Chapter 10 of 11·6 min read·The day after Wierach's decree
The Door Between Them
Lambert had been dressed for a visit before Adelais knew there would be no visit.
His nurse had fastened the boy's blue coat wrong at the throat. He stood in the outer room while Adelais fixed it, watching her hands with the grave attention he gave any task that might decide what came next.
“Will Grandfather see me?” he asked.
“He may,” she said. “We will ask.”
It was a small lie, and she disliked making it. But Wierach had promised the electors an audience within seven days. If the Emperor could receive seven men who had come to judge his wishes, he could receive his grandson.
Ortwin waited by the door. He had already sent word ahead, and a palace servant had returned with the same answer: His Majesty was resting. The physician advised against visitors.
“Did the physician see him this morning?” Adelais asked.
Ortwin’s expression stayed flat. “The servant did not know.”
“Then we will ask the physician.”
Fleck was not in the sickroom passage. A young assistant told them he was receiving treatment for his wrist in his own rooms. Adelais sent Lambert back with his nurse and went there alone, with Ortwin behind her.
Fleck sat at a narrow table, his injured wrist wrapped and supported. A basin stood beside him. He had been trying to write with his left hand; the lines on the page slanted downhill.
“Your Majesty.” He started to rise, then stopped when the pain caught him.
“Stay seated, Master Fleck.” She took the chair opposite him. “I have come to ask after my father.”
“He is resting.”
“How long has he been resting?”
Fleck looked at the paper rather than her. “His strength is still poor.”
“That was not my question.”
Ortwin shifted by the door. Fleck’s injured hand lay very still against the table.
“His condition changes,” the physician said. “There are hours when he is better. There are hours when he needs to be left alone.”
“And has he asked for me?”
Fleck swallowed. “I have not been asked to carry messages.”
A careful answer. So careful it did not sound like the answer a man gave when he had nothing to hide.
“Did he ask for Lambert?”
“I cannot say.”
“You cannot say, or you will not?”
Next
Adelais has begun preparing to leave Selbrun with Lambert, but she must find the true crown and a way past Wierach's watchful household.
His face tightened. “I am under the Arch-Steward’s orders. His Majesty’s rest is to be protected.”
There it was: Wierach’s hand, laid plainly over the physician’s mouth. Still, it was not proof of anything. A sick man could be protected from a wife who pressed too hard. A physician could be frightened by his employer without being part of a greater crime.
Adelais rose. “I hope your wrist heals.”
“Thank you, Majesty.”
She paused at the door. “When he is awake, tell him Lambert came.”
“I will.”
She could not tell whether Fleck meant it. His eyes had dropped to the page again, where his left hand had made a mess of the Emperor’s name.
Wierach was waiting outside the sickroom when Adelais returned. His coat was buttoned to the throat, and the privy seal hung at his belt. He stood between her and the door as if he had been placed there by the palace itself.
“Your Majesty,” he said. “I had hoped you would spare the Emperor another interruption.”
“You have promised the electors that he will receive them.”
“In seven days.”
“Then a brief visit from his grandson should not exhaust him.”
“He has not asked for the boy.”
The words came softly. Adelais felt them land before she could guard against them. Wierach saw that. He did not look away, and he did not take them back.
“He has not asked for me either,” she said.
“The Emperor’s strength is limited. His attention comes and goes.”
“Then I will be brief.”
“Not today.”
The guard beside the door looked at the floor. Wierach’s voice held no anger. It was worse than anger: a decision already carried out.
Adelais stepped closer. “You speak for him often.”
“I speak for the household that must keep him alive.”
“Keep him alive, or keep him from us?”
For the first time, Wierach’s face changed. Only a little: the tired crease between his brows deepened, and his mouth set. “If you want him well, do not turn his sickroom into a court.”
She had no answer that would not give him more than she knew. She looked at the door, then at the guard, and understood that she would not be let through by asking again.
“Come, Lambert,” she said.
He had been waiting at the turn in the corridor with his nurse. He looked first at Wierach, then at his mother.
“Is Grandfather asleep?”
“Yes,” Wierach said.
“Can he hear me?”
“He needs quiet.”
Lambert nodded, accepting the answer because adults had taught him that answers were things you received, not things you tested. Adelais took his hand and led him away.
In her rooms, the nurse began to unfasten the boy’s coat. Lambert put a hand over the buttons.
“Leave it,” he said. “I want to wear it when he wakes.”
The nurse glanced at Adelais. She gave a small nod. The nurse withdrew to the adjoining chamber, leaving mother and son alone.
Lambert sat on the edge of a chair, still dressed for the visit. “Did I do something?”
“No.”
“Maybe he is tired of me.”
Adelais came down on one knee in front of him. “Your grandfather is ill.”
“That’s what Master Wierach says.”
The words were quiet, but they held more than a child’s repetition. Lambert had learned to notice when adults chose one answer for him and kept the others to themselves. She had tried to teach him caution. She had not meant for him to use it against her.
“He has been ill for a long time,” Lambert said. “Before, he still called for me.”
Adelais’s mouth opened. Nothing came that she could say without making a promise she could not keep, or placing a fear in him that might be used by someone else.
She pulled him against her. For a moment, he stayed stiff with surprise. Then his arms went around her neck, and she held him harder than she meant to. His coat’s collar pressed against her cheek.
“I will find out what is happening,” she said.
“Can you make them let me see him?”
“I will try.”
That was the truest answer she had.
After Lambert had gone with his nurse, Adelais called Ortwin in and shut the door. He had served her long enough to wait for the order before asking what had happened.
“Make a list of what we need to travel,” she said. “For me, Lambert, his nurse, and two guards. No servants beyond those we trust.”
“Where?”
“South, at first. We can choose the road later.”
Ortwin’s gaze moved to the window. The palace yard below was watched by men who wore Wierach’s colors. “If we leave openly, he will stop us.”
“Then do not make the list openly.”
He nodded once. “And the crown?”
She had not said the word. She looked at him, and he understood why it mattered. If the court split, seals and decrees would be one kind of authority. The crown was another. Without it, Lambert could be proclaimed and still be made to look like a child whose mother had invented his inheritance.
“Find out where the true crown is kept,” she said. “Quietly. Do not touch it yet.”
“If Wierach has it—”
“Then we will know what we are asking.”
Ortwin took out a small notebook. “The horses can be made ready without a stable order. The nurse will need a reason to pack. I can give her one.”
“Do it.”
He did not ask whether she meant to flee. That was why she trusted him. She had not yet decided how much time they had, or what Wierach would do when he noticed her testing his walls. But she knew she could not leave Lambert in a palace where the truth was held behind a door and every answer came from the man guarding it.
Outside, a bell marked the hour. The sound carried through the closed window, measured and ordinary. Adelais looked at the coat Lambert had left draped over the chair. Its collar had been fastened wrong again. She went to fix it, then stopped with her hands above the buttons.
She would not dress him for another visit that could not happen.