Chapter 8 of 8·6 min read·Several days after Friedel's audience
What the Archbishop Had Not Heard
The first letter arrived with mud dried along its fold and Friedel’s seal pressed hard enough to crack the wax.
Hartwig read it alone in the library above the cathedral chapter room. The count had written plainly: he had entered the outer chamber, been refused a speaking audience, and received no answer from Ludolf. Fleck had fallen during the confusion. Friedel had not claimed the Emperor was dead, nor that he had heard anything from him.
Hartwig read the account a second time, slower. Friedel had taken care not to say more than he could defend. That care might be caution, or it might be the first useful judgment the young count had shown since inheriting his vote.
“Does he name the Emperor’s condition?” asked Canon Berthold, waiting by the table.
“He says he saw him.”
“And?”
“He does not say what that means.”
Berthold tapped the letter’s edge. “That is either wisdom or a way to make us ask.”
Hartwig folded the page. “It can be both.”
He placed it under a brass weight and returned to the cathedral accounts. The masons had stopped work on the north transept until the next payment. Their foreman had written three times in a month. Hartwig had answered twice, which was more than the bank had done for him. The Oelhaf house had financed the rebuilding, and the next installment depended on funds promised by the imperial treasury.
He had no wish to make an enemy of the man who held those funds. He had even less wish to let the treasury decide what the Emperor had said.
The second rider came before noon. Wierach’s packet bore the privy seal, carried in a leather case with a guard’s mark on the strap. The messenger waited in the chapter hall while Hartwig broke the seal and read the letter standing up.
The Arch-Steward’s account was longer. It described the physician’s judgment, the restrictions placed on Friedel, the count’s refusal to keep his distance, and Fleck’s fall. It said Friedel had been shown the Emperor and had left without further disturbance. It did not say Ludolf had spoken to him.
Hartwig read that part again.
“Does Wierach say the Emperor answered?” Berthold asked.
“No.”
“Does he say the Emperor recognized him?”
“No.”
“Then what does he want from us?”
Hartwig set the letter down. “For us to believe that seeing a man is the same as hearing him.”
Next
Hartwig has put his refusal into the electors’ hands; Wierach must now decide whether to answer it, ignore it, or make the Emperor’s voice heard.
The canon glanced toward the waiting messenger. “You will need a reply.”
“I will need more than one.”
Hartwig sent for the dean, the chapter clerk, and two senior canons. He had the accounts read aloud in the chapter room, first Friedel’s and then Wierach’s. The men listened without interrupting. When the clerk finished, one of the canons asked him to read the last passage of Wierach’s letter again.
“‘The Count was shown His Majesty, whose condition permitted no exchange,’” the clerk read.
“So,” said Canon Berthold, “the Arch-Steward admits there was no exchange.”
“He admits there was no exchange that morning,” said another canon. “That is not the same as admitting the Emperor has not spoken at another time.”
“No,” Hartwig said. “It is not.”
The room settled into the scratch of the clerk’s pen as he copied the two accounts into the record. Outside, a cart rattled over the cathedral paving. The sound passed, then came back more faintly from the lower street.
Berthold leaned over the table. “We could ask Wierach to provide the Emperor’s words in writing. That would leave us room to wait.”
“He will provide them.”
“And then?”
“Then we will know what he says the Emperor said.”
Berthold drew himself upright. “If we make this public, he will know we do not trust him.”
“He knows that already.”
“He may close the treasury to us.”
Hartwig looked toward the unfinished accounts. “He may.”
The answer troubled him more than he let show. The cathedral had absorbed twenty years of his rule and most of the money he could borrow. He could still hear the masons’ foreman telling him what it cost to leave a wall open through winter. He had spent years making the cathedral a monument to good judgment. Now a single declaration might make it a monument to a losing side.
The chapter clerk put down his pen. “What do you want entered?”
Hartwig looked at the two letters. Friedel had seen the Emperor’s face and had not said what the sight proved. Wierach had permitted the count to see him and admitted there had been no answer. The difference between the accounts was not a detail. It was the reason both men had written.
“Enter that I have received two accounts of the audience,” Hartwig said. “Enter that both state Count Friedel was not permitted to speak with the Emperor. Enter that I have no testimony from Ludolf concerning his will.”
One of the canons shifted in his chair. “That last line will be read as an accusation.”
“It is a statement.”
“People will choose how to hear it.”
“They already have.”
Hartwig asked the clerk to prepare a notice for the other electors. It would not call Wierach a liar. It would not describe Friedel as a victim. It would say that the Archbishop of Ammerau had not heard the Emperor’s will, and that he would not treat an account of an unheard will as the Emperor’s declaration. The question of whether a son or a grandson had the stronger claim remained for the electors to settle under the charter and precedent.
Berthold read the draft. “You are asking them to delay their judgment.”
“I am asking them not to pretend it has already been given.”
The messenger from Selbrun was still waiting when Hartwig finished. Hartwig invited him into the chapter room and handed him a copy of the notice.
“You may carry this back to the Arch-Steward,” he said. “The original will go to the other electors.”
The man read the first lines. His expression remained fixed, but his thumb found the edge of the paper and pressed it down. “He expects your answer to his account.”
“This is my answer.”
“He asked that you confirm receipt.”
“I have received it.”
The messenger waited, perhaps for a private reassurance. Hartwig had offered such reassurances before. They kept doors open and promises weightless. He did not offer one now.
When the messenger had gone, Hartwig carried the notice into the cathedral. The morning service had ended, but a few petitioners remained near the side chapel. The canons gathered at the lectern while the chapter clerk read the declaration aloud. Hartwig stood beside him, hands resting on the rail.
The words sounded more severe in the nave than they had on the page. He heard the mention of Friedel, the admission that the Emperor had not received him, and the careful refusal to draw a conclusion beyond that. He did not look toward the unfinished transept.
When the clerk finished, no one applauded. A woman who had been waiting to speak with a canon crossed herself and left. The men in the chapter did not move at once.
“Will you send the notice today?” Berthold asked.
“Yes.”
“And Wierach’s messenger?”
“He has his copy.”
Berthold came beside him. “You have made yourself part of the dispute.”
Hartwig watched the clerk fold the originals into separate packets. “I have a vote. I was part of it before the letters came.”
The first packet went to the western electors. The second was prepared for the eastern road. Hartwig sealed each with his own mark, not the cathedral’s. He had wanted, for months, to be asked for his judgment. Now that he had given it, there would be no returning to the pleasure of being courted by both sides.
At the door, the chapter clerk paused with the last packet. “If the Emperor’s will is brought to you tomorrow?”
Hartwig looked at the seal cooling on the wax. “Then I will read it.”
“And if it is brought by Wierach?”
“I will read it.”
The clerk nodded and left. Hartwig stayed in the nave until the doors closed behind him. He had not said Ludolf was dead. He had not said Wierach had lied. Every elector would understand what he had refused to say, and every elector would have to decide what the refusal was worth.