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could smell other people whose bodies he could not see in the room. As soon as Lucrezia
giggled, he saw her, but there was at least one other person in the room that he did not
see; he could smell that unseen person in the darkness of the glittering chapel. With his
nostrils he located the unknown person in a closed closet. Doudu concluded that this must
be one of the Pope’s personal security agents. Or someone hiding in the room without the
knowledge of the Pope. He intensified his sniffing of the air to detect any other hidden
person. But he felt nothing. Doudu then calculated that there were four people present in
the room.
The Pope sat on a throne in the chapel. Lucrezia sat at his feet. Father and daughter
had their eyes fixed on Doudu. “He is so black,” Lucrezia said. “How could the human
skin be so dark?”
“But he has unsurpassable elegance and grace,” Pope Alexander said. “Rise,
Doudu,” the Pope commanded, making a gesture to suggest rising. Doudu rose to his full
length, his face brightening up with a radiant smile. Doudu kept his nostrils fully opened.
He wondered why they kept a guard in the closet. Doudo also kept his eyes glued to the
ivory goblet in the Pope’s hand, from which Alexander kept sipping wine. Doudu could
see clearly see the veins of a leaf from a hundred yards, and he could not be surer that
he was staring at the missing Igbimo ivory goblet. As if to confirm Doudu’s thought, the
Pope kept turning the cup in his hand, until the icon of the king with the mudfish legs
directly faced Doudu. It was unmistakable. Immediately after Doudu was born, he was
shown the replica of the cup in the Benin palace, and told to go and find the missing one
wherever it might be. Doudu also witnessed the induction of other eunuch babies to the
same commission, as soon as they were born. They were trained and equipped to perform
this task in addition to any other duties they might be assigned.