Chapter 38: The Cartulary of Frozen Hours
The dawn came grey and bitter over the frozen track, and Aldric woke to find his breath hanging in the air like a ghost of indecision. The shrine of Saint Bernard lay two days behind them, its cold stone and colder counsel already receding into memory. Before them, the Alps rose in jagged defiance, their peaks wrapped in scarves of cloud that promised snow before the week’s end.
Gerold had already broken camp, his scarred hands moving with the practiced economy of a man who had learned long ago that hesitation killed faster than any blade. He glanced at Aldric as the lord emerged from his blanket, and his expression carried the weary resignation of a man who had watched his master scheme himself into ever deeper trouble.
“You slept badly,” Gerold said. It was not a question.
“I dreamed of vineyards,” Aldric replied, stamping feeling into his feet. “Rows and rows of them, stretching to the horizon. And in the dream, I was walking toward them, but the road never ended. It just kept winding through the mountains, past shrines and palaces and battlefields, always the same distance away.”
Gerold grunted. “Dreams are for priests and poets. We ride for Rome.”
“Yes,” Aldric said, and the word tasted like ash. “We ride for Rome.”
They moved south along the old Roman road, the stones worn smooth by centuries of pilgrims and armies and merchants who had all, in their own way, been walking toward something they could not name. Aldric’s mind churned beneath the stillness of his face. Hildegard’s parchment rested against his chest, the writ of immunity still unsigned, still unearned. He had told her he meant to ruin the coronation. He had meant it, then. Now, with the Alps closing in around him and the Emperor’s laughter still echoing in his memory, he was no longer certain what he meant.
The road brought them to a waystation as the sun reached its zenith—a stone building huddled against the mountain’s flank, its roof weighed down with snow that had not yet melted from the previous winter. A handful of travelers clustered around the hearth inside, and Aldric recognized the unmistakable silhouette of Princess Rotrude before she turned to face them.
“My lord,” she said, rising with a grace that seemed out of place in such rough surroundings. “I had thought you would be ahead of us by now. The Emperor’s couriers passed through yesterday, pressing south with all speed.”
“I am not a courier,” Aldric said, settling onto a bench with a groan that was only partly theatrical. “I am a man who has been dragged across half of Christendom to attend a ceremony he does not want, for a crown he does not believe in, in the service of an Emperor who will not let him go home.”
Rotrude’s lips curved. “And yet here you are.”
“Here I am.”
She sat across from him, folding her hands in her lap. Gerold had taken a position by the door, his eyes scanning the room with the habitual wariness of a man who had survived too many ambushes to trust open spaces. The other travelers kept their distance, sensing something in the trio that did not invite company.
“I have been thinking about your question,” Aldric said, surprising himself. “The one you asked at Paderborn. What would I do if I were truly free?”
Rotrude’s expression flickered with interest. “And what conclusion have you reached?”
“None,” he admitted. “That is the trouble. I have spent so many years scheming to escape my obligations that I have never once stopped to consider what I would do with myself once the obligations were gone. The vineyards were always the goal—the quiet, the wine, the books. But now that the possibility grows more distant with every mile, I find myself wondering whether the dream was ever real, or whether it was merely a fiction I told myself to make the servitude bearable.”
Rotrude was silent for a long moment. The fire crackled. Somewhere beyond the walls, a mule brayed in protest at its load.
“You are afraid,” she said at last. “Not of the Emperor, and not of the coronation. You are afraid of discovering that the life you have been chasing does not exist.”
Aldric opened his mouth to deny it, and found that he could not.
“I have read the histories,” Rotrude continued, her voice soft but carrying the weight of certainty. “I have watched my father conquer kingdoms and crush rebellions and reshape the world to his will. And I have watched him do it all while knowing that the thing he truly wants—a legacy that will outlast him—is the one thing he cannot seize, only earn. You are not so different, Lord Aldric. You want peace, but you have never once been willing to accept the cost of it. Because the cost is not the work, or the danger, or the service. The cost is the possibility that when you finally reach the vineyards, you will find them empty.”
Aldric stared at her. The words settled into his chest like stones, heavy and immovable.
“You have a cruel wit for a princess,” he said.
“I have a father who taught me that truth is the sharpest weapon in any arsenal,” she replied. “And I have watched you long enough to know that you are not the idle lord you pretend to be. You are a man who has been running from his own capabilities for years, because to accept them would mean accepting that you are not allowed to stop.”
The fire popped, sending a shower of sparks up the chimney. Aldric looked down at his hands—hands that had drafted drainage plans and diplomatic treaties, that had saved Aachen and outmaneuvered the Avars, that had written the arithmetic that might yet unmake an empire’s coronation.
“What do you want from me, Princess?” he asked quietly.
Rotrude leaned forward, her eyes bright with something that might have been sympathy, or might have been calculation. “I want you to stop pretending. The coronation is coming. You cannot prevent it, and you cannot escape it. But you can shape it. You can decide what kind of crown my father wears, and what kind of empire he rules. That is not a burden you chose, but it is a burden you carry. And I think—I hope—that you are finally ready to carry it honestly.”
Aldric was silent for a long time. The wind howled against the stone walls, and somewhere in the distance, he heard the faint rumble of snow shifting on a mountainside, threatening to become an avalanche.
“I made a promise to Hildegard,” he said at last. “I told her I would ruin the coronation. That I would make the price of the crown so high that the Emperor would have no choice but to let me go.”
“And will you?”
Aldric met her gaze. “I am beginning to think that the price was never mine to set. It was always going to be paid, one way or another. The only question is whether I am willing to pay it myself, or whether I will let others pay it for me.”
Rotrude smiled, and this time it was not unkind. “Then you have already answered your own question, my lord. The only thing left is to act on it.”
She rose, gathering her cloak about her. “The Emperor will reach Rome before the month is out. If you intend to shape what happens there, you must be ahead of him, not behind. I suggest you ride through the night.”
Aldric watched her go, and when the door closed behind her, he turned to Gerold.
“She is more dangerous than her father,” he said.
Gerold grunted. “That is because she knows what she wants. You are still trying to decide whether you want anything at all.”
Aldric laughed, and the sound was hollow. “And what do you want, Gerold? You have followed me across half of Europe, endured my schemes and my idleness and my self-pity. Why?”
The scarred warrior was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “Because you are the first lord I have served who did not pretend to be something he was not. You are a lazy, scheming, cynical bastard, and you would rather drink wine than save a kingdom. But you have never once asked me to be something I am not. That is worth more than glory.”
Aldric stared at him, and for the first time in weeks, something like warmth crept into his chest.
“Then let us ride for Rome,” he said. “And let us see what kind of crown we can build together.”
They went out into the cold, and the road stretched before them like a promise—or a sentence. And as Aldric mounted his horse and turned south, he felt the weight of Hildegard’s parchment against his chest, and he knew that the choice he had been avoiding was no longer a choice at all.
It was a reckoning.