CHAPTER 22 - 22: CLOAKS AND CROSSES

The legate from Rome arrived under an overcast sky, his party of fifteen riders cutting a clean line through the Jaffa Gate as the city watched in silence. Their cloaks bore the sigil of the Papal Keys embroidered in red and gold, the white banner of the Holy See fluttering behind them. They carried no weapons, only ceremonial staves and an air of sanctified suspicion.

They had taken nearly two weeks to reach Jerusalem from Acre, slowed not by road or weather, but by deliberation. The man at their center—Cardinal Odo di Castellari, Bishop of Tivoli and personal envoy of His Holiness Alexander III—was no stranger to diplomacy. A canon lawyer by training, he had served during the schism years, argued before kings, and once presided over the burning of a heretical monk outside Toulouse.

He had seen many kinds of kings. He had not seen one who printed books.

The receiving hall had been emptied of courtiers by Ethan's order. Only Balian, Gerard, and Anselm stood behind the throne, each dressed formally but plainly. The air held the smell of olive oil and warm iron—the byproduct of presswork carried up from the lower halls. The banners of Jerusalem, the Templars, and the Holy Sepulchre hung from the rafters.

Ethan sat on the throne beneath a high-arched window, his silver mask polished to a dull gleam. He wore a deep blue mantle lined with Tyrian purple—both to echo imperial dignity and hide his trembling hands. His arm still ached from the mold scab, now a sealed patch under bandage and resin. He had fasted the night before, not from piety, but to clear his mind.

As the cardinal entered, Ethan rose with effort, placing one gloved hand on the arm of the throne for balance.

"Your Eminence," he rasped. "Jerusalem welcomes you."

Cardinal Odo bowed low—lower than expected.

"Your Grace. Rome watches with interest and, we hope, understanding."

The meeting began not with politics, but liturgy.

Ethan had arranged for a sung Vespers in the Latin rite, held in the restored chapel of St. Anne. The choir was composed of local monks, trained in Roman chant, and the service included a reading from Matthew—the same Gospel Ethan had prepared as the first printed offering.

When the cantor recited the Beatitudes in slow, careful Latin, Cardinal Odo closed his eyes.

Afterward, they retired to a smaller audience chamber off the cloister garden. Candlelight danced against whitewashed walls, and mulled wine was served in plain bronze cups.

Ethan gestured toward a flat cedar box, brought in by Anselm and laid upon the table. Inside, nestled in wool and lined with red cloth, was the first finished copy of the Gospel of Matthew, part of the in-progress Liber Throni Petri.

Cardinal Odo examined it in silence. The leather binding was soft, dyed purple with gold-trimmed edges. Brass corner plates bore the crests of the Evangelists. He ran his fingers along the gold-leafed border and turned the page carefully.

The Latin was crisp, printed with uniform type, each heading illuminated by hand in scarlet and lapis. The capital B of Beati pauperes spiritu took up half the page, filled with vines, fish, and tiny angels in flight.

"This is not scribed," Odo said finally.

"No," Ethan replied. "It is printed."

The cardinal did not look up. "I have seen broadsheets in Venice. Letters from bishops. But never scripture."

"I've printed only twenty copies," Ethan said. "One will go to Rome, others to bishops across the Kingdom. It will not replace the sacred scribe—but it will share his burden."

"And whose idea was it to illuminate them in such fashion?"

Ethan inclined his head. "Mine. Though Anselm and his men did the work."

Cardinal Odo turned another page. The ink had no blotches. The margins were generous. A tiny Jerusalem cross had been pressed into the corner of each page—tasteful, but present.

"Why?" the cardinal asked simply.

Ethan met his gaze. "Because the Word of God should not belong only to monks with twenty years of silence and candles at hand. A priest in Acre should preach from the same text as a bishop in Antioch. And the people—they should see the same words in every chapel, not the fragmented verses scribes have time to finish."

He leaned forward slightly.

"This is not rebellion. This is reverence through order."

The cardinal sat back, tapping the edge of the Gospel's wooden box.

"The Curia has long warned against the democratization of scripture. Too many interpretations. Too many tongues."

"This is not the vernacular," Ethan said. "It is the Vulgate. As Saint Jerome wrote it. I have not changed a single word."

Odo's expression was unreadable. "Not yet."

Ethan let the silence stretch.

Then, he shifted to what mattered most.

"Your Eminence," he said carefully, "you may have heard strange things from Acre. That the King of Jerusalem builds paper mills. That he opens bathhouses and cleans the city streets. That he sends physicians with herbs and powders and orders scribes to copy books by machine."

"I have," the cardinal said. "And worse."

"Worse?"

"That you believe in ideas that were condemned in Constantinople. That you walk the edge of heresy in the name of cleanliness. That your press is an engine of pride."

Ethan didn't flinch. "And what does Your Eminence believe?"

Odo was quiet a moment. Then he said: "I believe that God can act in strange times through stranger men."

Ethan smiled behind the mask. "Then let me show you what I've built. Not words. Stone and earth."

Over the next three days, the legate was given a carefully curated tour.

He visited the Kidron paper mill, where the waterwheel turned in steady rhythm, feeding the pulping vats. He watched rag merchants bring in baskets of worn linen in exchange for copper.

He inspected the printing press, its inking stations clean, its pages drying in orderly rows. Anselm showed him how the block letters were set and inked. He even let the cardinal press a single page of Luke with his own hands. Odo held it like it might catch fire.

He toured the bathhouse, its heating system explained by a Hospitaller engineer in Gerard's company. The marble was warm underfoot. The pools steamed gently.

He walked through the streets of the lower quarter, where sweepers passed with carts and brooms, and bread sellers called out without stepping around dung piles. A child offered the cardinal a folded sheet of parchment: it bore a printed psalm and a hand-colored dove. Odo took it wordlessly.

In the evenings, Ethan hosted quiet suppers. No feasts, no dancing. Just prayer, music, and long conversation. He spoke of hospitals, canals, and schools—not yet built, but imagined.

On the fourth day, Cardinal Odo asked for a private meeting in the chapel of the Holy Sepulchre, beside the Aedicule itself. The door was sealed. Only the two of them remained, seated near the stone slab where pilgrims wept and kissed the marble.

The cardinal spoke first.

"You are not what we expected. The Curia was prepared to rebuke a mad king playing with forges and ink."

"And now?"

"Now," the cardinal said softly, "we see a man with a disease, with a vision, and with tools none of us understand."

Ethan nodded. "I don't need the Pope to bless my lungs or my wounds. But I do need him to see that what I'm building will outlast me."

Odo looked at him with something close to pity—and respect.

"I cannot promise a letter from the Pope. But I will carry this Gospel myself. I will place it on the altar in Rome."

He touched the edge of Ethan's robe.

"And I will tell him: Jerusalem lives. And perhaps, the Holy Spirit moves here still."

That night, Ethan stood alone on the ramparts. Below, the press worked by lantern light, preparing the second Gospel. The wind tugged at his cloak. He felt the slow ache of fatigue pulling at his joints—but also the rising warmth of a plan unfolding.

He didn't know what the Pope would decide. But now, he had a bridge to Rome—and the Book of Peter's Throne in motion.

In ink, in light, in stone.