Chapter 87: The Cartulary of Thawed Strangers

The scroll lay on the table between them like a snake coiled in winter, waiting for warmth to strike.

Aldric did not touch it. He had broken the seal already—that was done, the wax crumbled between his fingers before he had thought better of it—but he had not read the words. Instead he had carried it to the corner of the hall where the fire had burned low, where the shadows pooled thickest, and he had sat with it unrolled just enough to see the opening line.

Now Gerold stood in the doorway, snow melting from his cloak in dark rivulets, and Rotrude had appeared at his shoulder like a ghost summoned by the smell of trouble.

"Well?" she said. "What does it say?"

Aldric looked at the scroll. The new Pope's hand was neat, deliberate, the letters formed with the patience of a man who had spent decades copying Scripture before he had ever dreamed of wearing the fisherman's ring. Leo, he had signed himself. A name chosen, Aldric suspected, with the same care a general chooses ground for battle.

"The Holy Father," Aldric said slowly, "wishes to congratulate me on my forthcoming journey to Rome."

Gerold grunted. "That is not congratulations."

"No."

"That is a summons."

"That," Aldric agreed, "is a leash."

He let the scroll curl closed again. His fingers were cold, though the fire had been built high enough to warm the whole hall. The winter at Paderborn had been long—longer than any he had endured since boyhood, when the Vosges had seemed an entire world and the snow had been a friend rather than a jailer. Now the snow was melting, and with the thaw came roads, and with roads came men, and with men came purposes not his own.

He had spent the frozen months counting ways to lose. He had filled a cartulary with them, page after page of ledgers and estimates and quiet calculations, each one a small brick in the wall he meant to build between himself and the Emperor's designs. He had watched bishops arrive and depart. He had listened to nobles argue about precedence. He had learned the price of every favor and the weight of every promise.

And now a dead Pope had reached out from his grave and handed Aldric a new question.

"Read it to me," Rotrude said. She had come closer, her footsteps soft on the rushes. Her father's daughter in every line of her face—the same broad brow, the same unsettling directness. "All of it."

Aldric considered refusing. It was his habit, and a good one. But Rotrude had a way of waiting that made refusal feel like a confession of weakness.

He unrolled the scroll again.

"'To the most noble Lord Aldric, of the Vosges, greeting in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.'" He paused. "Already he flatters. That is not a good sign."

"Continue."

"'We have heard much of your wisdom, and of the esteem in which our beloved son Charles, King of the Franks, holds you. It has come to our attention that you are to undertake a journey to the holy city, and we wish to assure you of our prayers and our protection.'"

Gerold shifted his weight. "Protection," he muttered. "That is a word with teeth."

Aldric kept reading. "'Yet we must also speak plainly. The matter of the imperial title is one that touches the whole of Christendom. It is not a thing to be decided in haste, nor by the swords of soldiers alone. We have considered the question deeply, and we believe there is a path that honors both the See of Peter and the throne of the Franks. But such a path requires men of discernment. Men such as yourself.'"

He stopped.

The fire cracked. Somewhere beyond the walls, a horse whinnied, and another answered.

"He knows," Rotrude said quietly. "He knows why you are coming."

Aldric let the scroll fall closed. "He knows what I told the Emperor I would do. That is not the same thing."

"Is it not?"

No, he thought. It is not. But it is close enough to be dangerous.

He stood, and his knees protested, and he ignored them. The hall was dim, the shutters closed against the cold, and the only light came from the hearth and from the narrow gaps where the wind had worked the wood loose. He walked to the fire and stood with his back to it, letting the heat soak into his cloak.

"Hildegard," he said.

Gerold frowned. "The abbess?"

"She burned a letter. At Saint Bernard. She said some knots must be burned, not cut." He turned to face them. "I did not understand then. I thought she meant the Pope's demands, or the Emperor's ambitions, or the tangle of oaths and obligations that bind us all. But she meant this. She meant that the new Pope would reach for me before I could reach for him."

Rotrude's eyes narrowed. "You think she knew?"

"I think she knows everything. It is her chief vice, and her only virtue."

"Then why did she not warn you?"

Aldric smiled without humor. "Because warnings are for people who might avoid the danger. I am already in it. The only question is what shape the trap takes."

He looked at the scroll again. The new Pope's letter was not a threat. It was worse. It was an invitation. And invitations, in Aldric's experience, were the most dangerous letters of all—because they required an answer.

"Gerold," he said. "Find me a scribe. Not one of the Emperor's men. One of the Saxon priests, the ones who came south with the hostages."

Gerold's scarred face tightened. "You mean to write back."

"I mean to buy time. The Pope offers protection. I will accept it, and I will thank him, and I will say nothing at all about what I actually intend to do. And while he waits for my answer, I will think."

"Think about what?"

Aldric sat down again, heavily, and reached for the wine that had gone untouched since morning.

"About whether the Pope's protection is worth more than the Emperor's favor," he said. "And about what happens when both of them realize I have promised nothing to either."

Rotrude laughed—a small, sharp sound. "You are planning to betray them both."

"I am planning," Aldric said, "to go home. Everything else is detail."

But even as he said it, he felt the lie settle into his bones like cold water. Because the Pope had not written to a man who wanted to go home. He had written to a man who could shape an empire, and he had written with the confidence of a man who knew exactly what he was doing.

And somewhere in Rome, in the shadow of the Lateran, someone was already counting the days until Aldric arrived.

The door opened. A draft of cold air swept through the hall, and with it came the smell of wet earth and melting snow—the first true breath of spring.

A messenger stood on the threshold, his boots caked with mud, his face gray with exhaustion.

"Lord Aldric," he said. "I bring word from the south. The Pope's legates have crossed the Alps. They carry a proposal for the Emperor."

Aldric set down his cup.

"Of course they do," he said.

The thaw had begun.