Chapter 28: The Price of Paderborn
The rain had stopped by the time they reached the Weser, but the mud clung to their boots like a penitent’s guilt. Aldric had not slept. The wolf’s howl had followed him through the dark hours, a thread of sound weaving through his dreams until he woke with Hildegard’s face before him, her eyes sharp with knowing.
“You look like a man who has been arguing with himself,” Gerold observed, handing him a strip of dried venison.
“I have been negotiating with the only opponent who never tires,” Aldric said, chewing without tasting. “Myself.”
The army’s column stretched for miles behind them, a serpent of steel and flesh crawling toward Paderborn. Charlemagne rode at its head, his great frame swaying with a horseman’s ease, his crown of grey hair catching the pale autumn sun. Aldric watched him from a distance, trying to see the fear beneath the majesty. The Emperor had summoned him three times since Regensburg, each summons shorter, sharper, more insistent. The last had been a single word: *Come*.
“He grows impatient,” Rotrude said, appearing at Aldric’s stirrup as if conjured from the mud. She rode a small grey mare, her hood pushed back to reveal a face flushed with exertion. “Father does not like waiting. He says it gives his enemies time to think.”
“And what do his friends do with the time?”
“They think too.” She smiled. “Which is why he keeps so few of them.”
Aldric said nothing. He had learned that Rotrude’s observations were rarely idle. She was a blade wrapped in silk, and her father had taught her well.
“You have been quiet since the storm,” she pressed. “Gerold says you spoke of fears. Whose?”
“Everyone’s,” Aldric admitted. “Including my own.”
“And what does Lord Aldric of the Vosges fear?”
He turned to look at her fully. Her eyes were bright, curious, and for a moment he saw Hildegard in her—a woman who measured men by the weight of their silences. “I fear becoming necessary,” he said. “There is no cage so strong as the one built from other people’s need.”
Rotrude considered this. “Then you are already lost. My father has needed you since the drainage ditch.”
“The drainage ditch was a mistake.”
“It saved the palace.”
“It was still a mistake.” Aldric urged his horse forward, but Rotrude kept pace, her mare’s hooves sucking at the wet ground.
“Hildegard wrote to me,” she said, her voice dropping. “She says your plan is to make the crown too heavy for my father to bear. She says you intend to give him exactly what he wants, and in doing so, take it all away.”
Aldric’s jaw tightened. “The abbess talks too much.”
“The abbess talks precisely enough. She also says you will fail unless you understand what my father truly fears.” Rotrude pulled her hood forward, shadowing her face. “He does not fear the crown. He fears what the crown will cost him. The Saxons, the Avars, the Lombards—he has conquered them all with the sword. But Rome is a different beast. The Pope will place the crown upon his head, and in that moment, my father will owe his throne to a priest. That is a debt he cannot repay with steel.”
Aldric rode in silence. The logic was sound, as sound as Hildegard’s arithmetic, but it opened a door he had not considered. Charlemagne feared obligation. The Emperor, who had spent his life making others owe him, could not bear the weight of a debt himself.
“And you?” Aldric asked finally. “What do you fear, Princess?”
Rotrude’s smile was thin. “Being forgotten. A daughter of the Emperor is a piece on the board, moved and traded at her father’s pleasure. I have seen my sisters married to kings they never met, sent to courts that devoured them slowly. I do not intend to be a piece. I intend to be a player.”
“Then we are allies after all.”
“We are,” she said. “For now. But remember, Lord Aldric: I learned my craft from the finest player in Christendom. And he is riding just ahead of us.”
She spurred her mare forward, leaving Aldric alone with Gerold, who had heard everything and said nothing. The Saxon’s face was a mask of stone, but his eyes were troubled.
“She plays her own game,” Gerold said at last.
“Everyone plays their own game,” Aldric replied. “The trick is to make sure they play yours without knowing it.”
Paderborn rose from the flatlands like a scar upon the earth. The fortress was new, built from timber and stone quarried from the Saxon hills, and it stank of fresh-cut wood and older blood. Charlemagne had chosen it deliberately, a fist driven into the heart of the conquered land, a statement that the Saxons would never rise again. The army poured through the gates, banners snapping in the wind, and Aldric found himself guided—not by his own will, but by the press of men and horses—toward the great hall at the center.
The Emperor was already there, seated on a campaign chair, his sword across his knees. He looked older than he had in Regensburg, the lines around his eyes deeper, the grey in his hair more pronounced. But his gaze was still sharp, and it found Aldric the moment he crossed the threshold.
“My lazy lord,” Charlemagne said, his voice carrying through the hall. “You have been avoiding me.”
“I have been riding, Majesty. The avoidance was incidental.”
Charlemagne laughed, a bark of genuine amusement. “Incidental. You have a gift for making cowardice sound like a virtue.” He gestured to a stool beside him, and Aldric sat, feeling the eyes of the court upon him. “Rotrude tells me you have been thinking.”
“I have been thinking that the coronation is a trap, Majesty.”
The laughter died. Charlemagne’s hand tightened on his sword. “Explain.”
“Rome is a city of ghosts. The Pope is a king without an army, but he holds a key that no sword can turn. The moment he crowns you Emperor, he makes you his creation. Every enemy you have ever made—every Saxon, every Avar, every Lombard—will see you not as a conqueror, but as a priest’s puppet. And the Romans themselves will never accept a Frankish Emperor. They will plot, and scheme, and wait for the moment your back is turned.”
Charlemagne was silent for a long moment. Then he said, “You speak as if you have already decided I should not take the crown.”
“I speak as if I have decided you should take it on your own terms,” Aldric said. “Or not at all.”
The Emperor leaned forward, his eyes burning. “And what are my terms, Lord Aldric?”
Aldric met his gaze. He thought of Hildegard, of Rotrude, of the vine-clad hills he had not seen in a year. He thought of the wolf howling in the rain, and the freedom it represented. And he spoke.
“You must make the Pope come to you. Not to Aachen—that is too close, too Frankish. But somewhere that is neither Frankish nor Roman. Somewhere that belongs to you alone.”
Charlemagne’s brow furrowed. “Where?”
“Rome is the only place that matters, Majesty. But it need not be the Pope’s Rome. It can be yours. You do not take the crown from his hands. You take it from his altar, and in doing so, you make him your servant rather than your master.”
The hall was silent. Somewhere beyond the walls, a Saxon prisoner was being questioned, his cries muffled by timber and distance. Charlemagne stared at Aldric, and for a moment, the Emperor’s face was unreadable.
Then he smiled. It was not a kind smile.
“You have been thinking indeed,” he said. “And you have given me a gift I did not expect. The crown is a burden. But you have shown me how to carry it without bending.” He rose, his shadow falling over Aldric. “I will remember this, Lord of the Vosges. And I will reward you.”
Aldric felt the trap close around him. He had come to Paderborn seeking a path to freedom, and he had instead built a bridge to something far more binding. The Emperor’s reward would not be a writ of immunity. It would be a chain, gilded and unbreakable.
“Majesty,” Aldric began, but Charlemagne was already walking away, his guards falling into step behind him.
Rotrude was waiting outside, her face unreadable. “You gave him the answer,” she said. “Now he will never let you go.”
Aldric looked past her, toward the grey horizon where Rome lay waiting. “I know,” he said. “But I have one more scheme left. And this one will cost him everything.”