The Book of Secrets

LXXVIII

Frankfurt, October 1454

When we revisit places from our childhood, most reveal themselves to be small and mean compared with the magnificent locations of memory. Frankfurt was different. It seemed that all the world had arrived that year for the Wetterau fair. In one square, the cloth makers’ stalls became a tented city of every colour and weave imaginable: from heavy fustians and gabardines to the lightest Byzantine silks that shimmered like angel wings. From the covered market hall came the warm perfume of unnumbered spices: pepper, sugar, cinnamon, cloves and many more I had never tasted.

I tended our stall in a corner of the market between the paper makers and parchmenters. It was a lonely spot – for all the hundreds of merchants, we were the only booksellers at the fair – and I struggled to make myself heard above the clamour. After so many fearful years of secrecy, I could hardly bring myself to speak.

It should have been Fust. He was our salesman, and he had conceived this plan to show off the first fruits of our labour. But he had cried off the day before, complaining of a fever, so I had come in his place. It was good that I did. I had been too much in the Humbrechthof lately. Fust’s deadline was approach ing and the Bibles were still behind schedule. The constant awareness of it – calculating and recalculating schedules, supplies, man hours – had become a weight that hung heavy on my back. I dreaded the journey. I could not imagine myself away from the project, or it without me. But Fust insisted. ‘Peter will come with you. It will do you good,’ he told me.

After an hour on the road to Frankfurt, I knew he was right. The autumn air pinked my cheeks and cleared my head; the ripe smells of fallen apples and leaves unclogged my senses. Even the clamour of the fore-stallers, who risked the wrath of the authorities by offering goods outside the market, seemed more vibrant than irritant. That night I fell into easy conversation with the other merchants at my inn, staying up far later than I was used to, drinking too much and suffering a sore head next day.

On the first morning of the fair, a total of three men came to my stall. I almost counted a fourth, but he only wanted directions to the tanners. I had little to do but slap at the fleas who had warmed my bed the night before. My pleasure at leaving Mainz grew faint; in my mind I composed long can-tankerous complaints to Fust of how this was a fool’s errand. But that afternoon, the flow of visitors quickened. By next morning, I could barely keep pace with them. Many were priests and friars, but they must have reported what they saw favourably. Soon richer hands were picking up the pages, fat rings brushing the vellum. I saw abbots, arch deacons, knights. And, eventually, an unexpected bishop.

Every half-hour, something like this would happen: I would be standing behind the stall, commending the virtues of my books, when a young man with an ink-stained smock and wild hair would make a commotion, pushing through the crowd until he came to the front. He glanced at the Bible pages, then turned to the crowd and announced loudly, ‘He is a fraud.’

He held the quire open so everyone could see.

‘This man claims his text is perfect, but clearly he has not even read it. There is not a single correction.’

He fumbled under his smock and unrolled a scrip of parchment. He showed it to the crowd.

‘My work, on the other hand, is perfect.’

The audience, realising what was happening, laughed. Compared with the milk-white pages and velvet-smooth text of the Bible, his parchment was a sorry sight. The edges were tattered, the hide yellowed (we had soaked it in beer the night before), and the words almost invisible under a scruff of amendments.

‘Not one error remains,’ he declared.

‘Nor here,’ I answered.

He bent almost double, pointing his buttocks to the audience, and put his nose to the Bible pages.

‘I cannot find any fault,’ he admitted grudgingly.

Murmurs from the audience.

‘But any man can get lucky once.’

I picked up two more of the quires and displayed them. ‘Thrice? And, indeed, if you come to my workshop in Mainz you will find one hundred more available for purchase, all identical in their perfection.’

Peter Schoeffer (for he was the indignant scribe) puffed out his chest. ‘I could do you as many.’ He flapped his fingers in wild arithmetic. ‘They will be ready in the year 1500.’

‘Mine will be ready in June.’ I lifted my voice and addressed the whole crowd. ‘Any man who wishes to buy one, or to see more of this miraculous new form of writing, can visit me until Tuesday at my lodgings at the sign of the wild deer; or thereafter at the Hof zum Gutenberg in Mainz.’

Many in the crowd pressed towards our stall, clamouring to know more. Schoeffer pulled off his smock, smoothed his hair and joined me behind the table.

‘In two years, twenty men have made almost two hundred of these,’ I heard him boast to a pair of Dutch merchants. Under the table I kicked him: I did not want him revealing too much of our art, or even getting men thinking how it might be achieved.

But before I could say anything, a new arrival demanded my attention. I saw him coming from a distance – rather, I saw the commotion he made in the crowd as it opened before him. All I could see of him was the crown of his mitre. Even that barely poked above the surrounding throng. I smoothed my surcoat and rearranged the quires on the table.

‘The Bishop of Trieste,’ a priest announced.

I bowed. ‘Your Eminence.’

‘Johann?’

The pointed hat tipped back. A clean-shaven, olive-skinned face grinned up at me. Even then I did not recognise him: his title blinded me to the man who stood before me.

‘Aeneas?’

‘Aeneas has become more pious. You swore you would never take holy orders.’

‘Did I?’ Aeneas looked genuinely surprised. ‘I must have meant that I was not ready for it at the time.’

We walked in the cloisters of the cathedral. Across the square, a gaggle of priests and retainers watched from the door and wondered who I was.

‘The last time I saw you, in Strassburg, you were working for the council to frustrate the Pope.’ I gestured to his rich robes. ‘Now you are his ambassador.’

‘I deny nothing, but sinned in ignorance. I begged the Pope’s forgiveness and he has granted it.’

He said it in earnest, but even Aeneas could not make it sound spontaneous. I had the feeling he had said those words many times.

‘You were also trying to seduce a married woman. Did you conquer her?’

He had the grace to blush – though with embarrassment rather than remorse.

‘Keep your voice down. You know there is more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than ninety-nine who never stray.’

We turned a corner in the cloister.

‘Truly, I am not the man I was the last time you saw me. The council of Basle…’ He waved his hand as if wafting away a smell. ‘They were so tedious, Johann. They could not see it was a lost cause. They denounced the Pope, they denounced each other. Some even denounced me. Eventually I was offered a post as secretary to the Emperor Frederick and I took it. I went to Vienna.’

He smiled at me, his anger forgotten.

‘If there is a more boring city in Christendom I pray I never see it. The Jews in Babylon suffered less than I did in my exile. But God works in mysterious ways. It was there that I heard my calling. In that fractious, factioned, clique-ridden court I came to see that our friend Nicholas was right. Unity is everything.’

‘In Strassburg, you cared more about perfection than unity,’ I reminded him.

‘But how can there be perfection without unity? Unity is the foundation of perfection. And with your books you have achieved both. They are miraculous.’

‘If it was a miracle, it was worked by human sweat.’ I thought of Andreas Dritzehn, of Kaspar’s disfiguring wounds. ‘And blood.’

He laid his hand on my arm. ‘I take nothing away from you, Johann. You are a most astonishing man. Multum ille et terris iactatus et alto indeed. Let me see the pages again.’

I handed him the quire I had brought with me.

‘Absolutely free from error,’ he marvelled. ‘And what you said in your speech – that you have a hundred others exactly the same – was it true?’

‘Closer to two hundred.’

‘How have you done it?’ He saw my expression and retreated hastily. ‘I know you have your secrets. But this is – I repeat myself, but there is no other word – miraculous. Can you make anything with this art?’

‘Anything that can be written.’

This excited him greatly. Though still leaning on his stick, he seemed to dance down the cloister. When we reached the next corner he exclaimed, ‘Imagine it, Johann. The same Bible, the same mass, the same prayers in every church in Christendom. The same words in Rome and Paris, London, Frankfurt, Wittenberg and Basle. Perfect unity. These columns on your page would be the pillars of a Church stronger, purer and more whole than anything ever seen. A delight to God.’

‘It is only a book,’ I demurred.

‘But what are books? Ink and vellum? The accumulation of marks scratched by a reed on a page? You know better. They are the dew of the vapour of pure thought.’ He paused for a second, enchanted by his own eloquence. ‘Christ and the saints may speak directly to us, but more often they speak through books. If you can create them in such numbers, and with such immaculate text, all Christendom will speak with a voice so loud it stretches to heaven itself.’

His words warmed me all the way back to Mainz. I recounted them to Peter, and we passed a pleasant journey talking of all the books we might make and sell for the profit of the Church. I was glad, for it had never been easy between us. Often I found his enthusiasm for our work too aggressive, and rebuffed it; those times when I did try to encourage him, he took it as meddling. Looking back now, I think he nursed a deep passion for the work of the books and was jealous of it: he distrusted all motives but his own.

I was still dreaming of books to come as I rode over the bridge into Mainz and passed through the city gates. Peter took the sample quires back to the house; I returned our horses to the inn where we had hired them. It was almost dark, but I could not wait to share my success with Fust. I hurried to the Humbrechthof.

The gate was locked. When I tried my key it refused to turn. Irritated, I rang the bell hanging by the gatepost.

The window in the gate snapped open and a hooded eye appeared. It looked like Fust’s face, though there was no reason why he should be playing the gatekeeper.

‘Will you let me in?’

His face was hard.

‘I am sorry, Johann. This is no longer your house.’