By midmorning, the decree had been copied three times and read by no one outside Wierach’s chamber.
The first copy lay beneath the Arch-Steward’s hand. Its wax bore Ludolf’s privy seal, pressed deep enough to blur the little crown at the centre. The second was for Archbishop Hartwig. The third would go to Friedel, with a covering letter that called the order a necessary act of continuity.
Wierach read the decree again. It said the Emperor, being in recovery, would receive the electors at Selbrun within seven days. Until then, they were to make no binding decision on the succession.
“Is that all?” asked his secretary.
“It is all that can be said.”
The secretary waited, quill poised. Wierach let him wait a moment longer, then signed the covering letter. The Emperor had issued decrees through the privy seal for weeks. This one did not claim Ludolf had spoken. It did not need to. A seal could carry a command farther than a voice, if enough men agreed to hear it.
Hartwig arrived before the copy could be dispatched. He came in a plain travelling mantle, without the cathedral chain at his throat. His face suggested he had slept badly and blamed the bed.
“I had expected a reply,” he said.
“You have one.” Wierach passed him the decree.
Hartwig read it standing. “He will receive us in seven days.”
“That is the order.”
“Whose hand wrote it?”
“The chancery’s.”
“I asked whose words.”
Wierach folded his hands on the table. “The Emperor’s authority is in the seal.”
Hartwig looked again at the wax. “You know what I recorded. I have not heard his will. This does not change that.”
“It tells you he will be heard.”
“If he is able.”
“He is recovering.”
“Then seven days should be enough.” Hartwig put the decree down carefully. “Unless you want me to tell the electors that his seal is a better witness than his mouth.”
The secretary’s quill stopped. Wierach glanced at him, and the scratching resumed.
“You have made your position public,” Wierach said. “I am answering it.”
“You are giving me a date.”
“I am giving all seven electors a date.”
Hartwig’s lips pressed together. He did not look pleased to have been included. “If Ludolf receives us, I will listen. If he does not, I will not call this his will.”
Next
Wierach has seven days to produce an audience with Ludolf, while Adelais begins to test the possibility that her father is no longer alive.
“You may call it what you please. The other electors will see that the Emperor has asked them to wait.”
“And if they do not?”
“They will have disobeyed him.”
Hartwig tapped the paper with one finger. “A son has a claim. A grandson of the elder line has a claim. The Charter does not settle which claim is greater when the Emperor leaves both behind.”
“It settles who is to choose.”
“Then let us choose after we have heard him.”
The Archbishop left the decree on the table. He did not refuse it. That was as much as Wierach had expected, and less than he needed.
The copies went out before noon. A rider took Friedel’s across the river road, with instructions to change horses at the abbey. The messenger to Hartwig was unnecessary, but Wierach sent one anyway. The decree had to travel as an act of the Emperor, not a private note between two men.
In the Empress’s apartments, Adelais was trying to make Lambert eat stewed pear.
He sat in his high chair with one fist closed around a wooden horse. The nurse had cut the fruit small, but he pushed it away each time Adelais brought the spoon near. At last he accepted a piece from the nurse, then held it out toward his mother, already softened between his fingers.
“I’m honored,” Adelais said. She took it from him and ate it.
Ortwin stood by the door. “The Arch-Steward has sent word. The Emperor’s health is improved. He expects to receive the electors in a week.”
“Did the Emperor send word?”
“Wierach did.”
Adelais wiped pear from her thumb. “I asked whether my father sent word.”
Ortwin’s eyes shifted briefly to the nurse. “No, Your Grace.”
Lambert banged the horse against the tray. The nurse took it from him before he could throw it.
“Has he asked for me?” Adelais said.
Ortwin did not answer at once. He had been with her since she was sixteen. He knew when delay was safer than speech, and when it only made the speech worse.
“Not in some time,” he said.
The spoon was still in Adelais’s hand. She set it down beside the bowl.
For the past weeks she had let the days explain themselves. Ludolf was tired. Ludolf was fevered. Ludolf had asked for no one. A sick man could turn inward without meaning to wound the people nearest him. She had been angry with him for it, then ashamed of being angry. She had found other things to do.
Now she could not remember the last time a servant had said, The Emperor asks for you.
“When did it stop?” she asked.
“Before the last report.”
“And the one before that?”
“His Majesty was said to be sleeping.”
She looked down at Lambert. He had smeared fruit across his sleeve and was watching her face with serious attention. When she reached to clean him, he caught her finger and held on.
“Bring my cloak,” she said.
Ortwin moved at once. “You’re going to the sickroom?”
“I am going to see my father.”
The guard at Ludolf’s door let her through the outer passage but not into the chamber. Wierach’s clerk stood there with a tablet tucked under one arm. He looked uncomfortable in the way of a man who had been told to stand between a daughter and her father and had been promised that this made him blameless.
“The Emperor is resting,” he said. “The physician requests that no one disturb him.”
“Then fetch the physician.”
“Master Fleck is being treated for his wrist.”
“Fetch the Arch-Steward.”
“He is occupied with the decree.”
Adelais looked past him at the shut door. “He is awake?”
The clerk glanced down at his tablet. “The report says his strength is improving.”
“That was not my question.”
He had no answer ready. The guard stared at the opposite wall.
Adelais put her hand on the door latch. The clerk caught her wrist, not roughly, but quickly enough that she felt the choice in it. She turned her eyes to his hand. He let go.
“I will not force my way into my father’s room,” she said. “You can tell Wierach that I asked to see him.”
“I will.”
“And tell him to answer for himself next time.”
She returned to her apartments without calling for Ortwin. Lambert was asleep by then, his nurse rocking him with one foot while she folded linen. Adelais stood beside the cradle and watched his small hand open and close against the blanket.
Ludolf had stopped asking for her. The physician could be kept from her, the sickroom could be guarded, and every report could say recovery. But a man did not stop asking for his daughter by degrees and leave no one noticing.
She laid two fingers against Lambert’s cheek. He stirred, and she drew her hand away before he woke.
At the chancery, Wierach sealed the final copy for dispatch. The wax cooled beneath his thumb. He had given the electors seven days, and they would count them from the moment the decree reached their hands.
He told himself the Emperor had endured worse intervals of weakness. He did not tell himself what would happen if the audience came due and Ludolf could not be brought upstairs.
That problem would have to wait for the men who could not afford to wait.