Alix Christie - Gutenberg's Apprentice

“A tidy fortune,” said his uncle as they tripped the tumblers in the proper order. Tightly Johann Fust said, “Yes.”

Twelve paper, each at thirty guilders; eight vellum, each at ninety: eleven hundred guilders, in their raw, unpainted state: another hundred when they added in the painting and the binding.

“You ought to keep the lot,” his brother said, “for all the likelihood you’ll see a penny more.”

“Tsss,” hissed Fust. He glanced at Peter as if he didn’t want his son to hear.

It pierced him to the quick. He felt a sickening, familiar pang — one he’d not felt for many years. Not since he’d first arrived in Mainz and entered Jakob’s shop — an interloper, fatherless, untrusted. How dare they? Peter thought, his face tight. How dare Fust think that he could not be trusted? He ought to take his love and ride to Frankfurt — then keep riding, throw off this suffocating loyalty, once and for all.

Kraemer had slipped away; the brothers Fust stood stroking their two chins, one whiskered and one bare.

“We leave at first light,” his uncle said to Peter.

Peter looked at Fust. “It sounds as if I’d be more welcome on the boat.”

Gutenberg had argued that the convoy, even with its large armed guard, was too unsafe. He planned to take the books upriver on the ship himself.

“Don’t be absurd.” Fust made a sour face. “I never said it was your fault.”

“It?”

“This mess,” said Jakob.

“Come,” his father said. “Sit with us for a minute.”

They climbed up, then sat facing one another in the office until Fust leaned forward. “I need to know,” he said, “which stand you’ll man.”

“What are you driving at?”

“We need a close eye kept on the deposits.”

“You think he’d steal from you.” Disgusted, Peter shook his head.

Fust smoothed what wisps remained of his white hair. “It isn’t that I think it. I am certain.”

He opened his top drawer, pulled out a paper and unfolded it. Expression grave, eyes clamped on Peter’s face, he pushed it over.

“Even if we sell the whole run out, there’s hardly any profit after costs. Assuming that these costs are true, which doubtless they are not. It’s plain to me he plans to pass these costs to me — then cut me out.”

Peter studied the two columns written in the master’s hand. The income Gutenberg had listed at 7,000 guilders, of which 500 had come in — and been spent already — as deposits. The costs he’d listed at 5,000 guilders — which left net proceeds of some 1,500.

“We always knew the costs were huge,” he said.

“Can you not see it?” Fust retrieved the sheet. “Even if we clear that measly profit, I get only half. I owe sixteen hundred on the loans alone, and even more in interest. He’s pumped me, can’t you see it?” He slumped, face bitter, staring at it. “I bear the costs of his mismanagement, and all the risk. If I am even able to break even, it will be a bloody miracle.” His cheeks flamed as he cursed.

“I always said there was no margin.” Jakob was hunched over, frowning. “If I were you, I’d pull the plug.”

It was a boot, a punch, in Peter’s gut. “You pull the plug, you throw away the psalter.”

His father stared at him, his lips compressed.

“It’s true.” Peter stared at him. “You have no faith. No patience, and no faith.” There was a rushing in his head, a roaring. “The ink is barely dry — we haven’t even sold the rest. It all can even out — if you but wait. You haven’t even counted revenue from our own letter, or the psalter.”

“You heard him,” Fust said darkly, “as did I. When he said not to worry, months ago: that I would get my money back.” His ears, his neck, were flushed. “That’s not the deal I signed, you damn well know it. I think he plans to pay me from this pittance, then use his share to pay the first loan back and cut me loose, and keep the workshop.”

“He’d have to cut me loose then, too.”

They looked at one another for a long, long moment.

“I wonder, though,” said Fust, eyes clouding, “if that’s entirely true.”

Peter stood. “You either trust me, or you don’t.”

“Believe me, I would like to.”

“What makes you think that I’d betray you?”

His father sighed. “You cannot see the truth; he’s got you blinded.”

“It’s you who cannot see,” his son answered, reaching for the doorknob.

Fust harshly laughed. “He doesn’t give a damn about the book, you know. You just can’t see the way he uses you.”

Peter turned the knob.

“Why do you think he made you foreman, anyway?” His father’s words came lobbing as he turned. “Not out of any great regard, of that I can assure you. He simply wanted to get hold of you — and then be shot of me.”

27 August 1454

THE JOURNEY STARTED at the water’s edge. Across the river Peter caught bright glints of buckles and clasps, a lifting veil of dust above the waiting convoy. The wares and horses had been shipped across the Rhine to Kastel in the days before. He stepped aboard the ferry taking Mainz’s craftsmen to the farther shore. Fust and his brother were long since across, canvassing the train of wagons.

The guards that Frankfurt paid to see the foreign merchants safely in were local men: brown and muscled fellows scraped up from the Rhineland fields. Soon they would all be soldiers heading for the Bosphorus. But now, eyes flatly scanning the surrounding hills, they stood and waited, fingering their weapons. The convoy shifted, muzzles lifting above axles, creaking as the horses stamped in their impatience to be going. The only color beyond brown of tarps and wagons was bright red. The flags of Frankfurt were tacked here and there to warn the highwaymen away: imperial, the city of the kings, a crown atop a white and outspread eagle. All across the Hessian plain, scores of caravans like this were even now converging on the fair of fairs, the greatest market in the world.

Peter swung up on a small hired mare. The brothers Fust themselves were high atop the leading wagon. Each carried tokens from their women and specific orders to fulfill. The shout went up just after seven; the whole line lurched and started moving. Gutenberg had gone ahead by water with the Bibles snug in barrels, lashed to others filled with Rhine wines and Mosels. In better years Johann Fust would have floated too, but river fares and tolls were doubled in the weeks before and after the Frankfurt fair — just one more small indignity that rubbed the well-worn place of his resentment.

The sounds of jangling and pounding hooves as they moved out eclipsed that nattering inside. Peter felt the power of the compact beast beneath him and breathed the summer smells of baking dirt and sweat. Alone with the blue sky above, the muddy Main a guideline to their right, he gave himself up to the open countryside. The fields to either side were dun or amber or entirely golden; smallholdings stitched their dark green edges to the horizon. He saw the highway winding like a string ahead, up hill, down dale, vanishing at length into the haze. He turned once in the saddle, looking back. The convoy inched like a great serpent as it wound and writhed. It still seemed a miracle to him that they had done it — that they had finished it. The Book of Books was made. The rest was beyond him now, beyond them all, and in God’s hands. He felt his nervousness and fear subside. A feeling of tremendous peace descended. So much now lay ahead: a new day filled with triumph and his own new life, a great new book, with Anna at his side.