Chapter 62: The Cartulary of Frozen Kindling

The dawn came grey over the marshes, and with it came the smell of smoke.

Aldric woke to Gerold’s hand on his shoulder, the Saxon’s face grim in the half-light. “Riders,” Gerold said. “Frankish scouts, from the west. They say the Emperor’s column is two days behind us, and the Avar envoys have crossed the Lech.”

Aldric sat up slowly, his bones complaining. The writ of immunity was still tucked against his chest, a thin promise of parchment that had grown heavier with every league. He had not read Hildegard’s letter again. He did not need to. He knew its arithmetic by heart now, the cold calculus of a woman who had once loved him and now seemed content to watch him dance on the Emperor’s strings.

“The Avars,” he said, rubbing his eyes. “They are supposed to be suing for peace, not marching to meet us.”

Gerold shrugged. “Perhaps they heard you were coming.”

Aldric groaned. “That is not comforting.”

They broke camp quickly, the mud of the marsh squelching beneath their boots. Rotrude appeared from her tent with her hood pulled low, her eyes scanning the horizon with the practiced wariness of a woman who had grown up in a court of knives. She fell into step beside Aldric without a word, and he did not ask what she had overheard in the night.

The road south was a ribbon of frozen ruts, the ground hard enough to jar the teeth but soft enough to mire a horse to the fetlock. Aldric’s mind drifted to the vineyards of the Vosges, to the taste of the first pressing, to the long afternoons of doing nothing at all. He had built his entire life around the pursuit of that nothing. And yet here he was, riding toward Rome with a princess and a Saxon, to ruin a coronation he had never wanted.

“You are brooding,” Rotrude said.

“I am calculating,” Aldric replied.

“The same thing, for you.” She smiled, thin and knowing. “My father once said that you think so hard you could hear the grass grow. He meant it as a compliment. I am not sure it was.”

“The grass does not grow in winter,” Aldric said. “So perhaps I am safe.”

They rode in silence for a time, the marsh giving way to low hills and scatterings of birch. The air was cold and clean, and Aldric found himself thinking of Hildegard’s letter again. She had written of the coronation as a door, and of Aldric as the key. But keys, he knew, could also be used to lock doors. The question was which side of the door he wanted to be on.

The first sign of trouble came at midday, when a rider appeared on the ridge ahead, his horse lathered and blowing. He wore the colors of the imperial courier service, but his face was pale beneath the grime. He reined in before Aldric and slid from the saddle, saluting Rotrude with a bow that was more exhaustion than deference.

“Princess,” he gasped. “Lord Aldric. The Avar delegation has been attacked.”

Rotrude’s eyes narrowed. “By whom?”

“Bandits, the scouts say. But there were too many, and they were too well-armed. The envoys are scattered. Three are dead. The rest have taken refuge in a monastery half a day’s ride south.”

Aldric felt the familiar weight settle on his shoulders, the gravity of a problem that was not his but which he could not ignore. “And the Emperor?”

“He has halted at the Lech. He sends word that you are to retrieve the envoys and bring them to him. Unharmed.”

“Of course he does,” Aldric muttered. He turned to Rotrude. “This is your father’s doing.”

She raised an eyebrow. “You think he arranged an attack on his own envoys?”

“I think he arranged an opportunity,” Aldric said. “He knows I am trying to escape. He knows the only way I can do that is to make the coronation too costly. So he has handed me a crisis that requires my mind, my reputation, and my presence. If I succeed, I am bound tighter. If I fail, he has an excuse to keep me close.”

Rotrude was silent for a moment. Then she said, “You are not always wrong, Lord Aldric. But this time, I think you may be right.”

The monastery was a squat, stone building huddled against a hillside, its walls scarred by weather and neglect. The abbot met them at the gate, his hands trembling as he led them to the refectory where the surviving envoys huddled over a weak fire. There were four of them, Avar nobles in torn silks, their faces etched with fear and suspicion. One of them, a grey-bearded man with a gold ring on his thumb, rose as Aldric entered.

“You are the Frankish lord,” he said in halting Latin. “The one they call the Idle.”

Aldric inclined his head. “I prefer to think of myself as efficient.”

The Avar stared at him, then laughed, a dry sound like wind through dead leaves. “Efficient. Yes. Your Emperor sent you to fetch us, like sheep. But the wolves that attacked us were not bandits. They were Franks.”

Aldric felt the cold settle in his stomach. “You are certain?”

“I am certain of what I saw. They rode with Frankish saddles and Frankish swords. They spoke Frankish to one another when they thought we could not hear.” The grey-bearded man stepped closer. “Your Emperor wishes to blame the Avars for the failure of the peace. He wishes to have his war, and his crown, and his glory. And he does not care how many of us die to get it.”

Rotrude had gone very still. Aldric glanced at her, then back at the Avar. “If that is true,” he said slowly, “then you are not safe here. And neither am I.”

The Avar nodded. “Then where do we go?”

Aldric thought of Hildegard’s letter, of the arithmetic of crowns and costs. He thought of the writ of immunity in his saddlebag, and the vineyards that grew more distant with every choice he made. He thought of Charlemagne’s laughter, echoing across the marshes, and the way the Emperor had looked at him—not as a tool, but as a mirror.

“We go to Rome,” Aldric said. “But we do not go the way your attackers expect. We go by the mountain roads, through the passes that the merchants avoid. And we go now, before the snow closes the gates.”

The Avar studied him for a long moment. “And what do you want in return, Idle Lord?”

Aldric almost laughed. He wanted nothing. He wanted to be free of this entire, impossible tangle of crowns and envoys and emperors. But he knew, with the certainty of a man who had read too many histories, that the only way to be free was to finish the game.

“I want you to tell the Emperor exactly what you saw,” Aldric said. “And I want you to tell him that the price of his crown is higher than he thinks.”

He turned to the door, Gerold and Rotrude following. The snow had begun to fall again, thin and bitter, whitening the stones of the monastery yard.

“You are playing a dangerous game,” Rotrude said quietly.

“I am not playing,” Aldric said. “I am trying to end it.”

But even as he spoke, he felt the familiar whisper at the back of his mind—the treacherous voice that told him he could shape the storm, that he could bend the Emperor’s will to his own, that he could emerge from this with his vineyards and his freedom intact. He crushed it, as he always did, and swung into the saddle.

The road to Rome was paved with ashes and kindling, and someone had just struck the first spark.