Charlemagne: A Private Life

813, Aachen

The chamber holds smoke, lamp oil, damp wool, and the old ache that has gone from the saddle into the joints and stayed there. A heavy cloak lies across my knees though the brazier is close. Wax tablets, copied capitularies, and petitions are stacked beside the cup I have neglected again because lifting it has become an act I prefer not to perform before witnesses. The body teaches limits in a language no bishop can gloss. Men who once feared silence from me now fill it too quickly, explaining, advising, smoothing. Louis waits obediently, and obedience in a son of my house has never been a simple thing. Clerks and churchmen have already begun their work of making necessity look like virtue, conquest like order, severity like piety. They mean well by their own lights, which is part of the danger. If I let the hand rest too long, they will call the empire settled, sanctified, complete. It is none of those things, and I can still feel where it strains.