Chapter 84: The Third Day of Thunder

The boy was still pressed against the chapel wall when Drogo reached the door, his knuckles white around the hem of his tunic. Brother Aldric. He had the look of a hare who had heard the hounds but could not yet see them.

"Stay here," Drogo said. "Keep the seal. If anyone but me comes through that door, you are a scribe copying psalms. You know nothing. You have seen nothing."

"And if they ask why I am here?"

"Then you are a poor scribe who fell asleep over his work, and God forgive you for your laziness." Drogo's smile was thin and quick, a blade drawn and sheathed. "It has served me well enough."

He stepped into the corridor and the cold air struck him like a hand. The bells had woken the palace. Servants were stumbling from their quarters, half-dressed, their faces slack with the particular terror of people who wake to alarms they do not understand. A cook clutched a ladle as though it were a sword. A groom stood barefoot in the mud of the stable yard, staring at the sky as if the bells had fallen from it.

Drogo moved through them like a fish through reeds, unhurried, nodding, his face arranged in the mild bewilderment of a man who has been roused too early and intends to complain about it later. The fool's masque. He had worn it so long it fit like a second skin.

At the junction of the north gallery he met Bernard of Septimania.

Bernard looked worse than the night before. The dungeon had left its mark—a grey pallor beneath the beard, a stiffness in his left shoulder where the chain had bitten. But his eyes were clear, and they fixed on Drogo with the wary attention of a man who has decided to follow a path he does not trust.

"Lothar's scouts have been seen at the ford," Bernard said quietly. "Three riders. They did not cross. They looked, and they went back."

"He is cautious," Drogo said. "Good. Cautious men are slower."

"Cautious men are also harder to surprise."

"He is not marching to a battle. He is marching to a coronation." Drogo resumed walking, and Bernard fell in beside him. "He believes the gates will open. He believes the council has turned. He believes our father is a dying old man who has finally seen sense and will name him heir before God and the nobles of the realm. Every step he takes, he takes in the certainty of victory. That is not caution. That is hunger dressed as caution."

"And when he finds no open gates?"

"Then he will find something else."

They passed through the great hall, where the long tables still bore the remnants of last night's supper—candle stubs, crusts of bread, a cup overturned in someone's haste. The fire had burned low, and the shadows pooled thick in the corners. Drogo paused at the head of the hall, where his father's throne stood empty beneath its canopy of faded purple.

"Where is the emperor?" Bernard asked.

"With the bishops. He wished to pray."

"At this hour?"

"He wishes to pray at every hour now." Drogo's voice was steady, but something moved behind it, some current he did not let surface. "He knows what I have done. He knows what I am about to do. And he has chosen to trust me, which is a harder thing than any of it."

Bernard was silent a moment. Then: "You told him?"

"I told him enough. That I have used his seal. That I have written letters in his name. That I have promised Lothar the throne and Pepin the gates and the council a reckoning, and that all of it was a lie built on a truth I have not yet spoken aloud." Drogo turned from the throne. "He wept. Then he asked me which of my brothers I loved most, and I could not answer, because I love them all and I have betrayed them all, and love is no excuse for what I have done."

"Then why do it?"

They walked on, out through the western door, into the courtyard where the rain had stopped at last and the sky was the colour of a bruise. The flagstones gleamed. Somewhere beyond the walls, a horn sounded—a single note, thin and far, the kind that carries on damp air.

"Because if I do not," Drogo said, "they will tear the empire apart between them, and our father will die with his hands full of broken oaths, and the Saxons will rise and the Bretons will rise and the Saracens will take the south, and the name of Charlemagne will be a joke told by old men in taverns. I cannot stop the war. It is already here. But I can choose where the first blow falls. I can choose which brother wins."

"And you have chosen Lothar?"

"No." Drogo stopped in the middle of the courtyard, and Bernard nearly collided with him. "I have chosen none of them. I have chosen to make them all believe they have won, so that when they meet—and they will meet, whatever I do—they will meet as equals who have each been promised everything, and they will have to negotiate, because none of them will have the strength to destroy the others. That is the only peace available to us. A peace built on mutual disappointment."

Bernard stared at him. "You are mad."

"Probably." Drogo's smile returned, faint but real. "But it is the only plan I have left."

The horn sounded again, closer now. And then another sound, deeper, beneath it—a rumble that was not thunder, though the clouds hung low and black. Drogo felt it through the soles of his boots. Hooves. Many hooves.

He turned toward the gate.

"Lothar is ahead of schedule," he said.

"He cannot be. He was three days out."

"He pushed his men through the night." Drogo's mind was already racing, sorting, discarding, rebuilding. "He suspects something. Not the whole of it—he could not—but enough. Judith's letter. She told him I was ready to surrender, and he has decided to take no chances."

"Then we are undone."

"No." Drogo caught Bernard's arm. "We are early. Fetch the council. Every man I summoned—the counts, the bishops, the abbots. Bring them to the chapel. Tell them the emperor has called them to witness a great matter. And Bernard—" He tightened his grip. "If any of them asks why Lothar's banners are on the horizon, you tell them the emperor has summoned his son to a reconciliation. You tell them it is a day of peace."

"And if Lothar comes through those gates with his sword drawn?"

"Then we will see whether he has come to be crowned or to be forgiven." Drogo released him and turned back toward the chapel. The bells had stopped. The silence was worse. "Either way, he will find the throne occupied."

He walked quickly, and the third dawn broke behind him, red as a wound, and the hooves came on like a river rising.