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Authors: Alix Christie
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his voice, but Peter hears the edge.
“All are corrupted.” He hears himself too then: the weary, jaded voice of one who’d hoped for more. “I no less than all the rest.”
He should have stayed a scribe, he sometimes thinks; at least that way he would not feel this disappointed. He has his printing works, two of his four sons who have followed him as printers; he has made hundreds of fine books. He’s richer, more upstanding, than the master ever was. But part of him still mourns that touch, the feeling of such closeness to the Lord’s creation. At night sometimes, he’ll reach for his old pouch of quills, and stroke the skin of God’s lamb with the feather of His fowl, praying for some sign.
CHAPTER 5
MAINZ
November 1450
P ETER WAS ENSLAVED by duty, and it chafed. If Fust would not release him, he might spend his life in filth and smoke, his spirit shriveling like twigs thrown on the fire. His only hope was to secure a new position that would both set him free and allow his father to save face. He’d thought first that Jakob might help: there wasn’t anyone who loathed the Elders more, and Gutenberg was nothing if not an arrogant, abusive Elder. But then Peter saw himself, cap in hand, groveling before his uncle for some kind of clerkship. Mainz is bankrupt, dunce, Jakob would say. What scraps remain should go to those who pulled their weight. Not that Peter aimed to stay in Mainz; the place was heavy with the venom of that internecine war. For the first time in his life, he thought of purposefully failing—of doing work so foul and torturously slow that Gutenberg would have to cut him loose. He could not bring himself to do it. He had his pride, and pride did have its uses: mixed well with bitterness, it hardened in the backbone. There had to be someone he knew, some former teacher or a fellow who could get him a scribe’s post inside a chancellery, with luck a distant bishop’s or a duke’s.
His suit was buried in a chest beneath the bed: a short dark cloak, a cap pierced by a raven’s plume, a high-collared long white shirt and leggings, and the chamois pouch in which he kept his writing tools. As he unfolded them, he could feel that inky world receding. It seemed a dream, his old Parisian life. Who did she flirt with now, Céline with her russet curls? What did his former fellows say about his sudden disappearance as they gossiped in the morning at their lecterns?
He pulled his old skin on and slipped out after dark one evening from the Haus zur Rosau. The moon was low on the horizon, and the lanes that led to the cathedral were black tunnels, houses clawing toward each other overhead. The market square split open in a sudden pool of light. There was a mist about: November had its foot wedged in the door. Soon it would be the feast day of Saint Martin, the city’s patron saint. What chance was there they’d act the play this year upon the broad cathedral stair? Jakob would scream bloody murder if they tried. The people would not stand for such hypocrisy, he’d rail: the rich man tearing off his cloak and rending it in two to share with some poor lad dressed up to play the beggar.
Peter’s destination was the Schreibhaus at the corner of the painters’ district—the Writing House, belonging to the monks who dwelt outside the city wall at St. Viktor’s. In those days the scriptoria were in full flower all across the empire; in Mainz the finest books were written at the Charterhouse of the Carthusians or at the hilltop monastery of the Augustines of St. Viktor’s. The order’s house inside the wall had served for decades as their city school, and hostel for the lay scribes that they sometimes hired. In recent years he’d heard that it had turned into a meetinghouse for clergy of all kinds, although some scribes still worked in a back room.
He’d never set foot in the place before. It was a fetid den, his uncle said, where Archbishop Dietrich’s priests and
“All are corrupted.” He hears himself too then: the weary, jaded voice of one who’d hoped for more. “I no less than all the rest.”
He should have stayed a scribe, he sometimes thinks; at least that way he would not feel this disappointed. He has his printing works, two of his four sons who have followed him as printers; he has made hundreds of fine books. He’s richer, more upstanding, than the master ever was. But part of him still mourns that touch, the feeling of such closeness to the Lord’s creation. At night sometimes, he’ll reach for his old pouch of quills, and stroke the skin of God’s lamb with the feather of His fowl, praying for some sign.
CHAPTER 5
MAINZ
November 1450
P ETER WAS ENSLAVED by duty, and it chafed. If Fust would not release him, he might spend his life in filth and smoke, his spirit shriveling like twigs thrown on the fire. His only hope was to secure a new position that would both set him free and allow his father to save face. He’d thought first that Jakob might help: there wasn’t anyone who loathed the Elders more, and Gutenberg was nothing if not an arrogant, abusive Elder. But then Peter saw himself, cap in hand, groveling before his uncle for some kind of clerkship. Mainz is bankrupt, dunce, Jakob would say. What scraps remain should go to those who pulled their weight. Not that Peter aimed to stay in Mainz; the place was heavy with the venom of that internecine war. For the first time in his life, he thought of purposefully failing—of doing work so foul and torturously slow that Gutenberg would have to cut him loose. He could not bring himself to do it. He had his pride, and pride did have its uses: mixed well with bitterness, it hardened in the backbone. There had to be someone he knew, some former teacher or a fellow who could get him a scribe’s post inside a chancellery, with luck a distant bishop’s or a duke’s.
His suit was buried in a chest beneath the bed: a short dark cloak, a cap pierced by a raven’s plume, a high-collared long white shirt and leggings, and the chamois pouch in which he kept his writing tools. As he unfolded them, he could feel that inky world receding. It seemed a dream, his old Parisian life. Who did she flirt with now, Céline with her russet curls? What did his former fellows say about his sudden disappearance as they gossiped in the morning at their lecterns?
He pulled his old skin on and slipped out after dark one evening from the Haus zur Rosau. The moon was low on the horizon, and the lanes that led to the cathedral were black tunnels, houses clawing toward each other overhead. The market square split open in a sudden pool of light. There was a mist about: November had its foot wedged in the door. Soon it would be the feast day of Saint Martin, the city’s patron saint. What chance was there they’d act the play this year upon the broad cathedral stair? Jakob would scream bloody murder if they tried. The people would not stand for such hypocrisy, he’d rail: the rich man tearing off his cloak and rending it in two to share with some poor lad dressed up to play the beggar.
Peter’s destination was the Schreibhaus at the corner of the painters’ district—the Writing House, belonging to the monks who dwelt outside the city wall at St. Viktor’s. In those days the scriptoria were in full flower all across the empire; in Mainz the finest books were written at the Charterhouse of the Carthusians or at the hilltop monastery of the Augustines of St. Viktor’s. The order’s house inside the wall had served for decades as their city school, and hostel for the lay scribes that they sometimes hired. In recent years he’d heard that it had turned into a meetinghouse for clergy of all kinds, although some scribes still worked in a back room.
He’d never set foot in the place before. It was a fetid den, his uncle said, where Archbishop Dietrich’s priests and
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