Read Online Gutenberg's Apprentice by Alix Christie - Free Book Online Page B

abbots schemed—as much despised by guildsmen as the Elders’ tavern at the Tiergarten. The higher-ranking canons of the different orders stopped there when they passed through Mainz, en route from Rome or Aschaffenburg, the Hessian city where Dietrich had his court. Most of them also held high posts in the archbishop’s vast administration or the pope’s, along with parishes they scarcely ever darkened. The Schreibhaus had become a trading hall, except that they no longer bartered manuscripts, wine, and wheat, but pulpits, favors, sinecures, and prebends.
    The place was dim and stank of rancid food and wine. For an instant Peter mistook all those shrouded forms for sheep: fat woolen humps of black and brown, all lowing underneath dark rafters. Then the room resolved into the black of Benedictines and Augustinians, the brown of Franciscan friars, here and there a white Cistercian lamb. Off to the right, the priests of the cathedral chapter sat like folded exclamations, sharp and black, a band of white at every throat. Peter walked with purpose toward a half door at the back. A silver heller bought a cup out of a monastery cask. He turned, surveyed the room, and wished that he could stopper up his nose. Otherworldly scents mixed with the sweat wrung from the fabric of those unwashed robes: the chalk of cloisters, the bite of oak gall, the aftertaste of thin communion wine.
    The faces were all known to him—in the way that any face, in a place as small as Mainz, was known. They didn’t change: the jowls just spread, the noses grew redder and more bulbous. Elders all, patricians from the city or the minor nobles from the land: the clergy was made up of second sons from wealthy families, stashed and suckled by the Mother Church for life. It was amusing to him how their eyes slid over him and then went back to their own business. He had been gone for long enough for his own face to change. He was a stranger, with a stranger’s anonymity, which brought both freedom and a certain risk.
    He feigned a spark of recognition and advanced across the room. He did not know what he would do if he fetched up empty-handed at the far wall. He wove around the brothers at their stools and tables, said a prayer when he was spared: a glance, a sandy head in a dark cowl, a low familiar drawl.
    “Petrus Opilionus! Do I see right?” The puffy face of Petrus Heilant cracked in a wide smile.
    “Your eyes are fine.” Peter could not help but smile as broadly in return, so sweet was it to hear his Latin name. “Peter Shepherd,” Peter Schoeffer had been called.
    Heilant stood and embraced him, then looked him over with heavy-lidded eyes. He wore the black St. Viktor’s robe and stood just to Peter’s shoulder, as short and stocky as a well-fed goat. “Good Lord, it’s been an age.” There was a laugh on his full lips. “Where have you got yourself to? Look at you, a proper scribe.”
    Two acolytes were sitting at his table wearing white probationary shifts. “Eberhard, Lubertus,” Heilant said. “An old schoolmate, Peter Schoeffer, pen divine.”
    “You seem to be the one who’s blessed,” Peter whispered in his ear. “I can’t believe you took your vows.”
    Heilant shrugged and smiled; there’d always been a cunning spark hid well beneath that puffy, hibernating look. “I work, I write.” He flipped the rope ends girdling his full waist. “In penitence and patience, waiting for the Lord’s reward.” He tilted his fair head and smirked: “And once a week, I’m paid to take confession from the sisters.”
    “At St. Viktor’s?”
    “The Altmünster.” His old friend winked. “A little something on the side, to keep myself in drink.”
    “I always knew that you’d go far.” Peter laughed, swung his cloak onto the chair, and raised his cup to toast his luck. If any man could get him out of Mainz, that man was Petrus Heilant. He’d never seen much point in aiming low. His name alone explained it: Petrus Heilant von