Chapter 77: The Cartulary of Thawed Debts

The thaw came late that year, and with it the smell of things long buried.

Aldric stood at the edge of the camp outside Rome, watching the Tiber run brown and swollen with snowmelt from the Apennines. The road behind him had been a long unspooling of mud and misery, of frozen cart tracks and horses lamed on ice, of Gerold's silent endurance and Rotrude's sharp-eyed observations. The road ahead was worse: a city of marble and intrigue, where a crown waited to be placed on a head that had no business wearing it.

He had not slept well in weeks. The writ of immunity still lay in his saddlebag, unmarked, unsealed, useless. Hildegard's letter—the one she had burned—weighed on him more than any parchment ever could. He did not know what it had said. He only knew that she had wept when she read it, and Hildegard of Metz did not weep.

"You are brooding again," said Gerold, appearing at his elbow with a bowl of something that might have been stew. "It is unbecoming in a man of your station."

"I am not brooding. I am contemplating the infinite variety of ways in which I have failed to secure my own happiness."

"That is brooding."

Aldric took the bowl. The stew was thin and tasted of turnips, but it was warm, and warmth was the only currency that mattered in a Roman winter. "Where is the Princess?"

"With the Emperor's chaplains. She has been asking questions about the coronation rites. Difficult questions."

"Of course she has." Aldric spooned up a turnip and chewed it thoughtfully. "She is her father's daughter. She cannot help but meddle."

"She is also your ally," Gerold said. "Or she was."

"She is no one's ally. She is a cat playing with mice, and we are all mice." Aldric set the bowl aside. "What news from the city?"

"Pope Leo has returned to Rome. The faction that attacked him—the relatives of the late Pope Hadrian—have fled to Campania. The Emperor's men are hunting them, but they have not yet been found."

Aldric nodded slowly. He had heard this already, in fragments, from messengers on the road. The attack on Pope Leo in April of the previous year—the attempt to blind him and cut out his tongue—had been the pretext for Charlemagne's final journey south. The Pope had fled to Paderborn, to the Emperor's protection. And now the Emperor was returning him to Rome, not as a fugitive, but as a conqueror.

It was all so neatly arranged. Too neatly.

"What are you thinking?" Gerold asked.

"I am thinking that the attack on the Pope was too convenient. Too timely. The Emperor needed a reason to march on Rome, and lo, one appeared."

"You believe he arranged it?"

"I believe he did not need to. I believe there are men in Rome who wanted him to come, and men who wanted him to stay away, and the attack served the purposes of the former." Aldric rubbed his temples. "The question is not who struck the Pope. The question is who benefits."

"And who benefits?"

Aldric looked at the city, shimmering in the distance, its domes and towers catching the pale winter light. "The man who will be crowned emperor in three days' time. Or the men who will place the crown on his head. Or—" He stopped.

"Or?"

"Or the man who is supposed to prevent it." He picked up the bowl again, if only to have something to do with his hands. "Hildegard's arithmetic. She said the price of the crown would be too high. But she never told me what the price was. She only told me to make it so."

"And have you?"

Aldric was silent for a long moment. Then he said, "I have made a list. Of all the things that could go wrong. Of all the ways the coronation could be delayed, or disrupted, or made so costly that the Emperor would abandon it. And do you know what I found?"

"What?"

"Every single one of them requires me to do something. To act. To intervene. To be—" He grimaced. "Useful."

Gerold grunted. "That is the nature of schemes."

"No. That is the nature of my schemes. Other men scheme to gain power, or wealth, or glory. I scheme to be left alone, and every scheme ends with me more entangled than before." He set the bowl down again, harder than he intended. "I am beginning to think the universe has a sense of humor."

"Or a purpose."

Aldric looked at him sharply. "What do you mean?"

Gerold shrugged, the movement awkward with his scarred shoulder. "I am a Saxon. My people were conquered by a man who wanted to be emperor. I watched my village burn because Charlemagne wanted to extend his empire to the Elbe. And now I serve a Frankish lord who wants nothing more than to go home." He met Aldric's eyes. "Perhaps you are not here by accident. Perhaps you are here because you are the only man in this camp who does not want what the Emperor is offering."

"And what is that?"

"A crown. A legacy. A place in history." Gerold spat on the ground. "I have seen what men do for such things. They burn villages. They break oaths. They forget the faces of their dead." He picked up the empty bowl. "You have not forgotten. That is why you are dangerous."

Aldric stared at him. It was the most Gerold had said in weeks, and it landed like a blow. "I am not dangerous. I am lazy."

"You are the same thing, my lord. In the right hands."

Before Aldric could respond, a horn sounded from the camp's eastern gate. Hooves thundered on the frozen road, and a rider in imperial livery came galloping toward the command tents. Aldric watched him pass, his heart sinking.

"That is a messenger from the city," he said. "Something has happened."

They found out what it was an hour later, when Rotrude appeared at his tent flap, her face pale beneath her hood.

"The Pope has called a council," she said. "All the bishops and cardinals in Rome. He intends to present the case for my father's coronation."

Aldric's blood ran cold. "When?"

"Tomorrow. The coronation will be on Christmas Day, as planned, but the council will make the declaration first. It will be binding. Irrevocable." She stepped inside, letting the flap fall behind her. "My father will be crowned Emperor of the Romans, and there is nothing anyone can do to stop it."

Aldric sat down heavily on his camp stool. "Hildegard's arithmetic."

"What?"

"She said the price of the crown would be too high. She said I should make it so." He looked up at Rotrude. "But she never told me what the price was. And now—" He stopped, a terrible thought forming in his mind.

"Now what?"

He stood abruptly, crossing to his saddlebag. He pulled out the writ of immunity—the document Hildegard had given him, the one that was supposed to free him from the Emperor's service. He had never read it carefully. He had been too afraid of what it might say.

Now he unrolled it and read it in the dim light of the tent.

His hands began to shake.

"What is it?" Rotrude asked.

He did not answer. He was reading the fine script at the bottom of the page, the part he had overlooked. The part Hildegard had written in her own hand, beneath the formal language of the writ.

*The price of the crown is not gold, nor blood, nor service. The price is a witness. One who will see what is done and remember it truly. One who will not look away.*

*You are that witness, Aldric. You always were.*

*Forgive me.*

He let the parchment fall.

"Lord Aldric?" Rotrude's voice was sharp now. "What does it say?"

He turned to face her, and his expression was strange—half despair, half something that might have been recognition.

"It says I am not here to ruin the coronation," he said slowly. "I am here to remember it."

Outside, the horns sounded again, and the camp stirred with the news of the coming council. The road to Rome had ended. The road of ashes had led him here, to this tent, to this moment, to a truth he had spent years trying to avoid.

He was not a man who fled glory. He was a man who fled witness. And there was no running from that now.

"Gerold," he said. "Bring me ink and parchment. If I am to be a witness, I will at least be an accurate one."

The Saxon warrior nodded and left. Rotrude remained, watching him with those unreadable eyes.

"You knew," she said quietly. "Didn't you? All this time."

"No," Aldric said. "But I am beginning to understand." He picked up the writ again, folding it carefully. "The price of the crown is not too high for the Emperor. It is too high for me."

He looked toward the tent flap, toward the city waiting beyond the frozen river, toward the coronation that would change everything.

"I have a coronation to remember," he said. "And I have never forgotten anything in my life."