Chapter 24: The Seal and the Storm (II)

The rain had not stopped for three days. It fell in sheets across Aachen, turning the cobbled streets to mud and the Palatine Chapel’s marble floors to mirrors that reflected the guttering candlelight like the eyes of drowned men. Drogo stood at the window of his chamber, watching the water streak down the glass, and felt the seal against his chest—a disc of wax and gold suspended on a leather cord, warm from his skin, heavy as a crown.

Bernard waited by the door, his bandaged arm resting on his sword hilt. The dungeon had left him thinner, harder, with a shadow in his eyes that had not been there before. He had not spoken of what Judith’s men had done to him, and Drogo had not asked. Some debts were too large for words.

“The messenger left at dawn,” Bernard said. “He will reach Pepin’s camp by tomorrow evening, if the rivers do not swallow him.”

“And Lothar?”

“His scouts have been seen on the eastern road. He moves faster than we hoped.”

Drogo turned from the window. The candlelight caught his face, and for a moment Bernard saw something beneath the languid mask—a sharpness, a hunger, the glint of a blade being drawn.

“Good,” Drogo said. “Let him come.”

He crossed to the table where his father’s documents lay spread—charters, letters, the machinery of empire reduced to ink and parchment. He had stolen the seal from Louis’s private cabinet an hour past midnight, while the emperor slept with his hand on a reliquary of Saint Peter and his breath slow as a child’s. It had been almost too easy. His father trusted him. That was the cruelty of it.

“You are going to forge the order,” Bernard said. It was not a question.

“I am going to write the truth.” Drogo picked up a quill, dipped it in ink, and held it over a blank sheet of vellum. “The truth that Lothar will believe because he wants to believe it. That our father has named him sole heir. That Pepin and Louis the German are to be stripped of their crowns and confined to monasteries for the rest of their lives.”

Bernard’s jaw tightened. “And if Pepin believes it?”

“Then he will march faster, and harder, and with less caution. He will strike at the eastern border, where Lothar’s forces are weakest. And when they meet—” Drogo’s hand moved, the quill scratching across the vellum in his father’s precise, sloping script. He had practiced the hand for years, in secret, copying charters by candlelight until his fingers cramped. “—when they meet, the war will be so bloody that neither brother will have the strength to claim the throne. And the empire will be left to those who can still stand.”

“You.”

Drogo paused, the quill hovering. “No. Not me. A peace that both of them will hate but neither can refuse. A division that will hold because it is written in blood and witnessed by God.”

He finished the letter, blew on the ink, and pressed the seal into the wax. The imprint of Louis’s signet—Christ enthroned, the cross held high—glowed red in the candlelight. Drogo stared at it for a long moment, then set the letter aside.

“There is one thing I did not tell you,” Bernard said.

Drogo looked up. Bernard’s face was unreadable, but his hand had moved to his sword hilt.

“Judith knows.”

The words hung in the air like smoke. Drogo felt the temperature of the room drop.

“She knows what?”

“That you took the seal. One of the palace priests saw you leave the emperor’s chamber. He went to her, not to Lothar. She has not acted yet—she is waiting, watching.” Bernard’s eyes met Drogo’s. “She wants to see which way you will jump before she decides whether to push you.”

Drogo laughed, a low, bitter sound. “She always did appreciate a good performance.”

“This is not a performance, Drogo. If she tells Lothar that you have the seal and are forging orders, he will not march on Pepin—he will march on you.”

“Then I will have to give her a reason to stay silent.” Drogo stood, tucking the forged letter into his sleeve. “The empress and I have an understanding. She wants her son Charles to inherit something. I can offer her more than Lothar ever will.”

“And if she does not believe you?”

Drogo walked to the door, pausing with his hand on the latch. He turned back to Bernard, and for the first time, the languid mask slipped entirely. His eyes were cold as winter iron.

“Then I will tell Lothar that she has been bedding Bernard of Septimania, and that her son is not the emperor’s but yours. It will be a lie, but it will be a useful one. And Lothar will believe it because he will want to believe it—because he has always feared that his stepmother’s ambition runs deeper than her loyalty.”

Bernard went very still. His face did not change, but his knuckles whitened on the sword hilt.

“You would destroy her to save yourself.”

“I would destroy anyone who endangers the plan,” Drogo said quietly. “That is what it means to carry a weight like this. You do not get to keep your hands clean, Bernard. You only get to choose whose blood you are willing to wash from them.”

He opened the door, and the sound of rain filled the corridor—a steady, drumming roar like the hooves of an approaching army.

“Come,” Drogo said, his voice soft again, the mask sliding back into place. “We have an empress to visit.”

Bernard followed him into the darkness, and behind them, the forged letter lay on the table, sealed with the emperor’s own signet, waiting for the storm to break.