After arranging, and abandoning his ranks, Stephen and Robert rode on horseback and opened the gate of the fort, and with about one hundred and thirty knights, plus more than two hundred sergeants who were servants, only half of them had horses, and went in a panic towards the mountain pass of the Syrian gate, all of them carrying only about three or five days' dry rations, "to Seleucia, and to beg a little more from the castle of the Grand Duke, and then to Constantinople, to ask for help from His Majesty the Emperor." This was Stephen's order to coax everyone on the road, and even his brother-in-law, Robert, was stupidly kept in the dark and chased after his brother-in-law's horses' hooves.

Under the dust raised, Stephen looked melancholy at the splendid rivers and mountains of Syria, which were getting farther and farther away from his vision, and could only sigh, then turn his head, kick his mount with his spurs, and walk towards the mountains of Amonos without looking back

At this moment, in a workshop in the east of Seleucia, Anna and Agnes were standing on a long table in the outer hall, while Cabeamia, who was covered in black robes, stood respectfully beside her.

Anna's brown eyes looked at the utensils on the table that were divided into three parts, the leftmost of which was a thin poplar wooden board handed down from the ancient era, "Please come forward and write." Kabeamia made an inviting gesture.

So Anna gave the little sunfish a permissive look, and Agnes stepped forward with a hook pen and carefully carved two lines of words on the poplar board, which was already dripping with sweat, and Anna wiped her forehead twice with a silk silk with concern, "May I ask the Imperial Ink Officer and Your Excellency the Princess in Purple, why have we discarded this way of writing now?" ”

"I'm so tired." The two spoke almost in unison. The little sunfish gritted its teeth and lifted a thick stack of planks, then lowered it again, "It's too heavy, it's just vulgar." ”

Next, the little sunfish followed Cabeamia's guidance and came to the middle of the table, where there were overlapping pieces of papyrus from Egypt, in fact, this kind of thing has long been turned into a "living fossil" in the library, whether it is Constantinople or in the monasteries of Western Europe. ”

"Oh?" As she spoke, Anna held up a piece of papyrus with her own hand, and snapped it open, turning the tiny crumbs into smoke, almost fascinating her pretty eyes.

Finally, the little sunfish triumphantly came to the very edge, lifted the calfskin and lambskin paper that were unfolded on the wooden frame, took them off, and wrote a few lines of pastoral songs from the ancient era with pen and ink at will. But then Anna squeezed her hand, and her heart ached, "On a piece of parchment, at least twenty lines and 1,200 words must be written to be enough, otherwise it will be too wasteful." The princess in purple, since she had come to Seleucia, had been much more frugal than she had been in the palace, such as this piece of parchment, which was worth several silver coins, and she decided that it was a loser for Agnes to copy some poems of no practical use.

"What Her Royal Highness the Purple Princess and Her Excellency the Imperial Ink Officer have seen are the three most basic ways of writing that exist in this world. Although poplar planks are simple to manufacture and low in cost, the lettering is particularly inconvenient and slow; Papyrus, though much cheaper, is dry and brittle, and only the Ptolemaic kingdom on the other side of the ocean produces raw materials, which have completely declined since Ptolemy's fall to pagan hands; And in our court"

"It's my court." Anna interrupted Kabeamia's rhetoric in a timely and stern manner, and the Archon of the Golden Hand, not being annoyed, hastened to apologize, admit her mistake, and continue, "Ordinary letters are written on calfskin or parchment, which is extremely expensive. The St. Paul's College under Her Royal Highness the Princess in Purple is under construction, and if it is completed, it will inevitably be necessary to use a large number of people to copy a large number of classic books and manuscripts from all sides, which will cost a lot of money, and I am afraid that it will be greatly detrimental to the military and political support of the country. ”

"I understand what you said, but in the current world, apart from these three, I'm afraid there is no good way to carry writing. Little sunfish? ”

"Yes, Your Highness Princess, the rest is nothing more than silk, but that one is simply more expensive than cowhide and sheepskin; The others are shells, but also bark and leaves. The little sunfish answered one by one.

Anna suddenly made a slightly exaggerated expression and turned to the female archon, "Do you want me to learn to write the most beautiful and noble Greek letters, as you did when you were a child, in the country school of Conama, using the coarsest bark?" ”

The consul was submissive, and then she said that of course it was not for the pleasure of the princess, and that she would not dare.

Then, under the guidance of Kabeamia, they walked through the antechamber of the workshop to the workshop next to the Sallev River, where Anna soon saw that many Greek or German artisan employees, many of them teenagers, were carrying bundles of reed stalks, and entered the workshop room, and some of them saw Anna's purple robe, and hurriedly knelt down in fright.

"This is, Reed? But isn't it generally used to make reed tube barrels? Anna groaned and wondered that she had used this weapon when she had quarreled with Gawain before, but it was too powerful to hurt the wild brown bear.

"Not just reed stalks, but also wheat stalks, mulberry bark and discarded linen." After Cabeamia finished speaking, she continued to guide the two, so Anna and Agnes saw a device made of wood and bolts, which looked like a group in appearance, and could be controlled back and forth with a joystick, and below it were four refined wooden mortars, which contained water, and several craftsmen kept pouring the reed rods, wheat stalks, and linen rags into them, mixing them with the water, and on the four wooden mortars of the apparatus, wearing a sturdy beam, in the middle of which hung a mechanism in the shape of a wheel, and the axle was inserted with a movable lever, The lever is interspersed with a row of wooden pestles, wrapped at the end and set up two staggered small wheels on both sides, as long as two people continue to pull the small wheel, they can drive four wooden pestles, two up and two staggered pounding mortars, fluttering, and then Anna looked at the wooden mortar, which was pounded out of the churning viscous white pulp.

Anna was a veteran, and when she saw the sight of the iron-headed wooden pestle pounding the mortar back and forth, bubbling with white pulp, she blushed for a moment. (To be continued.) )