A Name in the Chapter Book

The bridge officer had set a trestle across the road and put two men beside it with spears. Adelais could see the river through the gaps between the planks. It was narrow there, but swollen from the night rain, and the current had taken a section of the bank below the bridge.

Ortwin rode up first. The officer handed him a folded order, its seal already broken.

“Imperial property is to be held for inspection,” Ortwin read. “That is all it says.”

“It says the chest is to be held,” the officer replied. He was a broad man in a patched green coat, with a strip of red cloth knotted at his wrist. “You can go on once it’s opened.”

Lambert stirred against Adelais’s shoulder. He had slept through most of the morning, but the halted horses and raised voices had woken him. He twisted toward the chest strapped behind Ortwin’s saddle, as if he knew the place where the crown rode.

Adelais shifted him higher. “Who sent the order?”

“The reeve at the north tollhouse. He had a rider from Selbrun.”

That was Wierach’s answer to the gate book. Not a letter to her, and not a command bearing the Emperor’s name. A barrier, placed where the road narrowed, with men who could later say they had obeyed what they were given.

“Show me the order,” she said.

The officer passed it over. The paper was damp at one corner. It named a sealed chest and required its contents to be inspected. It did not name Adelais, Lambert, or the cathedral chapter. The courier had ridden ahead quickly, but the order had been written for a thing, not for the people carrying it.

“Do you have the chapter’s record?” Ortwin asked.

Adelais took the folded document from inside her cloak. She had signed it in Selbrun, in front of witnesses. The cathedral chapter had recorded the crown’s custody, its seal, and the transfer to her. A line of ink could not keep a blade away, but it could make a man consider what his name would look like beside the act.

She gave the officer the record.

He read it twice, holding the pages close to his face. “This says the chest belongs to the chapter’s keeping.”

“It says who has custody,” Adelais replied. “The crown remains sealed. You have no authority to break the chapter’s seal.”

“I have an order to hold it.”

“Then write that you held it, and that you refused to give it back when shown the chapter record.”

The officer looked past her to the two guards. One had begun studying the river. The other watched the chest.