Blachernae, late July 1440
The great hall of the east wing had been cleared of its benches. When the receiving was done, Katarina stood on the dais step and watched the room fill. The servants went through the crowd with wine on brass trays, in at one door and out at the other. The guests stood about on the open floor. Along the north wall, under the high windows, the old men had gathered where the top table would have been, one of them leaning back with his hand against the plaster.
He was a distant Palaiologos cousin, a strategos under the Emperor Manuel, past seventy. He was talking to the man beside him while the man looked at the trays.
She came down off the step. The crowd opened for her and closed behind, and the heat rose off it with the smell of wax and bodies on a night that had not cooled. The balcony doors along the seaward side stood open their full width. There were too many people. The thick of it was near the center, around Isidore, and more were going that way.
She went to Filelfo first.
He had a cluster near the second window, four wives and one husband, and he was moving both hands in the air. The Ferrara decks again. He was explaining them to the husband, and putting on a show for him.
"A duke will pay for a deck what a good horse costs." He turned a card that was not there. "The Empress has a painter in this palace who could make such a deck, if the Empress would spare him from her walls."
"The Empress would not," Katarina said, and the wives laughed. She let the laugh run out, then put her hand on his sleeve and turned him toward the center of the floor. "Master Filelfo, go and tell the men around Isidore about the gold decks. They've kept him talking an hour. He's enthroned in three days and will need his voice."
"The middle of the floor, Empress," Filelfo said, and bowed to the wives, and went.
Pisanello had come early, before the hall filled, with a small thing for the nursery: a leaf of paper no bigger than two hands, and on it in thin color a duck, brown and green, one foot lifted and dripping. Katarina had told him at the door that Zoe had held it up to the window and asked whether the duck was cold. He was across the hall now with a few of the younger nobles and officers around him, talking of the Italian courts, Ferrara and Milan and Mantua, who had risen there and who had been put down, and they were listening the way they had not listened to Filelfo.
Eudokia Kantakouzene had a young cleric backed against the wall by the third window, two women beside her, and was not letting him go.
"And the Holy Father stood," the cleric was saying. "When the courier came with the news of Bursa, the Holy Father was at table. He stood to hear it read, and had it read again, and went to his chapel."
"Standing," Eudokia said. "Anna, the Pope stood for our victory." She did not look to see whether Anna had it. "And the plate. You said the plate at the Cardinal Bessarion's table was Greek work."
"Old Greek work, my lady. From the City, he said, before the Latins."
"Then it should come home." Eudokia gave him half a step and took it back. "The Patriarch's household is being chosen this week. My sister's boy has his letters and his Latin and no place. When the Archdeacon asks who is fit, you'll remember him. I will send you his name in writing in the morning."
"My lady, I am the lowest man in that house."
She turned to Katarina without breaking off, dipped her head, and went on in the same voice. "Empress, I'm placing my sister's boy. Someone has to. His mother prays and does nothing else."
"You're filling the Patriarch's house before he's sat in it, Eudokia," Katarina said.
"It'll fill up with whoever is nearest the door. I'd rather it were my blood." Eudokia turned back to the cleric. "The plate. Tell the Empress about the plate."
The cleric told about the plate. Katarina stayed for it. Eudokia's window was where the ships' gossip came ashore, and two minutes there was worth any report. The delegation had come in last night. What the City believed about Florence by Sunday would be settled in corners like this one, before the Kyrix printed a line. Filelfo had told her at the door that the special leaf was already set in his head, the union and the Creed and the words agreed on. He would have it out within the week. Tonight there were only the men who had been there, and everyone else wanting to hear it from them.
She found Izaoul near the doors to the inner rooms, out of the thick of it, a cup in his hand. He bowed as she came. "You're back," she said. "I hadn't heard. How was the north?"
"Long, Empress. I came this morning and haven't sat down since." He turned the cup. "I've only seen the Despot Thomas, an hour ago. He asked after the roads."
"And how are they."
"Quieter than they were," he said. "The King of Hungary has spent a year putting down his towns, and by spring most of them had given in. A man can ride from Buda to the mountains now and pay only the tolls. On the way back I passed through Smederevo, Empress. Your mother is well."
Katarina held still. "You saw her."
"I paid my respects. She gave me her blessing for the road, and a letter I've given to your steward. She asked after the children by name. She had the names in order."
"She writes often. Weather and prayers," Katarina said.
"She talked weather and prayers too. And asked three times whether you ate enough. I told her the Empress eats what the Emperor eats, which is lentils, and she didn't believe me either."
Katarina laughed and put her hand to her mouth and took it away. "Thank you, Izaoul, for going to see her."
Old Chortasmenos sat near the inner doors too, in a plain chair. Someone had brought it for him; there were no others in the hall. Mark of Ephesus stood at his shoulder in the same dark habit he had come ashore in, his hands in his sleeves, while Scholarios kept a pace off with his arms folded, and the two of them were giving the old man Florence in turns.
"Bessarion argued the fire with the Latins better than the Latins did," Mark was saying as Katarina came by, "and then argued it with me, and I couldn't fault his Greek. He did us honor there, Father."
"He gave them the principle and kept us the preposition," Scholarios said.
When Katarina inclined her head as she passed, Mark returned it, but Scholarios was looking at the old man and did not see her.
The crowd around Isidore had not thinned. Filelfo was in it now and had drawn a dozen men off to the gold decks at its edge, but twenty more had come to fill their places. She stopped at the outer ring.
Isidore had aged in Italy. There was a ring on his hand she did not know, and when he spoke he moved the hand. He was telling them nothing dangerous, the shape of the sessions, the courtesy of the Latins, the manuscripts Traversari had lent. A man at the front called him All-Holiness. Isidore told him, smiling, to wait three days.
One of the lesser magnates had his cup up over his head for a toast. She could not hear the first words, but the end of it came clear across the floor. "To the next shepherd of the City, and long may he hold the staff." The near cups went up for it. She looked for Constantine.
He stood in the balcony doors with George at his shoulder and Thomas beside him, and Notaras, and Izaoul come over from his corner, five men with their backs to the room. Constantine turned his head and found her, and held her eyes a moment. Then a servant was at her elbow about the sweets, whether the Empress wished them brought now or later, and she said now.
Constantine watched her take the servant's question and turn back into the crowd.
"She's good at this," Thomas said beside him. "Better than either of us. The room goes where she sends it and thinks it went on its own."
"Yes." He turned back to the men around him.
George stood at his left with a cup he had carried full all evening. Thomas at his right, in good dark cloth, his own cup half down. Notaras had come up ten minutes before and stayed, his rings taking the light when he moved his hand. Izaoul had drifted over from the inner doors after the Empress left him.
"The Duke of Naxos is here tonight," George said. "By the second window, in the Venetian black, though he wouldn't thank you for calling it Venetian. He came in two days ago and I asked him for tonight, a first look and nothing more."
"Bring him over. I want a look at him."
Constantine turned enough to find the man. Young, thirty or near it, in good black, moving through the crowd without hurry, greeting as he came, his eye returning to the balcony doors between greetings.
"What's he like?"
"Better than his letters. The letters are all Andros and injury. In person he is quieter, and he listens."
The Duke reached them by degrees and made his bow, correct and a little long.
"Majesty. Giacomo Crispo, Duke of the Archipelago. I have hoped for this since the spring."
"You are welcome in this city, my lord Duke."
Crispo spoke good Greek with a Latin accent. His eye went once over the cleared floor, the standing crowd, the trays, and came back. "Forgive me, Majesty. I have sat at a good many high tables, though not so many as my father. I have never stood at one. I do not know where I rank."
"That is the idea," George said, before Constantine could answer. "The Emperor does this from time to time. Tonight, my lord, nobody sits below a man he thinks he outranks, so nobody can complain of his place. It saves a great deal of quarreling over chairs. We had a bishop last year who would have gone to war over one."
"I will steal it, if the Emperor permits," Crispo said, "though my hall is smaller." He stopped there, and looked at his cup, and went on.
"Majesty. I will not press my business at your feast. Only this. After Rhodes, mine are the next islands north. My galleys are few, but they know those channels, and they are the Emperor's to call."
"My lord Duke, you and I will have much to discuss. The Mamluks failed at Rhodes, and it was no small thing that they tried. But not tonight, and not over wine. Come to me when the feast is behind us, and bring the captains who know those channels, and we will see what is worth doing there."
"Majesty." Crispo bowed. "I will come when I am called."
"George will send for you."
The Duke made his reverence and moved off into the crowd.
"He offered you eight galleys he cannot feed," George said, when he had gone.
"He talked about the Mamluks so he wouldn't have to say Venice."
Constantine watched the black coat go. "That's a delicate thing. I'll hear him, George, but I don't know yet what to tell him."
"After the enthronement, then," George said. "Which leaves the thing that is not for this floor."
Constantine glanced past him. Notaras stood three feet off with Thomas and Izaoul, talking freight.
"Not here," Constantine said. "The balcony."
They stepped out one at a time onto the balcony that ran the length of the hall's seaward side. The Horn lay black below it, and across the water the lights of Galata showed low along the shore.
Thomas came out first and set his forearms on the rail. Notaras followed. Izaoul took the far end. George was last out and stood with his shoulder half closing the group off from the doors, so that a servant with a tray stopped in the doorway and turned back.
"So it's not a rumor anymore," Notaras said. "I heard the word crusade four times on the floor tonight. The Holy Father isn't shy about it." He turned one ring. "No wonder. Every see in Christendom has his Bibles. That is a great deal of silver."
"And the council," George said. "The first talks went smoother than Rome had hoped. He counts the filioque a victory and means to use it while it's warm. Preach a crusade now, and Thessaloniki next year has a crusade waiting on it."
Constantine set his hands on the rail. "I confess I didn't read him that way. I read a man who wanted his union and his tithe, and I was content with that. Now he has the money and the union, with Italy quiet under him. He can afford to dream."
"And all that before Rhodes," Thomas said.
"Buda will say yes, gladly," Izaoul said from the far end of the rail. "The king said it to his own archbishop, and he meant it. He is not hiding it either."
"I expect we'll know more when the next letter comes in," Constantine said. "And the one after it. For now it's a letter and the talk on this floor, and we have a Patriarch to seat before anything else."
"Whatever it turns out to be," George said, "I'm not fond of a crusader army passing this city."
"If it succeeds, who takes what?" Thomas said. "The Franks didn't come this far last time to hand the keys to us." He pushed off the rail.
They talked it over a while longer, the new ships and the Euxine Company, the Naxos business, and what a crusade would do to all three. Then Notaras said he meant to ask the Empress for her painter, for a portrait of his own house, and when Thomas told him he would have to wait his turn, since the Despot was next, Constantine said they were both welcome to it.
"He's had me three weeks and we're not halfway yet. Sit for him yourselves and see how you like being looked at for an afternoon."
They laughed, and went in. Across the width of the hall, over the heads and the trays, Katarina's eyes had already found him.
Author note:
We jump about three months here, late April to late July 1440. A few things happened off-page in between and the chapter catches you up as it goes. Pisanello's been in the City since May, the Mamluks had a go at Rhodes in June and went home, and the delegation's just back from Italy.