Gutenberg's Apprentice Read Online Free Page A

shock, I know.” Fust’s voice was gruff. “But at least try to see. This is the change for which I’ve prayed.”
    A man would leave a legacy, Peter heard him say. The feeling that his sojourn on this earth was not for naught. The words, however well meant, rose and circled like a noose around his throat.
    “Will you not let me choose?” he whispered, already knowing.
    Fust held his eyes for a long moment. “I think that God has long since chosen for us both.”
    The Hof zum Gutenberg backed onto the Cobblers’ Lane and looked out on its parish church, St. Christopher’s, atop a knoll that banked down steeply toward the river. The place was featureless and grim; Peter looked in vain for any grace on its gray facade. There were three granite steps, a massive door, a knocker. His father wore a tunic made of red velour. Too fine, his son thought, standing in his shadow, waiting for Fust’s arm to rise, the iron ring to lift and drop. Peter stood immobile in his plain dark breeches and his one good shirt, still reeking from the journey. Just as he’d stood as a boy of ten, when sent to Fust: the sudden, piercing memory returned. That awkward, silent lad, bathed carefully and dressed, put on the market cart to Mainz—clad in what to those grand folk must have seemed like rags. How frightened he had been, how stiff in his desire to please lest he be put back on the cart and sent away.
    The man beyond this door was an Elder—a patrician of the highest rank and undoubtedly haughty. Fust dressed to show that though a merchant, he was just as rich. A strange alliance, when Mainz was riven between the old clans and the rising trading class. This Gutenberg was one of those who held the city ransom, thanks to Dietrich’s iron fist: a member of the old elite that ran the courts, the commerce, and the churches—and most of all sucked income from the loans that bled the city dry.
    “A leech, then,” Peter had observed, as he tried to worm out information over breakfast.
    “More of a pragmatist, I think.” Fust shrugged and cracked his hard-cooked egg. “I hear he’s viewed with some suspicion by his peers.” The man had only recently returned to Mainz; he’d spent some thirty years in Strassburg. Which did explain, to some extent, why no one knew just what to make of him. He’d put out a story that he was making trinkets for the pilgrim trade in hopes of keeping prying eyes away.
    The merchant dropped the knocker several times, then started pounding. With every fruitless blow his neck grew redder. He cursed beneath his breath and was about to turn when finally they heard a grinding sound. A bolt was wrenched, the door burst outward, and the two of them sprang back. In the entry stood the master of the house, unlikely as it was for any scion of an Elder clan to answer his own front door. Yet judging from the clothes, it had to be: he wore a belted linen tunic and shoes with silver buckles, though there was grime on both his leggings and his rolled-up sleeves.
    “Herr Fust.” A sharp, planed face, dark probing eyes that did not look entirely pleased. “I might have known it would be you.”
    “I would have sent you word—but my impatience was too great.”
    Gutenberg just grunted and looked out behind them, peering with suspicion up and down the lane. He waved them in beneath one arm. “Patience is for fools and saints.” He slid the heavy bolt and turned to face them. Strangely for a man of his high caste, he wore a long, dark twisted beard.
    “This is the son I spoke of.” Fust nudged Peter forward.
    A ripple underneath the skin pulled the man’s lips into a grimace. “I don’t see much resemblance.” His eyes raked Peter. “He has a name, this gifted scribe?”
    “Peter Schoeffer. Sir.” He bowed his head. Already he knew how it would go. He’d been apprenticed twice before, the lowest of the low.
    “I’d offer you a drink—but where the devil is Lorenz?” The master of the house looked around