Chapter 159: Future of the Empire of the Romans

The smoke from the wagon yard dwindled to a thin thread, then the ridge behind it sank below the sea, and eleven hulls headed southwest by the compass, with the sun to check the course and eyes serving as a distant third opinion.

Six days of open water lay ahead, with the Bulgarian shore far to starboard and ninety tons of raw hides below in the summer heat. The grain was the cheapest cargo aboard, yet a regent with a hungry city to feed would have traded every chest of sable for it.

There was a simple reason the venture would oblige the city needs.

Everything Venezia owned east of the Adriatic depended on Latins holding Constantinople, and the Republic’s share of the city and the islands would last exactly as long as a Latin seal kept the partition on paper.

The little colony ran its courts with the regency’s permission, while the Patriarch was Venetian because the Latin rite occupied Santa Sofia. The Marmara region, the two passages of the strait, and the route to Crimea all depended on that same treaty.

A Greek restoration would turn the partition into wastepaper, return the Greek houses to their lands and offices, and give Genoa and Pisa the chance to sell ships to the restorers in exchange for the wharves they had controlled when Venezia was barred from the Horn.

Of all the names the Greeks had reason to hate, Venezia stood first. It had brought the fleet that broke the sea walls, and Vito himself had killed the Emperor who held them.

Thus, the Latin Empire was of great importance, and five wars were burning around that throne.

Thrace was a slaughterhouse, as Kaloyan of the Bulgarians kept Baldwin in a cell and plundered the plain whenever he pleased. His Cuman horse-archers came off the same grass that had supplied the fleet goods, and at Adrianople they had ridden down some three hundred knights, Louis of Blois among them, then left the armored corpses for the crows.

The raids cut the grain route, leaving the Republic’s Marmara towns exposed to the next attack.

In Asia, Laskaris at Nicaea could cross the strait whenever he pleased, and that was where a Greek restoration would begin.

In the west, Boniface sat in Thessalonica and answered the regency when he felt like it, while the Greek lord of Epirus accepted no Latin master at all. At sea, Genoa and Pisa had ships but no share in the partition, and their corsairs sailed under no flag.

The fifth war was inside the walls. Greek houses sold their wardrobes for bread, and the poor sold whatever they had left. Meanwhile, the Greek towns of Thrace had begun to fear Kaloyan’s raiders more than their Latin lords, and whether hunger or fear won in the capital would decide who kept the walls.

The Latins were fighting five wars with an army meant for one. Their only moat was the sea, and the oars on that sea belonged to Venezia.

Henry held the regency but wore no crown. The barons agreed on everything about the crown except who should pay for it, and each could tell you exactly how much the next man owed.

On the harbor, Baldwin’s death had been whispered in a dozen different versions, each worse than the last, and the fleet had heard nothing since. What was a city to do when its crown depended on a letter from a Bulgarian cell? Count its loaves.

The garrison was thin, the treasury empty, and the Greek quarters lived on whatever the ships brought in. Zeno’s seal protected the colony and brought as much weight as the regency’s, but the histories’ promise that the podestà would be put on a leash sooner rather than later.

The throne depended on bread for the Greeks and pay for the barons’ retinues, let either run short, and the city would open its gates to whoever arrived first.

On the sixth night, Vito leaned on the stern beneath the lamp, his elbows braced beside Caterina, who held her tally. The histories he knew gave Henry his crown before summer ended, with Kaloyan’s army a day’s march away.

Boniface and Kaloyan would both be dead a year later, and Henry would enjoy ten good years, the best the Latins would ever get, and then came weaker emperors, another fifty-five years, and a fall on a summer day when the Venetian fleet was away in the Black Sea, after which Genoa would receive the keys under a treaty.

The dates nearest at hand were unreliable, while the distant outcomes held up better, and in the end, every lever Vito pulled might shift the road beneath his feet.

He meant to keep the Latin Empire standing, and to keep it standing for a long time, because it was the lock on his own back door.

Grain would feed the garrison and the quarters at a fair price, since a city with full bellies was more likely to keep its gates shut. Furs, wax, the galleys, and a good understanding between Zeno and the regency would take care of the rest.

Caterina tapped her quill against the tally. "Marito, since Soldaia you stand there mumbling at the horizon, and I, your own wife, am left to audit your sighs. Dai, anima mia, say the sums aloud."

The grin broke across his face, and he swept one arm out over the black water. "Alora, moglie, listen, whoever sits in that palace eats off other men’s ships, and whose ships are those? Ours, anima mia! Now put a Greek in that chair and watch him run to Genoa for hulls, and what does Genoa want for them? The wharf, cara, the very wharf we tie up at tomorrow, so we keep the Latins fed, and fat, and owing."

He laughed and finished. "Check it, moglie, and be merciless, because there is no pleasure in this world like being audited by a woman with a quill."

She checked the figures as carefully as she checked pepper, grain by grain, and wrote them in the margin without asking where he had got his sums.

At dawn, the sea changed color, and white water appeared ahead between the headlands, where the Black Sea poured through its single door. Bepi checked their position against the compass and took the fleet into the same northern passage that had fought them on the way up, but this time the current brought them south.

Steep, wooded banks closed around them, with villages tucked into the coves and vineyards across the slopes, while fishing boats scattered at the sight of eleven hulls.

The eastern bank belonged to whoever had last ridden down it, which meant ownership changed hands as often as the wind changed direction. Bepi ordered the hatches shut, and the fleet ran south like a river.

The strait widened, and the city rose on the right, a hill of roofs beneath one great dome.

Caterina inspected the Latin pennants on the sea wall and came up short. The Golden Horn had fewer sails than a capital ought to have, and some roofs still showed nothing but bare rafters.

A harbor boat flying the Lion came out of the Horn, just as one had before, and led them in.

The naves took the long wharf, while the galleys went to the exterior berths. A new edict had been nailed beneath the previous one at the gate, each bearing its own seal, so that the gate was tiled with law.

A crowd gathered on the stairs to watch eleven laden hulls arrive, and the hungry watched them as they watched a baker.

Here lays Constantinople, the last market before Venezia

The senior clerk who had tallied the fleet in the spring came down the wharf with his board under his arm, inspected the ships again, then stopped below Vito’s rail and lifted his nose.

Beneath the hides, hundreds of tons of answer waited for the hatches to open.