Gutenberg's Apprentice Read Online Free PDF Page B

are worth more than you think.”
    Peter watched those two face off across the battered table, moving not a muscle as they tossed his life between them. He should have stood and walked away. But he could not; his duty bound him hand and foot.
    “You’ve not advanced the whole.” The printer’s voice was querulous. “I need the rest for metal and equipment.”
    “You’ll get it when the contract’s drawn, as soon as I can raise it all myself.” For all his wealth, Fust didn’t have that kind of ready gold. He financed major outlays from the Lombard or some Jews in Frankfurt. “In counterpart,” his father said, “you’ll train my son, and pledge the instruments you make as guarantee.”
    “I don’t impart my knowledge on the cheap.”
    “It is my wish that Peter learn this art.”
    Gutenberg looked sharply at Peter, then returned his deep-set gaze to Fust. “I already said the whole thing’s much too tight.”
    “The Latin grammar will sell well. And once we’ve picked the book to print you’ll find and charge apprentices, as many as you please.”
    The silence hung like something breathing in the room. It pressed against the cobwebbed rafters, slithered down the blank gray walls. Peter stifled a cry for his old life—for feathers flashing, all the whirling on the place de la Sorbonne. Was this why God had raised him up? So He could fling him back into the muck from whence he’d come? He clenched his fists to stop the pricking in his eyes.
    “One thing.” Gutenberg had risen. “If there must be a contract, I will have your pledge.” His eyes bored into each in turn. “Everything I teach remains within these walls.” He scowled and threw his sharp, impatient gaze about the room; when he reached out and seized a crucifix that hung above a desk, they understood. Peter laid his hands on it and swore to tell no man the art and manner of the work; he pledged his honor in the eyes of God.
    It felt exactly as if he’d been inducted, blindfolded, into some black and cabbalistic brotherhood.

CHAPTER 2
     
    MAINZ
     
             September – October 1450
    T HUS BEGAN his apprenticeship.
    The day he started, he rose before dawn. His feet propelled him out and up and down the silent lanes of Mainz, shrunk now to just six thousand souls—less of a proud free city than a crumbling town.
    When he’d first come here, Mainz glittered. Peter still remembered how the dukes of Katzenelnbogen raced their sledges, banners flying, through the icy streets around the market square. Golden Mainz, they used to call her, a city with more gold- and silversmiths than any other in the empire. But then the workers dared to claim a piece of all that wealth, and the ruling class cried foul.
    More than once, and over many generations, the guildsmen had risen up in desperation, but were always beaten back. This time they’d won the council fair and square, and so the punishment exceeded all the times before. Most of the Elder clans had withdrawn to their country homes, his father said, incensed at being told to pay their share of taxes. The work fled with them, starving all the local craftsmen—but this was not the worst, to Fust. Archbishop Dietrich’s ban also throttled the river trade, cutting off the long-distance merchants. Mainz was besieged not from without but from within; she was a stunted place, sealed from the world.
    A candle flickered lonely in the sacristy of the cathedral as Peter passed. The ban had muzzled all St. Martin’s bells and chained its iron grille. The market square was darkened at its edges by prone bodies that he took at first for rags. Along the lane before the house of the Franciscans, he was forced to pull his cloak up to his nose. The wine the friars poured just puddled afterward as vomit spewed by idle workers seeking comfort in their courtyard. Peter turned his feet away and sought the ramparts, yearning for fresh air. Each of the city’s gates—the Iron, Wood, and Fish, the others