Chapter 1: The Fool’s Masque

The October rain fell in grey sheets over Aachen, washing the filth from the cobbles and turning the palace forecourt into a mirror of slate and sky. Prince Drogo watched it from the deep embrasure of a window in the east gallery, his cheek propped on one fist, his eyes half-lidded as though the effort of standing upright had quite exhausted him. His tunic, of fine Lombard wool dyed the colour of a bruised plum, hung loose on his frame, and a silver cup of watered wine dangled from his other hand, mostly untasted.

“You will catch a chill, Highness,” said a voice behind him, dry as old parchment.

Drogo did not turn. “Then I shall have an excuse to miss the hunting party. A fever is a small price to pay for the pleasure of abed with a warm brick and a book of Ovid.”

Bernard of Septimania stepped into the embrasure, his warrior’s frame blocking the grey light. He was a man of hard angles and harder silences, his face scarred above the left brow from some skirmish in the Pyrenean marches, and his eyes, the colour of winter ice, moved over the prince with a mixture of contempt and calculation that had become habitual between them. “Your father asked for you at Matins. The chamberlain said you were unwell.”

“I was. I am. The ailment is called court.” Drogo smiled, a lazy, sunlit expression that did not reach his eyes. “It is quite contagious, Bernard. You should keep your distance.”

Bernard did not smile. He leaned closer, dropping his voice to a murmur that was barely audible over the drumming rain. “The empress has been closeted with Archbishop Ebbo for the better part of an hour. They speak of the * Ordinatio Imperii*.”

Drogo’s smile did not waver, but something behind it sharpened, a flicker of steel beneath silk. The Ordinatio. The great settlement of 817, in which his father, Louis, had carved the empire into shares for his three elder sons—Lothar as co-emperor, Pepin as king of Aquitaine, Louis the German as king of Bavaria—and had, by omission, rendered Drogo a ghost in his own family’s story. The document had been his father’s attempt to secure the succession, to bind the kingdom in the iron bonds of divine will. It had instead sown dragons’ teeth across the Frankish world.

“And what does our dear stepmother propose?” Drogo asked, finally turning. He let the cup dangle, careless. “Another adjustment? A codicil? A new map of the world, drawn in her own hand, with her little Charles placed at the centre like a jewel?”

Bernard’s jaw tightened. “She proposes a dowry for her daughter Gisela and a new abbacy for her brother Conrad. She proposes that the emperor’s youngest son should be granted the march of the Breton frontier, with all its attendant duties and its certain distance from court.”

Drogo laughed, a sound of genuine amusement that echoed off the wet stone. “The Breton frontier. God’s teeth, Bernard, she means to bury me alive in a bog and call it a promotion.” He stepped away from the window, and for a moment the languor dropped from him like a cloak. His stride was quick, his spine straight, his eyes bright and calculating. “And what does my father say to this charming proposal?”

“He has not yet said. He prays on it. He consults his confessor. He asks the advice of his courtiers, most of whom are in the empress’s pocket.” Bernard’s tone was flat, but there was a warning in it. “You are running out of time, Drogo. The emperor’s patience is not infinite, and Judith is patient enough for two.”

Drogo stopped before a tapestry depicting the deeds of Charlemagne—the old emperor on a white horse, spear in hand, trampling the pagan Saxons beneath his hooves. He touched the thread of the spear, tracing its golden line with a fingertip. “My father loves me, Bernard. That is the problem. He loves me, and he fears for me, and he does not know what to do with a son who does not want a crown. Every man in this palace wants something from him—a title, a fief, a promise of justice. I want nothing. And that, to a mind like Judith’s, is the most dangerous thing of all.”

“Then give her something to fear,” Bernard said. “Take the march. Raise your banner. Make yourself a power in the west, and let her see that you are not a threat to her son because you are too large to be pushed aside.”

Drogo turned, and the smile returned, softer now, edged with something like pity. “You think like a soldier, Bernard. You think a man’s worth is measured in the shadow he casts. But shadows are easily banished—a lamp, a fire, a single candle can drive them off. I have spent twenty years teaching this court that I am nothing but a pleasant fool who likes his wine and his games. If I suddenly became a warlord of the marches, Judith would see me for what I am, and she would destroy me before the snows melted.”

“And what are you, then?” Bernard asked, low. “A ghost? A spider? Or something worse?”

Drogo considered the question with genuine seriousness, his head tilted, as though he were weighing the merits of a vintage wine. “I am a mirror,” he said at last. “I show men what they wish to see. My father sees a son untainted by ambition. Lothar sees a harmless younger brother who will never challenge his crown. Judith sees a lazy fool who can be bought off with a march and a dowry. And you, Bernard—what do you see?”

Bernard held his gaze for a long moment. The rain drummed on, filling the silence. “I see a man who has read every chronicle in the palace library and remembered every name. I see a man who knows the disposition of every legion in the empire because he listens when others speak and speaks when others listen. I see a man who could have been emperor, if he had been born a decade earlier, and who has chosen to be nothing instead.” He paused. “I see a man who is afraid.”

The smile faded from Drogo’s face. It was the first time Bernard had ever seen him without it, and the change was like a mask slipping to reveal a skull. “You are not wrong,” Drogo said softly. “I am afraid. I am afraid of what my brothers will do to each other when my father dies. I am afraid of the war that is coming, the war that is already here, in the whispers and the oaths and the letters carried by night riders. And I am afraid that I will be forced to choose a side, and that whatever side I choose will be the wrong one.”

He turned back to the window. Beyond the glass, the rain had begun to slacken, and a pale sun was breaking through the clouds, touching the wet roofs with gold. “The Ordinatio was meant to bring peace. It has brought only a long, slow fever. Lothar will not be content with a title and a shadow of power. Pepin will not be content with Aquitaine. Louis the German will not be content with Bavaria. And Judith will not be content until her own blood sits upon the throne. You cannot avert a storm, Bernard. You can only choose where to stand when it breaks.”

“And where will you stand?”

Drogo did not answer at once. He lifted the cup of wine, looked at it, and set it down again, untasted. “I will stand where I am least expected,” he said. “In the heart of the storm, with a smile on my face and a knife hidden in my sleeve. And when the battle is done, and the kings are dead or crowned, I will walk out of the wreckage and find a quiet corner of the world where no one has heard of the Carolingians, and I will live there, and I will be happy.”

“And if you cannot walk out?”

Drogo turned, and for a moment his eyes were not those of a lazy prince but of a man who had seen the future and found it wanting. “Then I will make sure that someone remembers that I was there,” he said. “That I was not merely a fool. That I was the one who could have changed the course of everything, and chose not to.”

Outside, the bells of the Palatine Chapel began to toll for Vespers, their bronze voices rolling across the city like a summons to judgment. And in the shadows of the gallery, a boy who had never held a sword in battle smiled, and waited, and prepared to play his part.