Chapter 32: The Cartulary of Frozen Dawn

The cold had teeth.

Aldric had known winters in the Vosges, had watched his vines sleep under blankets of frost, had warmed his hands over fires that smelled of applewood and old promises. But this was a different kind of cold—a cold that crept into the marrow and whispered that the sun had abandoned the world forever.

They had crossed the Alps through the Great Saint Bernard Pass, and the memory of that crossing would not leave him. The snow had been deep enough to swallow a horse, the path marked only by the bones of pilgrims who had not been so fortunate. Gerold had walked ahead, breaking trail with his massive shoulders, cursing in Saxon with every step. Rotrude had ridden silently, her face hidden beneath layers of wool, and Aldric had watched her and wondered what she saw when she looked at the mountains that had once stopped Hannibal.

Now, in the foothills of the Italian side, the snow had given way to mud—endless, sucking mud that clung to the hooves and dragged at the wheels of the baggage carts. The army stretched behind them like a wounded serpent, and ahead, somewhere beyond the curve of the earth, lay Rome.

“You are brooding,” Gerold said.

“I am thinking,” Aldric corrected.

“You brood when you think.” The Saxon shifted his grip on his spear. “It is a terrible thing to watch.”

Aldric did not dignify that with a response. He was thinking, truly thinking, about the writ of immunity in his saddlebag and the arithmetic that Hildegard had taught him. The coronation was drawing closer—Charlemagne had sent riders ahead to Pope Leo, whose own troubles were mounting. The Pope had been accused of adultery and perjury, had fled Rome with a rope around his neck, and now sought the Frankish king’s protection. Charlamagne had welcomed him with open arms and a smile that Aldric recognized all too well.

The Emperor was not a man who did anything without a purpose.

“My lord,” Rotrude said, drawing her horse alongside his. She had removed her hood, and her face was pale but determined. “My father intends to enter Rome as a conqueror, does he not?”

Aldric glanced at her. “He intends to enter Rome as a king. Whether that becomes conquest depends on the Pope.”

“And on you.”

“And on me,” Aldric admitted. “Which is why I am brooding.”

Rotrude laughed, a sound that had lost some of its sharpness in the mountains. “You are the only man I know who treats the fate of Christendom as an inconvenience.”

“That is because the fate of Christendom is an inconvenience,” Aldric said. “It has been inconveniencing me for years.”

They rode in silence for a while, past fields that had been stripped bare by the army’s passage, past villages where the peasants watched with hollow eyes and did not dare to meet the gaze of the Frankish lords. Aldric felt their stares like a weight on his back. He had wanted to be a vintner, a man of peace, a man who tended the earth and let the world burn around him. Instead, he was here, marching toward the heart of the old empire, with a plan to ruin a coronation and a writ of freedom that grew more distant with every step.

Gerold cleared his throat. “There is a rider.”

Aldric looked up. A horseman was approaching at a gallop, his mount lathered with sweat. He wore the colors of the royal household, and his face was grim. He reined in before Aldric and saluted.

“Lord Aldric. The Emperor summons you. Immediately.”

Aldric felt the familiar sinking in his gut. “What does he want?”

“The Pope’s envoys have arrived,” the rider said. “They bring news from Rome. Bad news, if the Emperor’s expression is any measure.”

Aldric exchanged a glance with Rotrude. She was smiling, and it was not a kind smile.

“Go,” she said. “My father will want his favorite idler to untangle this knot.”

Aldric urged his horse forward, leaving Gerold and Rotrude behind. The road to the Emperor’s tent was a gauntlet of banners and spears, of warriors who looked at him with a mixture of contempt and curiosity. He was the lord who fled glory, the man who had saved Aachen by accident, the reluctant architect of the imperial coronation.

He found Charlemagne standing before a table covered in maps, his great shoulders hunched, his eyes fixed on a parchment that trembled in his grip. Pope Leo’s envoys—two bishops with nervous eyes and trembling hands—stood to one side, clearly wishing they were anywhere else.

“Aldric,” Charlemagne said without looking up. “Read this.”

Aldric took the parchment. It was a letter from Pope Leo, written in a hand that had shaken with fear. The Pope had been attacked in Rome, dragged from his horse, beaten, and left for dead. His enemies had cut out his tongue—or so the letter claimed—though he had miraculously recovered enough to speak again. He had fled to the Frankish court, and now he begged Charlemagne to restore him to his throne.

The rest of the letter was a plea, and a promise. If Charlemagne would march on Rome and restore the Pope, Leo would crown him Emperor of the Romans. Not king of the Franks, not protector of Christendom, but Emperor.

Aldric read it twice. Then he set it down.

“Your Majesty,” he said carefully, “this is a trap.”

Charlemagne looked at him, and there was something in his eyes that Aldric had never seen before. Hunger.

“Of course it is a trap,” the Emperor said. “But it is a trap I intend to spring. The crown of the Caesars, Aldric. The crown of Augustus and Constantine. It will be mine.”

“And what will it cost you?”

“Everything,” Charlemagne said. “That is the point.”

Aldric felt the cold settle deeper into his bones. He thought of the writ of immunity, of Hildegard’s arithmetic, of the trap he had set and the price he had promised to make Charlemagne pay. And he realized, with a terrible clarity, that the Emperor had been playing a different game all along.

“You knew,” Aldric said. “You knew the Pope would come to you. You knew he would offer the crown.”

Charlemagne smiled. “I knew he would have no other choice. And neither do you, Aldric. You will plan this coronation. You will make it perfect. And when I am crowned Emperor of the Romans, you will have your writ of immunity.”

“And if I refuse?”

The Emperor’s smile did not waver. “Then I will find another use for your genius. One that involves the Saxon marches, and a winter that will make this one feel like a summer’s day.”

Aldric stood there, in the cold of the imperial tent, and felt the trap close around him. He had wanted to ruin the coronation. He had wanted to make the price so high that Charlemagne would let him go. But the Emperor had seen through him, as he always did, and now the only way out was through.

“I will do it,” Aldric said. “But I will do it my way.”

Charlemagne nodded, as if he had expected nothing less. “Your way is why I keep you, Aldric. Your way is why you are still alive.”

Aldric turned and walked out of the tent, into the frozen dawn. The sun was rising over the hills, painting the world in shades of gold and blood. He thought of his vineyards, of the wine that would never be made, of the quiet life that grew more distant with every step.

And he thought of the coronation, of the crown that Charlemagne would take, and of the price that Aldric would make him pay.

The path of least resistance had never once led him home. But now, for the first time, he began to think that the path of greatest resistance might lead him somewhere even better.

He began to plan.