Chapter 9: The Weight of Silence

The rain came in sheets across the Rhine, turning the roads to paste and the sky to the color of old lead. Drogo rode with his hood pulled low, his shoulders hunched in a parody of misery that required no great effort to maintain. Beside him, Bernard of Septimania sat his horse like a man carved from stone, water streaming from the brim of his helm, his eyes fixed on the distant smoke that rose from the roofs of Aachen.

“You could have stayed in the monastery,” Bernard said, not looking at him. “You chose to come.”

“I chose to be seen,” Drogo replied. “There is a difference.”

“Is there?”

Drogo smiled beneath his hood. “When you are seen, you are remembered. When you are remembered, you are accounted for. And when you are accounted for, no one wonders where you are when they are not looking.”

Bernard turned his head, rain dripping from his beard. “And where will you be, when they are not looking?”

“Somewhere else.”

They rode on in silence. The road to Aachen was crowded with the detritus of an empire in motion—supply carts mired to their axles, messengers splashing past with pouches of wax-sealed letters, a column of armored men marching south with the grim efficiency of wolves. Drogo noted each with the same lazy, half-lidded watchfulness that had become his armor. He let his reins hang loose. He let his mouth fall slightly open. He let his eyes wander, unfocused, as if the weight of the world were too much for him to bear.

It was a performance he had perfected over the years, and it served him well.

Aachen rose before them like a memory of grandeur. The palace chapel gleamed wetly in the gray light, its octagonal dome a monument to a glory that was already fading. Charlemagne had built it to house his bones and his legacy. His son was using it to house his grief.

They found Louis the Pious in the chapel, as Drogo had known they would. The emperor knelt before the altar, his crown set aside on a cushion, his gray hair plastered to his skull. He was praying, or trying to—his lips moved, but his eyes were open, fixed on the crucifix above the candles, and there was something in them that looked less like devotion and more like drowning.

Drogo approached slowly, his boots echoing on the stone. He did not kneel. He waited.

“Father.”

Louis did not turn. “I sent for you three days ago.”

“The roads were bad.”

“The roads are always bad when you do not wish to travel them.” The emperor rose, his joints creaking like old timbers. He looked at Drogo, and for a moment there was something in his gaze that was almost sharp—a flicker of the man who had once ruled half the world. Then it faded, swallowed by the exhaustion that had become his constant companion. “You have heard, then. About Lothar.”

“I have heard many things,” Drogo said carefully. “I do not know which of them are true.”

“He has crossed the Alps. He is raising an army. He calls himself emperor of the West.” Louis’s voice cracked on the last word. “My own son. My firstborn. He seeks to unseat me.”

Drogo said nothing. There was nothing to say that would not be a lie. Lothar had been moving toward this for years, and everyone with eyes had seen it coming. Everyone except the man who had refused to look.

“I have sent word to Pepin,” Louis continued, pacing now, his hands clasped behind his back. “And to Louis. I have asked them to come to Aachen, to stand with their father against their brother. I have offered them lands, honors, whatever they desire. I have offered Lothar the same, if he will but lay down his arms.”

“And will they come?”

Louis stopped. He looked at Drogo with an expression that was almost pleading. “They are my sons. They will come.”

Drogo held his father’s gaze for a long moment. Then he said, softly, “They are your sons, Father. That is precisely why I would not count on it.”

The words hung in the air like smoke. Louis’s face crumpled, and for a terrible moment Drogo thought the old man might weep. But instead he straightened, drawing himself up with a dignity that seemed to cost him more than any battle.

“You have always been a disappointment to me, Drogo,” Louis said quietly. “You have never taken anything seriously. You have never shown the slightest ambition for the crown, the church, or even the meager honors a prince might claim. I told myself it was youthful folly. I told myself you would grow into your blood.”

Drogo waited.

“But I wonder now,” Louis continued, “if I have been a fool. I wonder if you have been playing a game I do not understand, and whether you are the only one of my sons who has ever truly seen the world as it is.”

Drogo felt a chill run down his spine. He did not let it show. “I am not playing a game, Father. I am simply tired.”

“Tired of what?”

“Of watching men destroy themselves for things that will not matter in a hundred years.”

Louis studied him for a long moment. Then he turned away, waving a hand in dismissal. “Go. Find your chambers. Rest. We will speak again tomorrow, when the rain has stopped.”

Drogo bowed and withdrew. But as he reached the door, Louis’s voice stopped him.

“Drogo.”

He turned.

“There is a woman in the palace. Judith’s cousin. She has been asking about you.” Louis’s voice was flat. “She claims to have seen you in Cologne, three weeks ago, at a gathering of men who are not friends to this house.”

Drogo felt the trap close around him. He kept his face blank. “I do not know what she saw. I was in the monastery at the time, praying for my father’s health.”

“Were you?”

“I am always praying for my father’s health.”

Louis smiled, and it was not a kind smile. “Then perhaps you should pray harder. Because if I find that you have been lying to me, Drogo—if I find that you have been playing your little games with the enemies of this house—I will forget that you are my son. And I will treat you as I would treat any traitor.”

The words fell like stones into still water.

Drogo bowed again, deeper this time. “I understand, Father.”

He left the chapel with his heart hammering against his ribs, but his stride unhurried, his face serene. Behind him, the candles guttered in the draft from the door, and Louis the Pious knelt once more before the altar, praying to a God who had long since stopped answering.