Gallipoli, dusk
Laskaris was first on the quay, hat under his arm, the wind off the strait pulling at what was left of his hair. Andreas stood a pace behind him in a plain field coat, in off the Bursa road two days since. Behind them torch-bearers lined the mole, and behind the torches the masts stood in ranks against the last of the light.
"Majesty. Welcome to Gallipoli."
"Admiral." Constantine took his hand. "It is good to see you. Your reports have reached me all winter. I have been looking forward to seeing how far you have carried it."
Laskaris smiled, though there was a little caution in it. "Far enough that I hope you will forgive what we have done to the treasury. We have not been idle, Majesty."
He glanced toward the crowded anchorage. Galleys lay inside the mole, their yards and rigging crossing one another against the evening sky. "Though I confess, Majesty, I had not expected to have quite so many hulls to find room for."
Constantine followed his gaze. The Katarina rode among them, high above the lower galleys, while behind him the Helena was still being worked into her berth.
Thomas came down the gangway behind Constantine.
Laskaris turned to him. "Despot Thomas. Welcome."
"Admiral." Thomas smiled and clasped his forearm. "Good to see you. It has been too long."
"And you, my lord. I am glad you came."
Thomas released his arm, still smiling, and Laskaris said something more to him as Constantine's attention moved past them.
"Andreas."
"Majesty." Andreas stepped forward and took his hand. Up close he was leaner than he had been at the triumph, burned dark across the nose, with the look of a man who had spent most of the winter outdoors.
Laskaris walked them up the mole himself, naming each thing as they passed it. The mole had been cleared and re-decked its whole length, the old wrecks raised or broken up. "The harbor can berth up to fifty ships now, Majesty. It waters them from the new works, no bucket touching the town well."
At the shore end the fortress stood up against the first night stars, two towers at its corners and above them, on the high ground, the great tower that ruled the town and the strait together, all three pale at their tops where the masons had pointed the new work. "Twelve guns across the three of them. Six bear on the strait, six on the land approach, and every carriage is under a roof."
He turned before the gate and pointed left along the shore, where a long shed stood over a slipway, a pitch fire banked at its mouth. A galley sat propped inside it, her seams open. "The dockyard works again. That one came in making water a week ago. She swims by Friday. We build and mend everything here now, start to finish."
"Friday," Constantine said. "I will hold you to Friday. Now show us our quarters, Admiral. The rest will keep until morning."
The smell of the place reached them on the wind, tar and new-sawn oak and the cold mud of the foreshore, and under it the smoke of the garrison's supper fires inside the wall.
They took the council the next day in the great tower's upper chamber. The shutters were open on the harbor, morning light on the water below. The room was bare stone and new plaster, a soldier's room. A chart of the two seas lay on the table. There was wine, and no clerk.
When the door was shut and the five of them were around the table, Constantine poured his own wine and sat. George set his own paper at his elbow; what mattered he would keep in his own hand.
"Admiral. The sea."
Laskaris put two fingers on the chart and drew them down the middle of the Aegean.
"Quiet, Majesty, and I will start with the good of it. The lanes ran clean through the autumn, and the first ships out this spring came through untouched. The season opens on a swept sea. Our base at Smyrna keeps the Aegean secure. What piracy we had in these waters is hanged, enrolled, or gone south, and it is the south where the reports begin."
His fingers stopped below Chios and tapped once. "From Rhodes down, along the run toward Cyprus, there is raiding, but mostly against the Muslim trade. Mamluk ships above all, the Alexandria traffic. Galleys working out of Rhodes waters, some under the Order's licence, they say, some under its blind eye, which pays the same. The Knights call their own cruising the corso and call the rest of it nothing."
"How much of this is known?" Thomas asked. He had leaned forward.
"Less than the rumor, my lord. I have it from a few of my captains, men who ran those waters in other services, and from a Chian master who talks too much. No real numbers. The cargoes are hearsay. I would not mark any of it on this chart." Laskaris spread his hand flat. "I mention it because Cairo will not ignore Rhodes forever. If Cairo ever moves over Rhodes, it will affect every port in these waters. It wants watching."
"And it will get watching," Constantine said. "Now, the Gattilusio. Palamede writes me often enough about how useful he has made himself."
Laskaris almost smiled. "For once he undersells it, Majesty. Two of his galleys serve with the fleet permanent, at his own charge. They stand our watches and take our orders. I have stopped thinking of them as guests."
"Good. The Euxine?"
"One matter more in the south first, Majesty. Naxos." Laskaris moved his hand back down the chart. "Giacomo Crispo, the Duke, has written asking for aid. The old quarrel with Venice, over Andros. The island came to his wife when her father died; the Duke took it, and he holds it three years now. The Republic still calls it theirs, and the threats have grown louder of late. It has gone far enough that he looks for a protector, and by the same letter he asks leave to come to the City and put his case himself."
George set down his pen. "However it is dressed, Majesty, that is a quarrel with Venice."
"And if we send him home empty," Thomas said, "he will seek assistance somewhere else."
"He will, and I can already name where," Laskaris said. "Rhodes. There are ties there already, and the man is pressed enough to use them. I would not be comfortable with the Order's galleys sitting in the middle of the Aegean, and not as guests."
"Twenty-two galleys and the two great ships," Andreas said. "I would not pick a quarrel with Venice on that."
"Twenty-four, and six more by summer," Laskaris said. "Gun for gun we are the heavier in these waters now." He tipped his head toward Andreas. "But you are not wrong. A quarrel with Venice is more than guns."
"Venice will not go to war over one island," Thomas said. "Not with us, and not while her trade runs through our waters. They will complain, and then they will settle. It costs us nothing to hear the Duke out."
"The trade cuts both ways. We would bleed as they would," George said. "Though from the other side of it, a duke asking for the crown's protection is as fair an excuse to set foot in those islands as we will ever be given. I would want the old grants searched before he arrives. Those islands were Roman once, under Roman title, and titles do not die because the Latins forgot to ask us."
"After Rome, Venice is the largest market the presses have, and she takes more than books," Constantine said. "But Thomas is right. Listening costs nothing. When he comes, I will hear him. We decide after."
He turned to Laskaris. "The Euxine."
"The waters are quiet. Minor piracy, small boats out of the far eastern coasts, mostly beyond our lanes. The sea is not the problem up there. The shore is." He moved his hand north on the chart. "Theodoro is collapsing. The lord barely holds his own town, and the Tatars are at war in the interior, two khans against each other. Between them the caravan roads are dead. If it goes on, our own grain supply will feel it."
"Notaras and the Company press for action in the Euxine," Constantine said. "We licensed them their hundred men for the base at Avlita. It has not been enough for them; they want the crown's own hand in it. And with things as they stand, they are not wrong that it would come cheap. We could take Theodoro ourselves with little cost, and lock that coast against the Tatar war. And I do not like counting on Genoa alone in that sea." He looked up from the chart. "Andreas. Your opinion."
Andreas set his cup aside and stood over the chart.
"Interesting news, Majesty. I would still argue against a major campaign there. We have troubles enough at home."
"Milasa," Constantine said.
"Yes, Milasa. Raids even as we speak, small bands of horse, in and gone, off Teke. Nothing we can catch and nothing we can answer without crossing."
"And Germiyan?" Thomas asked.
"The Bey keeps his oath. So far." Andreas moved his hand east across the chart. "Bursa to Nicomedia, East to the Amasya border, quiet all winter. But inside our own lines there are Muslim villages that have seen nothing of us but a tax rider, some not even that. We hold the roads, the ports, the walls. Between them, much is still ungoverned."
He straightened. "And we are thin. With the winter recruits we are barely back to the strength we crossed the straits with, and half the new men are green."
"Seems Teke is a matter we will have to settle soon too," Thomas said. He set his hand flat on the table. "This year or the next. Before Karaman digests what it has swallowed."
Andreas gave a short nod, as if he agreed, and went on. "One more thing. Albanian irregulars, far southeast of Skopje. Small bands, burned byres, driven stock, gone before the garrison horse came up. Happened before. Wants an eye on it." He looked at Constantine. "And you know my request already, Majesty. A third legion, and I will answer in favor of a campaign, wherever you point it. Short of that, I answer only for the border. "
Below the window a boat was crossing the anchorage, and the hammering from the dockyard shed carried up over the water.
"The year's budget is closed," Constantine said. "There is no third legion in it. The ships stay the priority. We hold what we have, we watch the borders, and that is the year's work." He put one finger on the northern sea. "George. For the Euxine, the directors get this answer: the Company will have the crown's support. Two tagmata go north with their convoy, to make the station at Avlita a permanent one. A garrisoned base, the harbor and the ground the Company stands on, and not a step past it. No Theodoro. The tagmata stay three months, then the Company runs it themselves."
George was still a moment. "The directors will read it as half a yes."
"It is half a yes. Draft it so."
"Today, Majesty. It can be in the City by tomorrow, and the convoy sails on it."
"Then go and write it."
George gathered his paper and went, and Laskaris and Andreas after him, until only Thomas lingered a moment at the door and then followed the rest down.
Constantine stood a while longer at the shutters, looking down at the harbor and the working ships. Then he went to the door himself and put his head out. A guardsman came to attention in the passage.
"Send for the captain of the Pelagios," Constantine said. "Matteo, if I am not mistaken."
Author note:
A few historical things in this chapter. The Naxos situation was real: Duke Giacomo II Crispo actually did seize Andros from his wife's inheritance around 1437, Venice actually did protest, and in our timeline he brought in the Knights of Rhodes to garrison the island starting in 1440, ships and men and all.
The Tatar civil war in the Crimea is also real for this period, and it's exactly the kind of thing that quietly wrecks a trade network. Caffa's whole existence depended on those caravan roads staying open.
And the Rhodes piracy thread is the fun one to flag early, because it pays off later this same year historically. The raiding out of Rhodes against Mamluk shipping was real, the Knights were absolutely part of it whatever they called it, and it made Cairo angry enough that the Mamluks put together a fleet and moved against Rhodes and the Order's holdings that same year.