by Mary Gentle
The thought that it might be a true evil took the smile from my face.
True evil, if I only think that slavery’s bad when I am the one sold and enslaved.
Leon Battista’s hand-bill crumpled up in my hand as I clenched my fist.
I tugged off my leather gloves to smooth out the thick paper.
‘Holy Eight!’ I stopped suddenly enough that Tottola walked into me from behind, and I felt him grab my biceps with hands like iron, so as not to send me flying.
‘What?’ He looked down at my belly, under the long cloak, as he released me. ‘You took ill?’
‘No. But I realise I’ve been looking in the wrong places!’
I held up the printed paper illustratively as Attila strode back to us, his hand on his sword.
‘Master Leon Battista had enough of these printed…It doesn’t matter if no man recognises the print.’ I rubbed my thumb over the rag-made surface. ‘What I should have been looking for is the man who sold him this paper.’
‘This the last workshop?’ Tottola rumbled behind me.
‘For today.’ I pointed. A tabarra stood a few doors down the narrow street, torchlight reflecting into the mucky grey daylight and the half-frozen canal. ‘You can wait for me…’
‘We’ll come with you.’ Tottola didn’t have the hint of a sigh in his voice. ‘Both of us.’
I recalled Sergeant Orazi’s advice, passed on to me at one point: that his troopers should be made far more scared of him than they were of any conceivable enemy. Between that and loyalty to Honorius, there was no chance the two Germanic mercenaries would leave me unguarded.
We entered the fifth warehouse that day; I took a half-hour choosing three variant colours of green earth pigment, and discussing with the workshop-master the advantages and disadvantages of various mixtures of size for wood and canvas.
‘I need to buy more paper,’ I finally observed. Attila and Tottola had become bored enough to amuse themselves by looming over the shopkeeper’s apprentices and watching them pale–doubtless having been raised on Tacitus’s History of the Huns.
‘What kind of paper?’ The workshop master stretched out his hand as I put a torn-edged sample into it. ‘Ah.’
I fully expected to be told it wasn’t familiar, or wasn’t made by this workshop, or sold here–or else that they had only small quantities available in stock. Two of the parcels Tottola carried contained unavoidable purchases of paper.
The Venetian workmaster put the torn scrap of paper down by the edge of the terre verte pigment tub. ‘Yes. Whoever recommended you here was correct: this is our make–I’d know that drying-lattice pattern anywhere.’
He straightened up, and spoke again before I managed to collect myself:
‘I’d like to help, but we’re out of stock. A customer came in at the beginning of Lent, bought up the whole stock; it’ll still be a week or two before we have any more of that particular kind pressed. When do you need it by? Or can I offer you this other—’
‘I need it now,’ I interrupted, mouth unaccountably dry. Whatever Rekhmire’ can do as a book-buyer, I can do. It’s nothing but pretence and asking questions.
With what I hoped resembled genuine rich-man’s petulance, I whined, ‘Are you sure you don’t have any left? Just a small piece?’
The man shook his head, as one will do when wondering at the vagaries of customers. ‘He bought up all the sheets. Don’t forget a sale like that.’
I looked brightly at him, as if the thought had just struck me, instead of being painstakingly constructed between Attila and myself in the gondola that brought us here.
‘Where did you have the paper delivered to? If I could go and ask him if he has any left…even a quarter sheet…’
My heart thudded in my chest.
Here’s where he says the man had it collected, they didn’t deliver.
The works master reached down for a ledger, thumbed through it with agonising slowness–and halted his finger halfway down a page. ‘You’d tell him we sent you? Like his custom again, if I can get it.’
‘I’ll make certain he knows.’ I offered the carefully saved end-sheet of paper, and watched him write down an address.
Once outside, I took a deep breath of wet, freezing air–and realised Attila and Tottola were looking down at me with identical expressions.
‘Escort me there,’ I directed, with a look that plainly informed them I did not expect to come to harm in their company. ‘But you’ll have to wait outside. If this Herr Mainz knows Leon Battista got thrown into prison, I imagine he’s somewhat nervous.’
‘So I am!’ Tottola muttered, as we set off towards the churches the master had used as landmarks while telling me directions. ‘The General will have my balls!’
‘And that Egyptian bastard will have my balls to go with yours–and his!’ Attila muttered.
Tottola made no reply, but he looked worried. On a bearded Hun a head taller than any man in the streets of Venice, that is suitably impressive.
‘Honorius expects you to guard me,’ I said, the cold air welcome in my lungs after what seemed like weeks indoors. I stepped out more briskly. ‘And “that Egyptian bastard” will be too busy being pleased, if this comes off, to even think about how we did this–or about your balls, Attila. Which, let’s be honest, no one wants to think about…’
I said it much in the same manner as the young ensign Saverico might have. The large German soldier snickered. I thought Attila was more comfortable with the part of me that was young man than young woman.
Attila continued my arguing for me with Tottola as we trudged across campo, bridge, canal-path, and more bridges.
The address turned out to be a small shed at the back of a closed-up house. The house looked to have no occupants; the shed had two shutters propped open to let in the light.
I left the two mercenaries at the head of the alley.
There being nothing to be lost by a direct approach, I knocked on the shed door and opened it without waiting for an answer.
In the dim natural light that was all the illumination, a lean man with rough-cropped black hair turned away from a bench and towards me, both his hands laden down with long thin metal teeth that I thought Leon Battista would have recognised as type.
I spoke in the clearest Frankish Latin I could manage.
‘You’ll be the German Guildsman, Herr Mainz.’
I added rapidly, as I saw consternation on his face:
‘The Alexandrine embassy would like to speak with you.’
3
At Alexandrine, a flood of emotions passed over his face. He stepped forward, into the better light. The lines of his face spoke of hunger and distrust, and of hope.
Irritably, he muttered, ‘You ignoramuses still have it wrong! “Master of Mainz”, not “Herr Mainz”! “The Master of Mainz” is still my title, even if expelled from the guild!’
‘Ilario Honorius,’ I introduced myself. Something in the shadows at the back looked very like a wine-press, if a great carved wooden screw might be combined with trays and racks, rather than a grape-tub. ‘If I have your name wrong, how should I say it? It was Messer Leon Battista who called you “Herr Mainz”.’
‘Chicken-hearted Florentine!’ The German came almost up to the door. With the dying light from outside, I could see his robe and hose were patched and worn. ‘My name is Johannes Gutenberg, of the city of Mainz. Where is Herr Alberti? I have not seen him these many weeks.’
‘Prison. Florence. Exile.’ I gave the knowledge in chronological order, and briskly–what a man who has been lied to needs is the truth, blunt as it may be. ‘Why didn’t you come to the Alexandrine embassy?’
The German printer seized at his hair, knocking his black felt hat off the back of his head, and yanking his short crop up into hedgehog-spikes. ‘You ask me that! You, one of Alberti’s lackeys! I could be in Constantinople!’ Gutenberg choked out. ‘With a patron! I could work with the best materials–the finest resources–and you—’
He spat on the dirt floor at my feet.
‘Your petty little republic! Who is Duke? Who cares! Honest men can’t work, or are killed, and then another nobleman, same as the last!’
I moved my foot. ‘I don’t disagree. But a clear explanation and less public noise might be of more use than a political discussion. Florence isn’t my republic, and I’m not a servant of Leon Battista Alberti.’
And Herr Mainz must take me for a man, I realised, with my back to the open door’s light, and cloaked as I am. Since he doesn’t treat me as a woman.
‘I’m from the Alexandrine embassy,’ I persisted.
‘The woman said, no messages; that she would not take even letters from me!’
That confirmed every suspicion. Damn Neferet! I wondered which of the sacred Eight one appeals to in such circumstances.
Honesty still remaining my best option, I said, ‘Madonna Neferet was a conspirator along with Leon Battista; they both had their reasons for wanting you to stay here in Venice. They’ve both been sent into exile, now. The representative of Alexandria has been looking for you.’
He snorted derisively.
I brought out the hand-bill, hoping it would act as my credentials.
Tilting the paper to catch the grey light, I observed, ‘I’ve seen nothing like this before. The edges of the letters are sharp as if they’d been cut.’
‘They are.’ Herr Mainz sounded smug.
I nodded at long metal stylus-shapes in his hands. ‘But if your type is made from lead–I know lead—’
My mind clearly sees a silver-grey smear on the masonry of a bridge. Saverico’s brigandine; Rekhmire’’s leg. This may be an even more dangerous use for lead.
‘I’m not ignorant,’ I offered. ‘Men have been talking about the dangers of a mechanical scribe, and if one could be built, since I was a child. Lead’s soft. It deforms. The type would be crushed after printing a few sheets, the edges of the letters smeared.’
He gave me an abrasively close-mouthed smile, confirming himself secretive as other German Guildsmen, and no fool.
I took a breath, and pressed the limits of my authority.
‘Alexandria wants you and your printing-machina in Constantinople, if you’ll come. The Pharaoh-Queen may be willing to become your patron, if the printing works.’
The light gave Mainz–Gutenberg–oddly silver eyes. He looked stunned. ‘I have not dared to go out, to search…The Doge’s officers, here…’
I took a swift glance around the shabby workshop. ‘What do you need to bring with you, to replicate this device in Alexandria?’
Herr Mainz looked at me for a long moment, turned his back, and emptied his handful of long metal type into a large canvas bag.
The contents of a rattling shallow tray followed.
‘What I need? All of it!’ Gutenberg freed one hand to tap the side of his head, without turning round. ‘But all is here, safe, I do not forget!’
‘No, but accidents happen to any man.’
He shrugged, as much as a man may who is rapidly tying up the neck of a sack. ‘What, you’d have me tell my Guild secrets? The ratio of antimony and tin to lead, so that the edges of these letters stay sharp? Then what is stopping your theft of that?’
I could find no quick answer that I thought would convince him.
I squinted through the gloom. The machina’s screw was turned by wooden shafts, thick through as a gondola’s oar.
‘We can send men back to dismantle the printing-machina and bring it.’
I glanced around, uneasy for no reason I could pin down, and wished for the first time in many months that I had a sword, and a more recent memory of my knight’s training in Taraco.
‘If I may, I’ll call my father’s guards, and we can go to the embassy now.’
I found myself glad of the grey cloud and sleet, that brought twilight in ahead of its time.
A gondola took us as far as the Canal Grande, and then another boat over to the Dorsodura quarter, where we reverted to foot. In a maze of small alleys and waterways that bemused my sense of direction, Tottola took one long stride and caught up, dipping his head to murmur:
‘There are men behind us. Somewhere between ten and twelve, lightly armed, no armour except breastplates.’
Dread twisted cold in my belly. ‘The Venetians were having his workshop watched!’
Attila, as closely attached to Herr Mainz’s side as he might be without rope binding them together, spoke something in one of the Germanic tongues of the Holy Roman Empire, to which the printer responded.
Reverting to Visigothic Latin, Attila said, ‘Council of Ten.’
Increasing my pace put a line of pain across my lower abdomen.
‘I can’t run,’ I confessed, feeling my face burn hot against the cold wind. ‘Get him to the embassy. Don’t wait for me. Once you’re there, they can’t touch him.’
The Germanic brothers exchanged a look over my head.
Tottola grunted. ‘I’m not waiting to see what the captain would do if we left you!’
He moved swiftly enough that it took me by surprise. As Attila and Herr Mainz burst into a run, Tottola scooped his arms under my shoulders and knees, and lifted me clear off the cobbles.
Abandoning the parcels of paper, and the ceramic pots of green earth pigment that shattered as they fell, Tottola clutched me against his chest and began to run.
‘Bar the gates!’ Attila bawled as he hustled Herr Mainz ahead of me. ‘Turn out the guard!’
Berenguer and Saverico hauled the iron trellis of the Alexandrine gate open, stood ready, and slammed it on the heels of our passing through.
The bare garden of the Alexandrine house filled with running men, Sergeant Orazi at their head. Tottola breasted the flood–and failed to put me down, despite urgent request. The house door banged open; we entered from cold to warmth.
Rekhmire’, balanced on crutches in the entrance hall, shouted at me immediately he saw me. ‘How could you leave this house where you’re safe!’
Pointing out that I am most safe wherever Honorius’s Hunnish soldiers are, I thought would not help me.
‘I’m back here safely,’ I snapped, as Tottola set me down on my feet like a child in the entrance hall. ‘Even if the Venetians are on our heels!’
That turned out not to be a wise thing to say: Rekhmire’ broke into a flood of Alexandrine Latin–much of which I understood, although I would rather not–and then into Pharaonic Egyptian.
A glance at Honorius as he stomped in from the gate showed him unlikely to help me with translation.
Not that I need it, I reflected, watching Rekhmire’ balance his two crutches precariously in his armpits, so he could windmill his arms while he shouted at me. It all amounts to ‘You can walk around Venice, I can’t, and this gives rise to fear.’
‘We have the officers of Foscari’s council on our doorstep,’ Honorius announced matter-of-factly. He surveyed the man from Mainz, where the German stood dishevelled and panting, and then turned his attention to me. ‘And you found him, why?’
‘Because I engaged in a paper chase!’ I rearranged my cloak, that had been rucked up in the chase. In peripheral vision I saw Gutenberg blink as he caught a glimpse of my skirts. ‘As to the Doge’s men–I thought they had no idea of where he was.’
It had seemed reasonable, as we were rowed back, to suppose that the Council of Ten must be hunting for a large facility, a factory or a large scriptorium, or a workshop where woodcuts had somehow been made able to cut small letters. Not one man in a shed.
The Egyptian got out hoarsely, ‘They surely must have failed to find him while Alberti was here, or they would have stopped him.’
Talking to Gutenberg in the gondola had given me somewhat of his background; I summarised it.
‘He was setting three or four pamphlets a week. As fast as Leon could write them. They went off in bales on mule-back, to Florence. After Leon and Neferet left, he didn’t have business contacts, and he hear
d the Doge’s council wanted to speak to him and went into hiding.’ I cocked my head, listening to raised voices at the outer gate. ‘They must have found him and been watching him, hoping to pick up other conspirators.’
‘Instead, they found us.’ Honorius scowled. Noise rose louder from the gate. Evidently the Council of Ten weren’t used to being defied by armed foreigners.
Honorius’s household guard are not a large number of men, I realised, compared to how many soldiers the Doge of Venice might call to arms. Suppose we end with Carmagnola outside the Alexandria House?
Rekhmire’ abruptly closed a hand over my shoulder. His eyes shone bright in the lantern-light. ‘Listen.’
I could pick out nothing among the voices, strain as I might.
Honorius, when I caught his eye, shook his head bemusedly.
Rekhmire’ secured his grasp on his crutches and swung himself awkwardly and rapidly out into the late afternoon twilight, seeming oblivious to the cold sleet landing on his bare head.
I barely caught Honorius’s signal to Attila, to stay with Gutenberg, and then my father strode with me as I stumbled outside again in the Egyptian’s wake.
Lanterns illuminated the gate area, but made the desolate garden even darker. The scent of canal-water pervaded the air. Voices lifted in screaming confrontation at the iron grille of the Alexandrine house, where iron bars had been dropped into sockets across the gate.
Words rang like brazen trumpets in the language of the lagoon, and in Visigothic and Frankish Latin–and in another tongue that I only recognised as I caught it for the second time.
‘Listen!’ I echoed, seizing Honorius’s arm. ‘That’s Pharaonic Egyptian, I swear it!’
The mercenary soldiers made way automatically for my father, their faces grim under the lanterns, helmets and pole-axes and swords catching the light.
The circle of torches and lanterns beyond the gate was wider, and the Council of Ten’s officers more numerous, but I hardly spared the Venetians a look.
In chiaroscuro, their reddish-brown flesh covered by lamellar leather armour, and with spears in their hands, a squad of some fifty or so men in Alexandrine clothing formed a double line towards the gate.