A leaden gray sky cast its pall over the remaining members of Charles’s retinue that filed out the palace door. Freezing rain clung to clothes and soaked through to bones, but undeterred they assembled around the battered ancient stump that thrust up in the middle of the confined space. These, the great men of the realm, were accustomed to death and betrayal, yet they were pale and silent, tugging their cloaks and furs further up about their necks. Many fidgeted and stomped chilled extremities.
They didn’t have to wait long, for a small portal to one side screeched open on icy hinges. Guards marched from the darkness, stiff, somber, and formal. Behind them, draped in iron manacles and chains, limped Pepin. He was cleanly clad in plain linens and leather shoes. He held his head high even while shuffling through the slush to the executioner’s stump. Behind him, Roland followed the procession to the center of the courtyard.
Charles emerged from the palace door flanked by the remainder of his children, Naimon, and a few other close associates. Louis appeared dour, keeping pace with his father. Both Aldatrude and Berta had clearly been crying, and though they marched stiffly with all the gravity required of them, their faces remained red and puffy. Charles’s face was set and stern. He stopped before Pepin.
A hush fell across the yard. The tension between father and son was palpable.
“Pepin. My son.” He paused for only a moment. “You’ve been found guilty of murder … of treason.”
The prince stared back with venom.
Charles struggled to press on. “Pepin, Pepin … I held you as you took your first breath of life!” The king’s voice broke, but his eyes remained flinty. “We laughed together as you took your first steps! Cried when you were sad! Pepin, my son, you’ve broken my heart!”
Pepin threw back his head and laughed. The nobles stiffened visibly at this blatant display, this stunningly unrepentant rebellion against the very order of God.
“Well, Father, I got my way after all! It seems you will only have one heir now—too bad it’s the wrong son!”
Roland whispered to the sergeant next to him. The soldiers took hold of the prince, but he shrugged them off. Silently he stepped forward, sank to his knees, and extended his neck across the block. He gave a sidelong glance at Roland and hissed, “Use this well, Champion.”
The executioner stepped forward hefting an ax that glinted sharply in the diluted light. He sighted on the prince’s neck, raised the blade high overhead, and swung it down with a huff through his nostrils. Pepin’s head sprang from his shoulders in a pulsing spurt of blood.
Tears welled in Charles’s eyes, spilling over and tracking down his cheeks. Roland walked across the yard to Charles’s side.
The king’s voice trembled. “How could he do this—my own flesh?”
Roland shook his head. “You are much wiser than I, sire. But it seems ambition blinds ties of blood.”
Charles clenched Roland’s shoulder, leaning on him and taking strength from the young champion. They walked back to the open palace doorway. “Promise me you’ll never be so blinded,” he whispered.
“With my whole heart, my king,” Roland replied.
AOI
The next morning dawned crisp and cold. Aachen’s shutters and doors remained closed—bundled up against the stubbornly resurgent winter. Louis rode from the palace atop his warhorse, bedecked in plates of scale and elaborate arms, as befitting a prince of the realm. His travel cloak was tight about his body to fend off the chill. But his eyes were unfocused and far afield from the martial procession unfolding in his wake, for Louis both hated and grieved for his lost brother.
Behind him rode the troops handpicked for war with Saragossa, a clattering, rattling river of living steel that churned through the morning crust of ice atop the muddy track to the main gate. After Louis, Roland rode next to Oliver atop a spirited black warhorse that tossed his head and bellowed steam from his flared nostrils. The banners of Breton March and Vale Runer streamed behind them, between which Otun rode a bit unsteadily, towering over Kennick and Turpin beside him. Next in line rode the marchmen atop their solid Frank mounts. Behind those stalwart companies rode the Dane and Saxon warriors who had sworn fealty on the distant riverbank in Saxony.
The black warhorse beneath Roland strained at the rein to overtake Louis, its strong teeth chomping against the bit. The knight handled the beast with a strong hand, and though it clearly desired to fly through the countryside at breakneck speed, the great black remained reluctantly apace with the column.
Above the procession, Aude stood in the window of the champion’s quarters, the shutters flung wide so that she could watch them go. A brisk cold wind brushed at her cheeks, but she ignored it. Roland’s spirited warhorse pranced and lunged beneath her vantage point.
“Carry him with honor, Veillantif,” she whispered to the animal, her fingers toying with the gem about her neck. “And bring him safely home to me.”
The soldiers and knights rode out through the main gate. There each man passed two long spears standing upright, planted before the spring crops with their grisly fruits for all to see—Pepin’s and Geoffrey’s severed heads, silently awaiting the crows as they stared across the plaza.