Free Gutenberg's Apprentice by Alix Christie

Erbach had been born to wealth, and born to climb. The level of his scholarship was average, and as scribe he had a slapdash style, but he had never shown the slightest doubt that he would rise. He hailed from lands along the river Main, just like his distant kinsman, Archbishop Dietrich, Schenk von Erbach.
    They fell to reminiscing, probing the whereabouts of others whom they had studied with. The pimpled youths sat silent for a while, then started making mewling noises: curfew, prior, the long hike. Heilant rolled his eyes as they retreated. “At their age we’d have nursed a drink for hours in hopes of picking up some useful gossip.”
    “You, maybe.” Peter laughed.
    “You always did think you could make it without dirtying your hands.” Heilant smiled archly.
    Lies, all lies, thought Peter Schoeffer. Everything had always come from Fust. He felt, and pushed away, a little needling of guilt inside. “In youth,” he quoted with a bitter laugh, “I saw as through a glass, but darkly.”
    “The truth is, you have to make your own way in this world.” Heilant screwed his eyes up, looked intently at the tables at the far end of the room.
    “Amen,” said Peter.
    “It’s all in who you know.” A little gleam—ambition, and alertness—glimmered in those sleepy yet dissembling eyes. Heilant cocked his head and pitched his voice low. “See those two priests? That’s Volprecht Desch. And Greifenklau.” He singled out the two in habits of the Mainz cathedral. “And back behind that screen”—a heavy hanging, cutting off an alcove—“the men you really need to know: Quelder, Konneke, von Isenberg. A clerk for Rosenberg.”
    The names meant nothing to him, except for the last. “Hermann Rosenberg?” he asked, and Heilant nodded. The vicar general of the Mainz archdiocese, personal confessor to Archbishop Dietrich himself: they’d seen him years ago, officiating at some function at the university.
    “This is the place, then,” Peter said softly.
    It seemed a stroke of the most unimaginable luck, to be connected with so consummate a climber. The names that Heilant whispered with such awe were not just canon regulars at St. Viktor’s, but men who also held the leading posts in the archdiocese, each with its tidy income every annum. A deacon or a cantor might wear two hats, even three: clerk to the archbishop, envoy to some noble, priest to several parishes, officiant in any of the city’s forty churches. The clergy were all Elders, and the Elders were the clergy; one hand ceaselessly washed the other. That trafficking might once have made Peter sick, but he relished all those contacts now.
    “You’d know, then,” Peter said, keeping his voice low, “if any of those chancelleries require a scribe.”
    Heilant cocked his head, eyes bright. “I wondered why you graced us with your presence after all this time.”
    “You knew I was in Mainz?”
    “I know a lot of things.” His schoolmate smiled.
    “I need your help. My father dragged me back—you knew I was in Paris, too?” Heilant nodded. “I was about to join the rector’s staff at the Sorbonne.” Peter did not fake the grimace. “He’s forced me into some harebrained scheme to crank out books.”
    “Crank out?”
    “I can’t say more.”
    Heilant’s eyes went wicked, and he licked his lips. “With wood? I’ve seen that tripe.” He flicked his plump right hand. “Carpenters,” he scoffed. “The stuff they chisel isn’t any better than the junk that Lauber and his ilk churn out.”
    “Just as I see it. They seem to think they can replace real scribes.” Peter bent close. “I hoped that I might find a post where skills like ours are better valued. But no one—I mean no one—is to know.”
    “Where? Here in Mainz?” A little hardness entered Heilant’s voice. Swiftly Peter answered no. It would not do to step on Heilant’s turf.
    “Away from here. That’s all I care about.” He pushed away the thought of Fust and Grede, of