Chapter 79: THE MONASTERY AT THE WATER'S EDGE

The Danube lay gray and sullen beneath the January sky, its waters carrying chunks of ice that knocked against the pilings of the monastery's landing like the fists of drowned men. Konrad had ridden three days from Vienna, changing horses twice, sleeping in barns where the straw smelled of mice and old prayers. The river had guided him east, always east, past Melk's great abbey perched on its cliff like a stone eagle, past villages where smoke rose thin and straight from chimneys, past fields where the snow lay unbroken save for the tracks of foxes and the occasional wolf.

Now he stood at the gate of the monastery of Sankt Pölten, watching the brown-robed brother who studied him through a grille no wider than a man's hand.

"Brother Anselm," Konrad said. His voice was hoarse from the cold. "I have come to see Brother Anselm."

The monk's eyes, pale as winter sky, did not blink. "Brother Anselm receives no visitors."

"He will receive me."

"He is ill."

"I have come a long way." Konrad reached into his tunic and drew out the ring Hedwig had given him—the wolf's head seal, its eye a garnet that caught the weak light. He held it up to the grille. "Show him this."

The monk's face changed. Not fear, exactly, but something close—a recognition that came with the weight of old secrets. He crossed himself, muttered something Konrad could not hear, and disappeared into the shadow of the cloister.

Konrad waited. The wind came off the river, sharp with the smell of ice and rotting reeds. Somewhere beyond the walls, a bell began to toll the hour of Sext, its voice flat and mournful. He thought of the boy in Vienna—his brother, or not his brother; the words of the grey-cloaked woman still burned in his chest like a coal he could not swallow. He thought of Margarethe, who had given him a parchment and a kiss that tasted of secrets. He thought of Ottokar's knife at his throat, and the ledger of bones, and the child in the nursery who was not the only child.

He thought of his father, whose eyes he had never seen, whose sword now hung at his side.

The grille opened. The pale-eyed monk gestured him inside.

---

The cell was small and cold, its single window looking out onto the river. Brother Anselm lay on a pallet of straw, his face gray with illness, his hands folded on his chest like a corpse already laid out for burial. But his eyes—those eyes Konrad remembered from the confessional in Nuremberg—were still sharp, still watchful, still full of the sins he had recorded and could not absolve.

"You came," Anselm said. His voice was a whisper, thin as thread.

"You knew I would."

"I hoped." The old monk tried to smile; it became a grimace. "I have been waiting six years, Sir Konrad. Six years for someone to come and ask the right questions."

Konrad knelt beside the pallet. The stone floor bit into his knees. "You wrote about me. About my father. About what happened in 1268."

"I wrote everything." Anselm's eyes drifted to a wooden chest in the corner of the cell. "The ledger. The confessions. The names of the men who died so that Rudolf could wear a crown."

"Ottokar has copies."

"I know." Anselm closed his eyes. "I gave them to him. I thought—I thought if the Bohemian king knew the truth, he might use it to destroy the Habsburgs. I thought it was justice." He opened his eyes again, and there were tears in them. "But justice is a blade that cuts both ways. Ottokar did not use the truth to free anyone. He used it to bind you tighter."

Konrad's hand moved to the hilt of his father's sword. "Why did you confess to me? In Nuremberg. Why did you tell me to seek the truth?"

"Because I was afraid." The old monk's voice cracked. "I have spent my life recording the sins of kings, and I have learned that the only thing more dangerous than a king's sin is a king's fear. Rudolf fears you, Konrad. He has always feared you. Your father was the better man—braver, kinder, more beloved. And you carry his blood. You carry his claim."

"The claim to what?"

"To everything." Anselm reached out and grasped Konrad's wrist with a grip that was surprisingly strong. "The letter exists. The one Hedwig told you about. It names you as your father's heir—not Rudolf, not Albrecht, not any of the king's sons. You. And it is hidden in a place Rudolf cannot reach, in a place that remembers what the river has carried away."

"Where?"

Anselm's eyes flicked to the window, to the gray water beyond. "The monastery at Tulln. The nuns keep it. They have kept it since your father's death. They are the daughters of the river, and the river remembers."

Konrad's heart was beating fast now. Tulln. The name Hedwig had spoken in the winter garden. The name that had been following him like a shadow. "Why would nuns keep such a thing?"

"Because your mother asked them to." Anselm's voice was fading, the light in his eyes dimming. "She was a Přemyslid, your mother. She knew what Rudolf would do if he found the letter. She knew he would kill for it. She gave it to the sisters and made them swear an oath on the bones of their founder. And they have kept it, all these years, waiting for the one who would come to claim it."

"The one with my father's eyes."

"The one with the wolf's blood." Anselm's grip loosened. "But be careful, Konrad. The letter is not just a claim. It is a curse. Whoever holds it will be hunted by every crown in Christendom. Rudolf will never stop. Ottokar will never stop. And there is another—"

He stopped. His eyes went wide, staring at something over Konrad's shoulder.

Konrad turned.

In the doorway stood a figure in a grey cloak, the hood pulled low. The same figure from the corridor in Vienna. The same grey cloak that had haunted his steps since the Christmas feast. But now, in the dim light of the cell, Konrad could see what he had not seen before: the shape of the body beneath the cloak, the way the hands hung at the sides, the slight tilt of the head.

"Hello, brother," said a voice he knew.

The figure reached up and pulled back the hood.

Konrad stared.

It was his own face that looked back at him—older, scarred, weathered by years he had not lived—but unmistakably his own. His father's eyes, his father's jaw, his father's stubborn set to the mouth.

"I have been waiting for you," said the man who wore Konrad's face. "We have much to discuss."

Outside, the river knocked its ice against the pilings, and the bell of Sankt Pölten tolled on, indifferent to the dead and the living alike.