Chapter 53: The Cartulary of Frozen Compromises (II)

The dawn came grey over the frozen road, the sky the colour of unpolished steel. Aldric woke to the sound of Gerold’s knife scraping frost from his saddle, and for a moment he allowed himself the illusion that he was simply a man preparing for a long ride home. Then he remembered where he was going, and why, and the weight of the writ in his saddlebag seemed to press against his ribs like a second spine.

They had made camp in the lee of a ruined watchtower, some forgotten outpost of a forgotten war. The column stretched behind them, a thousand men and horses and wagons, all bound for the same impossible destination. Rome. The word itself felt like a stone in his mouth.

“You did not sleep,” Rotrude said.

She had appeared beside him without sound, as she often did, her breath clouding in the cold air. Her cloak was drawn tight, but her eyes were sharp and watchful, and Aldric knew she had slept even less than he had.

“I was thinking,” he said.

“A dangerous habit.”

“So I have been told.” He pulled his own cloak tighter and looked south, where the Alps rose like a wall of white bone. “The Emperor will want to move quickly. The passes close early this year.”

“He has already sent riders ahead to secure the route,” Rotrude said. “He thinks of everything.”

“That is what worries me.”

She smiled, that unsettling smile that reminded him too much of her father. “You gave him the plan, Aldric. You cannot now be surprised that he uses it.”

He had given him the plan. That was the bitter truth. He had told Charlemagne how to steal a crown, how to make the Pope an offer he could not refuse, how to bind the bishops and the nobles and the distant Byzantine court into a web of obligation and fear. And the Emperor had listened, and nodded, and praised him for his wisdom.

And then he had ordered the column to march.

“I thought I could make the price too high,” Aldric said, more to himself than to her. “I thought if I showed him the true cost of the crown—the wars, the diplomacy, the endless careful lying—he would see that it was not worth the having.”

“And instead?”

“Instead he saw that it was worth even more than he had imagined. Because I showed him how to pay it.”

Rotrude was quiet for a long moment. Then she said, “My father has spent his life taking what others thought impossible. You have only shown him that the impossible has a price. He has never once balked at a price.”

“I am beginning to understand that,” Aldric said.

“And yet you ride with him.”

“I have no choice.”

“There is always a choice.” Her voice was soft, almost gentle. “You could simply stop. Refuse to think. Refuse to plan. Let the coronation fail, and let my father rage. What could he do to you that he has not already done?”

Aldric turned to look at her fully. In the grey light, her face was unreadable, but there was something in her eyes that he had not seen before. Something that might have been concern.

“He could take my vineyards,” Aldric said. “He could take my name. He could take my head.” He shrugged. “But none of that would matter, because he would have taken my mind first. And that is the only thing I have ever truly owned.”

Rotrude’s expression shifted, and for a moment she looked almost young. Almost vulnerable.

“Then you are a prisoner of your own genius,” she said. “And there is no writ of immunity that can free you from that.”

She walked away before he could answer, and Aldric stood alone in the frozen dawn, wondering if she had just spoken a truth he had been running from for years.

The column moved out an hour later, and Aldric rode near the Emperor’s standard, as he had been commanded. Charlemagne himself was mounted on a great grey stallion, his breath pluming in the cold, and he seemed to absorb the winter air and convert it into heat. He was a man made of fire, Aldric thought, and the frost could not touch him.

“You look like a man who has been told his own funeral is postponed,” the Emperor said as Aldric drew alongside.

“I have been thinking, Majesty.”

“A dangerous habit.”

“So I have been told.”

Charlemagne laughed, a great booming sound that startled the horses. “You are a marvel, Aldric. You plan a coronation that will shake the world, and yet you look as though you are being led to the gallows.”

“Perhaps I am,” Aldric said. “A crown is a kind of death. It ends one life and begins another.”

“And which life do you fear losing?”

Aldric did not answer immediately. The road was climbing now, the ground hardening beneath the hooves, and the air was growing thinner and colder. Ahead, the peaks of the Alps loomed like the gates of a fortress that no army had ever breached.

“I fear losing the life I have not yet lived,” Aldric said finally. “The one in my vineyards, with my books and my wine and my sleep. The one I have been trying to reach for years.”

Charlemagne was silent for a long moment. Then he said, “You speak of that life as though it were a place you could reach by riding hard enough. But it is not a place, Aldric. It is a state of mind. And you will never reach it, because you do not truly want to.”

“That is not true.”

“Is it not?” The Emperor’s eyes were sharp, and there was no mockery in them. “You have told me that you want only to be forgotten. But you have also told me, in great detail, how to steal a crown. Those two desires cannot coexist. You cannot wish to vanish while also shaping the world with your thoughts.”

Aldric opened his mouth to argue, but the words died in his throat. Because he knew, with a sudden and terrible clarity, that the Emperor was right.

He had never truly wanted to be forgotten. He had wanted to be remembered on his own terms. He had wanted to be the man who chose his own legacy, not the man who had one thrust upon him.

And that, he realized, was the compromise he had made without knowing it. He had traded the life of idleness he claimed to crave for the chance to shape the storm. And now the storm was shaping him.

“You are a hard man to argue with, Majesty,” Aldric said.

“I have had practice.” Charlemagne smiled, and for a moment he looked almost kind. “But I will make you a promise, Aldric. When this is done, when the crown is placed and the world is settled, I will give you your writ of immunity. I will give you your vineyards and your books and your sleep.”

“And what will you ask in return?”

“Nothing.” The Emperor’s smile widened. “Because I know that you will not be able to stay away. You will hear of a problem, or a war, or a crisis, and you will think of a solution. And you will come to me, because you cannot help yourself.”

Aldric stared at him. “You are a devil, Majesty.”

“I am an emperor,” Charlemagne said. “The two are often indistinguishable.”

He spurred his horse forward, and Aldric was left alone in the column’s wake, the writ of immunity growing heavier in his saddlebag with every step south.

Gerold appeared at his side again, his scarred face unreadable beneath his helm. “Well?”

“I have just made a bargain with the devil,” Aldric said. “And I am not entirely certain I have received the better end of it.”

“You never do,” Gerold said. “But you ride anyway.”

Aldric laughed, a hollow sound. “That is the curse of my kind, Gerold. We see the trap, and we walk into it anyway. Because the alternative is to stop walking. And we do not know how.”

He looked south, toward the Alps and the road to Rome, and he felt the cold whisper of doubt once more. Hildegard had been right. He had offered his mind. And now, for the first time, he knew that he could not take it back.

The compromise was made. The bargain was struck. And the only question that remained was whether the crown would be his salvation or his ruin.