Chapter 29: THE PRICE OF ASHES
The road to Paderborn was a river of mud and iron. Aldric rode at the heart of the column, hemmed in by standards and hammering hooves, and he felt the weight of the realm pressing down on his shoulders like a millstone. Charlemagne had not spoken to him since the audience, but the Emperor’s silence was its own command—a leash drawn taut, waiting for the slightest slack to be taken in.
Gerold rode beside him, scarred face grim beneath his helm. “You look like a man who has swallowed a wasp,” the Saxon said.
“I have swallowed worse,” Aldric replied. “I have swallowed my own cleverness.”
The column crested a rise, and Paderborn spread before them—a royal seat of timber and stone, bristling with the banners of half a hundred lords. The Saxon campaigns had bled this land for a generation, and now Charlemagne meant to make it a throne-room for his ambitions. Aldric saw the palisade, the chapel rising raw and new, the smoke of a thousand cookfires, and he understood the arithmetic Hildegard had taught him: every stone here was laid by a man who believed the Emperor’s promises. Every promise was a debt.
“You have a scheme,” Gerold said flatly.
“I have the shadow of a scheme,” Aldric corrected. “It is not yet born, and it may kill me in the cradle. But if it works, Gerold, I will drink my own wine on my own hill and never see a crown again.”
Gerold grunted. “You said that before the Avars.”
“The Avars were a misunderstanding. This is a design.”
They passed through the gates into the bustle of the camp. Messengers came and went; priests argued with quartermasters; the shouts of men drilling echoed against the stockade. And there, waiting by the chapel steps, was Rotrude. She had shed her court finery for a riding cloak and a blade at her belt, and her eyes were bright with the hunt.
“Lord Aldric,” she said, falling in beside him. “My father tells me you have agreed to plan his coronation.”
“I have agreed to plan the road to it,” Aldric said. “The crown itself is Rome’s business.”
“You are too modest. My father says you have a mind that sees ten moves ahead. He says it with admiration, which means he is already planning to use you against someone.” She smiled. “I find that interesting.”
“Princess, I am a tired man who wishes only for—“
“For a writ of immunity. Yes, I know. You have made it your life’s work to be tedious.” Rotrude’s smile sharpened. “But you are not tedious, Aldric. You are the most dangerous idle man in the Empire, and I want to know what you intend to do in Rome.”
Aldric reined in his horse, forcing her to stop beside him. The camp swirled around them, indifferent to their little parley. “What I intend,” he said quietly, “is to make the crown so heavy that your father will think twice before asking anyone to bear it. He wants an empire. I will show him the cost.”
Rotrude studied him for a long moment. Then she laughed—a low, genuine sound. “You would sabotage his coronation to win your freedom?”
“I would make him see that the price is not paid in gold or glory,” Aldric said. “It is paid in the lives of every lord who must kneel, every priest who must bless, every man who must die to hold the thing together. If he sees that price clearly, he may decide the crown is not worth the ashes it will take to forge it.”
“And if he decides it is worth it?”
Aldric met her gaze. “Then I will have done my duty, and I will still be a prisoner. But I will have told him the truth, and that is the only coin I have left.”
Rotrude’s smile faded. She looked at him as though she were seeing him for the first time. “You would risk his wrath to spare him his own ambition.”
“Someone must,” Aldric said. “I am the only one who wants nothing from him but to be left alone.”
A messenger rode up, mud-spattered and breathless. “Lord Aldric! The Emperor summons you to the war council. He says the Saxon hostages have arrived, and he wishes you to witness the terms.”
Aldric sighed. “Of course he does.”
Rotrude touched his arm. “Be careful, my lord. My father does not love truth-tellers who wear the mask of laziness. He will test you.”
“He has tested me for years,” Aldric said. “I have failed every test, and he keeps me anyway. I have learned to be grateful for my failures.”
He turned his horse toward the great hall, Gerold a silent shadow behind him. The council chamber was thick with smoke and the smell of unwashed men. Charlemagne sat at the head of the table, a map of the Saxon lands spread before him, and beside him stood a priest in a velvet cope—Archbishop Turpin, his face a mask of pious calculation.
“Aldric,” Charlemagne said, gesturing to a seat. “I have decided that the coronation will be preceded by a synod of all the bishops of the realm. They will gather at Rome, and they will proclaim the Emperor’s authority over Christendom.”
Aldric sat. “A synod. Of course. That will require letters to every see in the Empire, provisions for a thousand clergy, and a schedule that will slip like a greased eel.”
“Which is why you will oversee it,” Charlemagne said. “You will have my seal, my treasury, and my name. And you will make it happen.”
Turpin leaned forward. “His Majesty has chosen you because you are efficient, my lord. The Church trusts efficiency.”
“The Church trusts obedience,” Aldric said. “I am not obedient.”
Charlemagne laughed—a bark that silenced the room. “No, you are not. But you are clever, and clever men are useful until they are not. Do not make yourself useless, Aldric. I am fond of you, but I am fonder of my crown.”
Aldric looked at the map, at the lines of conquest and the names of the dead, and he felt the old temptation stir—the whisper that said he could shape this storm, that he could use the synod to sow discord, to make the bishops quarrel, to delay the coronation past the year 800 and into a fog of endless argument.
But that was the path of resistance, and he knew where it led.
“Majesty,” he said, “I will do as you command. But I will do it in my own way, and I will not be rushed.”
Charlemagne’s eyes narrowed. “You have a condition.”
“I have a price,” Aldric said. “When the synod is done, and the crown is placed, I will have my writ of immunity. I will go home, and I will never be called to court again. That is what I ask.”
The room was silent. Turpin looked at Charlemagne; the Emperor looked at Aldric. And then Charlemagne smiled, slow and dangerous.
“Very well,” he said. “You shall have your writ—if the synod succeeds. But if it fails, Aldric, you will not go home. You will go to the frontier, and you will spend the rest of your days teaching Saxon children to read Latin.”
Aldric felt the trap close around him, but he nodded. “Then I had best begin.”
He rose, and as he left the hall, Rotrude fell into step beside him again. Her face was pale.
“You have just wagered your freedom against your life’s work,” she said. “And you have given my father the perfect excuse to destroy you if you falter.”
“I know,” Aldric said. “But I have one more scheme. And this one, I will not let him see.”
He looked toward the west, where the road to Rome ran through the winter dark, and he smiled—a thin, tired smile that held no joy.
“The synod will succeed,” he said. “But it will cost him more than he knows. And when it is done, I will be free—or I will be dead. I have made my peace with both.”