Chapter 5 of 5·5 min read·The days after Hartwig’s letter leaves Ammerau
The First Seal
The letter from Ammerau arrived with road mud dried along its lower edge and Hartwig’s seal unbroken.
Friedel had it brought to his chamber while he was still at breakfast. He moved the cup aside to make room on the table. His steward watched him pick up the letter, then looked toward the window, where two of Wierach’s men were waiting in the courtyard.
“Is that from the Archbishop?” Friedel asked.
“The seal is his, my lord.”
“I can see that.”
The steward withdrew. Friedel cut the wax with his bread knife. He had expected Hartwig to write. Every elector had received a copy, the courier said, and the Archbishop had asked that the letter be read aloud before any answer was given. Friedel read it once in silence, then again more slowly.
Hartwig did not accuse Wierach of anything. He wrote that he had asked to hear the Emperor’s will and had been refused an audience. He wrote that Prince Ottokar had told him he had not been brought to his grandfather. The boy had offered no account of the Emperor’s wishes. Hartwig would not pledge his vote until the matter was answered.
Friedel laid the letter flat. The words were plain. They did not say Ludolf was dead, or that Wierach had lied. They said the most important witness had not been heard.
He looked again toward the courtyard. The two men had dismounted. One was speaking to the stable boy while the other kept his eyes on the house.
“Bring them in,” Friedel said.
The elder of the two carried a narrow case of papers. He bowed with the practiced ease of a man who had spent years entering rooms where other people had to stand. “My lord Count. I bring the Arch-Steward’s greetings.”
Friedel kept Hartwig’s letter beneath his hand. “You arrived quickly.”
“We rode hard.”
“From Selbrun?”
“From the road east of it. The Arch-Steward’s concern is that no elector should mistake uncertainty for doubt about the succession.” The man set the case on the table. “He asks that you affirm the Emperor’s settled intention to preserve the elder line.”
Friedel glanced at the paper case. “Has the Emperor spoken to you?”
The messenger did not look at Hartwig’s letter. “The Emperor’s acts have spoken. He recognized the line of his elder son and placed Prince Ottokar under the Arch-Steward’s care.”
“That is not the same as hearing his will.”
“The Charter does not require every elector to receive a private audience.”
Next
Friedel has refused Wierach’s written endorsement and must decide whether to take his still-unpledged vote to Selbrun for a face-to-face demand.
“No. It requires an election.” Friedel touched the seal on Hartwig’s letter. “And it says the electors choose.”
“The electors confirm the house. The Charter was not written to set a child against his own grandfather’s line.”
“Lambert is the Emperor’s son.”
“And Ottokar is the child of the elder son. There is precedent for preserving the elder branch. There is also precedent for a sovereign’s son succeeding him. The Arch-Steward will not pretend the question has no argument. He asks that you consider what the Emperor himself established.”
The messenger said it evenly. Friedel could not tell whether he believed it. That made the sentence harder to dismiss.
If a son stood first, the matter seemed simple until a living grandson stood between him and the succession. If the elder line stood first, the Emperor’s surviving son might be set aside because his father had once chosen an heir who was now dead. The Charter left room for both readings. Men had been paid to fill that room with their own certainty.
Friedel folded Hartwig’s letter along its existing crease. “Why does Hartwig say he has not heard the Emperor’s will?”
“He has asked for an audience and has been told His Majesty is ill.”
“Then he has not heard it.”
“The Emperor’s condition is not a matter for the electors to examine by turning his sickroom into a court.”
It was a fair answer. Friedel disliked it for being fair. His father had taught him that a lord who wanted every fact before acting usually wanted to avoid acting at all. But his father had not lived to see his son’s vote carried about in other men’s cases.
“Did Ottokar say his grandfather told him nothing?” Friedel asked.
“He said he had not been brought to him.”
“That is not what I asked.”
“No, my lord.” The messenger’s fingers rested on the case. “The boy did not claim the Emperor had told him nothing. He said he could not speak to his wishes.”
Friedel felt the answer settle between them. It gave Wierach room to say the boy had not contradicted him. It gave Hartwig room to say the boy had not supported him. It gave Friedel no safe place to stand.
The messenger opened the case and drew out a sheet with a line for Friedel’s name and seal. “The Arch-Steward asks only that you state the elder line has been recognized and should be confirmed. You may reserve your vote until the election.”
Friedel read the document. It did not say Ludolf had chosen Ottokar in his final days. It did not say the Emperor had spoken to him. The wording was careful enough to pass through every door that had been closed.
His hand went to the signet ring on the table. His father’s seal had been melted down after the funeral and recast for him. The new ring was heavier, though the county’s debts were greater than its lands could bear.
“You want my name before the other electors have answered Hartwig,” he said.
“The letter has already gone to them.”
“Then I do not need to help them read it.”
The messenger paused. “You would be helping them mistake a question of access for a question of legitimacy.”
“Maybe it is both.”
“If you wait until every question is settled, you may find the realm has settled it without you.”
Friedel looked up. The warning was meant to sound like advice. He heard the impatience in it, and wondered if Wierach had sent the man because he thought a young count would be easier to hurry than to persuade.
“My father used to say that a seal makes a man responsible for the words beneath it.”
“Your father was right.”
“Then I will not seal words I cannot answer for.”
The messenger closed the case. He had not raised his voice or shown offence. “I will tell the Arch-Steward you have chosen to wait.”
“I have chosen not to sign this.”
“That distinction may matter more to you than to him.”
Friedel let the silence sit. He had wanted the man to call him young, or to threaten him plainly. Instead, the messenger had offered him the courtesy of being understood. That made it harder to turn the refusal into a victory.
When the men had gone, Friedel read Hartwig’s letter once more. He wrote a reply asking the Archbishop to send his account of the Charter’s language and the precedents he believed most relevant. He made no promise about his vote. He pressed his new seal into the wax and watched the mark take.
His steward returned with the midday accounts. “The Selbrun men are leaving.”
“Did they say anything?”
“One of them left a summons. The Arch-Steward asks you to attend the court at Selbrun and make your position known before the electors.”
Friedel turned the sealed letter over. The summons did not name a date, only that he should travel promptly. The first invitation had asked him to lend his name to a sentence. The second asked him to bring the man who owned it.
“Send Hartwig’s reply east,” he said. “And find out how many days to Selbrun if the road holds.”
The steward took the letter. “Are you going?”
Friedel looked at the summons, then at the untouched breakfast cooling on the table. “I want to know what he means to ask me there.”
He did not say yes. The Arch-Steward’s men had left without his seal, but the next question would not arrive on paper.