Gutenberg's Apprentice (24 page)

Peter looked across the room and saw the way exhaustion dogged the master, too. His face was gray, his skin stretched thin and folded at the turned-down corners of his mouth. It was fatigue so deep it went right to the bone: Peter knew that feeling. He didn’t think enough, though, at the time, about those trips Gutenberg made, nor ask himself how they had added to the strain. The man did not divulge whom he had gone to see or what he did—he simply disappeared, then reappeared days later, grayer, sharper, more irate. At the time they chalked it up to their excruciating, crawling progress—and then the ghastly inverse speed with which the costs increased. The master wore the proof on his face: that long, dark beard, which in six months had turned to pewter, gray mixed in with anthracite and white.

Peter set the dull and droning lists of Exodus: begats and more begats, the endless spawn of Abraham and Isaac. They swam before his eyes, slipping from his turgid fingers. Those generations spooling from their seed did little else but strengthen his desire. For eight months he had courted Anna out of sight; he’d not been back once to the brothel or the baths. When Father Michael spoke that Sunday of right reason,
recta ratio
, it loosened something in his mind. Aquinas said each man possessed this one defining line: the moral compass that should guide his life.

No man could know, until it rose to greet him, which path the Lord had chosen. Nor, with respect, could Fust decide which partner he should have. Peter had been waiting long enough; there’d never be a better time.

He went to see his father in his counting house. At the landing he paused briefly to prepare himself. Up from the great hall of the Kaufhaus came a steady throb of sound. He knocked; his father barked, “It’s open.” His face went instantly from peevishness to something like relief. “I had expected Koestler, come to sell me short.”

Peter smiled and spread his hands. “Do I look like a thief?”

His father wiped his face. “Then sit.”

He did as he was bid, and drew a breath. “I’ve made it into Exodus, in time for Lent,” he said. “And the new lad’s working fine.”

“Excellent.” Fust leaned back, hands crossed on his paunch.

“It’s well and truly started.”

His father nodded, waiting.

“And so . . . I feel it’s time. You’ll understand that I am loath to face this thing alone.”

The broad face spread into a knowing smile. “Ah,” Fust said—and then the words that Peter hoped to hear. “Indeed. You’re right.” He reached into his cupboard for the glass decanter. “And here I feared you’d come from Gutenberg with some new demand for gold.”

“I’ve put a little by,” said Peter.

Fust laughed, and pushed the full glass toward him. “That shouldn’t matter, if the dowry’s right.”

“It’s not the dowry that concerns me.”

“It should.”

He steeled himself. “I want a partner, not a linen chest.”

Fust stopped, his glass half poured.

“You married whom you chose,” Peter pushed on. “And not some contract with an Elder clan.”

“I had achieved a certain standing.” Fust’s eyes were narrow now. “I had a certain latitude, from being widowed.”

“Standing.” Peter thought of Grede. He forced himself to keep a level tone. “A man can fashion his own standing, I would think. You’ve said yourself the world is changing.”

Fust raised his hands, as if to silence him. “You do not know the world.” His tone was sharp.

“I know enough to pull my weight.” Peter looked into the blue shards of his eyes. “And take the woman whom I choose.”

“Who would be—?”

“Anna Pinzler.”

His father’s mouth fell in a bitter line. “You are a fool then, after all.”

A rush of sorrow flooded into him as swiftly as a molten metal, hardening in an instant in his heart. This debt was never-ending, then: no sacrifice of Peter’s would suffice. He’d owe and owe until the last day Fust drew breath. So be it.

“You ask for my consent?” His father’s voice was hard. “Or simply tell me that you’ve plowed the wench, and so must do your duty?”

Peter might have struck him, had not reason or some ancient prohibition stayed the surge of heat inside. “Disgusting words,” he said, when he came back to something like himself. His nails bit deeply in his palms. “I never thought to hear such filth out of your mouth.”

“I’m not the one who will be shamed.” His father heaved his torso up toward him.

“You shame me now.”

“By damn, you’re obstinate.”

Peter pushed himself up slowly. Fust was tall and broad; the desk stood in between them. But Peter was no knave, no orphan boy who’d benefit from a hard knock—not anymore.

“I will not give you my consent. I did not raise you to throw out your brightest prospects.”

“My prospects?” Peter harshly laughed. “Mine—or yours? You know they never were for me—but just your own advancement.”

“That’s quite enough.”

“Indeed.” He looked at Fust, his face half mottled in his rage. Red marks like posy-rings of pox, he thought. “And if I left?” One last, sharp thrust. “Who would you get to make your Bible then?”

“So you resort to threats.”

“I know my worth.”

“You think too highly of yourself.”

“Not one of them can draw or carve as I do, and you know it.”

“No man is indispensable. Not you, not Hans. Not even Gutenberg.”

“And even so you wouldn’t like to lose me.”

Fust stared at him as if he were a stranger. “You’ve learned from him, I see—just how to bite the hand that feeds you.”

At that his son walked to the door. He glanced once as he put his hand upon the knob, but Fust had turned to look over the trading hall. All Peter saw was his broad back; all that he heard was that incessant roar.

He moved his things to the Humbrechthof that afternoon. There wasn’t much to take: his shirts and books and writing pouch. Before he left he sought out Grede to tell her he was going. She had been tucking in the children for their naps; with a finger to his lips, he drew her out into the hall.

“I asked for Anna Pinzler’s hand,” he said. “Your husband has refused.”

She put a hand up to her mouth. “Dear God.”

He couldn’t tell the reason for her shock—the choice of bride, or Fust’s reply.

“I’m leaving now.”

She gripped his arm. “No, Peter, surely—”

“You can reclaim your room. I’ll sleep above the shop.”

Her fingers tightened. “You could have asked me—why did you never think that I might help?” She stared at him, her dark eyes huge.

“He wants an Elder bride or none at all,” he told her brusquely. “I thought to spare your feelings.”

She stiffened. “You do not know him as I do.”

“I’m sure that’s true.” Peter took her hands in his. “I’m sorry, Grede.”

“Just let me try—”

He raised her hands and kissed them gently. “Too late. I should have thought of it before. But now—” He shrugged, and walked away down the long hall.

The workshop was locked tight. But Peter had been trusted once. His father’s son enjoyed the privilege of a key. He drew it out and locked himself inside. Keffer was the only man upstairs, curled up asleep on his straw pallet. He cracked an eye when Peter put his satchel down. A grunt, and then he pulled his blanket tighter, rolled back into twitching dreams. The place was freezing, frost on both sides of the thick, waxed windowskins.

Below there was a glowing heart deep in the ashes of the fire. Peter wakened it and fed it and then set to work. In work there was forgetfulness; through all those months and years the need for letters never waned. Each idle moment they would cast some more, and ever more, replacing those the press had worn, making ever-larger piles to feed that ever-growing crew.

Sometime during that snowy afternoon the master put his head in, to complain about the waste of fuel. “A step ahead,” replied the stony figure at the forge. “It makes more sense for me to sleep here too.” Gutenberg regarded him, one bushy eyebrow raised. “At least you don’t eat much, the way you look,” he said, and went away. It was, indeed, the gauntest season. Fitting, too, that his expulsion from the house of Fust should fall just on the cusp of Lent—the fasting hunger time.

He filled the space where gratitude and love had been with tin and lead. He did not feel he owed a soul an explanation. Hans knew better than to ask; Mentelin knew nothing of it; Keffer, though good-hearted, was a clown. Gutenberg had doubtless guessed that Peter and his father had had words. But he said nothing, for it suited him, of course, to have the whole crew underneath one roof. As it felt right to Peter too, in that dark time of year, to close himself inside the space where he had always lived, wrapped up in parchment, paper—tied with letters, ink.

He would not lie directly to her face. He could not. Yet even so he lived in fear that Anna—bright and observant as she was—would somehow learn that Fust had refused. It never crossed his mind to throw himself upon her mercy and confess their plight. He knew too well how Pinzler would respond. He’d be compelled, for honor, to withdraw and reject Peter’s suit. And so, though he was careful not to lie outright, he breathed deceit: he crept and he dissembled.

He took the Sabbath meal with them from time to time, but not too often, lest they guess he did not dine at home. It steadied him to be at their calm hearth, watching Anna paint and holding up his arms to help her mother wind her yarns. His love worked with a deep intensity, her little tongue poked out as she minutely brushed a scene on a ceramic box: a tiny castle on an emerald hill, its ruby pennants rippling.

If anyone had asked him why he cleaved to her, this quiet slip of a girl—if he had ever been prepared to open up his heart for that inspection—Peter would have said that she was all that stood in those dark days between himself and the abyss. She rooted him, and held him to the earth. He was alone, more clearly, coldly, than at any time before. More so even than when he was orphaned, for an infant does not feel the absence at its back. He had not chosen this, but it was his.

He mimed an ordinary life: Anna never knew that when he left her, he did not return to the Haus zur Rosau, nor did she guess that his Sunday mass was sung no longer in his father’s pew, but at the master’s in St. Christopher’s. “My fondest greeting to your father and your mother,” she would say in parting, as his stomach twisted. What small allowance he might once have made for Fust’s ambition disappeared, corroded by the bile inside. It was his father’s fault that Peter had to feign a lightness that he did not feel; but for his veto, Peter might have spared himself—and her—that web of lies.

Klaus Pinzler would not wait much longer for the handshake. The only hope was to present his father with a dowry of the customary size, and pray he’d have to take it or lose face. The
Handschlag
did require a host of witnesses; a minor crowd could be arranged. Peter pictured Jakob’s face when he let drop his brother had refused a craftsman’s daughter. The Pinzlers had two elder sons as well, who painted manuscripts and doubtless knew his father’s clients. Peter felt a bitter exultation at the thought of trapping him at his own game.

The only question was the shape and size of wedding goods the Pinzlers should provide. He thought at first of asking Grede. But he refused to put her in that place, stretched between him and his father. He should have asked her help, and long before; he was a fool. Even so he roughly knew the dowry should be worth a year of a good income, some twenty, thirty guilders. And on the evening that he broached this figure, Anna blanched. He took her face between his palms. What
Mitgift
she could offer was laid piece by piece in a small chest of scented pine beneath the rafters of her room. Sheets and curtains, table linens—serviceable, certainly, but not the finest quality; some pewter dishes, several mirrors, ceramic pitchers painted by a Pinzler hand. Five years’ accumulated treasure, more or less.

“There’s more where that came from,” he murmured as he kissed the lines of worry from her brow. She kept on glancing down the ladder to her loft. They’d snuck him up to snatch a look; at any moment either parent might appear. They fled into the darkness, running toward the wall, ducking with their hoods pulled close into the foreyard of the Augustinerhof, where townsfolk clustered for the friars’ cheap wine and fire. Under cover of the crowd, he told her of his plan. He would build her dowry up himself—buy more fabrics and furnishings, all fine enough for any merchant’s house. He had some money put aside; he’d ask his uncle, maybe even Grede. Jakob was the leader of the guild, for pity’s sake; he’d cough up cutlery and candlesticks at least. And then, if they were quick, they both could earn a little more. Anna’s face lit then with hope. She’d paint a mirror for the duchess, she said, nodding; he could find some work to scribe. They laughed and stole a kiss; like two old hens, he said, scrabbling after fallen groats.

This was how he found himself once more inside the Schreibhaus. He collared Heilant, swallowing his pride. He needed work, he said, a little something he could do at night. The scribe looked at him at first with coolness, then his face broke into a wide smile. “Perfect.” He clapped his hands. “Two days ago we lost our best man to the house in Erfurt.” He was in charge of half a dozen scribes, Heilant explained—three from St. Viktor’s, three hired in from outside—to pen a big new monastery Bible. “Providence is swift,” he said, his cheeks spreading with genuine delight.

“My father’d have my hide,” said Peter quickly—much too quickly, he thought afterward, as if he were some wayward child. “You don’t know Johann Fust.”

“Come,” said Petrus Heilant. “You’re years past your majority.”

The blood rose into Peter’s cheeks—he felt it, cursed it, as he cursed these lies. And too, the thing was rich—a Bible, God above, another Bible, written out by scribes in Mainz this time.

“I couldn’t do it by the piece?” he asked, knowing full well that they would never parcel out such volumes. A tome like this would be a work of years, a dedicated team in a scriptorium.

“You amaze me.” Heilant pulled back slightly, as if Peter foamed about the mouth or showed some other sign of madness. “Of course not.”