Chapter 62: The Debt of the Wax Impression

The ride to Compiègne took four days, and each one felt like a year pressed into the space of a single breath. The rain followed them, a sullen companion that turned the roads to mud and soaked through their cloaks until Bernard began to curse the very sky. Drogo said nothing. He rode with the seal pressed against his chest, wrapped in oilcloth and bound with twine, and he felt its weight with every heartbeat.

They reached the monastery at dusk, when the bells were calling the brothers to Vespers and the light had turned the color of old bronze. Brother Anselm met them at the gate, his face a mask of careful neutrality that cracked the moment Drogo threw back his hood.

“Your Grace,” Anselm said, and his voice was thin as parchment. “I had hoped you would not come.”

“And yet here I am.” Drogo swung down from his horse, his boots sinking into the mud. “You received my message.”

“I received it. I did not believe it.”

“Belief is a luxury, Brother. I have come for the ledger.”

Anselm glanced at Bernard, then back at Drogo, and something flickered behind his eyes—fear, perhaps, or the memory of sins whispered in the dark. “The scriptorium is cold this time of year. The ink is thick. Perhaps we could speak first, over bread and wine, in the warmth of the—”

“The ledger,” Drogo repeated. His voice was soft, but it carried the weight of a command.

Anselm’s shoulders sagged. He led them through the cloisters, past the chapel where the monks were chanting, their voices rising and falling like the tide. The scriptorium was small and cramped, lit by a single tallow candle that guttered in the draft. Shelves lined the walls, stacked with scrolls and codices, and in the corner sat a heavy oak desk with a iron lock.

Anselm produced a key from his sleeve and unlocked the desk. Inside lay a leather-bound book, its pages yellowed with age and use. He placed it on the desk with the reverence of a man handling a relic.

“Three years of correspondence,” Anselm said. “Every letter that has passed through the imperial chancery, recorded by the hands of the scribes who copied them. Names, dates, seals, and the substance of each message, where it could be discerned.”

Drogo opened the ledger and began to read. His eyes moved quickly, scanning the entries, searching for the patterns that Judith had so carefully woven. He saw her name appear again and again, connected to bishops and counts, to abbots and merchants. But it was the letters to Lothar that drew his attention—letters that spoke of loyalty and reward, of lands promised and titles granted in exchange for service rendered.

“She has been busy,” Drogo murmured.

“The Empress writes to everyone,” Anselm said. “She is a woman of many correspondences.”

“She is a woman of many ambitions.” Drogo turned a page and stopped. His finger traced a line of text, and his eyes narrowed. “This one. To Bishop Ebbo of Reims. What does she promise him?”

Anselm leaned over, squinting at the entry. “I cannot say, Your Grace. The scribe who recorded it noted only that the letter concerned ‘the matter of the young prince.’ I assumed it referred to Charles.”

“So did I.” Drogo smiled, thin and cold. “But Ebbo is not a man who cares for infants. He cares for crowns. And he has long believed that the archbishopric of Mainz should be his.”

Bernard stepped closer. “What are you saying?”

“I am saying that Judith is not merely securing her son’s future. She is building a network of debts and obligations that will outlive Louis himself. And she is using the bishops to do it—men who can crown a king or unmake one with a single prayer.”

He closed the ledger and looked at Anselm. “I need you to write a letter. To Bishop Ebbo. In Judith’s hand.”

Anselm’s face went pale. “Your Grace, I cannot forge the Empress’s seal. I do not have it.”

“You do not need it.” Drogo reached into his sleeve and produced the stolen seal of Louis the Pious, wrapped in oilcloth. “I have my father’s.”

The silence that followed was absolute. Even the chanting from the chapel seemed to fade, swallowed by the weight of what Drogo had just revealed. Anselm stared at the seal, his mouth working soundlessly, and Bernard took a step back as if the thing might burn him.

“You mean to make the bishops believe the Emperor is writing to them,” Bernard said slowly. “To promise them what Judith cannot.”

“I mean to make them believe the Emperor is writing to them.” Drogo placed the seal on the desk. “The promises will be mine. The rewards will be real. And when the time comes, they will owe their loyalty to the man who holds their futures in his hand.”

Anselm shook his head. “This is treason, Your Grace. Against your father, against the Empress, against God Himself.”

“Against God?” Drogo laughed, and there was no mirth in it. “God has watched His anointed emperor tear his own kingdom apart for the sake of his sons. God has watched brothers sharpen their swords against each other’s throats. If I must stain my hands to stop the bleeding, I will answer for it at the Final Judgment. But I will not stand idle while they destroy everything our grandfather built.”

He leaned forward, his voice dropping to a whisper. “You owe me, Brother. You owe me for the sins I have kept buried these three years. The sins you confessed to me in the dark, when you thought no one would ever know. Now I am calling in that debt.”

Anselm’s face crumpled. For a moment, Drogo thought he might refuse, might call for the guards and have them thrown into the monastery’s cells. But then the old monk’s shoulders bowed, and he nodded slowly.

“What would you have me write?”

Drogo’s smile returned, softer this time, almost gentle. “Write to Ebbo. Tell him the Emperor is concerned about the loyalty of certain bishops. Tell him that the Emperor has heard whispers of disloyalty in the see of Mainz, and that he seeks a man of proven devotion to replace the current archbishop. Tell him that the Emperor has chosen him.”

“And when Ebbo discovers the truth?”

“By then, the truth will no longer matter. Ebbo will have committed himself to our cause. He will have written back, pledged his support, offered his prayers. And I will have his letter, in his own hand, to show him when he wavers.”

Bernard shook his head. “You are playing a dangerous game, Drogo. You are stacking lies upon lies and hoping the tower does not fall.”

“The tower will fall,” Drogo said. “Everything falls. The only question is what we build from the ruins.”

He handed the seal to Anselm. The monk took it with trembling fingers, and Drogo watched as he pressed it into the wax of a fresh letter, leaving the mark of the Emperor upon a lie that would echo through the halls of power.

When the letter was finished, Drogo took it and held it up to the candlelight. The seal gleamed, red and perfect, and for a moment he saw his father’s face in the wax—the sorrow, the doubt, the desperate hope that his children would not tear each other apart.

“Send it,” Drogo said. “And pray that I know what I am doing.”

He turned and walked out into the rain, Bernard at his side, and the storm swallowed them both. But in his chest, the stolen seal burned like a brand, and Drogo knew that he had crossed a line from which there was no return.

The blood was coming. And he was no longer trying to stay clean.