Gutenberg's Apprentice: A Novel

by Alix Christie

  “I am a wanderer, like all my kin,” he said, and held it up. The Gensfleisch family seal was that of a lone figure like a humpbacked beggar with a walking stick. It wore a pointy cap and held aloft a cup for alms, and underneath the cape, a lump that might have been a basket.

  “Saint Christopher?” asked Peter.

  Gutenberg gave a queer smile. “Perhaps. I’ve always thought it apt. Not the traveler, so much as some poor fool who spends his life in begging.” He pulled his collar up then. “I should like to have that cape.”

  When Peter fetched his wrap for him, he muttered, “Thank you,” much to his apprentice’s surprise. This gave Peter courage to inquire who they might meet and what he should know about their business there.

  Gutenberg regarded him with his deep, gold-flecked eyes. “A man who thinks he runs the world.” He expelled a little mirthful spurt. “For what that’s worth.”

  Peter waited—he was a master now in the fine art of waiting. Gutenberg looked swiftly right and left, and then he bent, as if imparting some great secret. “You have to think of Dietrich as a mappa mundi: all the world below, and at the top his fat round head.” His eyes were wicked. “The rest of them appendages to exercise his will. His right arm is his soldier, the knight Erlenbach. His left is Rosenberg, the vicar general, who tends what’s left of his black soul.” His teeth glinted as he grinned. The legs were chancellor and chief clerk, he went on, warming to his little game. Beneath these all the countless earls and margraves clinging to his heels. But this was nothing to the terra incognita spreading out from his vast bulk—the forces that he alternately schemed against or plotted with or fought tooth and nail: the other German dukes, princes, and archbishops, and above all, the pope in Rome.

  “You know him well,” said Peter with a little smile.

  “I used to go there fairly often long ago.” Gutenberg turned back downstream, his face in profile sharply chiseled, with that long, aristocratic nose.

  The Martinsburg, when it came into view, looked almost dainty through the screen of trees. As they came closer, Peter saw that it was fortified, its tower twice as tall and broad as Mainz’s Iron Gate. Atop its turrets fluttered Dietrich’s arms: the six-spoked wheel of Mainz and then the house of Erbach, two white stars, one red. The fortress could not be approached directly from the river, ringed as it was by sharply pointed stones. They slipped instead into a side canal and disembarked onto a jetty like a tongue extended from the wall. “Keep your mouth shut,” the master hissed as they were led inside. “Just kiss his hand and then fall back.”

  Peter had expected gold and jewels—pomp, excess. Such was the picture of this monster in the mind’s eye of the city’s guilds. He was astonished instead to find the great man in his morning dress, all pink from bathing, wearing only a black robe, his scarlet collar nearly hidden by his neck and jowls. He sat on a golden chair, that much was true, flanked by a man-at-arms and a priest in dark red robes. A silver tray of fruit lay at his right, beside a kneeling knave whose sole employ appeared to be advancing bits of food toward his mouth.

  “How kind to take the time to see us, dear Johann.” Languidly Archbishop Dietrich lifted up a fleshy hand. His eyes were heavy like a tortoise’s.

  “Your Grace.” The master bent his knee and kissed the rings upon that hand. Then it was Peter’s turn; he heard the master say, “Peter Schoeffer, lord, a clericus of Gernsheim and of Mainz, a scribe in my employ.”

  Peter backed away. “Warm greetings, Father,” Gutenberg was saying to the priest who must be Rosenberg: black brows beneath a bright white fringe that circled his black skullcap, penetrating, deep-set eyes. The knight, a hard, thin elder warrior all in leather, looked right through them both; to the side sat a secretary with a writing tray. The archdiocese had scores of scribes, but none so high as this, thought Peter with a spurt of hope. Two velvet stools appeared behind them, and they sat.

  Even afterward he barely could describe the room, so closely did he bend his ears to hear. He vaguely saw that it was large and paned with squares of painted blue Venetian glass on doors that gave out on a garden. What other decoration there might be, he did not see. They had been turned and twisted through the tower hallways to arrive in this bright chamber. Now as they waited Dietrich dipped his fingers in a silver salver, dried them on a linen towel, and, leaning forward, placed them on his knees.

  “Your metalwork, I see, does not extend to razors.” His own chin was white and smooth, a promontory jutting from a sagging sea of skin. His blue eyes opened, huge and oddly vacant.

  Gutenberg sighed loudly. “My lord, you know I’m an old sinner. The razor, I confess, is the least of my faults.”

  Dietrich’s cheek twitched. “You do consort with troublemakers, it appears.”

  Raising both his hands, the master supplicated brilliantly. “Forgive me, Grace, if you can understand. I’m quite unable to find craftsmen from the noble classes.”

  Dietrich had a pair of full and drooping lips that parted only slightly when he slipped a morsel in, or when, as now, he truly smiled. “Indeed. Yet we have need of smiths”—his eyes lapped briefly over Peter—“as well as scribes.”

  The humor snuffed out then, just like a candle, from Dietrich’s eyes. “You have a way with craftsmen, it would seem.” He turned toward Rosenberg. The vicar general bowed and pulled a volume from his sleeve.

  “It’s said that you made this,” the vicar said, black eyes upon the master’s face as he began to turn the leaves.

  The master rose, stretched out a hand. “I might have known I could not keep so marvelous a thing from you,” he said, inclining himself slightly toward Dietrich. It was a mime he played, thought Peter—Lord let him play it well. He felt an unaccustomed pressure on his shoulders, seated on that stool below the dais, his head right at the level of the henchman’s hilt.

  “It is some trick with wood, they say,” said Rosenberg, and Peter felt his chest seize.

  “Wood!” The master laughed. “I leave the whittling to lesser men. No sir, it is not wood.”

  “But still—some trick, not with the hand?” Rosenberg was frowning, holding out that grammar toward the master as if it had the clap.

  Gutenberg took it and raised it up. He squared his shoulders and turned to the archbishop. “A new invention, by your leave. A great technique born in the golden city of the Mainz archdiocese.” He held the grammar up as if it were a chalice until the archbishop reached out his hand.

  “With this technique, Your Grace, I can make many copies of a book, each one identical.” Dietrich took the little volume and laid it open on his knees. “This is a grammar—as you see.”

  Gutenberg glanced at Peter and mouthed silently, The leaf. Peter dug into his pouch and produced the Donatus page. “If I might approach?” the master asked, and Dietrich nodded.

  Gutenberg stepped on the dais, raised the printed leaf, and laid it next to the same page, bound now into a book. “As you can see, there is not a single difference you’ll detect—and most of all no slips or errors, as we encounter all too frequently from scribes.”

  Dietrich peered; his pale and bulging eyes moved slowly back and forth. “So it would seem.” His face remained impassive, but Peter thought he saw a look of shock, or at the very least surprise, in those veiled eyes. The archbishop beckoned Rosenberg, and Gutenberg resumed his seat.

  They sat on tenterhooks as those two whispered, Rosenberg intent, explaining something. The consultation seemed to stretch from minutes into hours, or maybe it was just the slowing down of time in that long moment in which Peter understood. They all knew—every one of them—while he and the whole crew had been locked down. The master had kept shooting off his mouth, while they’d been sworn to silence. Gutenberg sat there with his head high, and Peter felt a blaze of fury on behalf of Fust. His father had a fortune riding on this secret, which apparently was not as secret as he thought. Doubtless Gutenberg had waved the little book at half the Elder clans in Mainz in search of funds, Peter thou
ght, before he’d seduced Fust.

  Finally the master started fidgeting. He did not like to wait. His mouth worked until he said beneath his breath, “The psalm.” In the rustling that ensued as Peter drew it out, the archbishop and his vicar both looked up.

  “I hoped”—the master smiled, a little sheepishly, and stood, the psalm secreted in his hands behind his back—“that with my new technique I might be of some service to you too.”

  He spread the double sheet on which the scribe had written out the canticles of Moses and Isaiah, in sharp black letters with two blazing gold and red initials. “It seems to me,” he smiled, “the pope would be well pleased with this technique. A little gift made in this way in your archdiocese—a fine pontifical in gauge of your respect and love, and by the way, a nice distraction from the tithe.”

  Dietrich opened his pink mouth and smiled. “You never cease to surprise me, Johann.”

  “I learned my lessons well.” As all men knew, the pope required a tenth part tithe from every diocese to fund his Jubilee. The rumor was that Dietrich refused, along with the archbishops of Cologne and Trier.

  “And for the love I bore your godfather”—the archbishop smiled—“I might agree.” He waved at Rosenberg to take the sheet. “But there’s another task we must consider first.”

  The master tensed and waited.

  “You’ve heard perhaps that there are new monks at St. Jakob’s.” Dietrich sat back, tenting his white hands. “There is a push among the Benedictines for reform.” There was no movement in the room beyond the scratching of the scribe as they all waited for him to make his meaning clear. “Reform, of course, is something everyone supports.” He smiled blandly. “And so we ought to do our best to help this new congregation.” He signaled Rosenberg to carry on.

  “His Grace has authorized a revised missal, which some among the Benedictines feel essential,” the vicar started. “A new and standard text based on a strict interpretation of the Rule, replacing all the variations that have sown disorder.” Shrewdly Rosenberg looked down at Gutenberg. “It seems to us that this—technique—falls like a gift, for if it makes a single text identical in every copy, then each one is entirely free from error.”

  The master licked his lips. He stood a moment, stunned, it seemed to Peter. What whirred in the mechanics of his mind? Dietrich leaned his great black bulk toward them.

  “A missal,” said the master, pulling at his beard.

  “This tool of yours could be—extremely useful,” said the vicar. “So long as it does not . . .” His voice trailed off.

  “So long as we are all assured it does God’s work.” Archbishop Dietrich smiled, pretending that he waited. There was no possibility, of course, that his desire would be denied.

  “The Word of God, Your Grace.” The master dipped his head. “You do me a great honor.” The words were obsequious, though underneath it Peter knew that he was calculating madly.

  “One thing, though, I must beg, Your Grace.” Gutenberg looked briefly left and right, as if to fix his words into the minds of both the soldier and the priest. “I must insist on secrecy. I cannot work without it—for if word of this gets out, it is stolen from me in a moment.”

  Dietrich nodded, bobbing that huge face, made large as if to counterbalance the great miter of his office. “It will be so.” He turned to Rosenberg. “You need not keep these things.” The vicar bowed, and handed book and sheet back to the printer.

  “You will need money, I suppose,” said the archbishop.

  “Always,” said the master. They exchanged a smile.

  Dietrich turned then to his knave and raised the jewel-handled knife. The boy lifted up a pear—a pear, and in December! An instant later the archbishop raised his eyes, as if surprised to find them both still there.

  “Go with God,” he said, and lifted up the knife in a slow, lofty gesture. Peter recognized it with a shudder. It was the same dismissive gesture that he used when lifting up his shepherd’s crosier on the rare occasions that he deigned to visit Mainz.

  They exited the castle warren through some gardens and an iron gate that opened to the little town of Eltville-on-the-Rhine. Gutenberg stalked swiftly, his closed face not betraying what he thought. Nor did he say a word to Peter that whole day about the thing that had transpired. The scribe was mute, an appendage, a slave the master put back in its place when it had served its purpose. Yet all the while the shock of it was lodged inside him, blocking any other thought. The Word of God reduced to that crude, soulless type—the handbook of the Mass, this precious volume filled with sermon and with song, stamped like some tawdry trinket onto hide. A grammar was one thing—a holy book a sacrilege, a horror in God’s eyes.

  Mammon ruled, Peter thought darkly. This day as every day, Johann Gutenberg had business to transact. The man had fingers in all kinds of pies; they saw his niece, his nephew, and a pastor. He’d spent some early years in Eltville, it was clear—most likely every time the Elder clans decamped from Mainz, refusing to submit to taxes from the guilds.

  The sun was sinking when the boat to bear them back arrived. Despite libations at each visit, Peter was not warmed. They climbed on, and the master joined the captain in his shelter at the aft. Peter huddled on a bench up front. Spent horses were unhitched, and fresh ones tethered to the long, stout lines that ran between the towpath and the ship. The vessel struggled hard against the current as the dray team strained, the horses’ heads bowed nearly to the ground, before it heaved and started back the long, slow haul upstream.

  CHAPTER 7

  MAINZ

  Mid-December 1450

  REFORM WAS A PRAYER that bounced across the Holy Roman Empire and the rest of Christendom that year, a hope that something in the world might change. True Christians yearned for a return to a purer, more ascetic faith, and change had been agreed on at the conclave of the cardinals four years before in Basel. The world was wormwood, pocked with greed, and none plundered more than those who had been called to serve the church. The pope himself, in ordering his Jubilee, decreed that the abuses had to stop, and lent his weight to many projects of reform among the Benedictines and the Augustinians as well as within his own house, the hierarchy of the Holy See.

  It was a pious hope indeed. Peter knew it from the instant that he saw the archbishop’s knowing smile, his bland assurance that he endorsed reform. The only reform Dietrich wanted was the restoration of the abbeys’ wealth, for every monastery in the archdiocese was in his jurisdiction. For decades noble families had run them as their private fiefs and stripped them nearly clean, but this would henceforth cease—to honor God, return the monks to upright lives, the monasteries to their former economic strength, and thus increase the archbishop’s own receipts.

  This missal for St. Jakob’s was a marvelous commission, Gutenberg assured his partner, then his crew—the centerpiece of a great push among the Benedictines of the Bursfeld congregation for reform. He had no doubts, and through a night of talking convinced Fust as well that this was just the book they had been waiting to produce. Fust did not like the prospect of the clergy in command of that whole printing works he underwrote, despite his own faith and his uncles’ high positions in the city’s churches. But Gutenberg was a master of manipulation, Peter thought, observing as the two of them discussed it out of earshot of the crew. The master was quite able to convince them all to lift and drink directly from that poisoned chalice.

  For poisoned it most surely was. The handbook of the Mass was hellishly complex, even for the most accomplished scribe. It ran two hundred pages and was written in two, if not three, contrasting scripts: one for the priest’s words; a larger letter for the Gospel readings; and in finer books a third hand for the lyrics of the Psalms.

  The partners called the crew together two days after their return from Eltville. Gutenberg was quite unrecognizable: his hair was trimmed, as was his beard; he seemed to overflow with cheer. Beside him Fust stood, chest thrust out, his cheeks and chin smooth-shaved, convinced no
doubt by the sheer money to be made. Who did he take himself for? Peter asked himself. It was a strange inversion, to be sure: patrician Elder wearing whiskers, common merchant fresh of face.

  The master’s hands held something at his back. “I hear there was a bet.” He pulled a volume out and grinned. “It’s neither long nor short, but just the thing.”

  They craned to see the first page of the liber ordinarius, the handbook of the Holy Roman rite. “The first of many, let us pray.” Fust smiled and glanced at Peter.

  “They’ll go like fishcakes at the fair.” Gutenberg looked around at the four men. Hans plucked his throat; Konrad stretched a hand out, gauging the proportions of the page. Keffer pursed his lips and looked at Peter. A little flame inside the new apprentice flickered and went out.

  “Two hundred pages, worth their weight in gold,” said Gutenberg.

  Every priest in every parish, every abbot in his chapel, every soul of wealth and standing, had to have the handbook to the Mass. This edition would be newly drafted by the prior of St. Jakob’s, to be used by all the monasteries of the Bursfeld congregation, he explained. But nothing said their workshop had to limit it to that.

  With curving yellowed nails he started ticking off prospective buyers: seventy for Bursfeld in the dioceses of Mainz and Bamberg; forty, fifty more for churches in the cities, who’d strong-arm the wealthy of their parish to endow their pulpits with a copy. Nor was the Latin rite restricted to the Rhineland, nor to Germany and Austria and Bohemia, comprising their own Holy Roman Empire. Peter grasped at once their overarching goal: one single, uniform edition, which could be sold in every kingdom from the Narrow Sea of England to the Middle Sea that laps the Holy Land. Hundreds, thousands, of them, priced to undercut the products of the scribes.

  “God’s given us the means to multiply His Word!” Gutenberg was fairly dancing with delight. “At last His own benighted clergy, too, have seen.”