‘I think we’ll take the train,’ said Emily.
XLVIII
Strassburg
Andreas Dritzehn wanted me to like him. He had spread his table with venison, capons, jellies and sweetmeats. He flattered my new coat, which was second hand, and laughed if he even suspected a joke. He pressed me with wine, which he served himself, though there were many servants on hand to pour. I was quite willing to oblige him. He wanted to give me a great deal of money.
I made him wait. I refilled my plate and my glass often. I discoursed energetically on the weather, the harvest, progress on the cathedral, Paris. I was a delightful guest. Kaspar, across the table, said little. His spirits burned like a candle: they could be snuffed out in an instant. If my attention was deflected even a degree away from him, he became sullen and withdrawn.
At last the plates were cleared, the servants dismissed, the women dispatched to their chambers. Dritzehn threw another log on the fire and leaned closer.
‘Tell my about your mirrors.’
Like many ideas, it had been born of necessity. In this case, necessity took the guise of two men who one afternoon visited my house in St Argobast. Working in the forge, I did not see them arrive, or notice anything until one announced himself by rapping his cudgel on my shoulder. It was not a friendly tap, but a heavy blow that left my arm numb. I dropped the ladle with a howl. Boiling metal slopped into the fire, setting off a noxious steam that stung my eyes. I almost tipped the entire crucible over my legs. Weeping and choking, I turned around to meet my visitors.
One was the man who had hit me. If ever a man’s face bespoke his character this was it. His right eye, left earlobe and left arm were missing – though to judge by the knock he had given me, enough strength remained in his right arm for two. His nose had been broken so many times it looked like a sack of rocks; his lips, bared in a sneer, looked permanently bruised.
The other man stepped out from his considerable shadow. It was Stoltz, the moneylender.
‘We were supposed to meet yesterday to discuss your debts. You did not come.’
‘I forgot.’
The one-armed man made another movement. Still blinking back tears from the pain and fumes, I did not see it clearly. All I felt was another explosion of agony, this time in my knee. I dropped to the floor.
Stoltz stood over me. ‘You would be astonished, in my line of work, how forgetful men become. It is as if lending a man gold instantly addles his wits. Fortunately, my memory does not suffer this defect.’
He reached into the bag on his belt and pulled out a small notebook. I remembered the clerk in the Mainz mint with his enormous ledger, the all-knowing book from which my theft could not be hidden. I trembled.
‘Three months ago I loaned you fifty gulden.’
This was worth another blow, this time to my arm. I rolled over on my side. Stoltz stood over me.
‘Some men find money a strange abstraction. It flows from man to man and from country to country and knows no boundaries. In a single day it can go from the hands of a king to the hands of a beggar and back again. But in truth, money is very simple. It is a tool, just as a pair of bellows or a plough are tools. And within that tool lies an inherent utility. This we call value.’
A kick in the ribs. I covered my face with my hands. Nothing destroys a man’s credit so quickly as a mask of bruises on his face.
‘If I lend you a plough, its value is that it can improve your field to make it more fruitful. For that, you pay me. Likewise if I lend you fifty gulden, you pay me for the use of it. For the use of this money, you were to pay me five shillings a month.’
Two swats from the cudgel contorted my back in agony.
‘You have already failed to deliver the last month’s payment. Now I hear that the surety you gave me for the loan – the dowry of the girl Ennelin – turns out to be worthless. You have broken off your engagement to her.’
‘Her mother tricked me,’ I pleaded.
‘Then more fool you. I will not be left with the bill. By breaking the engagement you have forfeited your collateral. Under the terms of our agreement, I am entitled to claim back the entire loan immediately.’
‘I cannot pay.’ The money had barely touched my hands as it passed through them – some to Dunne and various suppliers, but most to pay off other loans that had fallen due.
‘Then I shall ruin you.’ Stoltz nodded to his henchman, who swung the cudgel underarm against the sole of my foot. I screamed. ‘When Karl has finished with you I will set the courts on you.’
‘Please. Please God.’ I scrabbled to get away from the brute. He let me, like a bear handler letting out the leash. I could not go far.
Desperation loosened my tongue. ‘I have invested it in a great labour. One that, God willing, will make me rich. If you ruin me now you will get nothing, pennies for gulden. If you wait I can repay you everything.’
Stoltz said nothing – but there was no movement from Karl. I took this as an invitation to continue.
‘I am devising a new art, one that will make me rich.
‘What is it?
‘You spoke of ploughs and fields. Imagine this is a plough which could make fields give up ten times as much wheat.’
‘Explain.’ Stoltz had no time for riddles. Karl stepped closer and stroked my ribs with the tip of his cudgel.
But I could not say it. Even then – bleeding, bruised and with the promise of worse to come – I could not. It was my secret, incomplete though it was. If every man knew it, there would be no advantage. I had to cling on.
I stared up at the thin, bloodless face looming over me. A wink of light behind him caught my eye: a pilgrim’s mirror that Aeneas had given me by the Rhine. I gazed at it, praying for salvation.
Stoltz swept a glass jar off the table. It shattered on the floor, jolting me back to him. ‘Pay attention.’
He glared down. Karl tapped the club against the side of his leg and licked his puffy lips. And that was when it flashed into my mind.
‘The mirrors,’ I croaked.
‘What?’
I pointed. He stepped back, fearing a trick, and eyed the mirror on the wall. A ring of light played over his face where the mirror reflected it onto him.
‘That will not save you.
‘Not in the way you think. But perhaps…’ I stood. Karl lifted the club to knock me down again, but Stoltz raised a hand to still him. I pulled the mirror off its nail and examined it. My mind raced.
‘This has been cast from an alloy of lead and tin. I have worked with this alloy: it shrinks as it cools and tightens around the mould.’ I ran my finger around the interlocking circles. ‘For a design so intricate, the only way to free it is to shatter the mould. Every mirror requires a new mould to be carved. It is slow and expensive.’
I did not know absolutely that this was true, but just as some physicians can diagnose a man’s sickness by looking at his face, I could read it in the shape and flow of the metal.
I pointed to the figures sculpted on the medallions inside the rings. ‘You see how flat and featureless these faces are? You cannot achieve the quality of detail from casting in this way. I can make them better than that – and cheaper.’
‘How?’
‘A new alloy. One that does not shrink as it cools. I can use the moulds again and again, and each time produce a truer copy than this.’
I pressed the mirror into his hand. He took it, scraping a fingernail over the rough carvings.
‘How many would you make?’
‘A thousand. At twelve shillings each, that would be five hundred gulden. I could repay your loan with double the interest.’
‘Lending money at interest is a venal sin,’ Stoltz admonished me. Karl glanced at him to see if this merited another blow. Thankfully, it did not. ‘You pay me for the use of the money.’