Constantinople, late April 1438
Helena came in on the morning tide with two small galleys astern, and as she passed the old Theodosian seawall Constantine stood at the after-rail and watched the Kontoskalion harbor open out before him.
The mole was scaffolded along most of its outer face. Two cranes worked on the seaward end, hauling cut stone up to where masons in linen caps were dressing the parapet. The main pier was nearly finished, the new ashlar facing running clean from the inner basin to the second buttress, and only the last twenty paces still showed the older brick beneath the scaffolding. Behind the pier ran a row of warehouses: three finished, the fourth being roofed, the fifth no more than a foundation and a stack of beams.
On the gable of the finished warehouse nearest the water, in white paint two feet high, was the figure 1.
George stood on the quay below in a plain dark cloak, with two clerks behind him and a small detachment of the guard. He raised a hand as Constantine came down the gangway, then clasped his arm.
"Majesty. You made fast time."
"Three days from Mytilene. Diogo's hull handles better than I expected for her size."
George let out a short breath and turned toward the harbor gate. Constantine fell in beside him, two officers from Helena following at a few paces.
They passed under the harbor gate and into the lower town. The street up to Blachernae was busier than Constantine remembered from the previous summer, dozens of carts running both ways. Two scaffoldings rose above the line of roofs ahead.
"The numbering?"
"The harbor and the Lycus quarter first, as you ordered. Every imperial building, every new construction. I have set the chancery to a full survey of the city as well — every standing structure to be given a number and entered on a register. Two months, perhaps three."
Constantine nodded. As they came up the long approach to the Blachernae gate, George went on, without changing his tone. "The eastern wing for the Empress will be ready by midsummer. The plasterers are finishing the children's rooms this week. Only the wall hangings are still to come from Glarentza. Katarina will be able to travel in June."
"Good." Constantine looked up at the walls of Blachernae, still showing the soot-line of last year's fires along the lower courses, then climbing into clean new stone where the masons had been working all winter. "How are the works going?"
George thought for a moment. "Better than last month. Some things are slow. The Lycus furnace is behind schedule. The Podestà has been disagreeable about grain shipments through the strait. The Aegean is troubled — we have a report from Captain Gregoras you should read this evening. Otherwise the city is working."
"Then I will read it this evening."
They passed under the gate.
The dinner was set in the smaller dining room on the upper floor, the one that looked out over the gardens toward the seawall. The food was plain — fish, bread, a bowl of olives Constantine had brought with him on the Helena, a pitcher of Thracian wine George had ordered up. Two servants attended at the door and were dismissed once the dishes were laid. The brothers ate alone.
Thomas had thickened a little in the shoulders since Constantine had last seen him. His beard was longer than it had been last year, and there was something settled in his face.
"You look well," Constantine said.
"I am eating well, brother. Catherine likes the kitchens here. She is in them more than the steward thinks proper."
"And your children?"
"Helena has had a fever for a week but the physician says it is nothing. She has begun to ride. The baby is well too, Catherine is still nursing her."
"Good to hear, brother. I look forward to seeing them. It has been a while."
Thomas poured for them both. "Constantine."
"Yes."
"The mother."
Constantine had been waiting for it. He set his cup down and folded his hands on the table and waited.
"She will not see me. She has still not seen me. I have been to the monastery four times. Three times I was sent back at the gate. The fourth time the abbess came out to me and said our mother had asked her to tell me not to come again until she sent for me. I have written twice since. The second letter was returned to me unopened, in the same packet, with no word. The first I do not know — she may have read it, she may not have."
"What did you write?"
"In the second one I told her about Helena's fever. I thought she would want to know." Thomas drank. "I do not know what was in the first one. I tore up three drafts before I sent the one that went."
"Is she eating?"
"She is eating enough. The abbess said so. She is not ill in the body. She prays. She reads. She sees no one but the abbess and her confessor."
"Has she said anything to anyone about — "
"No." Thomas's hand tightened on the cup and then loosened again. "She has not spoken his name. The abbess says she has not asked for news of the world since before the year turned. She does not ask after the children. She does not ask after Catherine. She does not ask after you."
Constantine looked at his brother across the table. There were lines at the corners of Thomas's mouth that had not been there before. He let the silence sit for a moment.
Thomas drank again and set the cup down with a small click on the wood.
"And how are Katarina and Zoe?" Thomas asked.
"Both well. Katarina is waiting for the palace to be ready before she moves."
"Catherine and Helena would love to see them. Helena is always asking about Zoe."
"Soon. Our families will be together again, the way they were in our father's time."
"I will drink to that," Thomas said, and did.
A pause. Thomas set his cup down.
"Do you know George Izaoul? He was at Demetrios's side. He was the one who carried the letters."
"I know who he is."
"He came many times to the palace seeking audience and forgiveness. I pitied him. After some weeks I took him on my hunts because no one else in the household knows the woods east of the city the way he does, and he brought down a boar in November that fed half my men for three days." Thomas was watching his face. "I have hunted with him through the winter. I have come to like him. I know how that sounds."
Constantine said nothing.
"He hates Demetrios's memory, Constantine. He thinks Demetrios was a fool who deserved the end he had. I do not believe that is an act. He was at Demetrios's side because no other court would have him — Italian father, Serbian mother, a Buondelmonti without lands. Demetrios took him. He played the part and he stayed alive."
"That is what a man like that does."
"Yes. And I am aware that may still be what he is doing." Thomas broke a piece of bread, did not eat it. "But Constantine — he speaks four languages well. He has been to Ragusa, to Buda, to Venice. He has networks the chancery would take ten years to build. He is sitting in a small house in the Petrion quarter eating my bread and writing letters to no one, because he has nowhere to go."
"You want him used."
"I think he could be used. Watched and used. I would not put him near the court. I would not put him near you. But the chancery is short of men who know the Balkans the way he does."
Constantine ate an olive. He watched his brother across the table and weighed what he was looking at. Thomas had been alone in the city through a winter. Thomas had killed Demetrios at Galata and had taken the dead man's most trusted retainer hunting four months later.
"Leave him where he is. I will see him myself before I make any decision. With George present."
Lycus river, next morning.
Andreas met him at the inner gate with George, Elias, and a stocky man Constantine had not met before, who turned out to be the foundry master Petros, one of Luca's Glarentza journeymen, sent east the previous October.
"Majesty." Elias bowed. He was thinner than Constantine remembered. "The works."
The works lay in the old armouries courtyard, expanded north into ground that had been cleared of two collapsed houses over the winter. The furnace itself was half built — a tall brick structure with the chimney rising in scaffolding above it, the iron banding around the lower courses already in place. The water-channel from the Lycus had been cut and stone-lined and a small mill-wheel was turning in slow trials at the far end. There were two casting pits dug and lined but not yet floored.
"October at earliest, Majesty," Petros said. "The local clay does not fire as hot as we need. We have lost two batches of brick."
Constantine looked at him. "Then you are three months behind. What do you propose?"
Petros took a breath. "We are, Majesty. There is good fire-clay near Tirilye on the Marmara coast. The Genoese took bricks from there before the war."
George stepped forward with a folded sheet. "I have the costs here, Majesty. We can have the first load in eight weeks."
Constantine glanced at the sheet, then back at Petros. "Do it."
George inclined his head and made a note on his own slate. Elias was looking at the chimney scaffolding and turned to Constantine.
"There is the issue of charcoal too, Majesty."
Constantine waited.
"Glarentza had timber at its back. Constantinople does not have easy timber. To run this furnace at production we need three thousand cartloads of charcoal a year. The supply we have now is perhaps a quarter of that, and even that is unreliable. If we fire her in autumn at the rates I have set, we will run for a month and choke."
George spoke before Constantine could answer. "I have draft contracts with two burner-guilds in the Thracian woodlands. The terms are not yet fixed. I need the treasury reserve unlocked to commit."
Andreas, who had been standing quietly, said, "The guilds will not be enough past spring. We need a proper imperial coppice. Burners under contract to the chancery, not to private masters. If we do not own the supply, the next campaign will be hostage to it."
"How long for the coppice?"
"Six months for it to be standing," George said. "I have the men. I need the order and the money."
"Sign the guild contracts now. Start the coppice this week. Bring me the cost projection by the end of the week."
George inclined his head. "Yes, Majesty."
Constantine looked up at the rising chimney a moment longer, then turned and walked back out through the gate.
The university site was on the western slope of the Hippodrome, where the old palace vaults had been cleared over the winter. The foundations of the library were laid and rising — the lower courses of ashlar were in, and the great rectangle of the building was visible on the ground for the first time. To the south, the smaller building that would hold the law school had its roof on. Workmen were everywhere. A donkey-cart was being unloaded near the east end.
Filelfo came out from under the colonnade of the half-built law school to meet him. He had grown a beard since October and the beard was already going white at the chin, but his step was lighter than it had been at Glarentza. He bowed without flourish.
"Majesty."
"Filelfo. Glarentza seems a long time ago."
Filelfo walked him through it. The library would take six months more. The law school would be in use by autumn. The chair of mathematics and reckoning had been filled — a man Plethon had sent from Mystras, who had already begun teaching a small cohort in rented rooms near the harbor. Scholarios had begun interviews for the first cohort of law students. Brother Nikolaos had been writing from Glarentza about the medical chair.
"This is the part I want to speak to you about, Majesty."
"Go on."
"The buildings are too modest."
Constantine had expected something like this from him. He waited.
"I do not mean the library. The library will be fine. I mean the whole conception." Filelfo's hands moved as he spoke, the way they had moved across the chancery table in October. "If you want this to be a place men come to from Italy and from France, it must look like one. Constantinople has the greatest church in Christendom and an emperor who has restored the city, and the university you are building for him will be a row of plastered halls and a library that looks like a granary. The men I want to bring east will see that and turn around."
"What do you want."
"Buildings worth a thousand-year empire. Façades. A square. Sculpture. Something that says: this is where the world's learning is now, and Florence is provincial by comparison." Filelfo paused. He had clearly rehearsed the line. "I do not say this for my own vanity, Majesty. Or not only. I say it because the men I have been writing to all winter will read about this place before they decide whether to come, and what they read must not be modest."
"You have been writing letters."
"I have. With your permission, retrospectively. I have an assistant of Brunelleschi's who I believe can be persuaded to come east to direct the architectural work. He has been with the master for nine years on the cathedral dome at Florence. He knows the hoists, he knows the trusses, he knows the new proportions. He will not come for a salary alone. He will come because what you are building here is bigger than what he is working on in Florence."
"His name."
"Antonio di Pietro. He is forty-one. Brunelleschi keeps him on the dome, but he is ready and the master knows it. If you write to him under your seal he will accept. I have made the soundings already."
"You have made the soundings already."
"Forgive me."
Constantine looked at him.
"Write under my seal."
"Majesty."
"And Taccola."
"Confirmed, Majesty. As we discussed. He sails from Pisa in May. I have written him about the Heron codices and he is eager to see them." Filelfo searched for the word. "He is engaged. I told you he would be."
"Good. I look forward to meeting him. Now tell me about the newspaper."
Filelfo's face shifted into a different register. He drew a folded sheet from inside his cloak and handed it across. It was a proof. The masthead was set in clean Greek capitals: ΚΗΡΥΞ. Beneath was the date, the calends of May, and the first column of text. Constantine looked at the spacing for a moment. Tighter than the books. The lines closer together, the page denser.
"The press house is ready by the end of next week. The presses you brought will be set up by the eighth of May. We print the first issue on the fourteenth. One thousand copies for the city. Six hundred for Glarentza by the next dispatch."
Constantine handed the proof back. He nodded once to Filelfo and walked on through the site. The donkey-cart had been unloaded and a mason was calling for water somewhere behind the library foundations.
Author's note:
Since the previous chapter we time skipped to April of 1438. Slowly but surely Constantinople is being rebuilt. After the first winter of work, the Kontoskalion harbor is nearly rebuilt, and the foundations of the new university are rising on the western slope of the Hippodrome. The new blast furnace on the Lycus is half-built.
What I am most enjoying writing in this stretch is Constantine slowly assembling his team of experts. Filelfo has gone from a recently-arrived humanist to a man running three steps ahead of his patron, recruiting Brunelleschi's assistant, signing Taccola, getting the newspaper to print. Some readers might find him too pushy, but that is who he was historically: vain, ambitious, gifted, and impossible to keep on a leash. He is exactly the kind of man you want building you a university.
Taccola is the one I am most excited about. In OTL Mariano di Jacopo had presented his engineering work to Sigismund when the Emperor passed through Siena in 1432-33, hoping to enter imperial service. Sigismund never followed through. Taccola spent the rest of his career as a Sienese civic official, writing the De ingeneis and De machinis with no patron to build the things he designed. Filelfo was teaching at the University of Siena in those same years and would have known him personally — which is how, in this timeline, the recruitment happens. Taccola finally gets what he wanted and more — a king who will fund the workshops, plus the Heron books waiting for him in Constantinople. He is sailing from Pisa in May.
If you want to watch the Italians go to work and read the full kingdom-building arc, Patreon is 15 chapters ahead.