Mystras, early 1430
The travelers came up from the Eurotas in the last light, monks and a few pilgrims with them, dust to the knee. Mystras drew such men all year. Some came for Gemistos, to sit at the edge of his circle and understand a third of what they heard. Some came for the churches on the hillside.
Alexios met them at the gate, as he met most who came through. He made a habit of knowing who passed, and the habit had served Theodore well. He found the monks lodging below the palace and sat with them over bread and watered wine, and let them talk, which travelers always wanted to do.
Two had come by way of Glarentza. They spoke of the harbor busier than they remembered, numerous Latin ships at anchor, and a thing in Constantine's town that Alexios made them describe twice.
A house where books were made, faster than any scriptorium, and Latin Scripture sold there openly to foreign merchants. Alexios kept his face easy and filled their cups again. When they went to their prayers, he did not. He went straight up to the palace.
Theodore II Palaiologos sat in his chamber in Mystras, the last of the afternoon light lying across the stone floor. The missive lay open on the desk before him, and his fingers had taken up a slow tapping on the arm of the chair. The day's petitions sat squared at the corner of the desk, read, judged, and sealed before midday, as they always were.
It had been a few weeks since word arrived of the death of his brother Constantine's wife, Theodora. Theodore had felt a pang of sympathy for his younger brother, and it had passed. It was not what troubled him now.
What troubled him was the news that came with it.
Latin Bibles. Constantine was having Latin Bibles made in Glarentza, and not by any hand Theodore knew. The letter spoke of a device, a machine of foreign make, though it said little of how the thing worked. He had read it three times and still it sat wrong with him, half absurd, half worse than absurd if it were true.
A knock, and Alexios came in and bowed. Theodore had known him long enough to read the set of his shoulders: the man had brought something.
"It is true, then," Theodore said. "The machine."
"It is true, my lord. The monks who saw it liken it to a wine press. Constantine feeds in paper at one end and the Scripture comes out the other, a hundred copies where a scribe would labor over one."
"A machine to print the Word of God. As though it were a merchant's ledger."
"That is near what he uses it for. He does not keep the books. He sells them."
"And the Church?" Theodore said. "What do they make of it in Glarentza?"
"The monks who saw it speak of blasphemy, my lord. Scripture in Latin, made by a machine, sold for coin. They call it an affront to the Orthodox faith, and they are not wrong to."
"And the bishops?"
"The bishops wait, my lord. They will see which way the Emperor leans before they find their outrage. Bishops usually do."
Theodore rose and crossed to the window. Below him Mystras fell away down the hillside, the roofs going gold in the last light, and none of it settled him. Ever since Constantine had gone to Glarentza and taken up with foreign traders, this unease had been growing. But a machine stamping out Latin Bibles by the hundred was not a line crossed. It was a knife put to everything they had kept.
"You know where I stand on the union," he said. "I would rather die than see the faith bent to Rome. Our fathers bled to keep it whole."
He had paid for Rome's friendship once himself. His own marriage had been his father's gift to Rome, an Italian bride for the Morea so that Rome would smile on the union talks, and Theodore had knelt and wed her because duty required it. Cleopa had come to the true faith since, and kept it better than half his court.
"Of course, my lord. But this runs deeper than theology. The Bibles are more than faith to him, they are currency. He is already using them to cultivate the Venetian and Genoese merchants, expanding his influence at their courts. Even Rome has taken notice. They whisper that your brother may yet become their champion of unity."
"Naturally," Theodore said. "Constantine has always played the opportunist, pandering to John's ambitions, whatever the spiritual cost."
The mention of John struck him. His mother had always looked on those two as the heirs of greatness, the sons who would shape the empire. And Theodore was the shadow that trailed behind them, the dutiful governor expected to support but never to lead.
He remembered a winter evening years ago, coming into the hall with news of a settlement he had brokered with a mountain governor. His mother sat by the hearth with John and Constantine, and she had barely looked up. Her attention stayed on John's talk of the court.
Despite all his efforts, all his sacrifices for the realm, he was unseen in his mother's eyes. A steward of the periphery, not a son of destiny.
"There is another matter that may interest you, my lord," Alexios said. "Your brother's debts."
"His debts?" Theodore's eyebrow rose.
"Constantine has borrowed heavily, mostly from Genoese financiers. He has wagered great sums on these ventures of his, the workshops, the paper mills, this publishing scheme. My sources say his debts now outrun his assets. He is stretched thin, and vulnerable."
Theodore took this in, and a grim smile formed on his lips. "Ah, Constantine," he said. "Ever chasing grandeur, and now chained by it. He thinks himself a Solomon, and forgets that pride goes before destruction." He crossed to the hearth. "I remember his promises as a boy. Conquests, triumphs, a world remade. Mother's eyes would light as though she were hearing a prophet, and I was set always to humbler work, duty, law, the keeping of tradition and Church." He watched the fire a moment. "Perhaps it is fitting that his grand dreams now tie him to the very traders who would carve up our empire for their gain."
"And yet the debts have not slowed him, my lord," Alexios said. "He gains ground with the Emperor even as he borrows. There are whispers that he uses the Bibles not only to appease the traders but to win John, to present himself as the ally of the Church and the man of the future, while your opposition may soon paint you as the one standing in its way."
Theodore turned, his eyes hard. "Do you take me for a fool, Alexios? I see it clearly. This is not about books, or Bibles. It is about power. Constantine means to make me irrelevant in the Emperor's eyes. He knows where Mother's favor lies, he knows how John looks to him. He would paint me the backward brother, the one clinging to the past."
He turned back from the window."But he will not succeed. The people are not so eager for change as he believes, nor is the Church. Both are mine before they are his, and I will use them to stop him."
For a moment he weighed writing to John himself. He could compose the letter in his head, every measured phrase of it, the machine, the debts, Scripture hawked to foreign merchants like bolts of cloth. And he could hear just as plainly how it would be read in the City. Theodore grudges his brother a success. Theodore lecturing the man who fills a treasury. Whatever he sent north would be read as envy and nothing else, and Mother would read it over John's shoulder and say nothing at all. There was no letter he could write that would not argue Constantine's case for him.
Alexios bowed his head. "What shall we do, my lord?"
"Nothing yet that carries our name. But I want more eyes in Glarentza, closer than a monk passing through. In the workshops, if it can be managed. I want to know what the press prints before the ink is dry, and I want to know the day his creditors lose their patience." He looked out over the hills, where the dark was coming down. He has stood in Mother's light long enough. Let us see how he stands without coin."
When Alexios had gone, Theodore sat alone while the lamps steadied.
It would take patience, and patience he had. He had spent his whole life being the patient one, the son who waited, who held the ground while the others rode out to be admired. He had told himself a hundred times that patience was the deeper strength, that the man who endured outlasted the man who dazzled. Perhaps that was even true. But he knew, in the quiet of the chamber, that he had made a virtue of the only thing that had ever been left to him. He had been patient because no one had given him the chance to be anything else.
Constantine had never waited for anything. He had gone to Glarentza and simply begun, and the world had rearranged itself around the fact of it. Theodore had governed Mystras for years the way their father wished, faithfully, correctly, invisibly, and the world had not so much as turned its head. There was a lesson in that he did not care to look at directly. That the bold were forgiven what the dutiful were never even thanked for. That a man who waited for his moment might wait until there was no moment left to take.
Then he took the letter from the desk, held its corner to the flame, and watched it burn nearly to his fingers before he let it drop.