Port of Glarentza, April 1430
Constantine stood at the stern of the Kyrenia. The air smelled of salt and tar. He ran his hand along the railing, the wood smooth and greasy from other hands before his. Gulls worked the water behind the ship. On the quay a carter swore at a mule, and crates knocked down into a hold somewhere.
"All the cargo is aboard, right?" he asked Damianus for what must have been the third time since dawn. It was his first voyage since arriving in this world, in this body.
"Aye, all's stowed and secured, Despot," Damianus called out, working his way aft between the coiled lines. "She's heavy with cargo, but the Kyrenia dances with the waves like a dolphin eager to leap."
Constantine turned to him, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. "You've a poet's tongue this morning, Damianus."
The sailor chuckled. "Just calling it as I see it, my lord. The sea's in a fine mood, and it'd be a shame to keep her waiting."
The Kyrenia was a sturdy two-masted galley, the only ship he owned, rigged with lateen sails for the Mediterranean winds. She had carried him to the Morea, and had stood in his brother's line at Echinades. Now she carried six Drakos cannons, their bronze muzzles capped against the spray.
As he gazed across the deck, his mind drifted toward the future. No one else was using cannons like this for naval warfare, not the Venetians, not the Genoese, not the Sultan. Yet his plans grew larger with each passing day. He dreamed of great carracks, high-sided and built for the open sea, bristling with cannons. For now he had one galley and six guns.
Nearby, the Venetian trade ship they had hired as a companion swayed at her moorings, her crew securing the last of the provisions. Fine mariners, the Venetians, but they sailed without a gun aboard, their hold set aside for the cotton and goods coming back from Ragusa.
At the bow George Sphrantzes checked the last of the cargo against his tally. For years now he had been the first man Constantine went to when a scheme grew larger than the treasury beneath it.
"Despot," Damianus said. "The wind favors us. Shall we set sail?"
Constantine drew a breath of the salt air. "Yes. She's waited long enough."
Damianus turned to the crew. "Hoist the yards!"
The men moved to it, and the sails filled and the Kyrenia pulled away from the quay into open water, the Venetian ship following behind. Constantine turned to Damianus.
"Will the breeze hold?"
"For a while. If we're lucky, we'll reach Ragusa in under a week."
Constantine smiled, though part of him wished the first landfall were Constantinople. There was no time for it. Ragusa first, and business.
The Pirate Encounter
Three days into the voyage, the weather shifted. They had stopped at Corfu, a Venetian island, to resupply, but the sea north of it was known to be treacherous, both for its storms and its pirates.
Constantine was in his cabin when the shout came. "Pirates!"
He rushed out, the cold wind whipping his face, and joined Damianus and George at the helm. "Where?"
"There," Damianus said, pointing toward a fast-moving ship cresting the waves, bearing down with alarming speed. It was small, low and sleek in the hull, a Dalmatian pirate.
"Damn it," Constantine muttered. "How close?"
"They're gaining," Damianus said tightly. "They mean to ram us."
Constantine's heart pounded. "Prepare the Drakos," he ordered, his voice trembling with both fear and exhilaration. The crews pulled the caps from the muzzles and ran the guns out, setting the quoins the way they had drilled in the bay at Glarentza.
"Fire!" he shouted as the ship closed the distance. The first cannon roared, smoke and flame off the muzzle, but the shot went wide, the ball splashing into the sea well short of the hull.
"Again!" The second shot struck home, and a section of the pirate's rail came apart with a crack they felt in the deck. The crew cheered but the pirates kept coming. The source of this chapter is NovelPing.
Constantine gave the order again, and this volley caught the pirate low along the waterline. The sea went in where the planking had opened, and the bow began to drop. On the deck, men left the oars and the ram and scrambled for the high side, and some were already going over into the water. "Despot!" Damianus called. "She's sinking."
A strange thrill coursed through Constantine. "I don't care," he barked.
"Again!"
The pirate went down by the bow. A few heads bobbed among the floating spars, then fewer. Constantine watched until there was nothing on the water but wood.
The thrill was still in him, and some part of him did not like that it was.
The crew began to chant his name, "Constantine! Constantine!" He could only manage a faint smile.
Port of Ragusa
Ragusa's white walls stood over the harbor as the Kyrenia came in, and behind them the towers and tiled roofs of a city that had grown rich keeping to itself between larger powers.
They were not allowed to land. Every ship put in from the sea sat out its quarantine first, and theirs was set at seven days. Constantine had not reckoned on losing a week to it, but there was no arguing with the health office, and the days gave him time he had not planned to have.
There was time, too, to notice the young man. He was the Venetian captain's son, off the trade ship anchored alongside, and from the first day his eyes kept coming back to the Kyrenia. He found reasons to be at the rail when Constantine was on deck, and he asked his questions lightly, as though they were nothing, about the guns, about the changes made to the ship, about the fight with the pirates.
Constantine answered him easily the first day or two, and kept the answers small. By the third he had grown careful. The questions came back too often to the same place, the Drakos guns, how they were bored, how fast they could be served, how a crew learned to lay them the way his had.
"Your ship handled the pirates remarkably well, Despot," he said one afternoon, his tone casual. "Those guns. I have never seen the like. And the way your crew fired them, so quick."
"We have made some improvements," Constantine said, keeping his guard up. "But any well-drilled crew can do as much with practice."
"Still, the design is unusual." The young man glanced again at the Kyrenia. "Your cannons seem further along than anything in Venice."
"Perhaps. A few changes, here and there," Constantine said evenly. "The sea rewards a man who thinks, doesn't it."
The young Venetian smiled and let it drop. That evening Constantine watched him walk the quay along the Kyrenia's length, pacing it off, counting under his breath.
"That one is trouble," George said quietly, coming to stand beside him. "He asks too many questions."
"And all of them about the guns."
"He will carry it back to Venice. You know he will."
"Here, there is nothing to be done about it." Constantine watched the young man move off down the quay. "A foreign port, their captain, their protection. We keep an eye on him, and we settle it closer to home."
"Settle it," George repeated.
"When we are back in the Morea."
Commerce and Diplomacy
George had already been through the cotton market, and his report was what Constantine expected. "High, Despot," he said as they walked in. "Half again what we'd pay in a spring with no shortage. They know we came a long way for it."
"They would." The stalls ran the length of one street, silk and oil and spice, and the cotton at the far end under awnings, the bales good, the prices on them worse. "And they know we cannot sail home empty."
The bargaining took most of a morning, and Constantine gave more ground than he liked before it was done. He paid what they asked, near enough. It emptied a good part of what the Bible sales had brought in, and bought no profit, only the paper that would keep the presses turning through the summer. That was the trade: coin now for the thing that made the coin.
Later came the formal meeting with the Rector and the council. The Rector received them in a sunlit chamber, a spare man in crimson who let the room settle before he spoke. When the courtesies were done, Constantine set a finely bound Latin Bible on the table between them, a gift from the Morea. Enjoying the story? Read on at g.com.
"A most exquisite gift, Despot Constantine," the Rector said, tracing the printed script. "I have not seen its like before."
"Thank you," Constantine replied evenly. "We hope this marks the beginning of a prosperous relationship. In fact, I wished to inquire about establishing a bookstore here in Ragusa. Our press in the Morea is growing. Ragusa could become a center for trade, and learning."
The Senators exchanged glances, clearly surprised and intrigued by the idea, though they said nothing. The Rector tapped a finger against the Bible's cover.
"A bookstore?" he repeated. "That is an interesting proposition. Ragusa has always been a city of trade, but knowledge... knowledge is a different kind of commodity." He paused. "But we are a city that has lived by trade, and we do not turn away a thing that sells. It will go to the council. There are permissions, and terms."
"I looked for nothing quicker," Constantine said.
They took wine after, and spoke of the pirates and the price of alum. When Constantine rose to go, the Rector did not hand the Bible to a secretary. He kept it on his own desk.
On the way home
They had left Ragusa days before, and put in at Parga, a small Venetian town on the Epirote coast, for water and provisions before the last leg to Glarentza. The light was going off the water when Constantine came up on deck, and the port had gone quiet, the day's work nearly done. He wanted to be home.
A crewman approached, and behind him a thin man with drawn features and wary eyes. His plain clothes and nervous glances betrayed a man accustomed to danger.
"Despot," the crewman said. "This man asks to speak with you. He says it's worth your time."
Constantine studied the stranger. "Who are you?"
The man bowed. "My name is Niketas, my lord. I beg a moment of your time."
"Very well. Speak."
"I couldn't help but notice your ship. The cannons. They're unlike any I've seen."
"You have an eye for cannons?" Constantine asked.
"Yes, my lord. I was a gunpowder maker serving the Ottomans, working on the siege bombards for Sultan Murad II."
Constantine's attention sharpened. "Go on."
The man's expression darkened. "An Ottoman Subaşı wronged my family, he violated my wife. In my rage, I killed him. We fled to Ioannina, but even that refuge has fallen. Murad's forces took the city. The Tocco heir could not hold it."
Constantine's voice softened. "I'm sorry for your suffering. But why come to me?"
"Work, my lord. And walls my family can sleep behind." He nodded toward the Kyrenia. "Whoever mills your powder now, I will do better. I know the proportions the Sultan's masters use, and I know where they cheat the saltpeter. Give me a shed and a corning trough and I will show you inside a month."
Constantine glanced at George, who gave a slight nod.
"You would swear loyalty to me?" Constantine asked.
"I swore it to the Sultan once, and kept it until his man came to my house. You will have better service from me than he did."
Constantine hesitated, then nodded. "Very well. You and your family will have safe passage to the Morea. There, you'll put your skills to worthy use."
Relief flooded Niketas's face. "Thank you, Despot. I won't disappoint you."
"See that your family is ready to depart promptly," Constantine said. "We sail with the tide."