Chapter 73: The Cartulary of Thawed Ground

The road south from Paderborn had turned to a river of mud, and Aldric of the Vosges rode through it with the expression of a man who had personally offended every god in the Christian pantheon and was now awaiting their collective reply.

Behind him, Gerold the Saxon muttered something in his native tongue that was either a prayer or a curse. Given the Saxon's history with Christianity, Aldric suspected it was both.

"He's been like this for three days," Gerold said to no one in particular. "Three days without a single scheme. Without a single complaint. It's unnatural."

"Perhaps I am simply enjoying the scenery," Aldric said, not turning.

"The scenery is mud, my lord. Mud and more mud, and behind us the ashes of a dozen Saxon villages, and ahead of us a mountain range that wants to kill us."

"You paint a vivid picture, Gerold. You should consider a career in the Church."

"I'd rather consider a career in drowning myself in the nearest river."

Aldric almost smiled. Almost. But the weight of Hildegard's parchment pressed against his ribs from inside his tunic, and the writ of immunity—still unearned, still unsigned, still a mockery of a promise—sat in his saddlebag like a stone he could not put down.

The thaw had come, as she had said it would. The snows that had blocked the Alpine passes were retreating, and with them went every excuse Aldric had constructed to delay the inevitable. Rome was no longer a distant threat. It was a destination.

He had spent the nights since the shrine of Saint Bernard turning Hildegard's arithmetic over in his mind, searching for the flaw, the crack, the place where the numbers did not add up. But her figures were sound. The coronation could be made costly—so costly that even Charlemagne might balk at the price. The problem was not the arithmetic. The problem was that Aldric no longer knew whether he wanted the sum to come out in his favor.

"You've been quiet," Gerold said, urging his horse alongside. "Quieter than usual. It's unsettling."

"I am thinking."

"That's what worries me."

Aldric finally turned to look at his bodyguard. The Saxon's scarred face was half-hidden beneath a hood of oiled wool, but his eyes were sharp and watchful, as they always were. Gerold had been with him since the beginning—since the drainage plan that had saved Aachen, since the forged illness that had conquered the Avars, since every disaster that had somehow become a triumph. The man had every right to be baffled. Aldric was baffled himself.

"I am thinking," Aldric said slowly, "that I have spent the better part of a decade trying to go home. And every road I have taken has led me further from it."

Gerold nodded. "Aye. I've noticed."

"And I am thinking that perhaps the problem is not the roads. Perhaps the problem is me."

Gerold was silent for a long moment. Then he said, "You're only realizing this now?"

Aldric laughed—a genuine laugh, surprising them both. "I have been told I am a slow learner."

"No, my lord. You are a fast learner who pretends to be slow so that no one will ask you to learn anything else."

The laugh died in Aldric's throat. He stared at Gerold, who stared back with the flat, unapologetic gaze of a man who had spent too many years watching his master outwit everyone except himself.

"That," Aldric said, "was unkind."

"It was true."

"It can be both."

They rode in silence for a while, the horses picking their way through the mire. Around them, the Emperor's army stretched in a long, ragged line—supply wagons, mounted knights, foot soldiers, priests, scribes, cooks, and camp followers. A city on the move, bound for Rome, bound for a crown, bound for a moment that would change the world.

And somewhere in that vast, crawling organism, Charlemagne rode at the center, surrounded by his counts and bishops and generals, a man who had conquered half of Christendom and was now preparing to claim the other half.

Aldric thought of the Emperor's laughter in the torchlight. He thought of Rotrude's warning. He thought of Hildegard's final words at the shrine, spoken with that low, almost kind laugh that had haunted him for weeks.

*You already have, Aldric. You came.*

She had known. Of course she had known. Hildegard of Metz had always seen through him, from the first moment they had been betrothed as children, two sharp-edged minds circling each other like blades. She had known he would come to Rome. She had known he would try to ruin the coronation. And she had known, perhaps better than he did, that his attempt at ruin would succeed.

The question was: what did she want him to do with that success?

A rider approached from the front of the column—one of the Emperor's messengers, his horse lathered and his face flushed with urgency. He reined in beside Aldric and thrust a sealed parchment into his hand.

"From the Emperor," the messenger said. "He requires your presence at the evening camp. There is a matter of logistics to discuss."

The messenger wheeled his horse and rode back toward the front, spraying mud in his wake. Aldric broke the seal and read the brief message within.

*Aldric. The Alpine passes are melting faster than anticipated. We will reach Rome by the middle of November. I require your assessment of the route through the Brenner and your recommendation for the final approach to the city. Do not disappoint me.*

There was no signature. Charlemagne had never needed one.

Aldric folded the parchment and tucked it into his tunic, beside Hildegard's. Two messages. Two women—one an abbess, one a princess—who saw him more clearly than he saw himself. And one Emperor who had decided, long ago, that Aldric's mind was worth more than his peace.

"The Brenner Pass," Aldric murmured. "He wants to go through the Brenner."

"The fastest route," Gerold said. "But narrow. Vulnerable."

"Vulnerable to whom? The Lombards are conquered. The Bavarians are cowed. The Saxons are—" He paused, thinking of the burned villages behind them. "The Saxons are occupied. There is no enemy left to ambush an imperial procession."

"Then why does he need your assessment?"

It was a good question. Aldric turned it over in his mind, examining it from every angle, and found no answer that pleased him.

"Because he wants me to see something," he said at last. "Something in the route. Something in the numbers."

"Something in the arithmetic," Gerold said, and there was a grim note in his voice.

Aldric nodded slowly. "Hildegard told me to count again. She said the numbers had changed. And now the Emperor summons me to discuss logistics on the very road where the numbers matter most."

"You think they're working together."

"I think," Aldric said, "that I have been playing a game I thought I understood, against opponents who have been playing a different game entirely."

He looked south, where the road vanished into the gray distance, toward the Alps and the passes and the ancient city that waited beyond. The thaw had come. The ground was soft and yielding beneath his horse's hooves, no longer frozen, no longer hard.

*The cartulary of thawed ground*, he thought. The ledger of what emerges when the ice melts. Of what has been buried all winter, waiting to be found.

He did not know what the Emperor wanted him to see. He did not know what Hildegard had planned. But he knew, with the certainty of a man who had read too many histories and written too many schemes, that the road to Rome would not end in ruin.

It would end in revelation.

"Gerold," he said.

"My lord?"

"Tonight, at the Emperor's camp, I will need you to watch. Watch the faces of the counts and bishops. Watch who smiles when I speak and who does not. Watch everything."

"And what will you be doing?"

Aldric smiled, and for the first time in weeks, it was not the smile of a man who wanted to lose.

"I will be counting," he said. "And this time, I intend to get the sum right."

He urged his horse forward, into the mud and the thaw and the long, gray road south.

Behind him, Gerold followed, muttering prayers and curses in equal measure, as the first drops of spring rain began to fall.