“Issue them archetypes of their own?” Lakhanodrakon spread his hands in something approaching horror. “Don’t you think this is a secret as dangerous as hellpowder? It should be restricted in the same way, and the production of documents written with it limited to the imperial chancery here in the city.”
“I’d like to believe I could convince you that this new way of lettering has more applications than simply the political.”
The Master of Offices’ scowl was like a stormcloud. “My concern is for the safety of the state. You’d need a powerful demonstration to alter my opinion here.”
“I suppose so,” Argyros said with a sigh. He seemed to change the subject: “Will you still be giving another reading next week, sir?”
Lakhanodrakon’s frown vanished. He was composing an epic on ConstansII ’s triumph over the Lombards in Italia, in iambic trimeters modeled after those George of Pisidia had used in his poems celebrating Herakleios’s victories. “Yes, from the third book,” he said. “I hope you’ll be there?”
“I’m looking forward to it. I only wonder how many of your guests will be familiar with what you’ve already written.”
“To some degree, a fair number, I suppose. Many will have been at the earlier readings last year and this past winter, and of course the manuscript will have circulated somewhat. I intend to summarize what’s gone before, anyhow.”
“No need for that.” Argyros opened a desk drawer and handed a pile of thin papyrus codices to Lakhanodrakon.
“What on earth are these?”
“Books one and two of your Italiad, sir,” Argyros said innocently. “I’ve given you thirty-five copies, which I believe will be enough for you to pass one on to everyone who is coming. If not, I still have the letters in their frames. I would be happy to make as many more as you need.”
A couple of days ago Argyros would have sung a different tune. He did not fret about the cost of seven hundred sheets of papyrus. The stuff was cheap in Constantinople, because the government used so much of it. And finding a potter from Mesopotamia who could be made to understand how to make the clay archetypes had not been difficult for one who knew the city as the magistrianos did. But Argyros was still squinting from the unaccustomed effort of putting twenty pages of poetry into frames a letter at a time—backward. Anthimos had helped, some, but he never did get the hang of it, and the magistrianos spent almost as much time fixing his secretary’s mistakes as he did making progress of his own. After a while, he had excused the hapless scribe. And then, halfway through page eighteen, he had run out of omegas and had to rush back to the potter to get more. It was all worth it now, though, watching the astonishment on the Master of Offices’ face turn to delight.
“Thirty-five copies?” Lakhanodrakon whispered in wonder. “Why, saving the Bible and Homer, I don’t know of thirty-five copies of any work here in the capital. Perhaps Thucydides or Plato or St. John Chrysostom—and me. I feel ashamed to join the company you’ve put me in, Basil.”
“It’s a very good poem, sir,” the magistrianos said loyally. “Don’t you see now? With this new lettering, we can make so many copies of all our authors that they’ll never again risk being lost because mice ate the last remaining one three days before it was due to be redone. Not just literature, either—how much better would our armies fare if every officer carried his own copy of Maurice’s Strategikori? And lawyers and churchmen could be sure their texts matched one another, for all would come from the same original. Ship captains would be able to take charts and sailing guides from port to port—”
At last the Master of Offices was beginning to catch some of the younger man’s enthusiasm. “The Virgin protect me, you may be right after all! I can see how this invention could prove a great boon for government. Imperial rescripts would become much easier to produce. And—oh, think of it! We could make endless copies of the same standard forms and send them throughout the Empire. And it might not even be too much labor to have other forms, on which we could keep track of whether the first ones had been properly dispatched. I can fairly see the scheme now, can’t you?”
Argyros could, only too well. He wondered if he would be able to change his boss’s mind back again.
VI: Etos Kosmou 6826
Had he not decided to pray at the church of St. Mouamet, Basil Argyros would never have got caught in the riot.
The church was in a poor part of Constantinople, not far from the Theodosian harbor on the Sea of Marmara. It held only about twenty people. As a magistrianos, Argyros could have chosen a more splendid holy place. He had prayed in Hagia Sophia often enough.
But St. Mouamet was one of Argyros’s favorites. He had a fine church in distant New Carthage much grander than the little shrine dedicated to him here in the capital. Argyros had seen it a couple of years ago, when he was in Ispania to ferret out the secret of the Franco-Saxons’ hellpowder. Come to think of it, he had also prayed to St. Mouamet before he set out for Syria last year to see what mischief the Persians were stirring up in the border fortress of Daras. He wondered idly if this visit to Mouamet’s church portended another voyage.
He picked his way through the winding alleys of the harbor district toward the Mese. Once or twice toughs eyed him speculatively, but decided it wiser to leave him alone. He might wear a gold ring on one finger, but he also slung a smallsword on his belt. Moreover, he was a tall, solidly built man, still strong though close to forty.
Unlike the back alleys, the Mese was paved with blocks of stone; Argyros scraped mud from his sandals. Colonnades on either side of the street supported roofs that gave shelter from sun and rain. When it had been showery the night before, as was true now, they also dripped. Argyros walked in the middle of the street, dodging mules, small carts, and heavily laden porters. The Mese widened out into the Forum of Arkadios. The other squares in the city were named for great Emperors: Augustus, Constantine, Theodosios. Theodosios’s halfwit son, Argyros thought, hardly belonged in such exalted company.
A crowd had gathered at the base of the tall column in the center of the square. Once a statue of Arkadios had topped the pillar, but an earthquake had sent it crashing down about a hundred years after Mouamet’s time. Only a colossal hand and forearm survived, set up next to the column. Standing balanced on two man-sized fingertips, a monk was haranguing the crowd. The fellow was scrawny, swarthy, and not very clean. He wore a ragged black robe and let his hair grow long, so that it fell in a tangled mat past his shoulders. A fanatical light burned in his eyes as he shouted out his message, whatever it was.
His Greek, Argyros noticed as he approached, had a strong Egyptian accent. That sent the first trickle of alarm through the magistrianos. Egyptians were volatile and still reckoned themselves a folk apart despite having been part of the Roman Empire since before the Incarnation. As if to emphasize their separateness, many still clung to the Monophysite heresy; even those nominally orthodox had strange notions about the relationship between Christ’s human and divine natures. The monk came to his peroration just as Argyros reached the back edge of the crowd. “And so,” he cried, “you can see how these icons are a desecration and an abomination, a snare of Satan to deceive us into circumscribing the uncircumscribable.” He drew an image of Christ from within his robe, held it over his head so his audience could see what it was, then dashed it with all his strength against the column beside him.