Gutenberg's Apprentice: A Novel

by Alix Christie

  Excitedly he went to Ruppel. Build me a wider type-stick, man, he said, an m’s width broader than our column. Ruppel scratched his head, but did it. Peter set a dozen lines in something like a frenzy, lining each precisely up to end at the same spot. When necessary he dropped a hyphen or a stop into the extra space beyond the margin. He took the tray back to the press and waited for the inking and the grinding and the proof. And then he knew.

  It was perfect. Absolutely perfect: more exquisite than the dream of any scribe. The block was sharp, perfectly squared: the punctuation floated softly in the margin, brushing like the lashes of a bashful bride.

  Until that day, his father had just seen the press as a much faster set of hands. The master, for his part, was driven by a vision of that never-ending replication, making many from the one. That evening, when he showed them both, they grasped that this was much, much more.

  “No scribe can rival this, for evenness and strength,” said Peter.

  Gutenberg was staring fascinated at the page. “I guess the geese will be relieved,” he cracked, “to keep their quills.”

  Fust placed the printed sheet beside a manuscript he’d recently commissioned. “What need for clerici, indeed.” Their letter was much darker than the written words; the text block was much sharper, more defined. Peter’s father pursed his lips, then dropped his finger on one red-inked line. “Why can’t we do the red as well, then? And put the rubricator out of work?”

  Peter looked at Gutenberg. By then they had a way of speaking without words. Two craftsmen, silently assessing a technique: If the lines are movable, changeable. Gutenberg was nodding, dark eyes ratcheting between the printed and the written sheets. If we can add, subtract, the elements at will. He put a hand upon the merchant’s shoulder as his mouth began to widen in a grin. “By God. Why not?”

  “If you can put a line in, you can take it out,” said Peter slowly. “We could print it later with a different ink.”

  He pictured it, the miracle of all those lines that scribes would letter in bright red to mark a difference from the text: Here starts the book of Job; Here ends the prologue of the Four Evangelists. Those lines just lifted out—removed, invisibly, so that they wouldn’t print in black. And then—he tried to see how it would work—each line dropped back, alone, a solitary thing that they would somehow ink in red.

  “Just run it by itself.” The master looked with glinting eyes at his apprentice. “A second pass on the same sheet.” He grinned and shook his hoary head. “You’re seeing now the way I see.”

  A startled laugh burst out of Fust. “We can remove the hand of man!” His eyes were wide. “Replace the hand of man!”

  Gutenberg looked up toward a point on the dark beams. “The symmetries of metal, now of space.” His smile was wide. “The Lord alone knows where it will end.”

  By Easter half the type was fashioned, and they’d made good progress in the cutting of the skins. One evening not long after, Fust asked his son to see him once the household had retired. His father stood outside in the small courtyard, drinking in the breath of spring. His mood was ebullient: his merchant’s sap rose every year with the greening of the buds and the thawing of the Alpen passes. Peter took the cup he offered and asked where he was headed first.

  “To Basel, I should think.” For silks and dyes brought through the Bosphorus from the Levant.

  “Don’t worry overmuch about the shop,” said Peter. “In point of fact”—he tipped his cup—“I owe you an apology. It’s everything you ever said. Forgive me for not seeing it before.”

  Fust touched his goblet to his son’s. “For which I’m more than glad.” He settled back. For a long moment he just looked at Peter, blue eyes gleaming.

  “And so . . .,” he said, a half smile on his lips, “we come to the next step.”

  The man was nothing if not logical. The sanguine man lived by the things that he could touch and count. The job was found; next came the bride. He’d be remiss as his adoptive father, Fust said, not to broker Peter an outstanding match.

  “For some poor scribbler?” Peter kept it light. “For that is all I look like now.”

  “We’ve got the time.” Fust clasped his hands across his girth. “A year, or eighteen months—then we can safely let this news disperse.”

  The Elder houses all would flock then, he was sure. He mentioned names of daughter this and daughter that: Fürstenburg and Gelthus, Echenzeller. Dowries, yes, but more than that, a place at all the highest tables.

  “And once you thought that I should be a priest.” Peter ribbed him gently. Time was, he would have bridled at his father’s heavy hand, but in between had come this Book, and with it now, an even deeper trust that God would clear his path.

  “A waste, to join the clergy.” Fust cocked his head, appraising him. “When you think how far you’ll rise with these skills.”

  Ah, yes. How Fust desired, had always yearned, to rise. It was the curse of all those born too low, yet still endowed with brains to chafe against their chains. Fust had a list, his son had long believed, of all that Peter, as the eldest, should achieve. As big a business as his father’s, and as fine a house, the honor Fust himself had gained as a Companion of the Mint, a member of the Münzerhausgenossenschaft. The man had all of this. What more must Peter do, to raise him even higher? Already Fust had risen, in some ways, higher than his own patrician partner.

  Peter wondered how much Gutenberg resented being barred from that old club where his forefathers had sat, minting coins and guaranteeing all the weights and measures. Things were much looser now than in his youth: the proof was that they had admitted Fust.

  “In any case, I’d mull it over,” Fust said, pouring more wine.

  Peter and Fust did not look alike, nor even think alike, his foster son reflected as he brought the wine to his lips. Yet how much had he given him, this solid, balding, kindly man. Peter had to honor this, no matter how his new awareness burned inside. A simple truth, but one that pounded hard within him. The scribe had made his mark: he was essential now. The workshop could not run without him. Fust and Gutenberg both knew it, too. No other man could carve those letters as he did, nor set them into graceful lines. It was remarkable, the lightness that this brought. How marvelous to be so needed, and how freeing.

  CHAPTER 3

  ALCHEMY

  May 1452

  THERE WAS NO END then to the roaring of the forge. The ores went into it in shovels and came out transformed. In cataracts the molten metal poured into the iron pots and mixed, and in thin streams sought out their molds. How long? they asked themselves, bent sweating from dawn to dusk. For every score of letters that came gleaming from the casting box, another hour went by in planing and in filing until they stood at the same height. When would they have enough? Peter asked the master, but the man just waved his hand.

  “Keep on,” he said, and Peter thought of Pharaoh hardening his heart. Each plague the Lord sent down to free His chosen people from Pharaoh’s grip just tightened it, so stubborn was that slave master. Deliver us, O Lord, he prayed, stiff fingers guiding every punch into the clay. Bring us into the good and spacious land, the land that floweth with milk and honey.

  His father returned and went on swiftly westward toward Bourges and after that to Paris. Somebody had to raise the gold they poured into that forge. The Duke of Burgundy by then had moved his court to Flanders, but there were markets still for pigments and for precious stones across the Loire and Île-de-France. The family saw his three big wagons off, the merchant perched up on the dashboard with his driver holding the long reins. Little Hans was like an eel on Peter’s shoulders, writhing as his elder brother gripped his legs. The boy was blue-eyed, golden, like his father; Peter dared to hope his father’s dreams no longer rested solely on the firstborn foster child. He and Grede and Tina watched the dust of their departure from the wall above the Martin’s Gate. The wagons disappeared in a great cloud along the thin brown line that ran between the abbeys, heading south and
turning westward only after they had passed the line of hills. Behind the watchers, on the hill inside the city wall, white shards of Roman ruins poked out of the loam—just like the teeth of giants, Peter teased. Little Hans and Tina looked alarmed. He thought of this again a few days later as he took the long way from the workshop to the Guildhall—how the fallen of the past remain, their traces a reminder that all peoples perish.

  His uncle Jakob had requested that he stop to see him, on some business, Peter had assumed. He climbed into the clear air high above the Kästrich, breathing deeply to expel the poisons from the forge. He walked along the wall and dropped at last onto the lane above the livestock market, looking at the city spread beneath him, sparkling like the waters of the Rhine.

  The day was warm and bright; the double towers of the Altmünster were to his left, above their green fields sliced by a bright stream; below and to his right stood the red sandstone bulk of the cathedral. To either side poked up a score of spires, and just before him, in a cascade of blue slate, spread out the warren of the Jewish quarter. He plunged directly down a narrow lane. The Guildhall was two houses joined and tucked away among the heathen, as was only right: as hidden and remote from Elder power—Mint, cathedral, the archbishop’s court—as it was possible to be.

  Peter dodged the hawkers clutching at him, crying out their wares, and turned into the Betzelstrasse and the hall called Mompasilier. The name was bastardized, a Rhinish hash of monplaisir. French for “my pleasure”: tavern, haven—coven even, some might say—for members of the city’s guilds. Peter had never liked the way they looked at him in there. He never had belonged—it struck him as he put his hand on the claw that served as doorknob. Not to a single guild, not even really to this city, until now. Until he hewed to Gutenberg, he’d hewed his whole life long just to himself and God.

  His uncle had one corner of a private room reserved for Brudermeisters of the guilds. He raised a hand and waved Peter toward his table. Ale was drawn, delivered in two foaming tankards. Thirstily, Peter raised his: the brewers always sent their best to Mompasilier.

  “I thought you might have heard about this order for indulgences.” His uncle was not one to waste his breath. As soon as Peter sat, his ice-cool eyes had probed his face and hands.

  “No, sir.”

  “Two thousand more, I am informed.” Jakob leaned toward him. “To pump the people even drier.” His fingers tightened on his beer stein. The city council frowned on the proliferation of these letters of indulgence. The letters in themselves were not the problem; all faithful people had the right to speed their way from purgatory if they could. But now the clergy seemed to crank them out at every chance, and this pumped more scarce guilders out of Mainz. Peter shook his head: he hadn’t heard.

  His uncle held his hands so that the light would catch the massive seal on his guildmaster’s ring, it seemed to Peter, striking fear into the hearts of those whose lives were governed by those two crossed hammers.

  “Your man Cusanus has requested them for Frankfurt.” Jakob’s eyes went left and right to verify that no one heard. “You’re not . . . involved, by chance . . . in making them, in that excuse that Gensfleisch calls a workshop?”

  “I don’t know what you mean. We’re making mirrors.”

  “Come now.” Jakob smiled. “He could produce a thousand chits with all that metal, I am sure.”

  How like the man to pounce before his father’s trail was even cold. Of course Jakob did know; they paid his guild their dues. Then Peter started, as the meaning of his uncle’s words sank in. He had not thought of it before—the prospect of their art abused, its glory twisted to the traffic of the church.

  How had it not occurred to him? He had thought only that the clergy would abhor the very notion of some trumped-up yokels printing off God’s Word. He hadn’t even seen that it was just as likely that Archbishop Dietrich would perceive their press as a new way to serve his economic interests. For metal letters could be used in any order, set and printed to decree whatever new insanity either side in that sad war desired. Peter leaned toward Jakob. “No one else knows. Outside of you—and Biermann.”

  The mention of the tinsmiths’ leader irked his uncle; in the hierarchy of the trades, the goldsmiths had no truck with common smiths. It did not matter. Peter cast his mind back to that visit he and Gutenberg had made to Eltville-on-the-Rhine. The master claimed that Rosenberg, Archbishop Dietrich himself, had long since put the press out of their minds, but Peter wouldn’t be so sure.

  “I wouldn’t put it past the cheat,” said Jakob, meaning Gutenberg.

  “The answer’s no.” Peter sat back and raised his mug. “We’ve work enough to do.”

  “Work’s fine, when it is done within the rules.”

  Peter did not answer.

  “I told Johann; I’ll say the same to you. If he’s protected by the guild, he will abide by the guild rules.”

  “That’s a matter for my father and my master.”

  “Your master.” Jakob’s face contorted. “The only thing he’s mastered is the art of fleecing Mainz. The man’s a snake, I say.”

  “It’s not my business,” Peter said again. “It is a matter for your brother.”

  “He doesn’t listen. Never did.” A thin white line rimmed Jakob’s nostrils. “They suck you dry, then have the gall to blame you for the mess they’ve made. This so-called master is the same. I don’t suppose he told you how he held the treasurer of Mainz for ransom? Had him tossed into the Strassburg jail, some years ago—to squeeze out payment on his cursed bonds?”

  This Peter easily could see; it was entirely Gutenberg. It was as much as he could do to keep his face straight. He turned the conversation back. “Is it the Jubilee indulgence, then?” he asked.

  His uncle nodded. His face was drawn, the lines as sharp and deep as those made by a master carver. “And all the while the city is left dangling. They made us pay a hundred yearly just to lift the ban, but still they drag their feet. The debt with Speyer isn’t even cleared.” His voice was bitter.

  Peter pictured Erlenbach, the bishop’s fist, sheathed in his metal-studded leather as he rode through the archdiocese. They said he missed the bloody warfare of crusading, and was glad to get a taste of fighting when he could. “But this indulgence isn’t Dietrich’s,” he objected. “It’s the pope’s.”

  “Which in the way of things will trickle down until the poorest of them pay. Dietrich is an expert at extorting his one-quarter of one-tenth.

  “And then”—his uncle looked with some ferocity at Peter—“there is to be another tithe. They’re squeezing, hard, from Rome all the way down, to pay for all those pilgrims.” He sighed then, and his features softened slightly. “They squeeze us from all sides.”

  “Our workshop has no part in it.” Peter spoke as calmly as he could. “No part at all.” And yet the fear had sprung to life inside. They must not get their hands on it, he thought.

  “They cannot know.” He uttered it before he knew it. Guiltily he glanced around, conscious he had spoken much too loudly. The other guildsmen were still hunkered drinking, their heads down. “If Dietrich gets his hands on this, we all are finished.”

  Their press was more than blessed—it was pure gold. He’d been so taken by its beauty he had missed this fact: whoever held that press held total power. They might as well mint coins with it, if they could use it to print letters of indulgence to be sold. It was a thing of monumental value, to the free city that was Mainz—and to Dietrich, ever itching to revoke their hard-won freedom. Gutenberg and Fust had surely seen this value, down the road.

  “You see it, don’t you?” Peter whispered. His uncle sat back, looking at him strangely: thoughtfully, and with a glint of new respect.

  “His people know,” Peter went softly on: “there was a meeting once, about a missal.” His uncle nodded.

  “We pray that it is long forgotten, but who knows?”

  “They don’t forget,” his uncle said.

  “If
they should hear even a whisper . . .” Peter shook his head. “He’ll have it seized, no doubt—and use it in whatever way he pleases.”

  That evening Peter made his way with purpose to the Schreibhaus. His only access to the clergy was his old mate Petrus Heilant, scribe and snoop. He found him warming the same stool, his eyes as ever roving that full room.

  “We haven’t seen you in a while,” the canon of St. Viktor’s said, his regard shrewd.

  Peter cocked an eyebrow. “Nor have I heard much news from you.”

  “In times like this,” the scribe said lightly, “they clamp on to their posts like leeches.”

  Peter gave him a world-weary smile and sat. “I figured so.” He shook his head. “So I’ve been left to drafting contracts, credit letters, now and then a bit of law.”

  “That’s bitter, truly.” Even as he spoke, the scribe’s eyes swiveled back to track the traffic to and fro.

  “Though . . .” Peter made a show of hesitating slightly, “I did hear there might be confessionalia about.”

  Heilant paused in his scanning. “You’re well informed.”

  “Whatever I can do to scrape a fare back down the Rhine.”

  Primly Heilant pursed his lips. “I wouldn’t count on it. There’s no love lost right now between His Grace and the pope.”

  “Meaning?”

  Archly, Heilant smiled. His eyes probed Peter. If he struggled over whether to divulge a thing he shouldn’t, the struggle was both brief and futile. He dropped his voice. “The Jubilee indulgence is as good as dead. They’re even planning to refuse the pope’s new tithe.”

  “Enough of pumping dry the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation,” Peter whispered; Heilant nodded. At least, thought Peter, Dietrich’s thoughts were not on Mainz. “A little standoff then, between His Grace and Nicholas the Fifth,” he said.

  The look was withering. “His only aim is to extort us.”