Alix Christie - Gutenberg's Apprentice

“A smith.” The very word was leaden. Fust had tried once already to make a smith of him, a goldsmith like his uncle Jakob, and their father before that — and when that didn’t take, a merchant or a lawyer. But Peter had found a trade all his own and had excelled. Must Fust now snatch it all away?

His father had lent this man vast sums. Now he would lend him his own son. Not his only begotten, though, Peter thought, the anger surging. He was no longer that.

“Do it,” his father said. “For me.”

Peter heard the words of Jesus, on that dreadful eve. Do this, in memory of me.

“It is a shock, I know.” Fust’s voice was gruff. “But at least try to see. This is the change for which I’ve prayed.”

A man would leave a legacy, Peter heard him say. The feeling that his sojourn on this earth was not for naught. The words, however well meant, rose and circled like a noose around his throat.

“Will you not let me choose?” he whispered, already knowing.

Fust held his eyes for a long moment. “I think that God has long since chosen for us both.”

The Hof zum Gutenberg backed onto the Cobblers’ Lane and looked out on its parish church, St. Christopher’s, atop a knoll that banked down steeply toward the river. The place was featureless and grim; Peter looked in vain for any grace on its gray facade. There were three granite steps, a massive door, a knocker. His father wore a tunic made of red velour. Too fine, his son thought, standing in his shadow, waiting for Fust’s arm to rise, the iron ring to lift and drop. Peter stood immobile in his plain dark breeches and his one good shirt, still reeking from the journey. Just as he’d stood as a boy of ten, when sent to Fust: the sudden, piercing memory returned. That awkward, silent lad, bathed carefully and dressed, put on the market cart to Mainz — clad in what to those grand folk must have seemed like rags. How frightened he had been, how stiff in his desire to please lest he be put back on the cart and sent away.

The man beyond this door was an Elder — a patrician of the highest rank and undoubtedly haughty. Fust dressed to show that though a merchant, he was just as rich. A strange alliance, when Mainz was riven between the old clans and the rising trading class. This Gutenberg was one of those who held the city ransom, thanks to Dietrich’s iron fist: a member of the old elite that ran the courts, the commerce, and the churches — and most of all sucked income from the loans that bled the city dry.

“A leech, then,” Peter had observed, as he tried to worm out information over breakfast.

“More of a pragmatist, I think.” Fust shrugged and cracked his hard-cooked egg. “I hear he’s viewed with some suspicion by his peers.” The man had only recently returned to Mainz; he’d spent some thirty years in Strassburg. Which did explain, to some extent, why no one knew just what to make of him. He’d put out a story that he was making trinkets for the pilgrim trade in hopes of keeping prying eyes away.

The merchant dropped the knocker several times, then started pounding. With every fruitless blow his neck grew redder. He cursed beneath his breath and was about to turn when finally they heard a grinding sound. A bolt was wrenched, the door burst outward, and the two of them sprang back. In the entry stood the master of the house, unlikely as it was for any scion of an Elder clan to answer his own front door. Yet judging from the clothes, it had to be: he wore a belted linen tunic and shoes with silver buckles, though there was grime on both his leggings and his rolled-up sleeves.

“Herr Fust.” A sharp, planed face, dark probing eyes that did not look entirely pleased. “I might have known it would be you.”

“I would have sent you word — but my impatience was too great.”

Gutenberg just grunted and looked out behind them, peering with suspicion up and down the lane. He waved them in beneath one arm. “Patience is for fools and saints.” He slid the heavy bolt and turned to face them. Strangely for a man of his high caste, he wore a long, dark twisted beard.

“This is the son I spoke of.” Fust nudged Peter forward.

A ripple underneath the skin pulled the man’s lips into a grimace. “I don’t see much resemblance.” His eyes raked Peter. “He has a name, this gifted scribe?”

“Peter Schoeffer. Sir.” He bowed his head. Already he knew how it would go. He’d been apprenticed twice before, the lowest of the low.

“I’d offer you a drink — but where the devil is Lorenz?” The master of the house looked around testily. “I’m in the thick of it, I can’t—” He broke off then and smacked his forehead with his hand. “Forgive me,” he said, giving Fust a rueful smile. “Of course — I quite forgot that you might call. It’s second nature now, to keep stray eyeballs out.”

Yet they were hardly strays. If Peter understood it right, his father was this madman’s financier.

“I thought it time that Peter saw your new technique,” his father said.

Instantly, the man’s sharp face was inches from his own. Up close his eyes weren’t black, as they had first appeared, but brown and flecked with topaz. His hair was wild and bristling to his shoulders, and his beard cascaded from his chin down his whole chest, glinting here and there like twists of wire.

“You’ll swear to keep it secret first. Upon your life.” The breath that sprayed on Peter’s face was rank.

“I swear,” he muttered, and at that, this Johann Gensfleisch, known as Gutenberg, spun quickly and began to lope down a dim hall. They followed through a door and out into a courtyard where, half blinded, Peter saw the dark shape turn once more and bark, “Your life!” before it yanked the heavy stable door.

Heat and noise hit them first. A searing darkness, stoked by fire, a throbbing clatter: battering of mallets on metal, the duller thud of wood on wood. As Peter’s eyes adjusted he could see that just three men caused all this din. A red-haired giant stood beside a weird contraption made of wood; in the far corner two other men were silhouettes before the orange glow of a hot forge.

“Impressoria.” The master of the place stretched out his arm. “Printing. Though the word alone does not begin to do it justice.” Inside his workshop his face had come alive with a fierce pride. “It’s more a system like a watercourse, a clock — a series of precise and interlocking parts.” His right arm scooped the whole thing toward him. “I had to devise each bloody part — each tool, each instrument, each wretched motion of each lousy hand — and make the whole thing mesh.”

He led them toward the fire, into a smoke so foul and so astringent that he tossed them cloths to cover up their mouths and noses. “Hans and Keffer make the metal.” Four reddened eyes surveyed them above filthy scarves. The master turned to Peter, eyes like those of some demented barber-surgeon. “I hope to hell that you can smelt.”

God, no . The hissing of the coals and acrid fumes had plunged him instantly back in that filthy corner of his uncle’s shop where he had sweated and endured. Alongside any number of poor grunts, his cousin and a clown named Keffer, too — if this staring swaddled face was he, and not some brother or cousin. The bloodshot eyes gave off no clue.

“All Fusts were raised up at the forge,” Fust slid in before Peter could respond.

Gutenberg gave a brusque nod. “We cast the letters in reverse until we’ve got enough to set ’em into lines.” He jerked his wild head toward his financier. “You see now why I started small.”

From there they lined the letters into pages, covered them with ink, and gave them to the pressman, he went on. The ginger giant promptly straightened when the master strode toward him. “You need a mountain bear like Konrad here to heave the bar.” This bar was a long handle jutting from a wooden platform that looked strangely like the presses they erected in the vineyards for the harvest. Peter walked around it, studying its parts. There was a long and narrow tabletop the size of a small coffin; over this a kind of wooden gallows rose. Through its topmost bar was threaded not a noose but a huge wooden screw, from which was dangling, just above the tabletop, a massive wooden block.