they went out, Frederick was concluding his exchange of religious reflections with Solomon.
The emperor asked what other prodigious things their host had to show them, and Ardzrouni, anxious to get them out of that room, led them back into the corridor. From there they came to a closed double door, beside which was an altar of the kind pagans used for their sacrifices, altars of which Baudolino had seen many remains in Constantinople.
On this one there were faggots and twigs. Ardzrouni poured over them a thick, dark liquid, took one of the torches illuminating the corridor, and set the pile afire. Immediately the altar flared up, and in the space of a few minutes they began to hear a faint subterranean churning, a slow creak, while Ardzrouni, with arms upraised, uttered formulas in a barbaric language, but looking now and then at his guests, as if to let them know he was imitating a hierophant or necromancer. Finally, to the amazement of all, the two leaves of the door opened without anyone’s having touched them.
“Wonders of the hydraulic art”—Ardzrouni smiled with pride “which I cultivate, following the learned mechanics of Alexandria, of many centuries ago. It’s quite simple: beneath the
