Book II / Chapter 41: Of Presses, Ships, and Heirs

Glarentza, early spring 1435.

The roadstead lay gray and still. A bell on the mole rang once. Two Burgundian ships rode under the wall, their hulls black with tar, their sterns marked with the cross. On the quay, men moved iron-bound coffers from cart to gangplank, each painted with the double-headed eagle and the words FRAME, BED, SCREW. Bales of paper stood in rows. Jars of ink were carried in straw cradles, the black inside catching the light.

“Soft with the black,” Theophilus said through his teeth. A jar passed between hands; he flinched. “If one breaks, the stink will never leave the hold.”

Constantine stood a little apart, where the air smelled of pitch and faint orange from the streets behind. He watched the men lift the second press chest and step together over the plank. The board bowed but held. For an instant he watched the strain, wood, weight, men balanced between ship and quay, then let the breath out slow. He measured the moment like a man counting before speech.

Theophilus kept his eyes on the jars. “I’ll say it again,” he said quietly. “Selling presses to half of Europe tells them where to look for the key. We should have kept more back. Time would have guarded it for us.”

Constantine waited before he answered. A gull cried overhead. The Burgundian in the red cap watched the loading in silence, his face unreadable.

“Look,” Constantine said at last, his hand taking in the quay, the paper, the jars, the clerks who had just signed for more sheets than a monastery would see in a year. “They buy the mill, but we keep the river. We show them the strike, and keep the die. The presses go out; the black and the paper come back to us, in coin until their grandsons die.”

Theophilus’s mouth tugged, a reluctant humor under the purse‑string. “If the jars do not crack, and the clerks do not lie.” Then, lower: “Still, it is a bold thing.”

“Better we set it,” Constantine said, “than let it set itself.”

A small company crossed the dock toward them, cutting through the stream of stevedores. The man at their head had the Burgundian cross stitched at his sleeve, a neat beard, and the air of one who has had to teach his boots to move like a courtier’s. Beside him walked a thinner fellow with ink under his nails and a leather case hugged to his ribs. A pace behind came two men who carried the sea on their skin even in port: sun‑freckled, salt threaded through their hair, the set of their shoulders shaped by years of bending over timbers.

The Burgundian captain bowed. “Your Majesty,” he said in Latin softened by Flemish vowels. “Messire Guillaume de Sassy, with your leave.” His companion inclined his head. “Colin le Prévôt, factor in your service for His Grace when he does business as a merchant.”

Colin produced a sealed strip; Theophilus took it, turned the wax to the light, and nodded. The captain’s eyes slid once to the presses, then back.

“Our duke, Philip, sends his regards and thanks,” Guillaume said. “He says the two machines are received with gratitude and will be kept with care. He also asks that we be shown not only how to use them, but how to keep them true, the proper order of work.”

“You will have it,” Constantine said. “The manual in Latin is in the chest marked K. We’ll show you the rest with your hands on the levers.” He allowed a small smile. “It’s not witchcraft, only stubborn work done right.”

Guillaume looked up in quick surprise; he had expected a steward, not the man in the purple cloak with the signet at his belt. He covered it with a small smile. “To be taught by an emperor,” he said, “will make a tale at home. And our printers may learn to watch where they spit.”

Colin had turned toward the two men behind him, already half-guessing how the weight in the conversation might shift. “Your Majesty,” he said, “His Grace sends you shipbuilders from Portugal, as requested, Masters Diogo Gonçalves and Afonso Vaz. They built at Lisbon and Aveiro, and their hands have laid more ribs than I have counted coins. The duke sends them with his word on their skill and their pay.”

The two stepped forward. Diogo Gonçalves bore a shipyard’s scars, splinter lines on his fingers and a white nick at one ear. Afonso Vaz’s eyes were quick; he moved like a man more at ease with wood than talk. They bowed, unsure how deep courtesy ran in a foreign court.

“Majestade,” Diogo said, then stopped and tried again, careful Latin that had been folded and kept in a chest for just such an hour. “We are honored. We come to work, not to talk. We know ships.” He lifted one hand, made the shape of a round, full hull in the air without thinking. “Big bellies. High castles.”

A quick pleasure showed under Constantine’s calm. He had asked for these men in letters that had taken years to reach them. “You found the right road,” he said, his Latin easy. “I have wanted Portuguese masters for some time. I hear your ships do not fear distance. We will build you a yard to your liking and give you good oak. I mean to build a fleet, Portuguese in its bones, armed with guns. We have the guns. We will have the hulls.”

Afonso’s mouth did that quick, involuntary thing a craftsman’s does when he hears a problem he respects. “Oak is good,” he said. “Pitch honest. Iron sound.” He snapped his fingers once. “Then we make a great ship, a stern that holds steady and a bow that keeps dry.”

Theophilus set the letter aside and studied the two men, then gave a short nod. “We’ll speak of pay after you’ve walked the yard and seen our timber,” he said. “If the wood’s not sound, I’ll find another forester.”

Guillaume grinned, the stiffness easing. “His Grace will be glad to hear you have an appetite for the sea as much as for paper.” He nodded toward the presses. “He sends painters to Lisbon to win brides and carpenters after them.”

“Your duke understands that the world is a web,” Constantine said. “Threads must be laid before the voyage dares the open sea.”

“They say in Lisbon you send ships beyond sight of land for weeks,” Theophilus said, his suspicion and number‑sense not entirely at ease with poetry. “That your men do not break when the compass lies.”

Diogo shrugged, as if choosing between saws. “The sea is a wide well. You learn its edge and the wind’s moods. If God is kind and the hull is sound, a man comes home to tell his sons what he’s seen.”

Constantine let the talk fall to practical things: how long the crossing took, how the ink rode, what the Burgundian purser demanded in rope. The captain spoke of a storm off Cape St. Vincent and a jar that slammed against the bulkhead. Theophilus drew breath through his teeth, then, seeing the same jar intact on the quay, allowed himself a small smile.

Later that day, Clermont Castle

The room kept the day’s warmth. A narrow window showed a strip of sea, dull and flat. On the table lay a letter sealed with Burgundy’s cross; beside it, a knife with a smear of ink where Constantine’s thumb had rested.

Plethon sat near the light, the white in his beard catching it. Theophilus Dragas stood with his ledger closed under one hand, as if even a marriage had to be counted before it was spoken of. The wax on the seal had cooled to a red bead.

“The Pope planted this seed in Rome,” Plethon said, touching the parchment with one finger. “Lady Agnes of Cleves, Burgundian, well dowered, well connected. Eugene and his nephew Condulmer spoke of the match as if it were a banner. They even hinted that her house might, in time, sit on a restored throne through such blood.”

Constantine felt the old taste rise in his throat, sharp and metallic. In Rome he had swallowed it and smiled; here he let it come back. He thought of the child they had named a bride, ribbon in her hair, a doll in her hand, and passed his thumb along the page until the paper grew warm.

“She was eleven when they said it,” Theophilus added, voice flat, loyal to fact. “Betrothal now, marriage later. Now she is barely thirteen. Later is still later. We—” He stopped himself from saying kin and chose realm instead. “We need an heir before rumor makes itself a second steward. Thomas already casts a longer shadow than one man ought.”

“The Pope knew the arithmetic,” Plethon went on. “He counted prestige, coin, the weight of Burgundy’s name. All true numbers. But time is a number also.” He turned his palm up. “And there is the other ledger: your own stomach. You told me of it. You are not the first prince to feel revulsion and hide it. You will not be the last. You said—”

“I said I would not wed for politics alone,” Constantine answered, quietly. He kept his eyes on the cross in the wax. “I told Jean de Croÿ I would give the offer reverence and time. I told him peace first, then marriages. I told him I would pray and consult. And he told me this much: their knights do not ride for a wedding ring. They ride for Christendom. Burgundy’s resolve, he said, would not fail if we did not seal it by a child’s hand.”

Theophilus inclined his head, a small sign of agreement. “Đurađ Branković writes as well,” he said, taking a second packet from his sleeve. “Not through a scribe, his own hand. He writes like a man who knows the ground under him is shifting. Katarina is seventeen. Your mother’s name is well known in that house. Serbia beside us makes a wall against Edirne’s future plans.”

Plethon glanced to the window and back. “And the crusade has been ridden,” he said evenly. “The Burgundians did not fail us. The duke kept his word. Their men bled under our banners, and today their factors load our presses and buy our paper and black. Their commitment is already sealed, in coin and blood both. So the question is changed. It is no longer, will Burgundy come if you wed? They have come."

He glanced again toward the window. “Serbia offers a wife grown, one who can give you sons before Saint Demetrios counts another winter.” He faced Constantine. “Sphrantzes was right about heirs. A realm cannot live on promise. Thomas is steady for now, but steadiness fades. Leave a cradle empty and the court will fill it with rumor.” He rubbed the bridge of his nose and let his hand drop. “Turn from Burgundy and Rome will frown. Eugene and Condulmer will expect an answer. Better we give them ground to stand on, a new meeting on the Union, a pledge that your voice will not fall silent. That will soothe them more than gold or gifts.”

Constantine touched the Burgundy seal and felt the wax cool under his nail. The sickness was not an argument; it was a reminder of the line he had once sworn not to cross. He remembered Rome, the quiet room, the Pope’s thin hands, Condulmer’s smooth voice, the talk of dowry and influence, the promise of Burgundy’s blood on a throne. He had smiled as duty required, asked for prayer and time, and the envoy had taken no offense.

“Burgundy gives us weight in halls where Latin words are law,” Theophilus said, counting aloud without looking at his ledger. “Serbia gives us a bride who will not spend two or three winters in a nursery with dolls while the court learns to gossip. If we must choose where to set the stone today, set it where it holds the arch."

Constantine nodded once, and the decision fitted him like a tool well made. “We answer Philip with thanks and courtesy,” he said. “We tell him what Jean told me at Thessaloniki, that their resolve does not hinge on a child’s ring, and we praise him. We tell Rome the crusade bound us tighter than any ribbon could. But as for myself, I cannot wait on a child’s years. The Empire needs an heir now, not promises. We accept Serbia.”

He turned to Theophilus. “Write tonight. To Đurađ: our assent, and the honors owed a father who entrusts us with his daughter. Bid him send Katarina to Thessaloniki, where we will make ready for the wedding.”

Author’s Note:
This chapter begins after a short time skip, in early spring of 1435. We are in the middle of Book Two of Empire Rewritten! Ships loading!