Chapter 38: THE PRIEST'S LEDGER

Brother Anselm’s cell was colder than the winter garden, and twice as bare. A straw pallet, a wooden crucifix, a writing desk scarred by ink and knife. The Franciscan knelt before the desk, his back to Konrad, his hands busy with a leather-bound ledger that had seen more winters than either of them.

“You should not be here,” Anselm said without turning.

“You told me to pray. I thought I would pray with my confessor.”

“You thought you would pry.” The priest’s shoulders rose and fell in a sigh. “The door is closed. The walls have ears. The ceiling has eyes. And still you come.”

Konrad closed the door behind him and leaned against it. The ring was cold against his chest. “You know what Hedwig told me.”

Anselm’s hand stilled on the ledger. “I know what you told me she told you. Those are different things.”

“The priest’s knot,” Konrad said softly. “You tie it around the truth and call it discretion.”

Now Anselm turned. His face was grey as old ash, his eyes red-rimmed from candle smoke or sleeplessness—or both. “You want me to untie it for you. To tell you what the river remembers, what your aunt means, what your father wrote. But I cannot, Konrad. I can only tell you what I have recorded, and pray you read it rightly.”

He gestured to the ledger. Konrad crossed the cell in three strides and looked down at the page. The ink was fresh, still glistening in the candlelight, the script tight and even—a scribe’s hand, not a priest’s.

“What is this?”

“A record of sins.” Anselm’s voice was barely a whisper. “Not absolutions. Not confessions. Just the sins themselves. Names, dates, places. What was done, to whom, and by whose order.”

Konrad’s eyes moved down the page. He saw names he knew—barons, bishops, merchants, a castellan from Krems. He saw places he had passed through on his journey east. And then, near the bottom, in a hand that was not Anselm’s, he saw his own name.

*Konrad von Eppenstein. Prague. The Feast of the Epiphany, 1274. Given the wolf’s seal by Hedwig von Eppenstein. Shown his father’s death. Told of the letter. Warned of the river. Asked the priest what the river remembers.*

“You are writing about me,” Konrad said.

“I am recording your sins,” Anselm said. “As I record all sins. It is the only way I can keep them straight. The only way I can remember what cannot be forgiven.”

Konrad looked up. “You believe what I have done cannot be forgiven?”

“I believe you do not yet know what you have done.” The priest’s voice cracked. “I believe you have been given a weapon you do not understand, and a warning you have not heeded. The river remembers everything, Konrad. But it does not always forgive. I wrote that to you. I meant it.”

“Then tell me what it means.”

Anselm was silent for a long moment. The candle guttered. In the distance, Konrad heard the roar of the feast—laughter, a burst of song, a dog barking. The golden lion’s den was still awake, still hungry, still watching.

“There is a river in your blood,” Anselm said at last. “Not the Danube, not the Vltava. A river older than either. It rises in the hills of Swabia, where the Habsburg name was born. It flows through the lands your father claimed, and the lands your mother’s people ruled. It runs beneath the walls of the castle where you were born, and it empties into a sea you have never seen.”

Konrad said nothing. The priest’s words were poetry, and poetry could hide as much as it revealed.

“Hedwig told you the river remembers,” Anselm continued. “She meant that the dead do not stay buried. She meant that the river carries the truth downstream, to those who know how to read it. She meant that your father’s blood is still in the water, and that it will rise to meet you when you least expect it.”

“That is not an answer.”

“It is the only answer I have.” Anselm turned back to the ledger and dipped his pen. “Your father was murdered on Rudolf’s orders. You know this now. You carry the proof. But you do not know why, and you do not know who else was involved. You do not know the names of the men who held him down, or the woman who watched, or the child who was hidden in the reeds. You do not know what was taken from his body before it was thrown into the water.”

Konrad’s hand moved to the ring at his chest. “Hedwig gave me this.”

“She gave you a key. But you do not know what door it opens.”

“Then tell me what door.”

Anselm shook his head. “I cannot. I do not know. I only know that there is a door, and that the river will show it to you when you are ready to walk through it. But there is a price.”

“There is always a price.”

“This one is higher than you think.” The priest’s pen scratched across the page. “The river remembers everything, Konrad. It remembers the sins of the fathers and the sons. It remembers the oaths that were sworn and broken. It remembers the children who were never born, and the children who were never named. And when the river rises, it takes what it has been owed—in blood, in gold, in years. You cannot cheat it. You cannot bribe it. You can only choose which side of the flood you will stand on when it comes.”

Konrad stared at the priest’s back. The candle flickered. The feast roared. And somewhere in the dark, he heard a sound that made his blood run cold.

A child’s laugh.

Anselm froze. His pen stopped. His shoulders tightened.

“You heard that,” Konrad said.

“I heard nothing.”

“You heard it.” Konrad stepped toward the door, his hand on the latch. “There are children in this castle. Ottokar’s children. The nursery door.”

“Do not go there.” Anselm’s voice was sharp. “That is not a door you want to open.”

“Why?”

The priest turned. His face was pale, his eyes dark. “Because the river remembers everything,” he said. “And it remembers what Ottokar has hidden in that nursery. Not his children, Konrad. His hostages. The sons and daughters of the men he does not trust. And one of them carries a name you know.”

Konrad’s grip tightened on the latch. “Whose name?”

Anselm’s mouth opened, but no words came. And then, from beyond the door, the child laughed again—bright and careless and wrong, like a bell rung in a tomb.

“Ask the river,” the priest whispered. “It will tell you.”