She ran a finger over the reassembled letters. ‘This is the grandfather of them all. The type he used for his masterpiece, the Gutenberg Bible. So far as we’ve ever known, that was the only major book he printed.’ She caressed the printout like an infant. ‘This is like finding an autographed copy of a lost Shakespeare play with illustrations by Rembrandt.’
‘We haven’t found it yet,’ Nick reminded her. ‘All we’ve got is a printout of a reconstruction of one page that a guy tore up in Strasbourg. I don’t think that was original either, unless Gutenberg printed it off on office paper.’
‘You pointed a gun at him and the only thing he cared about was destroying that piece of paper. It’s a true copy of something. Somewhere.’
LXII
Mainz
For such a large building, the Hof zum Gutenberg was surprisingly unassuming: the narrow street offered no position where you could take in its full size. At ground level it blended unnoticed into its neighbour, while the greater part slipped around a corner into an alley. You would have had to crane your head far back to see the peaked gable overhead: most people were too occupied dodging livestock, dung and the pelts hanging from hooks outside the furrier’s shop opposite to look much higher than their own feet. It was a perfect home for what went on within.
‘I hear you have taken a new name since you returned,’ Fust said.
‘Gutenberg.’ I had jettisoned my father’s name and assumed that of my first and last home. It announced me as a man of property, which proved useful in some of my dealings; but more than that it anchored me. I belonged here.
As we stepped over the threshold I looked up, as I always did, at the crest carved into the keystone of the arch. It showed a hunched pilgrim in a high conical cap, bent almost double under the weight of the load he carried hidden beneath his cloak. What was that burden, I wondered? He leaned on a stick, while the other hand held out a begging bowl for alms. I did not know how it had become our family emblem – even my father could not say. But I felt, as always, a kinship – a weary pilgrim still begging alms to finish his journey.
I had been busy since my return. The front rooms which my father had used to display his cloths and wares had been boarded up. Now they were crowded with furniture, pushed against walls or piled high as if readied for a move. Dust had already begun to settle.
I led Fust into another room, then down a short corridor past the pantry. We paused outside an iron-bound door that led into the rear wing.
‘What you see and what you hear – you swear by Mary and the saints you will not reveal it to anyone?’
Fust nodded. I opened the door.
In the middle of the room, three men sat at a table that had been moved there for the purpose. They were sipping wine, though none looked as if he was enjoying it. They knew what was at stake.
I introduced them.
‘Konrad Saspach of Strassburg, chest maker and carpenter. He makes our presses, which you will see presently.’
Saspach was one of the few men who had grown in my estimation since I’d known him. His beard was now white and bushy as a prophet’s, his hands so wizened it seemed impossible they could turn a lathe or make a saw cut so straight. He had always been on the periphery of our enterprise, but when I asked him to come from Strassburg he had agreed willingly.
‘Götz von Schlettstadt, the goldsmith who engraves the dies and forms we use.’ Not long after I met him the Armagnaken had sacked his town and looted his shop. A goldsmith with no gold cannot maintain a business. Soon afterwards he had come to Strassburg and offered to work for me. I accepted gladly, for he was the most meticulous goldsmith I ever knew. All metals were like clay in his hands.
‘Father Heinrich Günther.’ A younger man with a grave face and staring eyes. Günther had been vicar of St Christoph’s church around the corner until – in a dispute between the archbishop and the Pope – he had committed the sin of siding with his superior’s superior. The archbishop had stripped him of his benefice and left him penniless.
I looked at them all, watching Fust or studying their cups as their moods dictated. These orphans and outcasts were my guild, a brotherhood of craftsmen. If only Kaspar could have been among them my happiness would have been complete.
‘And what do you all have in common? It sounds like the beginning of a joke: a carpenter, a goldsmith, a priest and…’ He looked at me. ‘Whatever you are, Hans Gutenberg?’
A copyist? An imprinter of paper? A beggar? A fool?
‘A pilgrim.’ I could see the answer displeased him. I hurried on. ‘First, we will demonstrate the power of this art.’
I handed him a piece of paper. Four pinholes had been pricked in the corners, and a pencil line ruled apparently at random in the middle.
‘Write your name here.’
With the reluctance of a man who thinks he is being made a fool of, he took a pen from the table and signed his name on the line.
‘The paper is damp,’ he commented.
‘It takes the ink better.’
Saspach took the signed paper and disappeared through a door into the next room. From behind the door came a long creak of protest, like a ship straining on its hawser. Then a thud, a rasp and a clang. Fust’s eyes narrowed, while the others affected not to notice anything.
Saspach returned and laid the sheet triumphantly in front of Fust.
‘Liebe Gott,’ he murmured.
His name was still there, just as he had written it. But where before it had been a solitary bloom on a barren page, now it sat in the midst of a garden, hundreds of words that had blossomed around it in an instant and drawn it into their web. His name was now part of a sentence:
Wherefore we decree that JOHANN FUST is truly forgiven of these sins and that the stain of them is removed.
‘No pens. No desks. No mind to wander or hand to slip. A perfect copy every time. And, as you see, completed in an instant.’
Fust looked like a man who had fallen down a hole and found a cave of gold. He pointed to the grammar book I had shown him in the vineyard. ‘And this came out of that room also?’
‘Every page.’
‘It is indistinguishable from the real thing.’
‘Perhaps it is the real thing – as gold is to lead or the sun is to the moon.’
But Fust’s merchant mind could not be dazzled for long. Already I could see the calculation in his eyes, measuring and counting. ‘Why do you need a thousand gulden from me? Everything here seems complete.’
‘This is just the beginning. This proves it is possible. To take advantage of the art I need more presses and equipment, more men to work them, more paper and vellum.’
‘To print indulgences and grammar books?’
I shook my head and leaned over the table. I had sworn beforehand that I would not touch the wine lest it cloud my thoughts. Now I found I had already drained my cup. It rushed in my veins.
‘A new venture. Bolder than anything we have attempted. For all our achievements, we are still apprentices in this new art. Now we will make our master-piece.’
LXIII
Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany
Nick took a random exit off the autobahn and drove until he found a motel. Emily slept in the seat next to him. He felt empty, his body a hollow tank trembling from the last drops of adrenalin and caffeine sloshing around inside. He had to force his eyes to stay open. He shivered with relief when they pulled into the car park at the back of the motel, and almost wept when he saw the plain room with its solid brown bed.
Emily threw back the bedspread and sat on the edge of the bed to take off her shoes and socks. She looked at him for a moment, a strange look that Nick didn’t understand.