Chapter 7: The Abbess’s Arithmetic

He found her not in the chapel, but in the palace’s eastern garden, where the emperor’s roses grew in stubborn defiance of the northern clime. She stood with her back to him, examining a gnarled vine with the same clinical scrutiny she once applied to his boyhood letters.

“You’ve let the blight take the lower branches,” she said without turning. “A shame. The emperor’s gardener would weep.”

Aldric stopped at the gravel path’s edge. “I didn’t come to discuss horticulture.”

“No. You came to discover why I’m here.” Hildegard turned, and the late afternoon sun caught the silver thread in her veil. She was forty now, nine years his elder, and age had only sharpened the angles of her face. “You always did prefer to walk into traps with your eyes open.”

“Then open them for me.”

She smiled—a thin, knowing curve that had once undone him entirely. “Your drainage plan. The one you sketched in three hours to avoid attending the council on Avar tribute.”

Aldric felt his stomach tighten. “What of it?”

“It was brilliant. The bishop of Mainz has already ordered copies made for every monastery in his see. He believes it a sign of divine inspiration that a layman should solve the Fens problem so completely.” She plucked a dead leaf from the vine. “Charles agrees. He has decided you shall oversee its implementation across the entire Rhine floodplain.”

“I am a vintner, not a hydrologist.”

“You are whatever the emperor needs you to be.” Hildegard’s voice carried no mockery, only a weary accuracy. “I came to warn you. Not out of affection—let us be clear on that—but because your failure would inconvenience my own plans. I have spent three years building the abbey’s grain reserves against the coming famine. If the Rhine floods take the harvest, my sisters starve.”

Aldric pressed his fingers to his temples. “The coming famine. You speak of it as though it were an appointment.”

“It is. The winter of 793 will be the harshest in living memory. The ice will come early and stay late. The harvest will fail across three kingdoms.” She stepped closer, and he caught the scent of lavender and old parchment. “I have read the same works you have, Aldric. I simply chose to do something with them.”

He laughed, though there was no joy in it. “And I chose to do nothing. That was the entire point.”

“And yet here you stand, in Aachen, having saved the palace from siege and outmaneuvered the Avars, while your vineyards rot untended in the Vosges.” She tilted her head. “You are the laziest man I have ever known, and somehow the most effective. Have you considered that perhaps God has a sense of humor?”

“I have considered that God is a tyrant who delights in my suffering.”

“Then we agree on His nature, if not His purpose.” She turned back toward the palace. “I have secured an audience with the emperor this evening. I intend to present a counter-proposal: that the drainage project be managed by a consortium of monasteries, with you serving only as advisor. It will halve your burden.”

Aldric’s eyes narrowed. “Why would you do that?”

“Because I need you functional, not crushed beneath a royal commission. The famine will require coordination across dioceses, and you are the only person in this court who understands both the mathematics and the politics.” She paused at the garden gate. “Also, I find your misery amusing. It would be a shame to see it extinguished by overwork.”

She was gone before he could respond, leaving him alone with the roses and the weight of her words. The winter of 793. He had read the signs himself—the unusual bird migrations, the early thickening of walnut shells, the strange pallor of the autumn sun. He had simply chosen not to think on them, the way he chose not to think on many things.

Gerold appeared at the path’s far end, his scarred face creased with worry. “My lord. The emperor summons you.”

“Of course he does.” Aldric brushed soil from his tunic. “Does he say why?”

“He says—” Gerold hesitated. “He says you are to be measured for new robes. For the journey to Rome.”

Aldric’s blood went cold. Rome. The pope had been sending increasingly frantic letters throughout the summer, begging Charles to intervene against the Lombard rebels who threatened the Holy See. A journey to Rome meant a crown, or at the very least, a settlement that would reshape the balance of Christendom. It meant months of travel, of ceremony, of being watched by every eye in Europe.

“Tell him I am ill.”

“My lord, that excuse has failed three times this year already.”

“Then tell him I am dead.”

Gerold’s expression did not change. “I am to inform you that the emperor has already anticipated that response. He says, and I quote: ‘If Aldric is dead, I shall have him embalmed and carried to Rome anyway, for his counsel is worth more than his corpse is heavy.’” The warrior paused. “He laughed when he said it.”

Aldric closed his eyes. The garden swam behind his lids, red and gold. Somewhere in the palace, he could hear the distant sound of singing—the chapel choir, practicing for the Advent service. Hildegard would be there, her sharp eyes missing nothing. Rotrude would be in the library, plotting her own small rebellions. And Charlemagne, the great bull of the Franks, would be sharpening his horns for the next conquest.

“Very well,” Aldric said at last. “Very well. But if I am to be dragged to Rome, I shall do it on my own terms.”

Gerold’s eyebrow rose. “My lord?”

“I will need writing materials. A dozen quills, the finest vellum, and the complete records of the imperial treasury for the past five years.” A plan was forming in his mind, a scheme so audacious that even Hildegard would be forced to admire it. “If Charles wishes to make me an instrument of his ambition, then I shall show him what a truly dangerous instrument looks like.”

He turned from the roses, and for the first time in months, Aldric of the Vosges smiled. It was not a pleasant expression.

“Gerold, fetch me the letters of Pope Hadrian. All of them, from the past decade.” He began walking toward the palace, his steps quickening. “There is a pattern in them, I think—a pattern that no one else has noticed.”

“What pattern, my lord?”

“The pope asks for help. The emperor sends aid. The pope gives thanks. And then—” Aldric stopped at the threshold, looking back at the garden where Hildegard had stood. “And then the pope asks for something more. Each time, the request grows larger. Each time, the emperor’s response grows more entangled. Do you see it, Gerold?”

The warrior shook his head.

“No matter. I see it clearly enough.” Aldric’s smile widened. “If Charles wants a crown, he will have to pay for it. And I intend to make certain the price is so high that he will have no choice but to let me go home.”

He entered the palace, and the shadows swallowed him whole. Behind him, the autumn sun sank below the walls of Aachen, and the first cold wind of the coming winter whispered through the roses.