Constantinople, late November 1439
The Company kept its house two streets above the Kontoskalion, in a counting-hall that had stood roofless for sixty years and now had new beams, new tiles, and the company emblem cut in stone over the door. From the upper room a man could see down the slope to the harbor. The Company's four large round-ships lay along the inner mole with their yards down and their seams black with winter pitch.
Notaras came up the inner stair a little after the second hour and found the brazier lit and most of the table seated. The charcoal had taken the worst of the chill out of the air. The new stone held the cold, and the directors kept their cloaks on.
They were seven when the door was shut. The noble with the heavy signet and the scar along his jaw had taken the place across from Notaras, as he always did, and had brought his own wine. The official whose cuffs had once shone with wear had new cuffs now, and a collar of marten, and had learned to arrive early. Below him sat two lesser men of the roll, brothers by marriage, who voted together and spoke one at a time. At the table's foot was the merchant director, a Thessalonican with grey in his beard and tar worked deep under his thumbnail. Then Stéphanos, who held the Logarion's seat, with his cases stacked at his elbow, and beside him the clerk with the minute book open and his pens cut.
Stéphanos was young for the seat. Every man at the table had said so at one time or another, though never twice in his hearing. He had come out of the first class of the school at Glarentza, had done two years in the Logarion's grain accounts, and had been sent for when the Company was chartered, because he could read both a ledger and a room, and most men who could were needed elsewhere.
He laid his first paper flat and pinned the corner with an inkwell.
"The year first, my lords."
He read it without ornament. Four hulls in service through the season. Eleven voyages on the Avlita run, one to Trebizond under charter to the crown. Outbound, paper, worked iron, cloth, and oil. Homebound, grain in the main, then wax, hides, and salted fish. Freight earned, so much. Charges, wages, and the warehouse at Avlita, so much. The clerk's pen followed him line by line.
"The distribution made at the Feast of the Cross," Stéphanos said, "was one part in eight upon each share, paid under seal through the Logarion. The crown's wish, which I am instructed to convey, is that the returns of the present year be kept within the Company and put to new works. The yard can lay a fifth great hull in the spring if the money is voted whole."
"The money will be discussed," the scar noble said, "when the letter has been read."
"There is one matter before the letter," Stéphanos said. "The new roll. Ten men have paid in and are below at noon to be entered and sworn. The subscription was filled in nine days."
Notaras made a small sound in his throat. "The list wanted three names, not ten. Names from houses this table dines with. Instead we have entered half the Chalkoprateia."
"The money is raised," the merchant director said. "It is entered and receipted. The court cannot return it now without cause."
"The crown wished the roll opened," Stéphanos said, and Notaras let it close. The clerk entered the exchange in three words and dipped his pen again.
"The letter," the scar noble said.
Stéphanos took it from the first case. "From Athanarichos, the Company's factor at Avlita, dated the feast of Saint Demetrios, carried on the Prodromos." He read.
The lord Alexios gave notice through his chamberlain that from the new year the dues of the port would be doubled, upon every hull and every load carried up from the water. The factor had protested the tariff agreed at the establishment of the warehouse and had been told that the tariff had been agreed for the establishment, and the establishment was accomplished, and the lord's protection had a price that the lord would now name. That was the first matter. The second was the protection itself. In the last week of August, riders had come down the valley of the river by night, Tatars by their gear, and had burned the goods of a merchant of Herakleia that stood consigned in the Company's yard awaiting lading, four hundred hides and the wax with them, and had gone back up the valley unpursued. The lord's men had arrived the following noon, counted the ashes, and asked the factor whether the Company's watch had seen anything. The Company's watch was eight men. The third matter followed from the second. The wax and hides promised against the Prodromos's autumn lading had never come down from the interior, the carriers refusing the road, and she had sailed for home with half her space empty rather than winter there. It was the third such loss of the summer, counting small. The factor begged the direction of the court, and remained its servant, and so forth.
Stéphanos laid the letter down. "The garrison of Kalamita, the citadel above the harbor, is reckoned at a few dozen men. What the lord Alexios keeps under arms across all his holds together, the factor puts at some few hundreds, and ill found. The dues rise, and the protection they are said to purchase does not exist."
For a moment there was only the crying of gulls over the harbor.
Then the scar noble put his hand flat on the wood. The Emperor had an army wintering in Bithynia at that hour, he said, tagmata sitting at Bursa and Smyrna with nothing to do until spring but eat. Put two of them aboard with the first convoy and the lord of Theodoro's issue would be settled by Easter.
The official in the marten collar came in behind him. A petition had gone to the palace the week of the triumph, over the seals of this court, and had no answer yet, and if the crown's own creature, chartered under the eagle and guaranteed through the Logarion, could be robbed and taxed at pleasure by a princeling with a few hundred ill-found men, then the charter was worth the lead it was sealed with. One of the brothers said the Logarion held the crown's shares and should speak with the crown's voice, and the crown's voice should ask for troops, and he looked at Stéphanos while he said it, and so did the rest of the table.
Notaras heard them out, and then spoke.
"The station is the crown's interest as much as ours. Let the crown secure it. That is what fleets and tagmata are for."
Stéphanos took it without moving in his chair, and waited until the table had done before he answered.
"My lords, I have referred it. The first secretary gives the crown's answer himself. He is expected within the hour."
The marten collar opened his mouth and shut it again. The scar noble looked at Stéphanos, and reached for his own wine.
They heard the street door below, and boots on the stair, and George came in with a single clerk behind. The table rose. He waved it down before it was fully up, took the chair that was brought without looking at it, and refused wine with two fingers. Stéphanos had half risen to yield him the letter and the reading of it. George motioned him down as well.
"I have read the factor's letter," he said. "The Logarion copied it to me a week ago. I have also read your petition." He paused before he went on. "The crown's answer is in three parts, my lords, and I will give all three, and then this court will do as it judges best."
"First. The army is not available. The tagmata winter where the campaign left them, and there they stay. The Emperor will not ship regiments across the sea to collect a merchant's dues. Spend no breath on it."
"Second. Trebizond. The lord Alexios's daughter is married to the Despot John's brother. The crown will not send spears against the marriage kin of Trebizond while Roman muskets eat the Komnenos's bread. Whatever is done at Avlita, the crown's hand will not be seen in it."
"Third. Caffa writes to Genoa, Genoa writes to Galata, and the Podestà counts the hulls entering this harbor every morning. The arrangement with Genoa stands and it costs the crown nothing. It will not be disturbed over a warehouse."
He stopped there, folded his hands on the table, and looked at no one in particular.
The marten collar studied his rings. One of the brothers began to say that in that case the petition had been answered with three doors shut and no door opened, and stopped halfway when nobody joined him.
Notaras turned his cup a quarter turn on the wood, and turned it back.
"A question for the first secretary," he said. "What does the charter permit the Company in the defense of its own stations?"
"The charter permits the Company to maintain armed men for the protection of its stations, its goods, and its convoys," George said. "The crown licenses what the charter permits."
"The Company maintains a warehouse watch," Notaras said. "Here, and at Avlita. Some thirty men, under Stavrakios." He picked up his cup and drank.
The scar noble spoke first. "Then the Company must protect its own." He said it slowly. "The crown cannot be seen at Avlita. A Company watch is already at Avlita. A watch can be enlarged."
"A hundred men," the merchant director said, and he was leaning over the table now, the tar-marked thumb moving on the wood. "Stavrakios has thirty. Hire seventy more over the winter, local men, men of the empire, no Italians and no Catalans. They go out with the first convoy in the spring as the Company's watch, under the Company's factor, on the Company's wages. If a hundred men with good arms stand at Avlita, the Tatar finds another valley, and the lord Alexios can reckon for himself what his protection is worth when the Company provides its own."
"And what his dues are worth," the scar noble said.
Nobody answered that, and the clerk, after a glance at Stéphanos, wrote none of it.
"The cost," Stéphanos said. "A hundred men found, armed, and paid for a year, with their stores and their passage, is the fifth hull. The court should vote knowing that it chooses. Men this year, or the ship."
"The ship carries nothing if the wharf burns," the merchant director said.
The marten collar wanted the ship too, and a war galley besides. The Company should have its own fighting hull, he said, under its own flag. The merchant director answered him. The imperial fleet kept two galleys on the Avlita run through the season, he said, and had since spring, and would while the crown's grain came home in the Company's holds. A war galley cost more at her mooring than she earned at sea. The Genoese wrote home about merchants who bought warships. For now, the watch, the crown's galleys, and the wharf standing.
"Arms," the scar noble said. "If the Company hires a hundred men, it arms them properly. Fifty pyrvelos at the least, or shall we send them against Tatar horse with pikes and swords? And the new pattern, my lords, the pattern the tagmata carry. The Company is a chartered body of this empire and its men will carry what the empire's men carry."
Stéphanos put the question in form, and the clerk read it back before the hands went up: that the Company engage one hundred men under Stavrakios, formerly of the First Legion, for the security of the station at Avlita and the protection of the Company's goods and convoys; the men to be hired within the empire over the winter and conveyed with the first convoy of the spring; arms to be purchased under crown license; the cost to be borne from the retained returns of the year, the fifth hull deferred.
Seven hands. The clerk counted them aloud, wrote the count, and sanded the page.
George had stayed in his chair through all of it, and said nothing when it was done. Then he asked Stéphanos whether the noon business below was ready, and Stéphanos said the new men were waiting in the yard. George nodded and gathered his cloak, and that was the whole of the crown's comment on the morning's work.
Author note:
The Imperial Company of the Euxine Sea
Chartered trading company of the Roman Empire, founded in late 1437 by chrysobull of Emperor Constantine XI Palaiologos and guaranteed through the Logarion. The Company began trading in the Black Sea (the Euxine) in 1438, carrying manufactured goods out and returning chiefly with grain, alongside wax, hides, and salted fish. By 1439 it operated four large round-ships out of Constantinople. Its governing court of directors includes some notable names of the capital, among them Loukas Notaras, though its roll was later opened to men of the trades by the crown's wish.
The Company's capital was raised by subscription, the crown putting in the largest sum and private men the rest; new shares are created only when the court opens a subscription, as it did this autumn. The Logarion, the crown's treasury, holds the crown's shares; they belong to the office and pass with it, to whoever wears the purple next. "Guaranteed through the Logarion" means that distributions pass through the treasury under its seal and that the charter and the Company's contracts carry the force of imperial law.
The form had a precedent close at hand. Genoa had held Chios since 1346 through a company of shareholders chartered by the Republic, which took the island's revenues and its mastic and paid its subscribers from the proceeds.
The Company's first foreign station is its warehouse at Avlita, the harbor below the fortress of Kalamita in the Principality of Theodoro, held by the lord Alexios. Avlita is the last port of that coast remaining under its local ruler, and the Company's grain passes through it between the Gothian interior and the capital.