The Book of Secrets

LII

Strassburg

Twenty-seven kings stared down from their glass thrones: proud and solemn, elevated above the cares of the world. Beneath their vitrified gazes, the world they had left moved apace. The cathedral echoed with the ring of hammers, the shouts of masons, the creak of pulleys and the squall of infants. Somewhere in all the din, the choir was trying to sing a litany. And at the back of the church, two men stood in an alcove whispering furiously.

‘You promised me nothing could go wrong.’ Andreas Dritzehn was neither proud nor solemn. His cheeks were flushed with anger, his fists balled tight as if poised to strike someone. Probably me. That was why I had insisted on meeting in the cathedral.

‘Do you think you are the only one who has put money into this venture?’ I felt sick just thinking of it, though I did not expect Dritzehn to sympathise.

‘We must melt down the mirrors we have made and sell the metal.’

‘No. What we bought was lead and tin and antimony. What we have now is alloy. We cannot unmix it, any more than we could melt those windows to make sand and lime.’

‘Then sell the alloy.’

‘That metal is the key to our enterprise – and our fortunes. If we sell it, other men will realise its power and teach themselves to copy it. If one of them happens to be an Aachen goldsmith, then he will cast the mirrors and take all the profits of our labours.’

‘Let him.’ Dritzhen’s face puffed with anger. ‘I need my money back.’

‘The pilgrimage has been postponed, not cancelled. All we need is to hold our nerve and sit out one extra year. Then we will be as rich as we ever dreamed.’

‘I cannot sit out an extra year! ’ He bellowed it like a gelded colt. I looked to see if anyone had heard, but the sawing of carpenters hid it.

‘I should have listened to my brother Jörg,’ he moaned. ‘He told me you were a vagabond, a conjurer. That you would be the ruin of my family.’

It was then I realised, perhaps for the first time in my life, that I was responsible. I was too old to run. I owed too many men too much to be able to disappear. One-armed Karl would find me, or someone like him, and my crushed body would be dragged off one of the canal weirs, snagged among the scum and branches.

I had to free myself. And like a drunk who finds release in one more draught, I reached for the only cure I knew.

‘There is another art I know. Less advanced than the mirrors, though with rewards that might dwarf them. All it needs is patience.’

He shook his head. ‘I have had enough of your secret arts.’

‘Did you never wonder what Kaspar and I were doing in your basement? The mirrors were never more than a sideshow, sowing the seeds for our greater work.’

Even in his despair I could see he was interested. ‘You never spoke of this.’

‘Of course not. The mirrors are already secret enough. But this new art is ten times greater. Only four men know of its existence.’

‘Can it be carried off before next year?’

‘Difficult to say. As I told you, its progress is less advanced than the mirrors. But once it is ready there will be no delay. No waiting for pilgrimages, no shipping it down the river. Even the plague could not stop it. All it will require is a little investment.’

He grabbed my coat and thrust me against the cathedral wall. ‘Are you deaf? Have you listened to a word I say? I have no more money. How can I spend my way out of bankruptcy?’

With a calmness I did not feel, I pulled his hand off my collar and stepped away. Light sparkled on a gold pin he wore on the shoulder of his coat, Christ on his cross with a verse of scripture scrolled around it.

‘What about that?’

He cupped his hand over it. ‘It was a gift from my wife.’

It was beautifully made. Every sinew in Christ’s body strained against death, as if his flesh tried to fight back the spirit from breaking free. The lettering underneath was perfectly even, punched into the thin metal with impossible finesse. It reminded me of the task at hand.

‘You can borrow the money we need. I will be at my house in St Argobast if you change your mind.’

Sometimes I believed that borrowing money was my true business, and all my work with ink and metal existed merely to provide a pretext for the loans. The mirrors had become a monster devouring itself; when nothing remained, I needed a new idea to borrow against. In those days I no longer thought of the arts in terms of profit, or even if they would work. All that mattered was that they kept the stream of money flowing.

Three days after our meeting in the cathedral, Dritzehn came to my house. I met him in the yard between the barn and the forge. Hens pecked around our feet; my pig rooted for apples fallen from the tree behind the barn.

‘How much?’ Dritzehn asked without preamble.

I had thought of little else in the intervening days. ‘One hundred and twenty-five gulden.’

He spluttered in indignation, which rapidly exploded into a violent fit of coughing. I watched him anxiously. I did not want him to die before I had his money.

‘That is more than I have loaned you already – and that has almost bankrupted me.’

‘Sometimes the only way across the river is to go deeper. What about your house?’

He wiped spittle from his mouth with his sleeve. ‘What about it?’

‘You can borrow against it.’

‘I already have.’

‘Borrow more,’ I urged him. ‘If your debts fall due and you cannot pay, they will take your house however much you owe. Better to risk everything on success than fail with half measures.’

I knew he would agree. Otherwise, he would never have come. It took a few minutes for him to come to terms with himself. He scuffed his boot in the dirt; he swung his shoulders and kicked his feet like a straw man on a stick.

‘I can give you forty gulden now. The rest, I can raise in a few weeks.’

‘Are you sure? Once I have taught you this art you cannot leave our partnership. If you have any doubts, go home now.’

He wanted reassurance. ‘This money is to be used only for the good of the enterprise?’

‘Of course,’ I said, already calculating how best to distribute it among my creditors. ‘And we will share the profits in the same proportion as before.’

‘And if any of us dies before the venture is complete, all the investment will revert to his heirs?’

I looked at him sharply. ‘Are you expecting to die?’

‘No.’ Another fit of coughing overtook him; he tried to swallow it and only made himself choke. ‘But I am older than my father was when he died. Life is short; death stalks all our shadows.’

I crossed myself. ‘This secret is too great to hazard to inheritance. If any of us dies, he will take it to his grave.’

This agitated him. ‘What of my wife? She must get something if I die. Am I to mortgage her widowhood?’

‘A merchant who invests in a voyage cannot reclaim his capital while the ship is at sea. Any money you put in must remain with the partnership until it is completed.’

He sighed, his face grey with defeat. I clapped him on the shoulder and tried to feign enthusiasm. ‘Forget this talk of death. In two years’ time you will laugh that you ever doubted me.’

I stood at the gate and watched him wander down the road, a sad and haggard man. Had I reduced him to this state? Lost in the labyrinth of my schemes and my debts, I could no longer tell if I was his benefactor or his nemesis.

‘Did he bite?’

Kaspar walked out of the barn. His sleeves were pulled up, and a round welt shone on his palm from pushing the engraving tool into the metal.

‘He’ll pay.’

‘Then why so sad?’

Kaspar reached out to stroke my cheek. But my dealing with Dritzehn had left me in a solitary mood. I turned away.

‘What has come over you? You are so morose: you trudge around as if all the world was piled on your shoulders.’

‘Perhaps it is the weight of the gold I owe.’

‘Do you remember the old times? You were a much more interesting man then. Before this obsession with gold and loans and debt. You were an artist; now you are a money-changer.’

‘Finance is as much part of this art as lead or ink or copper,’ I snapped. ‘It is the size of this enterprise which justifies it. You want to create things of rare and novel beauty – and no man is better at it. But for this art, the beauty comes from its scale. A drop of water is nothing, but a river is majestic. An ocean is unfathomable.’

‘Have you ever looked at a drop of water? Suspended from a branch on a sunlit morning, the whole world reflected in its orb – stretching as the bough shakes, not knowing if it will cling on or fall and disappear into the earth. That is beautiful.’

‘If I could do this work for nothing and give it away for free, I would. But you have seen how the costs pile up on each other – and we are not nearly finished yet.’

‘Either beauty is present or it is not.’ Kaspar and I were in different conversations. ‘If you print one indulgence, or cast one mirror, it is what it is. Whether it is unique or there are a thousand others the same, it does not matter.’

‘What about gold? Are a thousand gulden more beautiful than a single coin?’

‘They are to you.’

Two months later, Andreas Dritzehn died.