Chapter 48: The Cartulary of Frozen Threads

The snow had begun again, thin and mean, like the spite of a forgotten god. Aldric watched it fall from the shelter of a pine copse, his breath clouding the air before him. Behind him, Gerold was scraping frost from his saddle, muttering in Saxon that would have earned him a beating in any Christian court.

“You speak as though the cold were your enemy,” Aldric said, without turning.

“It is,” Gerold replied. “And so is the woman who sent us here.”

Aldric smiled, though there was little warmth in it. Hildegard’s message had been waiting for them at the waystation south of the Saint Bernard Pass, pressed into the hands of a grimy courier who had ridden through the night to find them. It had been short, as her messages always were, and maddening, as her messages always were.

*The Emperor’s arithmetic has changed. He has begun to count in years, not miles. Come south quickly, or the writ will be written in someone else’s ink.*

Aldric had read it three times, then folded it into his saddlebag beside the unfinished writ of immunity. Whatever Hildegard meant, she meant it to pull him forward. She had always known which strings to pull.

Now, in the grey light of a late autumn morning, the road to Rome lay before them like a wound in the earth. The army had thinned as it marched, detachments peeling off to garrison towns and guard passes, but Charlemagne’s household remained a formidable engine of men, horses, and baggage. Aldric had counted six hundred spears at dawn, and that was only the vanguard.

“We should not linger,” Gerold said, his voice low. “The Emperor’s scouts have been watching us since the third bell.”

Aldric glanced toward the distant column of horsemen moving along the valley floor. “Of course they have. He does not trust me to arrive on my own. He expects me to bolt.”

“Do you intend to?”

“No,” Aldric said, and was surprised to find he meant it. “The writ is still unearned. And I find I am curious to see how this ends.”

Gerold grunted. “Curiosity has killed better men than you.”

“Better men, perhaps. But none so well-read.”

They rode south through the morning, the Alps falling away behind them like a half-remembered dream. The road improved as they descended, Roman stones surfacing beneath the mud, and Aldric felt the strange sensation of traveling forward in time as well as distance. The Empire of the Franks was new, still being hammered into shape, but the road beneath his horse’s hooves was older than the memory of Christendom.

They caught up with the main column at midday, threading through the baggage train toward the Emperor’s standard. Charlemagne was not riding his great warhorse today, but walking alongside a cart, his cloak heavy with snow, his voice rising and falling as he spoke with a cluster of bishops and counts.

Rotrude was there too, riding a small grey mare at the edge of the group, her face half-hidden beneath a woolen hood. When she saw Aldric, she peeled away and guided her horse alongside his.

“You look terrible,” she said.

“Thank you, Highness. The snow has been kind to you.”

She smiled, thin and sharp. “The snow has been kind to no one. My father is in a strange mood. He speaks of Rome as though it were already his, and yet he will not name the day we arrive.”

Aldric felt the familiar prickle of unease. “He plans to arrive before Christmas,” he said carefully. “The Pope expects him.”

“The Pope expects many things,” Rotrude said. “My father expects more. He has begun to speak of the title as though it were a debt owed to him, not a gift to be received.”

Aldric said nothing. He had heard Charlemagne speak of the imperial crown in exactly that way, and he had heard the danger in it. The Emperor of the Franks was not a man who accepted gifts gracefully. He seized them, and he crushed them until they yielded what he wanted.

“What do you intend to do?” Rotrude asked.

“I intend to see the coronation through,” Aldric said. “Then I intend to go home.”

“And if the coronation cannot be seen through without you?”

“Then I will make sure it can.”

Rotrude studied him for a long moment, her eyes bright and unreadable. “You have changed, Lord Aldric. You no longer speak of failure as though it were a goal.”

“I have discovered that failure is a luxury I cannot afford,” he said. “The Emperor has made sure of it.”

She laughed, but there was no humor in it. “That is not the Emperor’s doing. That is yours. You have convinced yourself that you are indispensable, and now you cannot bear to be anything less.”

Aldric opened his mouth to reply, but the words died in his throat. She was not wrong. He had spent years convincing himself that he wanted nothing more than to be left alone, and yet every time he had reached for freedom, he had found a reason to delay. The drainage plan. The forged illness. The writ of immunity. Each had been a step toward escape, and each had led him deeper into the Emperor’s service.

“Perhaps,” he said at last. “But I have also learned that the Emperor’s service is not a cage. It is a loom. And the threads are already woven tight.”

Rotrude’s smile faded. “That is a dangerous way to speak.”

“It is a dangerous time to speak at all.”

They rode in silence for a while, the column winding south through the foothills. The snow had stopped, and the sky was clearing, revealing a pale winter sun that did little to warm the air. Aldric’s thoughts turned to Hildegard, to the message she had sent, to the arithmetic she had promised to rewrite.

He did not know what she had planned. He did not know whether she intended to help him escape or to bind him tighter to the Emperor’s cause. But he knew, with the certainty of a man who had read too many histories, that she would not let him fail.

And that, more than anything, frightened him.

They made camp that evening in the ruins of a Roman waystation, the stones still bearing the marks of an empire that had crumbled centuries ago. Charlemagne summoned Aldric to his tent after supper, and the Emperor was alone, his bishops and counsellors dismissed.

“You have been quiet,” Charlemagne said, not looking up from the map spread across his table. “I do not trust quiet.”

“I have been thinking, Majesty.”

“About what?”

Aldric hesitated. He had planned to lie, to offer a comfortable answer that would set the Emperor at ease. But something in Charlemagne’s voice, in the weary set of his shoulders, stopped him.

“I have been thinking about what comes after,” Aldric said. “You will be crowned Emperor. The world will change. And I will be left to find my place in it.”

Charlemagne looked up, his eyes sharp. “You could have a place at my side.”

“I could,” Aldric said. “But I have never been good at standing in anyone’s shadow.”

The Emperor laughed, a low rumble that seemed to shake the tent. “No. You have always been too busy running from it.” He straightened, his gaze fixed on Aldric. “But you are not running now. You are here, in my tent, on the road to Rome, with a writ of immunity still unearned in your saddlebag. Why?”

Aldric met his gaze. “Because I want to see the coronation through,” he said. “And because I want to see what kind of empire you will build.”

Charlemagne studied him for a long moment, then nodded slowly. “Then you shall have your answer, Lord Aldric. But I warn you—once you see what I intend to build, you may not want to leave.”

Aldric said nothing. He bowed, and left the tent, and stood for a long time in the cold, looking south toward Rome.

Behind him, he heard the Emperor’s voice, low and thoughtful, speaking to no one.

“He is learning to stay. That is the first step.”

Aldric closed his eyes, and the writ of immunity weighed heavy in his saddlebag, and he did not know if he was walking toward freedom or toward a cage of his own making.

The threads were weaving tighter, and he could not see the pattern.