Chapter 31: The Cartulary of Frozen Lambs

The snow began again before they cleared the last switchback of the pass, a thin, sifting fall that clung to the manes of the horses and turned the world to a whisper of grey. Aldric pulled his hood lower and did not look back toward the shrine. He had left Hildegard with a parchment in his hand and a promise in his mouth—a promise to ruin Charlemagne’s coronation—and now the weight of it sat in his chest like a stone swallowed whole.

“You are quiet,” Gerold said. The Saxon rode beside him, his scarred face half-hidden beneath a wolf-pelt mantle, his spear balanced across his saddle like a thing he might need at any moment.

“I am always quiet,” Aldric said. “It is one of my few virtues.”

“You are always thinking,” Gerold corrected. “Quiet is different. Quiet is easy. Thinking is what makes you look like a man who has eaten bad cheese.”

Aldric almost smiled. “I have eaten bad cheese. This is worse.”

They descended into the valley of the Po as the snow gave way to rain, a cold, relentless drizzle that soaked through wool and leather and found the bones beneath. The road south was crowded with pilgrims and merchants, mule trains laden with cloth and salt, a steady stream of humanity moving toward the promise of Rome. Aldric watched them with a detached curiosity, the way a man watches ants build a hill he knows he will have to kick over.

The writ of immunity was still in his saddlebag. He had not looked at it since the shrine. He did not need to. He knew the words by heart, knew the careful clauses Hildegard had drafted, knew the seal that would make Charlemagne’s eyes go hard and flat when he saw it. The trap was set. The road to Rome stretched ahead. And yet—

“You are doing it again,” Rotrude said.

She had appeared beside him without a sound, her horse a sleek grey mare that picked its way through the mud as if the road were a royal carpet. Her hood was thrown back, and the rain beaded on her dark hair like pearls.

“Doing what?” Aldric asked.

“Thinking too hard. You get a crease here.” She touched her own brow, between the eyes. “My father does the same when he is planning a war. It is a family trait, I think. The desire to win.”

“I am not planning a war,” Aldric said. “I am planning a retirement.”

“You keep saying that.” Rotrude’s lips curved, not quite a smile. “And yet here you are, riding toward Rome, surrounded by an emperor’s army and an emperor’s daughter. Does that seem like retirement to you?”

“No,” Aldric admitted. “But it is the closest thing I have managed in eight years.”

They rode in silence for a while. The rain softened to a mist, and the road began to climb again, winding through olive groves and terraced hills where the first green shoots of winter wheat pushed through the dark soil. Aldric found himself thinking of his vineyards, of the way the vines looked in the spring, the new leaves bright and fragile against the old wood. He had not seen them in three years. He was not certain they would remember him.

“What did the abbess give you?” Rotrude asked.

Aldric did not pretend to misunderstand. “A warning.”

“About what?”

“About the nature of traps. The ones you set for others are the ones most likely to catch you.”

Rotrude considered this. “She is clever, your abbess.”

“She was always clever. It was one of the reasons I—” He stopped, and Rotrude’s eyes sharpened with interest.

“One of the reasons you what?”

“One of the reasons I let her go,” Aldric said. “I knew she would never be content with a life of wine and silence. And I was too much of a coward to ask her to choose.”

Rotrude was quiet for a long moment. Then she said, “You are not a coward, Aldric. You are a man who has convinced himself that wanting nothing is the same as being free.”

The words struck him like a blow. He did not answer, and Rotrude did not press. They rode on through the mist, and the road to Rome grew longer with every step.

They reached Pavia on the third day, a city of red brick and ancient walls, its streets crowded with the Emperor’s vanguard and the merchants who followed an army like gulls trailing a fishing boat. The palace was already a hive of activity, clerks and couriers and priests moving through the corridors with the frantic purpose of men who believed the world would end if a single letter arrived a day late.

Charlemagne was in the great hall, surrounded by maps and wax tablets and a half-eaten haunch of boar, his crown set aside on a cushion as if it were no more than a hat. He looked up as Aldric entered, and his eyes lit with the particular warmth that Aldric had learned to dread.

“Aldric of the Vosges,” the Emperor said, the name rolling off his tongue like a blessing. “I was beginning to think the Alps had swallowed you.”

“They tried,” Aldric said. “I am a poor meal.”

Charlemagne laughed, a great booming sound that echoed off the stone. “Sit. Eat. Tell me what you have learned from that abbess of yours.”

Aldric took a seat at the long table, accepting a cup of wine and a heel of bread. “She taught me arithmetic,” he said. “The kind that makes men weep.”

“Good.” Charlemagne leaned forward, his massive hands flat on the table. “Then you will understand what I am about to tell you. The Pope has agreed to the coronation. The date is set for Christmas Day. And I have decided that you will stand at my right hand when I receive the crown.”

Aldric’s wine cup froze halfway to his lips. “I am a minor nobleman with a talent for drainage. That is a place for an archbishop, or a king.”

“You are my most reliable instrument,” Charlemagne said. “And I will have you there.”

The words were gentle. The meaning was not. Aldric looked into the Emperor’s eyes and saw the iron beneath the charm, the will that had crushed the Saxons and humbled the Avars. He thought of the writ of immunity in his saddlebag, of Hildegard’s careful arithmetic, of the trap he had set and the price he had promised to make Charlemagne pay.

And he knew, with a cold certainty that settled in his gut like a stone, that the trap was already closing around him.

“Your Majesty,” he said carefully, “may I ask what you intend to do with the crown, once you have it?”

Charlemagne smiled, and it was not a kind smile. “Everything,” he said. “I intend to do everything.”