July 1437
At Ostia, the castellan had the chest opened before he looked at the captain. Morning light lay on the wet timbers. Gulls dropped and rose at the porters' shouts. Two men eased the first chest ashore while a customs guard cut the manifest seal with a blackened knife.
"How many chests?" the castellan asked.
"Twenty-three in all," the captain said. Salt had dried white on his cloak and at the edge of his beard, and he kept one hand on the folded manifest. "Fourteen marked for the Curia. The rest for Roman buyers and two houses in Spoleto."
"All upriver?"
"If the river men are sober."
The castellan did not smile. He watched the customs man pry up the lid. Straw showed first, then leather, then the square backs of books packed tight beneath it. The man dug in with both hands, lifted one out, pressed the board, and checked the spine, while another guard knelt beside the chest and felt beneath the top layer.
"Nothing beneath?" the castellan said.
"Only books, my lord," the captain answered.
"The last man who told me that had pepper under the Psalms."
The captain said nothing. He watched the customs man's hands.
At the clerk's board, the reed pen moved across the bolletta: chest marks, count, origin, dues. The clerk kept his head down while the customs men worked through the straw and bindings with practiced fingers. One book came up damp along the lower edge from the voyage; the guard wiped it on his sleeve and set it back.
At last the castellan took the manifest and broke the fold with his thumb. "Rome takes more from Glarentza every season," he said. "A man would think Venice had given up pepper for theology."
The castellan handed the manifest back. His eyes went to the clerk, then to the chest, and only then to the captain's face. "Last we heard, the Emperor had Adrianople and meant to sit down before Constantinople. Has the siege begun in earnest?"
The captain let the question hang a moment longer than courtesy required while men lifted the second chest to the quay and the rope groaned in the block overhead. "Then you heard old news."
The clerk's pen went on for another word.
"Begun?" the captain said.
"No, my lord. He has the City."
The pen stopped. The customs man with both arms in the chest looked up, and the other straightened from his crouch with straw on one sleeve. The castellan said nothing at first. He set two fingers on the edge of the open lid and left them there.
"Taken it?"
"Yes."
"They said months," the clerk blurted.
"They said a great deal," the captain replied. "At Glarentza the harbor had it before I sailed. Men came in from the City itself, men who had seen the banners at the gates. Not tavern talk."
The castellan measured him in silence. The captain shifted the manifest from one hand to the other and waited.
"Driven out?" the castellan asked.
"The Turk is out of the City," the captain said. "That much I will swear to."
The castellan took his hand from the chest and straightened. "Have you letters?"
"Yes."
"For the Curia?"
"A sealed packet and three private bundles."
"Anything else to declare?"
"Only that I would clear my cargo before the whole quay begins shouting the same news."
The castellan turned to the clerk. "Finish it now."
The clerk bent over the board again. His hand had lost its steadiness, and the first pinch of sand fell wide of the line. The castellan did not look at him.
"You," he said to the nearer guard, "check every mark. You, get the Curia chests off first. I want them on the river craft for the Ripa as soon as the bolletta is sealed." He pointed toward the warehouse with two fingers. "Set the Spoleto freight aside. The Roman buyers can wait their turn."
The captain gave the smallest incline of the head. He had won what he wanted and knew better than to show it.
The castellan looked once more at the black letters on the nearest lid—GLARENTZA, PAPACY EDITION.
"Send a rider," he said to the clerk without turning. "And another by river. Rome hears this before the unloading is done."
The bolletta was sealed. Porters bent under the poles. Men farther down the quay kept their hands on bales and ropes and listened. By the time the third chest struck the planks, the words had gone past the warehouse doors and down toward the fish sheds and the boatmen: he has the City. A gull landed on the slipway and pecked at a strand of straw. The customs man asked the clerk for the next number and called for another seal.
By noon the room off the papal apartments was heavy with heat. The shutters stood open to the glare, but the air barely moved, and flies kept finding the soft wax at the candle cups and the damp rim of the fountain basin in the court below. On a side table lay unopened packets from Naples and Lombardy, two printed papal Bible samples with their clasps fastened, and eastern reports so often opened and folded again that the outer leaves had gone grey at the seams.
Condulmer was there before the Pope, one hand on the back of a chair, talking with a papal treasurer and the Camera secretary, who was sorting packets by seal and province.
"All spring it has been France, then Sforza, then Constantine," the treasurer said. "A man opens one packet and another is at the door."
"Better packets than condottieri," Condulmer answered.
"That depends on who is paying them."
The secretary did not look up. "A ship came upriver from Ostia sooner than expected," he said. "That may settle one rumor and start three more."
Then Bessarion came in fast enough to catch his sleeve on the corner of the side table and pull one of the book samples askew. He freed it, set the book straight with two fingers, and remained standing with a sealed letter in his hand. Small as the movement was, all three men noticed it.
"From Ostia?" Condulmer asked.
"From Glarentza," Bessarion said.
He did not sit. A half-moon of red wax marked his thumb, and he kept turning the letter between his fingers. The secretary set down the packet he had been sorting. The room went quiet enough for the fountain in the court to be heard running thin over stone.
The door from the inner room opened, and Pope Eugene came through with a chamberlain behind him. He stopped before the chair at the head of the table. Someone had told him a ship had come; the faces around him told him it was more than cargo.
He did not sit. "Well, Bessarion?"
Bessarion glanced once at the seal, then held out the letter. "Constantinople is in his hands, Holy Father."
No one moved for a breath. Then Condulmer crossed himself, and the treasurer did the same. The older chamberlain near the door sat heavily on the nearest bench. Eugene took the letter, broke the wax with his thumbnail, and read the opening standing, his lips moving once over the formal style. Then he lowered the page and made the sign of the cross.
"A soldier of Christ," he said quietly.
Condulmer's mouth tightened. "A hard one."
The Pope read on. The sheet crackled as he turned it back to the first page. Wax had softened on the nearest candle and run onto the tray. No one touched the side table or the packets on it. For several breaths the room held only paper, flies, and the faint scrape of the secretary's shoe as he shifted his weight.
Then Eugene set the letter flat on the table and rested two fingers on it. "Halil Bey?"
"Dead, Holy Father," Bessarion said.
"The boy Sultan?"
"Escaped east, into Anatolia."
"Gallipoli?"
Bessarion shook his head once. "His Majesty writes that the strait was in Roman hands when the packet left. He does not make the same claim for the fort."
"And the city?" Eugene asked. "The churches. Hagia Sophia."
"The fighting reached the sea walls and the palace quarter," Bessarion said. "Hagia Sophia stands. The liturgy has been served there again."
That answer sat in the room a moment. Then the Pope read the middle section more slowly. His eyes narrowed at one place and went back to it. He read the passage again, folded the letter, and tapped it once with the nail of his forefinger.
"He writes more firmly than before."
No one hurried to soften it. Bessarion let the line stand. The secretary gathered the older eastern packets into a neater stack. The treasurer glanced toward the printed Bibles on the side table and away again.
"He writes as a man who has taken back his city," Bessarion said. "But he binds himself again to the union."
Condulmer leaned forward. "What does he ask, plainly?"
Bessarion answered. "That I present the recovery formally to His Holiness, that preparations begin at once for the work of union, and that the first commission sit in Italy, the second at Thessaloniki, and the full council afterward in Constantinople."
Eugene's hand remained on the letter. "Rome is the safer and fitter place."
"For the first stage, yes," Bessarion said.
"For the final as well. A council cannot look as though it gathers because an emperor has called it to his own city."
Bessarion kept his voice level. "He leaves the first work in Italy. Thessaloniki follows. Constantinople is named only for the last sitting, and not without reason. Whatever is agreed there must still be borne in the East."
The treasurer, who had been quiet since the news, spoke then. "He has the City now. Does he seek union, or Rome's recognition dressed as union?"
Before Bessarion could answer, Eugene said, "Yes. Which?"
"If he had written before Adrianople, or before Constantinople, men could have said need drove him," Bessarion said. "He writes after victory. That does not settle the matter, but it does take away the easiest objection."
No one answered at once. Flies kept returning to the damp rim of the fountain basin below.
Bessarion went on. "There is another point, Holy Father. The Greek side will have to be handled carefully. In the City there are bishops and monks who will hear tone before doctrine. If Rome's first answer sounds like an order, the anti-union men will have their words by noon. If it comes as articles for examination, they must answer the articles."
"Now that the city stands again," Condulmer said, half to the table and half to himself, "they will not be spoken to as refugees."
"No," Bessarion said. "They will not."
The treasurer glanced toward the unopened Lombard packets. "Rome has burdens enough already."
That ended the muttering. Eugene picked up the letter again and read the closing lines. Whatever passed over his face at Constantine's style and signature was gone by the time he folded the pages, laid them across the papal Bible nearest his hand, and looked first to Condulmer and then to the secretary.
"Our answer will go at once. We will congratulate him and recognize the recovery formally. Preparations for the first talks will begin at once. The final seat of the council is not settled today."
Condulmer bowed his head. "I will draft the public letter."
"The private reply as well," Eugene said, looking to the secretary. "Take Bessarion's points down exactly. I want the Italian commission prepared on paper before the week is out. Gather every eastern report from the room below and reconcile the contradictions."
The secretary had his pen out before he finished speaking. Sand whispered over the first lines.
Eugene turned back to Bessarion. "You will give me names. Theologians, canonists, envoys. Men who can read articles without turning the room into a sermon."
"I will."
"A thanksgiving service tomorrow," the Pope said to the chamberlain by the door. "And let the Roman packets wait until evening."
The chamberlain bowed and went out, stirring the papers on the side table. When the room began moving again, it did so in office motions: pens uncorked, seals found, packets retied, one candle trimmed because the heat had bent it too low. On the table before the Pope, Constantine's letter lay across a printed papal Bible from Glarentza while fresh ink dried beside them in sand.
When Bessarion came out from the papal rooms, the courtyard was white with sun. Clerks crossed it with bundles under their arms. At the far side, a groom held two reins in one hand and wiped the neck of a sweating horse with the other. The noise of the chamber fell away as soon as the doors shut behind him.
His monk was waiting under the arcade, a satchel at his feet, in a strip of shade barely wide enough for him. He stepped forward at once.
"How did it go?"
Bessarion straightened one glove finger before he answered. "He received the letter and did not refuse. We have room to work."
"That is good."
The monk heard the lack in it. He bent to take up the satchel, then stopped with the strap in his hand. "That is not how a man speaks after hearing Constantinople is restored."
Bessarion began walking, and the monk fell in beside him. Their sandals clicked under the arcade and went dull where the paving held damp. For a few steps Bessarion said nothing. He could still feel the heat of the room on his face and the drag of the sleeve that had caught on the table.
"Before," he said at last, "men in Rome could speak of Constantine as a prince in need. That language sits less easily now."
The monk looked at him. "Because he has the city."
"Yes," Bessarion said. "And because Glarentza's presses carried Rome farther than Rome could easily have managed alone."
They passed from the shade into a strip of sun between the arcades. Heat struck the stone there and came back through the soles. A secretary hurried by with a packet tucked into his belt and nearly ran into them before checking himself and bowing.
The monk adjusted the satchel on his shoulder. "Then the Holy Father is angry?"
"No." Bessarion shook his head. "He is not a petty man. But he is stronger than he was a few years ago, and men in that position do not like accounts that run both ways."
They passed back into shade. At the end of the arcade a groom was tightening a girth with both hands, one boot braced against the stirrup leather. The horse had gone dark beneath the saddle cloth.
"So what changed in that room?" the monk asked.
Bessarion looked past him toward the stable arch and the clerks still moving between the papal rooms and the chancery. "They must answer him differently now," he said. "And they must do it while Rome has Italy on its hands."
The monk took two more steps before the second point caught up with him. "Sforza?"
Bessarion gave a small nod. They had reached the stable arch by then. The groom pulled the buckle through, and the leather creaked in the heat.