Chapter 81: The Stones in the River

The question hung between them like breath in cold air, and for a long moment Drogo did not answer. Rain ticked against the shutters. Somewhere beyond the corridor, a candle guttered and died, and no one moved to relight it.

Bernard stepped back, the burned charter still smoking faintly in his fist, his eyes moving from emperor to prince and back again. He had the look of a man who had walked into a chapel and found it full of wolves.

Drogo looked at his father. The old man's hands trembled at his sides. The seal on Drogo's wrist caught the last of the lamplight, and he made no move to hide it.

"You ask which stone I am," Drogo said quietly. "I am the one that never touched the water. I am the hand that threw the others in."

Louis closed his eyes. His lips moved, but no sound came.

"Father." Drogo crossed the room and took the emperor's hands in his own. They were cold, the fingers knotted with age and weeping. "You dreamed of stones because you know the truth you will not speak. Your sons are already in the river. Lothar has crossed the Rhine. Pepin is at Orléans with his host. Louis the German sits in Bavaria, waiting to see which way the water runs. The empire you inherited from Charlemagne is drowning, and you cannot save it by standing on the bank and praying."

"I can still save their souls," Louis whispered.

"You can try." Drogo's voice was gentle, which made it worse. "But first you must live long enough to do it. And you are dying, Father. You know this."

Louis pulled his hands free. For an instant something of the old emperor flickered in his face—the man who had made bishops kneel and counts beg. Then it was gone, and he was only an old man in a wet robe, staring at the son he had never understood.

"The seal," he said. "You took it."

"I borrowed it."

"You forged my name."

"I wrote in your name. There is a difference, though I grant you it is a subtle one."

Bernard made a sound low in his throat, half laugh, half groan. Louis turned on him.

"And you. You let him."

"My lord," Bernard said, "I have spent the last two weeks in your dungeons for a lie I had not yet told. I am not certain I am in a position to refuse your son anything."

Louis stared at him, then back at Drogo. "What have you done?"

"Everything," Drogo said simply. "And nothing that cannot be undone, if you will sit down and listen."

He guided his father to a stool by the wall—the same stool where Bernard had sat while the seals were pressed, where Judith had stood and demanded her son's future, where Brother Aldric had written letters that would decide the fate of three kingdoms. Louis sat. He looked very small.

"Lothar believes I have sold you to him," Drogo said. "He believes I will open the gates of Aachen when he arrives. He believes the regency council will hand him the crown within the week. He believes this because I told him so, in letters sealed with your seal, in a hand that is not quite yours but close enough that no one will question it until it is too late."

"You mean to trap him."

"I mean to stop him. There is a difference, though it is also subtle." Drogo crouched before his father, so their eyes were level. "Pepin marches north believing Lothar has already claimed the throne. He will come to Aachen not to support his brother but to contest him. Louis the German will hear of it and march west, because he will not let either of them take what he believes is his. And when the three of them meet—not on a battlefield, Father, but in a room, with the seal in my hand and the council at my back—they will have to talk. They will have to compromise. Because the alternative is a war that none of them can win."

Louis stared at him. "You would bring them here. Under my roof. My sons who have betrayed me, who have raised armies against me, who have—"

"Who are your sons," Drogo said. "And who will tear this empire apart if you do not find a way to bind them to something larger than their own ambition. You have crowned and uncrowned Lothar twice. You have given Pepin Aquitaine and taken it back. You have made war on your own blood, and you have wept over it, and you have done penance for it, and none of it has worked. Do you know why?"

"Tell me, since you seem to know everything."

"Because you keep trying to choose," Drogo said. "You keep trying to decide which son is worthy, which one is faithful, which one deserves the crown. And they keep proving you wrong, because no man can bear that weight. Not Lothar. Not Pepin. Not Louis. Not you." He paused. "Not me."

Louis's eyes sharpened. "You?"

"I have no crown to claim," Drogo said. "I am the youngest. I am the fool. I am the one who laughs at the wrong moment and drinks too much and sleeps through councils. That is what they believe, and that is what keeps me alive. But I am also the only one of your sons who does not want your throne. I want something else."

"What?"

"Peace," Drogo said. "A quiet corner. A place where a clever man can rest and not spend every waking hour wondering which brother will kill him first. I want to save your soul, Father, because you are the only one of us who ever tried to be good. I want to spare my brothers' blood, because they are my blood, even if they are fools. And I want to keep the empire from burning to the ground, because Charlemagne built something here that was more than a crown, and I will not watch it turn to ash."

Louis was silent for a long time. The rain had softened to a drizzle, and through the shutters came the first gray light of dawn. The candle that had died was not relit.

"And if you fail?" the emperor asked at last.

"Then I will have failed," Drogo said. "But I will have failed trying to hold it together, rather than trying to tear it apart. That is more than most men can say."

Louis looked at the seal on Drogo's wrist. Then he looked at Bernard, who stood in the corner like a man who had seen too much and understood too little. Then he looked at his son, and something in his face shifted—a crack in the old certainties, a door opening where no door had been.

"You have one night," he said. "You said so yourself. One night to save us all or destroy everything you love."

"I did."

"Then use it." Louis rose, slow and unsteady, and put his hand on Drogo's shoulder. The weight of it was heavier than any crown. "I trusted God all my life. Now I will trust you. Do not make me regret it."

Drogo bowed his head. "I will not, Father."

But as the emperor left the room, and Bernard moved to follow, Drogo remained where he was, staring at the seal on his wrist. The wax was warm from his skin, the impression of his father's face pressed into it like a promise.

He had lied. He would make his father regret it. He would make them all regret it, before the end.

But that was the price of peace. And he had already paid so much more.

Bernard paused at the door. "What now?"

Drogo looked up. The first light of dawn was seeping through the shutters, and somewhere in the palace, a bell began to toll.

"Now," he said, "we send for my brothers. All of them. And we pray that they come."

He stood, and the seal caught the light like a small, cold sun.

"And if they do not," he added softly, "we will have to go and get them."