Gutenberg's Apprentice (11 page)

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

R
EFORM 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.”

Fust had a bottle in his hand; he twisted at the cork until it popped.

The pressure gave then, too, in Peter’s head: he heard the platens of a hundred presses crashing, books churned out as hot and rough as bolts bashed out by blacksmiths. Big volumes too, not puny little grammars: vast quantities of brutish, ugly, soulless tomes.

He scrutinized Fust’s face: his blue eyes shone, his cheeks were glowing. Did he feel no compunction about selling out that beauty, all the praise and grace that God invested in their hands? He glanced at Konrad, who had lately started muttering that he would like to push on home. Keffer would be glad, he guessed, of extra work. Hans—well, Hans was as loyal as a hound. Which left just Peter Schoeffer to spit in the soup.

“There is a reason books like these are done by scribes.” He reached and took it out of Konrad’s hands. “You need at least two separate scripts, at least two sizes.”

Gutenberg’s glass stopped, half raised. “Really.” He cocked an eyebrow, looked around, and drawled it mockingly. “I’m much obliged. I guess then Brack is short of scribes.”

“Heinrich Brack,” Fust put in, looking hard at Peter. “The prior of St. Jakob’s.”

“And author of our text.” The master wheeled, gave Hans a jovial whack. “His Grace is more than pleased. You should have heard old Rosenberg!” He cackled. “‘Such a means to make a perfect text, and in his Lordship’s diocese!’” He mimed a high falsetto.

“I guess he didn’t look that closely at the type then,” Peter said grimly. He saw again that cheap Donatus, open on Archbishop Dietrich’s knee.

“I guess he did.” The master’s back was up; his eyes were glinting.

“With due respect.” Peter glanced apologetically at Hans. “This letter will not do.”

“Says who?” The master’s face was twisted.

“It is too coarse.” Peter spoke as pleasantly as he was able. “Too heavy, and too square.”

“You, of course, could do much better.”

“That’s not my meaning.”

“Although . . .” Fust’s voice broke in, meditative and slightly probing. “It might not be a bad idea. It might just—”

Peter, stunned, could only gape.

“A finer letter, as he says, might well improve it.” Fust fished out his spectacles and reached to scan the written missal.

“A whole new face—that takes six months—to draw and cut and cast?” The master barked a laugh. “God’s body, man. It’s madness.”

Fust stroked his chin, and held his ground. “Even so. It’s worth a try.”

Konrad looked at Peter and traced a blade across his neck; Hans thrust his lips out, sighing. The master turned his back and walked a moment up and down, one hand inside his vest, the other torturing his beard. “Two hands and in two sizes,” he muttered blackly, spun, and then returned. He brought his face so close that Peter saw the tiny red threads in his eyes. “You’re not the only one who’s ever seen a missal, Master Scribe.”

“Let it be on my head,” said Fust in a loud voice. Unspoken, his real meaning: it is my money, sir, and I decide.

“So be it, then. The purse prevails. But let me warn you.” Gutenberg recoiled from him, still holding Peter in the tight grip of his eyes. “The thing had better blind me with its brilliance.”

What kind of man was this? What kind of stunted and inhuman being, to whom Peter had been yoked? For all the years he worked with him, he tried to understand. The truth was that he never really knew. Peter came as close as anyone: he’d seen the master’s childlike wonder and delight, and then the darkness that erupted, demons lurking just beneath the surface every time. He was a man who made the weather. He was as changeable and dramatic as the Rhineland sky: sunny and expansive at one moment, black and pelting hail the next.

It seemed to Peter then that each of them contained his separate humor. Gutenberg was choleric, all fire and passion. Fust was sanguine, full of appetite. The Roman doctor Galen would have classified Peter himself as phlegmatic, as cool as air or water. The colors of their humors thus were black and red and white. But most of all it was the black of choler that prevailed.

That afternoon they were allowed to venture out. Hans had wangled it, somehow. If Gutenberg had had his way, they would have started on that missal then and there. Instead the master shut himself up in his study, and the crew received a sharp and sunny winter afternoon. They ambled to the Iron Market at the river’s edge, where Konrad made a beeline for the locks. He needed something small, to fit a chest.

The Mainzers, when they saw them, eyed them with suspicion. The story had circulated that these strangers made some trinkets for the pilgrim trade, which almost certainly would cut into business. Peter’s uncle had made clear that the goldsmiths’ guild would tolerate this cockeyed workshop just so far. Peter wondered how long Fust and Gutenberg could keep up this pretense. At least the priests and scribes of Mainz were far too fine to venture down along the docks—but just in case, he kept his cap pulled down.

The market overflowed with every metal object men could fashion, laid out on cloth or spilled from baskets: buckles and rings and hooks, tin plates and pans and candlesticks, brass salvers shaped like fish. The locks were sent from Nuremberg, whose smiths were known for their precision and their patience. Konrad fingered every shape and size on offer. None could touch the Nurembergers for a lock, or cogs or wheels and balanced shafts that ran the vital works of scales and clocks. He demonstrated how the tumbler dropped to lift the barrel. “As tough to crack as Keffer’s balls.” The pressman laughed. The big smith grinned to hear his name. “In point of fact.” He elbowed Peter, jerked his head toward the public baths.

“Another time,” Peter said, and pushed him playfully away. His head was ringing still with this fresh madness.

“You then,” Keffer said, and Konrad nodded, paying for and pocketing his lock. Hans made a face as they went off. “One thing on his mind, that lad,” he said, watching as they shouldered through the crowd.

Hans and Peter moved on southward on the empty towpath. The city had been cut off for four whole months. The market boats had drastically reduced their traffic, waiting for the haul downriver in Cologne, then linking in a long towline that only stopped to switch the teams in Mainz. The wind was all that now alighted in that excommunicated place; Peter walked against it, the folly of the morning turning in his mind. Hans plodded at his side; he’d never broach the topic. They crossed the frozen rill that cut the city from the quays of Selenhofen, where a huge new ship was being built. Workers swarmed its frame. Peter’s eyes rose above the busy scene and picked out the long row of roofs that was the Charterhouse, stretched like the beads of a great rosary along the bank. Inside each small peaked cell a monk sat writing, with his quire of parchment and his scripture and his quills.

“They’re mad.” It burst out of him. “Right off their heads, to think that we can do this.”

“Damn right.” Hans laughed. “Else none of us would be here.”

“Ten thousand letters, Hans. It can’t be done, not stroke by stroke.”

“You should have kept your trap shut, then.” Hans scanned the vacant shore, then squatted down and plucked a piece of reed. “Eight months, I reckon, give or take.”

“Monstrous.” Peter looked downriver, far away.

“You, a man of doubt?”

“Completely.” He dropped his cloak and sat.

Hans was fishing in his teeth with the thin reed. His eyes held Peter’s, weighing. “But we can’t use the one we’ve got.”

“I didn’t mean–”

Hans flapped his hand. “He doesn’t give a damn how it is done, so long as it gets done.”

“He’ll kill us all.”

“Well, I’m still standing,” Hans said, and stood, spat out the chewed stalk. He held a hand out and hauled Peter up.

“He doesn’t have a clue.”

“That’s where you’re wrong.” Hans scratched his grizzled beard and looked across the river toward the distant fields. “He knows damn well. He isn’t going to get another chance.” He pursed his lips. “He’ll have to throw it in, if it don’t work this time. And that would fair near kill him.”

“There’s nothing that could kill that man.”

“You’d be surprised. We’re not as young as we once were.” Hans pulled his cloak up higher on his neck. With his bare pate, his ring of hair, he might have been a barefoot friar. They walked on, came up to a rope that cordoned off the boat works.

“Quite a monster.” Hans whistled. “Windows out of glass.”

Though raw and keeled onto its side, the ship recalled to Peter Mainz as she had been. The hull was that of any Overlander, lifting high above the water, flat of keel to skim the river’s shifting sandbars. When it was sent downstream for painting, it would bear the Katzenelnbogen coat of arms—and quantities of tax-free fish and salt and wine the council had allowed, to sway the duke in their dispute with the archbishop.