Chapter 42: The Bishop’s Silence

The rain had not ceased for three days. It fell upon Aachen in sheets of grey, washing the filth from the streets and the blood from the stones, though no blood had yet been spilled within the palace walls. That would come soon enough, Drogo knew, and he had begun to feel the shape of it in his bones like a sickness.

He stood at the window of his chamber, watching the water stream down the glass, and thought of his father kneeling in the candlelight, weeping over a seal that had been stolen and returned, stolen and returned again. The old emperor had given it back to him with trembling hands, believing his youngest son had come to confess his sins. Drogo had let him believe it. There was kindness in that lie, he told himself. His father had so little kindness left.

A knock came at the door, soft and insistent.

Bernard entered before Drogo could speak, his face pale beneath the bruise that still marked his jaw from the dungeons. He closed the door behind him and stood with his back to it, as if he expected someone to follow.

“The Empress has summoned the bishops,” Bernard said. “All of them. Ebbo of Reims, Agobard of Lyon, even Hildwin—she has called them to the chapel for a council at noon.”

Drogo turned from the window. “On whose authority?”

“Her own. She claims she has received a revelation from God concerning the succession.”

“A revelation.” Drogo’s smile was thin. “How convenient that Our Lord chooses to speak only to empresses and never to chaplains.”

Bernard stepped closer, lowering his voice. “She means to have your father declared unfit. To have Lothar crowned emperor in his place while Louis still lives. The bishops will do it, Drogo. They have been bought or frightened into compliance, every one of them.”

“Not every one.”

“Ebbo owes his see to your father. But he owes his safety to Judith now. She has something on him—something that would see him burned.”

Drogo considered this. Ebbo of Reims was a man of ambition disguised as piety, a scholar who had risen from the imperial chapel to the highest see in Francia. He had crowned Louis the Pious in 816, had anointed him with holy oil and called him the Lord’s anointed. If Ebbo could be turned, he could also be turned back.

“Send word to Ebbo,” Drogo said. “Tell him I wish to speak with him in the crypt beneath the chapel, one hour before the council.”

“He will not come.”

“He will. Tell him I have something of his. Something he lost many years ago, in a monastery in Aquitaine, when he was young and foolish and thought no one was watching.”

Bernard’s eyes narrowed. “What do you have on him?”

“Nothing. But he does not know that. And a man who has spent his life hiding secrets will always believe that someone has found them.”

Bernard nodded slowly, then turned to leave. At the door, he paused. “And what of Lothar? He is two days’ march from Aachen. If the bishops crown him, he will be emperor before the week is out.”

“He will not be crowned,” Drogo said. “Because he will not be here.”

“What do you mean?”

Drogo moved to the table where the seal lay wrapped in cloth, its weight a temptation he had resisted twice. “I mean to give Lothar a reason to delay. A message will reach him tonight—from Pepin, or so he will believe—claiming that Louis the German has crossed the Rhine with an army and is marching on his territories. Lothar will have to choose between claiming a crown and protecting his lands. He will choose his lands. He always does.”

“And when he discovers the message was a lie?”

“By then, the bishops will have been dispersed, my father will have made a show of piety that shames their council, and Judith will be left with nothing but her ambitions and her fears.” Drogo’s voice was quiet, almost gentle. “She will have to come to me then. She will have no other choice.”

Bernard studied him for a long moment. “You speak as if you have already won.”

“I speak as if I have already lost everything that matters,” Drogo said. “And in losing it, I have learned that victory is only a matter of who is left standing when the blood dries.”

He did not wait for Bernard to respond. He crossed the room and opened the door, stepping into the corridor where the torches guttered in the draught. The rain beat against the windows like a thousand small fists, and somewhere in the palace a bell began to toll.

The council would begin at noon. He had two hours to make a bishop believe in his own sins.

He walked through the corridors of Aachen, past the guards who nodded and looked away, past the servants who lowered their eyes as he passed. They saw the lazy son, the pleasure-seeker, the prince who spent his days in wine and idle talk. They did not see the man who had stolen his father’s seal and returned it, who had opened gates that had never been opened and closed doors that had never been shut.

He reached the chapel and descended the narrow stairs to the crypt, where the bones of saints lay in silver reliquaries and the air was cold and still. He waited in the shadows, listening to the drip of water and the distant murmur of prayers.

Ebbo came alone, as Drogo had known he would. The bishop was a tall man, gaunt and hungry-looking, with eyes that had spent a lifetime searching for threats. He stopped at the foot of the stairs and looked into the darkness.

“You have something of mine,” Ebbo said. His voice was steady, but Drogo could hear the tremor beneath it.

“I have many things,” Drogo said, stepping forward into the faint light of a candle. “I have your fear. I have your ambition. I have the knowledge that you will do whatever is necessary to survive.”

Ebbo’s jaw tightened. “You have nothing on me.”

“I have your silence,” Drogo said. “And I have the certainty that when the council meets today, you will speak against the Empress’s revelation. You will remind the bishops that your father—our father—was crowned by the Pope himself, and that no council of bishops can unmake what Rome has made.”

“You ask me to defy the Empress.”

“I ask you to serve God.”

Ebbo was silent for a long moment. The candle flickered between them, casting shadows that danced like living things.

“And if I refuse?” the bishop asked.

Drogo smiled, and in the dim light of the crypt, the smile did not reach his eyes. “Then I will tell her everything you have hidden for thirty years. I will tell her about the boy in Aquitaine, about the letters you burned, about the oath you broke to gain your see. And when she is done with you, you will wish you had never been born.”

Ebbo’s face went pale. He opened his mouth to speak, but no words came.

Drogo stepped closer, his voice dropping to a whisper. “You will speak against her today. You will call her revelation a lie. And when the council is over, you will come to me, and you will kneel, and you will thank me for saving your soul.”

He turned and walked back toward the stairs, leaving Ebbo alone in the darkness with his sins.

The bell tolled again, closer now. Noon was approaching.

And in the palace above, Judith of Bavaria was preparing to crown her son emperor of a fractured dream.