Gutenberg's Apprentice by Alix Christie

carved: strange gnomes, fantastic horses, each detailed and grotesque. Hans too would sometimes etch on sheets of metal, little engravings that were just for fun.
    In truth it was not that unpleasant, bolted in there with the cold wind battering outside. They wet their whistles with the master’s wine, and hummed and played and scratched. Keffer’s pen was ribald. Cackling, he would bring over his drawings: bulbous tits that squeezed a massive cock; a finger or a fist that vanished in a hairy slit. Hans and Konrad bickered gently through an endless game, to judge from that same grubby pile of coins they just kept shifting back and forth.
    For several days the talk had turned to wondering about the project that the master had in mind. Gutenberg had gone away for a few days and left them printing under Hans. But that grammar was small fry, Hans averred—a practice run, before whatever better book the master planned.
    “Don’t care what it is, just so we’re moving.” Konrad used his knife to shave a curl from the oak table. “I’m sick of waiting on you clods.”
    “Careful what you wish for,” Hans said knowingly. “I’d lay good money it is big.”
    “Or else a schoolbook he can pop at half a shilling,” Keffer put in.
    Konrad nodded. “The main thing is, it should be quick.”
    Peter lifted up his head to hear them better, catching as he did a sour look from Hans. “Why don’t you save your breath and ask the scribe,” the old smith scoffed.
    As one they looked at Peter.
    “As if I had a clue.”
    Keffer scratched his yellow beard. “You must have some idea.”
    Greek and Roman titles whistled through his head. Aristotle and Aquinas, Virgil, Euclid, sprang to mind. But they were miles away from markets for such learned works.
    “Just pray it’s short.” Konrad began paring his nails.
    “A psalter, maybe, or a history. Neither is that long.” Peter weighed the buyers up and down the Rhine: mainly nobles, merchants, Elders, and the church.
    “Nah.” Hans hoiked a gob of spit into the fire. “I warrant he’s got something bigger on his mind.” He turned back toward the scribe, eyes narrowed. “A sacred work, perhaps.”
    “It’s just a guess.”
    “You wouldn’t know?”
    “I wish I did.”
    It struck Peter that Hans must have downed a jarful, by the way his eyes were rolling in their sockets.
    “You scribble all damn night. Don’t tell me you don’t know what for.”
    “It’s just my practice, to keep my hand.”
    “Your precious bloody hand.”
    “Now, Hans.” Konrad lifted his, a great big slab of meat, and shook it at the smith.
    “‘Now, Hans.’” The old smith spat again; his voice cranked higher. “Don’t Hans me, man.” His eyes were shot with red. “I’m sick of it, I tell you. Pussy here thinks he’s the bloody savior.”
    “Cool it.” Keffer reached to grab him, but Hans jerked to his feet, then clutched the table with both hands to keep from falling. “I’m sick of it, I say.” Hans’s voice was thicker, slurring. “Fancy hands has prolly gone already, drawn some pretty new type for the master, little shit.”
    “Shut it.” Konrad grabbed Hans by the belt and sat him roughly down, then smacked him smartly on top of his thick skull. When Hans kept cursing, Konrad stood and flung his blade into the wood with a loud thwock , the steel inches from the old smith’s hand. Hans flinched and held his tongue.
    “Forget it,” Keffer offered. “He’s just drunk.”
    Even so, it irked Peter. He crossed the room and loomed above the little leathered man. “It’s just my trade. The craft I learned.”
    “Like you had to learn a craft. Pretty little merchant’s boy like you.” Hans tried to hoot but succeeded only at a phlegmy cough.
    Peter looked at each of them in turn: Hans bald and slumped, Konrad worrying at his blade, Keffer poking at the fire. The story of his goddamned life—mongrel, bastard, orphan, he had heard them all. Labels, like the tags that