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

Foreigners, said Keffer, glad to find a friendly face. The journeyman was nimble with his fingers, always drawing with a lump of coal: blank faces with breasts, a nest of thatch. What luscious lips he could show Peter, he’d wink and whisper, if they ever could get sprung. Peter whispered back that you could pay in Paris with silk stockings if you liked. He was no prude, for all the years he’d had to hold his lust in check on monastery stools. Another reason, as if any more were needed, to get free. He couldn’t take his pleasure here the way he had in Paris, unwatched and anonymous. He felt his cock stir at the thought of all those satin entries, the dim red lamps, the damp, inviting archways of the street of Saint-Denis.
    Fust stopped by once in mid-October, in between his autumn journeys, to check that things were “well in hand.” Choice words, his son thought darkly: “in hand” was what he was, his very essence. The master barely looked up at his partner, simply waved a splattered arm. “Godspeed on your work,” he let fly. “I’ll take the same for mine.”
    It was not God’s speed, no—the very opposite. September and October passed; the daylight hours began to wane. Yet strangely they could feel a force drag the shop forward, silver drop by silver drop. There was a movement there, excruciatingly slow, yet inexorable—though where it led them, none could say.
    And then one evening a change came.
    The master raised his head, eyes bright, as if he’d caught a scent. He rubbed his eyes. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, yes.” The batch they’d made the day before had hardened just as soon as it was poured into the mold. This next batch they completed replicated that result. The letters sliding from the mold were crisp and hard; Konrad had run the first lot twenty times beneath the heavy press, and not a single one looked the worse for wear.
    “By God, I think that’s it.” Gutenberg turned to Hans and smacked him on the arm. “You look like hell, you know.” He thrust his chin toward Peter and pointed toward the ladle. “If we can get it right again, at scale, we’ll drink tonight!” He drew his bushy brows together, chanting it like some old alchemist: “Two tin, four lead. Then just a quarter of antimony—to stiffen your sad pricks.” He smiled—a brief, exhausted flash. Hans and Keffer laughed.
    Peter went to fetch the requisite amounts. The powdered ores were piled beside each other on a slate that Konrad had erected in a corner by the forge. “Not just a beaker, either,” Gutenberg hollered. “I want a bucket of the stuff.” He fake-punched Hans again. “And put some speed in, will you? I have got a wicked thirst.”
    Peter hurried. He scooped and hurried, smelted and hurried. It was this hurry that wrecked everything, he thought as he dashed the sweat away. The pressure of racing to accomplish things without the wit to see if they were any good. He held his two hands steady as he poured and mixed the molten streams, longing for the slow and careful scoring of the pages, the focused trimming of his quill. The time to settle and to think. In half an hour he’d mixed a bucketful and carried it back to the bench. There, he thought, setting it down. The bastard ought to be content.
    Gutenberg dipped in the ladle and splashed a test out on the stone. He pried the metal off and put it to his teeth, bit, and spat. “Good Christ,” he croaked, and thrust his tongue out, flecked with grayish crumbs. “What crap is this?” His face contorted as his hand flew out and knocked the basin over. A searing pain tore Peter’s hand; he screamed and flung it wildly to throw off the scalding ore that poured across it. Hans grabbed the flailing silvered glove and swiftly plunged it into the cooling bucket that stood ready by the forge. Peter was jerked along, twisting on his knees, aware of nothing but the ringing pain. The old smith held his whole arm under water, his own hands rapid as they shucked