Chapter 27: The Book of Peter’s Throne
The roads into Rome wore down even the most patient travelers, and Cardinal Odo di Castellari was not known for patience. After weeks at sea and another of bone-jarring carts through the spine of Italy, he entered the Holy City beneath the weight of heat, dust, and expectation.
But the wooden chest resting across his knees on the final stretch was what truly weighed on him.
It bore no crest—only a stamped cross with flared arms and a symbol now seared into Odo's memory: a stylized fish, carved from walnut, its eye formed from a single inlaid garnet. Inside was the first complete copy of a Bible unlike any the world had seen. One produced not by monkish hands in candlelit scriptoria, but by pressure and iron and ink. A Bible born of wood and vision, from a king touched by both affliction and something stranger.
And its name: Liber Throni Petri—The Book of Peter's Throne.
Odo passed through the bronze gates of the Lateran Palace with the chest in tow. He did not ask permission. He did not need to. He was expected.
In the Pope's private study, the air was cool beneath stone arches and tapestries. It was early evening, and the light filtering through the high clerestory windows had taken on the amber softness of approaching dusk.
Pope Alexander III stood waiting, robed in white, flanked by two aides but otherwise alone.
"Odo," the Pope said quietly, without smile or scorn. "You return."
"I do, Holiness," Odo said, his voice a mixture of awe and fatigue. "And I bring you something... extraordinary."
He motioned to the chest, which two squires unlatched and opened slowly.
Pope Alexander approached.
Nestled inside was the Liber Throni Petri.