Chapter 7 of 7·6 min read·The next morning, from dawn to midday
The Hand at the Bedside
Fleck came to Friedel’s chamber at dawn with the Arch-Steward behind him.
The physician had changed his coat. There was a dark smear on one cuff, perhaps ink, and his eyes looked as if he had spent the night awake. Wierach was dressed as he had been the previous evening, the imperial seal at his belt.
“His Majesty cannot receive you,” Fleck said.
Friedel stood from the desk. “You have examined him?”
“I have.”
“And he cannot speak?”
“Not safely.” Fleck looked past Friedel to the shuttered window. “His strength is poor this morning.”
Wierach took the folded letter from his hand and placed it on the desk. “The physician has made his judgment. I will not let ceremony endanger the Emperor.”
Friedel looked from Fleck to Wierach. “Yesterday you said you would decide whether I might see him.”
“I have decided. You will not speak to him. You may enter the outer chamber and look upon him from the screen. No questions, no approach to the bed.”
“That is not an audience.”
“It is what his health permits.”
“Then I will see him.”
Wierach’s gaze paused on Friedel’s face, weighing the answer. “You understand the conditions?”
“I understand that you have set them.”
“Good.”
They went by a passage that Friedel had not used before. Two guards waited outside the sickroom. One opened the door only after Wierach spoke to him. Beyond it, a narrow antechamber smelled of vinegar and boiled linen. Fleck went ahead. Wierach followed, then Friedel.
A screen stood between them and the bed. It was painted with a hunting scene: hounds in a field, a stag turning toward a line of trees. The room beyond lay dim. Friedel could make out a canopy, a table, and the high outline of a man beneath the bedclothes.
“Your Majesty,” Fleck said. “Count Friedel of Rensheim has come to pay his respects.”
No answer came.
Fleck waited a few moments. He did not look toward the bed. Wierach stood at Friedel’s shoulder, close enough that the seal cord brushed his sleeve when he shifted.
“Is he awake?” Friedel asked.
“Do not question him,” Wierach said.
Fleck moved around the screen. “His Majesty has been told you are here.”
Friedel could see the physician’s shoulder and the edge of a pale hand on the blanket. The fingers were still. A strip of linen covered the wrist.
Next
Hartwig will receive Friedel’s account alongside Wierach’s, and must decide whether the failed audience is grounds to challenge the Arch-Steward publicly.
Fleck returned to the antechamber. He kept his voice low. “My lord, he is resting. You should leave him to it.”
Friedel had come six days through rain to hear what the Emperor wanted. He had been given a report of broth, fever and small recoveries, and now a hand behind a screen. He looked at Wierach’s seal, then past the screen to the bed.
“Let me see his face.”
“No.”
“Then there is no point to this.”
Wierach did not move. “There is a point. The Emperor has been informed that you came. You have seen that he is alive and being tended.”
Friedel stared at him. “I have seen a hand.”
“Count Friedel,” Fleck said, “please.”
The word stopped Friedel more effectively than Wierach’s warning. Fleck’s voice had gone thin. Friedel looked at him. The physician had both hands clasped in front of him; his right thumb pressed hard into the left palm.
“Does the Emperor know who I am?” Friedel asked.
Fleck glanced at Wierach.
“Answer the Count,” Wierach said.
“He was told,” Fleck replied.
“By whom?”
“By me.”
“Then let him answer.”
Friedel stepped around the screen.
Wierach seized his sleeve. The guard at the door moved in. Friedel twisted free, and his shoulder struck the screen. It rocked on its feet and caught the edge of the table. A glass vessel tipped, hit the floor and broke.
Fleck lunged to catch it. His foot slid on the spilled liquid. He fell hard against the bed rail, one hand striking the wood. The sound came sharp and ugly. He folded over his wrist.
The guards reached Friedel. One caught him beneath the arms, the other pinned his right hand against his side. Friedel saw the bed clearly now: Ludolf’s face, slack beneath the canopy, mouth slightly open. The Emperor’s skin had the grey cast of a man long ill. Fleck was on his knees beside the bed, holding his wrist against his chest.
“Let go of me,” Friedel said.
The guard tightened his grip.
“Enough,” Wierach ordered. “He is an elector.”
The men released Friedel. He stepped back, rubbing the place where one had held him. No one had touched the Emperor. Fleck’s eyes were squeezed shut against the pain.
Wierach stood between Friedel and the bed. “This audience is over.”
“You said I could see him.”
“You saw him.”
“I saw a man who did not move when his physician spoke.”
“His illness is grave.”
“And you know what he wants?”
Wierach’s mouth set. “I know what he established before he became ill.”
“You know what you say he established.”
For the first time, the Arch-Steward looked angry. It lasted no longer than a blink. “Take the Count to his rooms. A surgeon must see Fleck.”
“I can walk,” Friedel said.
“Then walk.”
They left by the same passage, without the physician. Friedel kept his eyes on the floor. At the door to his chamber, he stopped the guard from closing it.
“Send for a clerk.”
“You are not to leave your rooms,” the guard said.
“I asked for a clerk.”
The guard hesitated. Behind him, Wierach had reached the passage. “Let him write,” he said. “He will remain here until the matter is settled.”
A clerk arrived with paper and a small inkpot. Friedel dictated a letter to Hartwig. He wrote that he had been permitted into the Emperor’s outer chamber, but not to speak with him; that he had asked whether Ludolf knew him and received no answer from the Emperor; that in the confusion Fleck had fallen and been hurt. He did not write that he had seen the Emperor fail to move. He had no proof of what that meant, and he would not make a claim he could not defend.
The clerk read the letter back. Friedel corrected two phrases and signed it. His hand shook once when he added his seal, then steadied.
“Take it to Ammerau,” he told his rider when the guard allowed him into the courtyard. “Do not stop for a fresh horse unless the one you have cannot go on.”
The rider tucked the letter inside his coat. “And if they ask what happened?”
“Tell them I was refused an audience.”
The man nodded and rode out through the gate.
Friedel returned to his chamber. The physician’s blood—only a few drops, the clerk had said—had been wiped from the floor before he came back. On the desk lay Wierach’s copy of Hartwig’s legal arguments, set out neatly beside the empty inkpot. Friedel read the first page, then closed it.
The door opened. Ottokar stood in the passage, with a palace servant behind him.
“May I come in?” the boy asked.
Friedel looked at the servant. The man kept his eyes lowered.
“Come in,” Friedel said.
Ottokar entered but did not sit. “Did you speak to him?”
“No.”
“Did you see him?”
“Yes.”
Ottokar looked at Friedel’s sleeve, where the guard’s fingers had left a dark crease. “Did they hurt you?”
“Not much.”
The boy lowered his eyes. “They say Fleck is with the surgeon.”
“His wrist may be broken.”
Ottokar nodded once. He seemed to be waiting for Friedel to ask something, but Friedel had no question that the boy could safely answer.
“Did you see him?” Ottokar asked.
“I saw his face.”
Ottokar held Friedel’s gaze. “And?”
“And I was turned away.”
The boy’s shoulders eased by a fraction. He reached for the door, then stopped. “Will you tell Hartwig?”
“I have sent him a letter.”
Ottokar glanced toward the passage. “Wierach will send one too.”
“I expect so.”
“Then he will say you frightened the Emperor.”
“He may.”
Ottokar seemed to consider this. “I did not see you frighten him.”
“No,” Friedel said. “You were not there.”
The boy took that answer without protest. He left, and the servant closed the door behind him.
Before midday, Wierach’s own messenger rode west with a sealed packet for Hartwig. Friedel watched him from the courtyard window. The two letters had begun their journeys from Selbrun with different accounts of the same room. By the time they reached Ammerau, the physician might be able to say whether his hand would ever close properly again.