Baudolino until then had been amused, following the altercation, but now he had had his fill of it. “Enough!” he said. “Tomorrow perhaps you can try putting another chicken in the upper room. Now, speaking of chickens, let me eat this one, and I hope it was slaughtered in the usual fashion.”
- Baudolino sees Frederick die twice
The supper went on until late, and the emperor asked to retire. Baudolino and his friends followed him to his chamber, which they inspected again with attention, by the light of two torches set in the walls. The Poet chose also to take a look at the flue of the fireplace, but it narrowed almost immediately, allowing no room for the passage of a human being. “You’re lucky if the smoke can pass through here,” he said. They also peered into the little defecation cubbyhole, but nobody could have climbed
up from the bottom of the pit.
By the bed, along with a lamp already lighted, there was a jug of water, and Baudolino insisted on tasting it. The Poet remarked that they could have put a poisonous substance on the pillow where Frederick’s mouth would rest while he was sleeping. It would be a good thing, he pointed out, if Frederick were to have an antidote always within reach. You never know….
Frederick told them not to exaggerate their fear, but Rabbi Solomon humbly asked permission to speak. “My lord,” Solomon said, “you know that, even though I am a Jew, I have devoted myself loyally to the mission that will crown your glory. Your life is as dear to me as my very own. Hear me. In Gallipolis I bought a wondrous antidote. Take it,” he added, removing the phial from his coat, “it is my gift to you, because in my poor life I will have few occasions to be deceived by powerful enemies. If by chance, one of these nights you were to feel ill, swallow this promptly. If something harmful were served you, it would save you at once.”
“I thank you, Rabbi Solomon,” Frederick said, moved, “and we Teutonics were right to protect those of your race, and so we shall continue to do for the coming centuries: I swear this in the name of my people. I accept your beneficent draft, and this is what I will do with it.” He drew from his traveling sack the coffer with the Grasal, which now he always carried jealously with him.
“Here, you see,” he said, “I pour the liquid that you, a Jew, have given me, in the cup that contained the blood of the Lord.” Solomon bowed, but murmured, perplexed, to Baudolino: “The potion of a Jew becomes the blood of the false Messiah. … May the Holy One, blessed be he always, forgive me. But, after all, this story of the Messiah is something you gentiles invented, not Yeoshoua of Nazareth, who was a just man, and our rabbis tell us that he studied the Talmud with Rabbi Yeoshoua ben Pera’hia. And besides, I like your emperor. I believe one must obey the impulses of the heart.”
Frederick had picked up the Grasal and was about to replace it in its ark when Kyot interrupted him. That evening all of them felt authorized to address the emperor without being asked: an atmosphere of familiarity had been established between those loyal few and their lord, pent up in a place that they could not yet deem hospitable or hostile. Kyot then said: “Sire, you mustn’t think I doubt Rabbi Solomon, but he too could have been deceived. Allow me to taste this liquid.”
“Sire, I beg you, let Kyot do so,” Rabbi Solomon said. Frederick nodded. Kyot raised the cup, with a celebrant’s movement, then held it barely to his mouth, as if in Communion. At that moment it seemed to Baudolino that an intense light spread through the room, but perhaps it was one of the torches that had flared up, at a point where the resin was thicker. For a few moments Kyot remained bowed over the cup, moving his mouth as if to absorb thoroughly the scant amount of liquid he had imbibed. Then he turned, holding the cup to his chest, and put it,
delicately, in the ark. He closed that tabernacle slowly, so as not to make the slightest sound.
“I smell the perfume,” Boron was murmuring. “You see this glow?” Abdul was saying.
“All the angels of heaven are descending around us,” Zosimos said, convinced, blessing himself backwards.
“Son of a strumpet,” the Poet whispered into Baudolino’s ear, “with this pretext he’s celebrated his holy Mass with the Grasal, and when he goes home he’ll brag from Champagne to Brittany.” Baudolino whispered back, telling him not to be malicious, because Kyot had acted truly like one rapt in the highest heavens.
“Now no one can deflect us,” Frederick said, gripped by strong and mystical emotion. “Jerusalem will soon be liberated. And then, we will all go and return this most holy relic to Prester John. Baudolino, I thank you for what you have given me. I am truly king and priest.”
He smiled, yet he was also trembling. That brief ceremony seemed to have overwhelmed him. “I’m tired,” he said. “Baudolino, now I will shut myself in that room with the latch. Keep good watch, and thank you also for your devotion. Don’t waken me until the sun is high in the sky. Then I will go and swim.” And he repeated: “I am terribly tired; I’d like not to wake again for centuries and centuries.”
“A long peaceful night will restore you, dear Father,” Baudolino said affectionately. “You don’t have to set off at dawn. If the sun is high, the water will not be so cold. Sleep well.”
They went out.
Frederick drew the leaves of the door closed, and they heard the click of the latch. They stretched out on the surrounding benches. “We don’t have an imperial cubbyhole at our disposal,” Baudolino said. “Let’s go quickly and perform our corporal functions in the courtyard.
One at a time, so we won’t ever leave this room unmanned. This Ardzrouni may be good, but we can trust only ourselves.” After a few minutes, all of them had returned. Baudolino put out the lamp, bade all a good night, and tried to sleep.
“But I was uneasy, Master Niketas, for no good reason. I fell into an anxious sleep, and I kept waking up after brief, intense dreams, as if interrupting a nightmare. In my drowsiness I saw my poor Colandrina, drinking from a grasal of black stone, then falling dead to the ground. An hour later I heard a sound. The salle d’armes also had a window, from which came a very pale nocturnal light; I believe the moon was in the fourth quarter. I realized it was the Poet, who was going out. Perhaps he hadn’t sufficiently emptied his body.
Later—I don’t know how much later, because I would fall back asleep and then wake again, and each time it seemed to me that only a few minutes had passed, but perhaps this was not true—Boron went out. Then I heard him come back, and I heard Kyot murmur to him that he too was nervous and wanted a breath of air. But after all, my duty was to keep an eye on anyone trying to enter, not on those who left, and I knew that all of us were tense. Then I don’t remember, I wasn’t aware of when the Poet reentered, but, long before dawn, all were deep in sleep, and so I saw them still, when, at the sun’s first rays, I woke for good.” The salle d’armes was now illuminated by a triumphant morning.
Some servants brought wine and bread and local fruits. Though Baudolino warned them not to make a sound, so as not to disturb the emperor, all were in noisy good humor. After an hour had gone by, it seemed to Baudolino that, although Frederick had asked not to be wakened, it was late enough. He knocked at the door, without receiving a reply. He knocked again.
“He’s sleeping heavily.” The Poet laughed.
“I hope he’s not unwell,” Baudolino ventured.
They knocked again, louder and louder. Frederick didn’t respond. “Yesterday he seemed really exhausted,” Baudolino said. “He may have had some kind of seizure. Let’s break the door open.”
“Keep calm, everybody,” the Poet said, “violating the door that protects the emperor’s sleep is almost a sacrilege.”
“We’ll commit the sacrilege,” Baudolino said. “I don’t like this.”
In disorder, they hurled themselves against the door, which was sturdy, and the bolt barring it must have been solid.
“Once more, all together! When I say go,” the Poet said, now aware that if an emperor doesn’t wake up while they’re breaking down his door, his sleep is obviously suspect. The door again resisted. The Poet went and liberated Zosimos, who was sleeping in his chains, and he arranged the group into two lines, so that together they could push forcefully against both leaves. At their fourth attempt the door gave way.
Then they saw Frederick, lying in the middle of the room, lifeless, almost naked, as he had gone to bed. Beside him was the Grasal, which had rolled on the ground, empty. The
