Gutenberg's Apprentice: A Novel

by Alix Christie

  “Gracious of you, in such weather.” Klaus gave Fust the cushioned chair.

  A little flush described an arc along her neck’s left side. Formally, Peter Schoeffer bowed. Markus leaned and spread some quires. “Depending on the job, we’d vary certain shades,” he said, and fanned some pages from that new handwritten Bible.

  Peter had told them only that his father sought a painter for a book. He hoped to keep it just that vague—although he almost slipped, himself, right then and there.

  The paper of that written Bible was the very same that they were using in the Humbrechthof. The same cream linen with its wavy chain lines and the ox-head watermark, identical—a pointed shape that looked more like a fox’s than an ox’s head. The very same, from the same molds in the same mill along the river Po: discomfort, then suspicion, needled him inside. Sharply he looked at Markus, who was telling Fust that Archbishop Dietrich had commissioned this new Bible; they’d just finished a new psalter for him, too. Petrus Heilant, Peter thought: he was the scribe who ran this Bible job. What were the chances that the paper handler’d talked—made some remark as he was selling the same batch to both the master and the monk? Peter’s skin crawled as he watched the artist’s fingers trace the vibrant colors of the borders. The fact of two big clients in the same small place would be remarkable; he made a note to pry it out of Gutenberg.

  The job he had in mind, Fust said, was for half a dozen books, each painted more or less the same. He sat and scrutinized the painted margins. Peter watched him breathe the pigment in, his nostrils flaring, body warming to the beauty and the craft. He saw the way his fingers traced the lines. This was beyond all else what Fust, the merchant, had bequeathed to him, he thought: for all that his foster father was a man of commerce, he had been born and raised a craftsman. He did not lack for finer feeling.

  That written Bible was a handsome thing: the lettering was fluid, the decoration in the standard Cherry Orchard style of branching bowers filled with buds and birds. Their flowers were orange or red, white-hatched; they used the leaves of the acanthus, indigo or green. The style was graceful, calm, though to his eye—and to his father’s and to Anna’s, Peter knew—too rote and filled with gold-flecked preening. “I see now why His Grace approves your work.” Fust gave an enigmatic smile.

  Without intending to, Peter glanced at Anna. Her eyes were on him; for an instant he could feel the torrent they unleashed. If they had been alone, he knew she would have scorned that work. With pity—after all, her brothers labored there. But he had heard her more than once dismiss it as mere shiny surface, just copied from a pattern book. Repetitive, identical—just like those metal letters he had shown her.

  All he had offered her. All she had spurned. Peter looked back down.

  His mistake had been to think that she was like him—born of this clay, yet able to rise out of it somehow. He felt her eyes still on him, prickling. His face felt taut: he was intensely conscious of that beam of her attention, like a thread across the table, stitching at his skin. Again he glanced up, and the tension broke. She looked away; she could not bear his gaze.

  Markus gathered up his sheets. Casually Peter asked how many pages the whole Bible made. Around a thousand, was the answer. He nodded, galled inside—to have to gaze at this, and yet be barred from showing off the wonder of its freshly printed rival.

  The Austrian gave a small cough and nudged his papers forward. They were samples only, he explained; the works of course remained inside the abbeys and the castles he had served. “You name the thing, I’ve colored it,” he said, his mouth a crooked line. “Choir books, land grants, books of hours, and Bibles too. I heard you had a big one here.”

  Fust pursed his lips, then opened the worn sheets. He sat unmoving for a while, staring at a strange and gleaming thicket. This artist’s vines were hung with spiky leaves, in shades of silvered green, gray slate. He turned the page, to find the same wild bushiness upon the next sheet, and the next. The man possessed a queer and otherworldly style: Peter had never seen such flowers grow upon this earth as bloomed upon those pages. His large initials used less gilding than the Mainzers’; he formed them out of patterns flecked with dots. Here and there he’d dropped in figures—monkeys, saints—that were more awkward, less successful. The Pinzlers looked on silently, and Peter tasted sourness in the air.

  “You must have stumbled into nettles once.” His father clucked his tongue.

  The painter kept his sad eyes fastened on the man who might, with luck, become a client. Fust was peering down, evidently charmed by, or at the very least intrigued at, those barbed and writhing lines. “Nettles, aye.”

  “I’ve tried to paint more true to life.” The painter spread his fingers, long and tapered as an angel’s. “But never seem quite able.”

  “You have then, like the others, some pattern that you follow?”

  “Just in my mind.”

  Fust raised his head and eyed the fellow. “You were last in Würzburg, am I right?”

  “I was.”

  “And painted there a Bible.”

  “I was one of many hands.”

  “Before that?”

  “In Bohemia, then Salzburg.”

  “I like a man who moves around.”

  The Austrian relaxed a bit. “It is an interesting life.”

  “You hear things,” Fust said. “I would guess,” and tipped his head at Klaus. Their host rose and came back with wine and glasses.

  There wasn’t much about the tramp, at least, for anyone to fancy. His face was weather-blasted, with a glint of animal alertness in his fully opened eye.

  “What news is there, then, from the East?” his father asked.

  “The heretics encircle Belgrade.”

  “Bad news.” Klaus frowned.

  “Shields and banners.” Peter looked at Klaus with sympathy. “That’s all that anyone wants painted now.”

  Anna’s father drew down his dark brows. “Chests are what you need, and altars, windows, if you want to feed a wife and child.” His tone was sharp.

  “And to the south?” Fust kept on.

  “A man from Graz said I might like to know there was a mountain of old manuscripts on one ship he saw coming into Venice.”

  “From Constantinople?”

  “Survivors, aye. The Greeks are fleeing.” The Austrian looked up, around. “Manuscripts of all descriptions, what I heard. They saved some libraries, at least—they say there’re books there none of us have seen.”

  “What kind of books?” Fust leaned forward.

  “Medicine, geography. Ptolemy and Plato—all of it in Greek.” The painter hitched his shoulders and gave a ghost of a smile.

  Fust turned toward Peter; for the first time in long weeks, his eyes began to stir.

  The last time anyone had salvaged learning from the East, it had been Cardinal Cusanus. A dozen years before, he’d sailed off to Byzantium, and smuggled treasures from those monasteries that lay crushed now underneath the despot’s boot. What other riches had they salvaged in their flight? Things only ancients knew, which few had seen—except in scribbled Latin copied from the Arabs.

  “A silver lining,” Fust said thoughtfully, and then fell silent.

  After a time Klaus made a sign; there was a scraping as both painters stood and pushed their chairs back. Fust stood and shook their hands. “The choice is hard,” he said, and tipped his head. Anna stiffly curtseyed, and then they all withdrew. Her waist was just as slim, her hair as long and shining. Peter wondered if she’d brushed it fifty times, as she had done so long ago for him.

  Frau Pinzler came and without a word set down three steins of beer. His father didn’t notice how tight her lips were, nor how she carefully avoided Peter’s eyes.

  “It’s good to see you back, Johann,” said Klaus.

  “This has been—most enlightening.” Indeed, his son thought: a raft of news.

  “Share and share alike.” The painter cut the sausage. “There’s precious little now to go a
round.”

  Fust nodded. “You’ll not get lapis now, nor azurite, but what you can from Cornwall.”

  “Won’t matter if the buyers stay this scarce.” Klaus took a quaff. “How soon you think you’ll need him?” Which “him” he meant was clear.

  Fust glanced at Peter. “Hard to say,” he said. “A month or two.”

  “By then the Austrian will be long gone.” Klaus smiled, a little lighter now. “It stands to reason, anyway,” he paused, “that we look out for ours.” He could not stop himself from glancing at the son he might have had.

  He hoped to cut a deal with Markus, plainly: have the painting done right there, and not at Weydenbach’s a few doors down. Fust made a noncommittal noise.

  “A shame, I mean,” Klaus kept on, “to spread the benefits too far afield.”

  “When you could keep it underneath this roof, you mean.”

  “It shouldn’t make much difference to your partner.”

  Fust’s face went hard. “This has no bearing on that work.”

  “You get what’s yours, eh? The old sinner gets what’s his?” The wink, the tone, were both much too familiar.

  “I do not grasp your meaning.”

  Klaus licked his lips. “Just that—he bought a vat of linseed oil last week, for some new project, as he said.” He turned toward Peter. “I couldn’t think what he would do with it—with metal, anyway, if you get my meaning.” He made a little motion with his finger, to show he knew about those pilgrim mirrors. “Herr Gutenberg was winking and grinning, like he does, you know—like it was something big.”

  The sound in Peter’s throat was incredulity—a croak he barely managed to conceal as a brief laugh. Fust did not move a muscle; he was a trader after all, extremely skilled in feinting and dissimulation. “The man is brimming with mad notions,” he said drily.

  And then they drank a little more, his father measuring a decent interval until he rose. “I’m grateful for the hospitality,” he said, and took his cap up from the table, “and for the news.”

  Klaus watched them, brows knit, as they stepped outside. He was still watching as Fust plunged into the swirl of bodies on the Leichhof, weaving with a brusque efficiency along the slick dark streets, his back erect, tight-lipped. Peter had to speed to catch him. The vat of suspect oil, the surging crowd, merged in his mind—became a gleaming canvas by a Flemish master, thick with busy workers and wild dancers and a prancing fool. What new insanity could Gutenberg be planning now?

  Fust waited until they had climbed up to his office and shut the door. “You’ll tell me everything.” He stood solid and unmoving.

  “I know as much as you.”

  His father’s eyes were contemptuous. “Then you are hardly master, are you?” He spun, disgusted, flinging his cloak down. “What you don’t know could fill a cargo ship.”

  “I can’t control him—no one can,” said Peter quietly.

  “More’s the pity.” Fust stood moodily, his hands clasped at the back. He turned to Peter and gazed out on the trading floor.

  “It must be something for the archbishop,” he said at last, as he turned back, his face bereft of all expression. Loss had left his once-round jowls as slack and sagging as a hound’s. “Erlenbach’s in Mainz, you know. Sniffing around.”

  Peter’s stomach tightened.

  “He wouldn’t dare,” he said, half to himself—meaning the master, not Erlenbach, Archbishop Dietrich’s man-at-arms. His father shook his head; he looked upon him with a mixture of disgust and pity.

  “You are a fool to trust him. As was I.”

  Perhaps, his son thought. God preserve us, if you’re right.

  “What is his business? Erlenbach’s?”

  Fust grimaced. “Tax, more tax. He’s leaning hard on the cathedral chapter.”

  Dietrich could not simply wave his hand and squeeze the people dry; he needed the approval of the priests of his cathedral to do that. Was it still possible his people had not learned of Gutenberg’s technique? Lord keep them blinded, Peter prayed: just keep them grubbing like blind moles for gold.

  “Can Jakob keep him well away?”

  “It isn’t Jakob who concerns me,” Fust replied.

  “It may just be some decoy plan.”

  Fust’s nostrils whitened. “A vat of oil.” He stared at Peter, thinking. “What kind of decoy do you make with that?” He pulled the folds of flesh around his neck, then let them go, hand curling tightly in a fist he weighed against his lips.

  “I need to know.” Each word was clipped. “You will find out, and send me word.” His fist shook lightly, as if weighing dice. “I couldn’t answer for my actions if I had to see the man.”

  Gutenberg was there before his foreman the next day. He sprang and turned as Peter entered. It was a shock to find him sitting at the desk Peter had claimed; there was never a soul astir before cockcrow but him and the boy who laid the fire. Peter loved the silence of the early morning, its steadying before the crew converged. But not that winter dawn, when Gutenberg leapt up and strode toward him, waving something in his hand.

  Peter had barely slept, his mind engaged in pouring tainted vats and filling them, repouring then refilling, all the sticky, fitful night. And now came that old reprobate, a curl of glee upon his lips, pushing some pages at him.

  “A brilliant morning, I would say.” The master shook the pamphlet eagerly. Take, open, his eyes said, praise me, exclaim!

  “A vat of oil.” Peter brushed the sheaf away. “‘Some big new project,’ which we hear about in gossip.”

  Gutenberg drew back, then up, the eager look replaced by one of haughtiness. “I’m saving your damned shirts.” He’d never been a man to quail: he thrust the papers into Peter’s hand.

  It was a lengthy poem in verse—the kind of tripe you could pick up for pennies on the square. An epic—no, an ode, in close-writ lines that stretched for many pages. The Sibylline Prophecy.

  “Doggerel,” said Peter.

  “A solemn prophecy, in noble verse.” One corner of the master’s mouth was lifted. “The ancient wisdom of the Sibyls.”

  “You plan to print this.” Peter looked into that crafty face, those glowing, canine eyes. The man was mad then, after all.

  “A certain winner, I would say”—the master’s coy look widened to a smile—“to calm the people at this fearful time.”

  He prattled on: the prospects were incredible, the text was tailor-made for such a time. It told the story of the coming of a peaceful king, who’d crush the hounds of hell and save believers from eternal flame. “The monarch’s name”—he winked—“is even Friedrich.

  “They’ll lap it up!” The fire had reignited in his eyes. “We’ll get enough to cover all the outlays.”

  Peter’s pulse was beating in his ears. He could not speak at first. It was a madness even greater than the madman Gutenberg could birth. If Dietrich, in the tumult of reform and war, had pushed the matter of their bookwork from his mind, he only needed a reminder—slight, and made with metal type—for the whole business to flood back.

  “You would risk everything,” he hissed. “Have you no notion what a book like this would do?”

  “Save our backsides, fool.” The master’s lips were twisted; he lunged to grab the prophecy, but Peter held it tight.

  “As well announce our business by the crier,” Peter spat. He hoped to hell the man remembered his own words.

  Discovery was death, the end. For months he’d thought of little else: what Rosenberg, and Dietrich—Erlenbach—might do, if they discovered that extensive workshop underneath their noses. It hardly mattered whether they conceived the press as heresy or boon. They might perceive it as a thing that they could seize and use, or else they’d see it as a threat to the scriptoria whose proceeds kept the landed cloisters fat and ripe for skimming. Either was conceivable. Incredibly, Archbishop Dietrich had not yet grasped what this technique could do—for if he had, by now he surely would have swooped.

  “The instant
you produce another book, they’ll fall upon us. Come crashing in, and—”

  Gutenberg cut in sharply. “What will it take for you to understand? The well is dry. The purse is empty. Your father made that more than clear.”

  “You cannot threaten the whole Bible just for the thirty, forty guilders it might yield.” The man was arrogant, just lunatic enough to risk it all. Peter bent his force and will against it. “Nor use this paper—it’s a miracle already no one’s noticed.” He moved a step toward him. “He will discover us, for certain.”

  “Do not speak of what you do not know.” The master’s smile was mocking. “His Grace is ill. Extremely so. A great misfortune for him—although not for me, nor for the doctor he hauled in at a vast cost from Holland.” He snorted, rolled his eyes. “You do the job for which you’re paid, and leave affairs of state to me.” He held his hand out for the pamphlet.

  It took only a moment to scratch out a note and send it to the Kaufhaus. Some fifteen minutes later, Fust arrived. From the composing room they could not see, but each of them heard clearly.

  “I have a rack of bones to pick with you, Johann.”

  There was a pause; the master took his time in rising. “It’s good to see you, too, my friend.”

  Then they went upstairs, and the compositors bent back to work. Inside a minute they heard voices rising, accusations bouncing off the floorboards. “Sabotage,” they heard, and “folly.” And then the master’s testy voice: “For God’s sake, let it be, Johann.”

  “Finally met his match.” Hans cocked his head and grinned.

  Peter thought of Anna, she of the Iron Door. Those brothers back in Strassburg, with their mirrors and their plague. The hapless clerk of Mainz whom Gutenberg had seized some twenty years before. He’d always pushed against the rules—and anybody fool enough to try to block his path.

  Fust’s face was set when he descended. Peter stepped out, on the pretense of some work he had to place on the composing stone. He understood, as they threw charges, countercharges, at each other on the stairs, that Fust refused, point-blank, to free up any member of “his” crew for this new work.