Constantine eased the door closed behind him. He had spent the night in the small adjoining bedchamber, close enough to hear the midwives moving softly in and out, yet kept apart by women's rites and Katarina's own insistence, sleeping in brief, uneasy stretches while they checked on her and the child. She was past the worst of it now, but not past weakness, and he had learned not to trust peace too quickly.
Pale morning light filtered through the chamber's latticed window, and in that gentle glow, he saw Katarina awake in bed with Zoe cradled against her breast. The only sounds were the soft breaths of mother and child. A delicate scent of chamomile lingered from the midnight feeding.
He moved quietly to the bedside. Katarina's face was drawn and pale, but her eyes were clear, more present than he had seen them in weeks. She managed a small smile as he sat beside her. Zoe slept soundly in her arms, a tiny fist curled against her mother's collarbone.
"Did we wake you?" Katarina whispered.
Constantine shook his head and gently brushed a loose strand of hair from her brow. "No," he murmured. "I was already awake." In truth, sleep had eluded him—his mind churned with the day's coming duties—but now, in this hush, those worries receded.
Zoe stirred, a little whimper escaping her small mouth. Katarina adjusted the swaddling, and Constantine reached down on impulse. "Let me," he said softly. With care, he lifted his daughter from Katarina's arms to give his wife a moment's rest. Zoe fussed at the change of hands, but Constantine swayed on the spot, rocking her gently against his chest. Within moments, she settled, warm and astonishingly light in his hold. Katarina watched, a quiet laugh in her eyes at the sight of her husband soothing an infant with such tender grace.
"She finally drifted off not long before sunrise," Katarina said, keeping her voice low. "The little one eats like a sailor." There was a flicker of wry humor in her tone. It eased Constantine's heart to hear it, evidence of her strength returning. Just days ago, her voice had been weak and dull with exhaustion; now he heard the Katarina he knew.
He allowed himself a faint smile. "She takes after her mother, then," he replied, the corner of his mouth lifting. Katarina's lips curved in a pale echo of a smirk.
Constantine returned Zoe to Katarina's arms, and for a moment, they watched her breathe, letting the quiet settle.
At length, she looked up. "You should go," she said quietly. "They'll be waiting for you at the docks."
He nodded, though the thought of leaving this chamber, this fragile bastion of everything he could not protect by decree, tightened something in his chest. Beyond these walls the harbor would already be crowded with witnesses: courtiers, officers, priests, shipwright-masters, dockers. All ready to measure his reign by whether the new hull kissed the sea cleanly or split on the slipway like an omen. A launch was never only timber and ropes. It was promise, and a promise could drown.
He leaned forward and pressed a kiss to Katarina's brow, then to Zoe's soft head. "I'll return as soon as I can," he promised.
"We will pray for smooth waters," Katarina said. She squeezed his hand, her grip still frail but determined. Constantine saw the concern in her eyes, she knew ships and ceremonies carried their own dangers.
He squeezed back gently. "And I will pray for you both," he answered, his voice low and earnest.
In this room, he was not emperor but husband and father, and he let those words hang openly between them.
Katarina's fingers lingered on his for a moment before she released him. "Go," she whispered. "Make it a day Zoe will be proud of when she's old enough to hear the tale."
Constantine drew a long breath, steeling himself. At the door, he cast one last look over his shoulder. Katarina sat propped against the pillows, cradling their child in the dawn's gentle light, two fragile, precious lives that meant more to him than any empire.
He fixed the image in his mind, allowed himself a final, grateful smile, and stepped out into the waking day.
By mid-morning, a crowd lined the wharves of Glarentza to witness the empire's new flagship take the sea. Constantine arrived amid cheers, but his attention fixed on the immense hull poised on the slipway. The Katarina rose above the harbor, a triple-masted warship with high decks and broad flanks of fresh oak that caught the sun in warm bands along her ribs. Ropes and timber braces still held her to land, for the moment. An imperial banner cracked from her mainmast in the sea breeze, and a carved Saint Nicholas looked out from the prow, stern and watchful, as if judging the water that waited.
At her bow, a platform draped in red had been raised for the rite. Constantine mounted it and found his advisors already gathered. Plethon stood at his side, his gaze roaming the great hull with a measured approval. Constantine laid a hand on the smooth timber. Pride and anxiety wrestled in him, not in the abstract, but in particulars: if she hesitated on the ways even a breath, the priests would murmur of omen; if she struck the water too hard, his rivals would call it waste and folly.
Sensing the tension in him, Plethon offered a faint, knowing smile. "A ship is a promise, Emperor, made of wood, iron, and the faith of men who expect you to keep it."
Constantine let out a quiet breath, a wry curve at his mouth. "Then we'll keep it with iron, coin, and discipline," he murmured. Plethon's words were a reminder that this spectacle, for all its drums and banners, bound him to future action.
A hush fell over the quays as the Metropolitan stepped forward before the prow, resplendent in white and gold, the embroidered omophorion heavy across his shoulders. He raised a silver cross and invoked God's protection over the vessel and those who would command her. The deacons' responses rose in counterpoint, mingling with the cry of seabirds overhead. The Metropolitan dipped the cross in consecrated oil and reached up to anoint the bow, marking the wood with the sign of the cross as incense drifted through the salt air.
A sudden gust snapped the banners, drawing a soft murmur from the front ranks. The Metropolitan spread his arms toward the sea. "May she cleave the waters as the Lord parts peril from deliverance." His benediction rang over the docks, and those closest bowed their heads or crossed themselves.
When the prayers subsided, Constantine stepped to the edge of the platform. His voice carried clearly. "I name this ship Katarina. May she carry the will of this realm farther than any promise spoken on land."
For a heartbeat, the crowd held its breath. Then the cheer broke across the harbor, sharp, exultant, echoing off the water. Constantine allowed himself only a restrained smile, acknowledging them with a raised hand.
The cheers rolled on a moment longer before fading into expectant quiet.
With a nod from the Emperor, the shipwright and his men hurried to the hull to loose her from the last restraints. Mallets thudded against wedges; braces shuddered, then fell away. "Release!" a foreman cried, and the word was taken up along the ways like a signal in battle.
The Katarina answered with a long groan of timber. She lurched, inching forward as the tallow-slicked runners took her weight. For a breath she moved slow, reluctant, then the mass began to slide, the whole slipway trembling under her.
Then a mooring line caught.
It was only a hitch, but enough to snap the bow hard to one side. The rope went taut with a crack like a whip, and the ship's descent halted in a single brutal jerk. A murmur ran through the crowd, thickening into a gasp. Constantine felt his gut tighten. One caught line on a launch was the sort of omen men remembered, the sort priests would name in sermons and rivals in council-chambers. If she hung there, if she failed to take the water cleanly, they would call it Heaven's judgment on his coin and his reforms alike.
The hull shuddered, straining against the snag as if in protest. Yardmen swarmed the line. A shipwright lunged in with a broad-bearded axe meant for trimming beams and, without hesitation, chopped through the rope. Fibers parted in one wet snap. The slack recoiled; the bow sprang true.
Freed, the Katarina slid again. Slow at first, then faster as the runners gave way beneath her weight. A thunder of timbers and shouted warnings rose from the ways. She surged down the slip, the last braces skittering aside, and slammed into the harbor.
The sea bucked white at the blow. Spray burst up and out, washing the dock edge and spattering the nearest onlookers. The great hull heaved, settled, and rode the swells, alive now, floating where a moment before there had been only greased wood and air.
For a long heartbeat no one spoke. Men listened for the wrong sound: the rending groan of a cracked keel, the splintering cry that would mean disaster. But there was only water lapping against fresh planking and the distant wheel of gulls over the masts. The ship lay true.
Relief moved through the wharves like a wind. Workers pulled off their caps; a few crossed themselves quickly, as if ashamed to have doubted. Then the city exhaled in a roar. Cheers broke across the harbor — not the frenzy of victory, but a thick, grateful sound of joy and reprieve. Laughter rippled among the crowd. Out on the small boats that had rowed to steady her, sailors waved their caps and whooped toward the platform as the Katarina rocked, steady, in her first honest swell.
As the thunder of cheering ebbed, Constantine was quiet amid the jubilation. He descended from the platform and, with a handful of officers at his back, went to the gangplank the yardmen were wrestling into place against the newly floating hull. He would be among the first to tread her decks. The Katarina's gangway creaked under his boots as he climbed aboard.
On deck, the world was all motion. Crewmen hauled lines, shouted to one another, and bent over fittings to make sure the launch had not wrenched anything loose. Constantine paused near the mainmast, drawing in the sharp stink of wet oak, feeling the low, living sway underfoot. He listened, not to the crowd now, but to the ship herself: the slow creak of settling joints, the steady slap of harbor water against fresh planking. She was no longer timber on land. She had begun to breathe.
At a quiet gesture from him, his officers held back. Constantine toward the stern, to the captain's cabin, and the captain-designate stepped aside, clearing the narrow doorway without a word. Inside, the space was bare and new: raw walls still pale where the adze had bitten, a built-in desk waiting for charts and instruments, a single window that admitted a thin band of light.
From within his coat he drew a small wooden icon, worn smooth at the edges. He did not make a ceremony of it. He murmured a few words under his breath, then fixed the icon to a beam near the door, pressing it firmly into place. The Virgin's gaze would be the first thing a man saw when he entered, the last when he left.
"Guard those who sail in her," he whispered. It was not a plea for miracles. It was an acknowledgment of what the sea could do to even the best-made promise.
He stepped back onto the quarterdeck as towing boats took up their lines and began to draw the Katarina toward the pier. Sunlight lay broken on the ripples around her hull. Constantine stood at the rail, watching the wharves loosen into noise again as the crowd drifted in bright, disorderly currents. Pride settled in him—heavy, earned. He thought of the months behind this morning: the arguments in council, the ledgers bled for timber and iron, the shipwrights' bruised hands, the prayers he had not admitted to saying until he heard them spoken aloud.
The result floated beside him, solid and obedient to the water.
Yet triumph was never a resting place. Plethon's words returned with the tug of the towlines: a promise made of wood, iron, and faith. This ship was more than canvas and oak. She was expectation given a keel. His people would ask victories of her, security, horizons pushed outward—and the first failure would be laid at his feet. If he could not feed that expectation with results, the loss would cut deeper than any shattered plank.
He kept his hands on the rail a moment longer, feeling the ship's slow, patient motion beneath him, and then turned back toward the pier. The Katarina had taken the sea. Now she would demand the future.
Author note: The Portuguese master shipwrights arrived in Glarentza in early spring 1435, and we're now in June 1436, so roughly fourteen months from first rib to launch( a build time of 12–16 months was typical in the 15th century if materials and skilled labor were available). A big Venetian or Portuguese flagship of the era usually ran around 40–50k ducats, but the Katarina, being a heavy "war carrack" edging into proto-galleon territory with a proper gun deck, would've come in noticeably higher.