Chapter 65: The Cartulary of Frozen Presents

The snow had begun again, thin and spiteful, sifting through the pines like the whispers of a courtier who wished you ill but lacked the courage to say so aloud. Aldric pulled his cloak tighter and watched the column of horsemen wind down the far slope of the pass, their banners limp against the grey sky. Somewhere ahead, beyond the frozen rivers and the smoldering villages, Rome waited with its marble and its promises. And in Rome, a man named Berengar was about to receive a gift he had not asked for.

“You are brooding,” Gerold said. The Saxon rode beside him, his scarred face turned into the wind, his hand resting on the pommel of his sword out of habit rather than threat.

“I am thinking,” Aldric corrected. “There is a difference.”

“Is there?” Gerold asked. “When you brood, you scheme. When you scheme, people die. Forgive me if I cannot tell the difference.”

Aldric opened his mouth to answer, but the words died in his throat. A rider was approaching from the head of the column, his horse lathered and blowing. The man wore the livery of the imperial messenger service, and he carried a leather satchel that had been sealed with wax the color of dried blood.

“Lord Aldric,” the rider said, reining in. “A gift from the Emperor.”

Aldric felt the familiar cold settle in his stomach. “I do not accept gifts from Charlemagne. They always arrive with strings attached, and the strings are usually barbed.”

The rider shrugged. “He said you would say that. He also said to tell you that this particular gift is not from him. It is from the Abbess Hildegard.”

Aldric’s hand paused halfway to the satchel. Behind him, he heard Rotrude’s horse shift, and he knew without turning that her eyes had sharpened with interest.

“Hildegard,” he repeated. “She is supposed to be in Metz.”

“She was,” the rider said. “She is no longer. The letter explains.”

Aldric took the satchel and broke the seal. The parchment inside was folded into tight quarters, the script neat and angular—Hildegard’s hand, unmistakable even after all these years. He read it once, then again, and felt the cold in his stomach spread to his chest.

*Aldric—*

*By the time you read this, I will be in Rome. I have secured an audience with Pope Leo, who is in need of allies. He has heard of your reputation—the lord who solves problems by refusing to solve them—and he finds it useful. You are to present yourself at the Lateran Palace no later than the Feast of Saint Andrew. Do not be late.*

*I have also taken the liberty of arranging a meeting between you and Berengar. He is a man of simple appetites: gold, land, and the assurance that his sins will be forgiven. He does not know yet that he is the hinge upon which the Emperor’s coronation will turn. You will tell him.*

*Do not thank me. I am not doing this for you.*

*—H.*

Aldric folded the letter and slipped it into his tunic. The snow continued to fall, and the column continued to move, and the world continued to spin toward a future he had never wanted.

“Well?” Rotrude asked, urging her horse alongside his. “What does the abbess say?”

“She says she is in Rome,” Aldric said. “She says she has arranged a meeting with Berengar. She says I am to present myself at the Lateran Palace before the Feast of Saint Andrew.”

Rotrude’s eyes narrowed. “That is barely a fortnight away.”

“I am aware.”

“And you are going?”

Aldric looked at her. The princess’s face was unreadable, but there was something in her voice—a note of genuine curiosity, perhaps even concern—that he had not heard before.

“I am going,” he said. “Because Hildegard has never once steered me wrong, and because the alternative is to let Berengar make his own choices. And a man like Berengar, left to his own devices, will choose the path of greatest destruction.”

“That is not a reason to go,” Rotrude said. “That is a reason to run.”

Aldric smiled, and it was not a kind smile. “I have spent my entire life running, Princess. Running from duty, from responsibility, from the weight of a name I never wanted. And every time I run, I end up exactly where Hildegard intended me to be. So perhaps it is time to try a different approach.”

“Which is?”

“To stop running,” Aldric said. “To walk into the trap with my eyes open. To see what she sees, and to understand why she has spent so many years maneuvering me toward a fate I have spent so many years avoiding.”

Gerold made a sound that might have been a laugh. “And here I thought you had given up on wisdom.”

“I have given up on idleness,” Aldric said. “They are not the same thing.”

The column moved on, and Aldric rode in silence, the letter burning against his chest. He thought of Hildegard’s arithmetic, of the sums she had laid out for him in the shrine, of the way she had always seen the shape of the future before he had even learned to look.

He thought of Berengar—a man he had never met, a man whose name had been whispered in the corridors of power for years. A man who held the key to the Emperor’s coronation, and who did not yet know that the key would be his undoing.

And he thought of the gift, still unopened, at the bottom of the satchel.

It was a small box, carved from oak, wrapped in a scrap of linen. Inside, nestled in a bed of dried lavender, lay a ring of hammered silver, set with a stone the color of winter sky. The stone was carved with a single word, too small to read at first glance. Aldric held it up to the fading light and felt his breath catch.

*Patience.*

He slipped the ring onto his finger. It fit as though it had been made for him, which, he realized with a chill, it probably had.

“What is that?” Gerold asked.

“A reminder,” Aldric said. “That the longest road is the one that leads home.”

The Saxon frowned. “That makes no sense.”

“It is not meant to,” Aldric said. “It is meant to be felt.”

He turned his horse south, toward the Alps, toward Rome, toward the man named Berengar and the coronation that would either set him free or bind him forever.

The snow continued to fall, and the road continued to unspool before him, and somewhere ahead, in the marble halls of the Lateran Palace, a woman who had once been his future was waiting with a knife to cut the knot.

He did not know whether she meant to set him free or bind him tighter. But he knew, with the certainty of a man who has read too many histories, that he would go to her anyway.

Because the path of least resistance had never once led him home.

And he was beginning to think it never would.