Gutenberg's Apprentice by Alix Christie Page B

departure was repudiation: he’d seen his nephew leave not once but twice, his own son taking up the stool the foster boy had shunned.
    “I told your father, and I will tell you too,” Jakob said. “This . . . ‘workshop’”—his voice curdled—“is outside the rules. The man’s an Elder, and no doubt a snake. I plan to keep the closest eye upon it.”
    Peter caught his father’s fleeting irritated look. “Why don’t you let me watch my business,” Fust said, “and you watch yours.”
    “The one destroys the other, that’s the point.” Jakob drained his glass and stood. How fitting, Peter thought, that he’d ascended to the post of city treasurer. His first act had been cancellation of the Elders’ interest payments. “They either fund the city like the rest of us and pay their tax, or they can bloody well decamp.” He turned to Peter, one hand on the doorknob. “If I were you, I’d watch my back.”
    His footsteps faded on the great stone stair. Fust snorted, slicked his hair back. “He always saw the black before the white.” He gave his son a look. “Though there is money to be made, while they are at each other’s throats.”
    Roll in the barrel, he said next; Peter fetched it through the small, arched door.
    “Something for you.” Fust grabbed a chisel from the rack. He popped the wooden lid and started drawing out the volumes he’d procured. Tomes of canon law, the decretals of Boniface and Gregory, some copies of the cruder sort of romance. And then a packet wrapped in suede: an unbound group of folded sheets, perhaps three quires. He handed it to Peter, who opened it. A calendar of saints filled the left page, in red and black; the right was blank, awaiting a fine painting. “For Duchess Mechtild,” said his father. A lovely copy of the Hours of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
    Peter’s body tightened. The lines of the textura hand were a rich brown, exquisite, written with a seamless grace—almost certainly the work of a Carthusian scribe. Textura meant “woven”: the monks had always said the scribe wove his own spirit into God’s.
    “What use is this to fire-boys?” Peter’s voice was harsh.
    Fust blanched; he genuinely looked surprised. “I thought you might advise me in the painting.”
    “As I had thought my life was mine.” Peter pushed the packet back across the desk.
    Fust leaned both palms against the wood and stood there looking at him a long while. At last he sat down heavily. “You have not grasped the whole of it.”
    “I grasp enough.”
    Fust frowned. “You disappoint me, Peter. You, of all people, not to see what this will be.”
    “I see a crude and ugly copy of the best that men can do. There’s not a lord alive who’ll touch a book this madman makes, you know it.”
    “Not yet.” His father’s nostrils flared. “Not yet—but give it time. You can’t imagine it, perhaps, but I can. Books everywhere, and costing less than manuscripts—in quantities that simply stun the mind. Imagine how the world would look if anyone could buy one!” His eyes fell on the book of hours. “I can’t live just off these. I sell the things, I ought to know.” He raised his eyes to Peter’s own. “In ten years, twenty, who will pay a prince’s fortune for such things? The gentry are not all as rich as that. It’s finished. I am sorry, but it’s true. Once we have found the secret to the letters, there will be no need for scribes.”
    “And everything of beauty is destroyed.” Peter rose. “Everything that matters, in the praise of God—or learning—trampled. Do not forget, I know a thing about this business too.”
    His father nodded. “Of course. You must defend your interest. Your hands, your trade, I understand. It changes nothing, though. It’s over. The life of scribes, the value in your hands—you may as well accept it now.”
    “I beg to differ.”
    “Beg all you like.” Fust’s eyes went steely. “It will not change the truth—or your own