in his eyes, icing his vision.
Then, through his misery, he glimpsed a gleam of yellow. Duck was there. Duck, as she had been since the Big Argument, her hood pulled up to hide her strange tomboy's haircut: a messy bob that no one could tame. She was peering at something in the snow, calling out for him to come and look, but her words were printed in clouds of breath and he read them rather than heard them.
He raced towards her, but no matter how hard he tried, he could not reach her. The snow was deep and his legs felt heavy. He was chained to the ground. Then she too vanished and he collapsed, too tired and lonely to go on.
The boundaries of his dream began to shift. A wind rose and Blake was suddenly lifted into the sky like a freed snow angel, watching as the field below him grew smaller and smaller. And then his heart lurched. For there, in the snow, ending exactly at the spot where Duck had disappeared, was a path of footprints.
They formed a giant question mark.
Immediately, his dream burst and he hurtled back towards the ground like a skydiver without a parachute. His head snowballed into his pillow.
Desperately, he clutched at the lines of
He turned over and fell asleep again.
The silence woke me. Something was wrong. I opened my eyes and peered into the gloom, trying to detect any sound, any movement, but there was none. Only a sliver cusp of moonlight across the floor. The darkness pressed in all around me, as thick as velvet.
For months now, Peter had been my sleeping companion, keeping me awake with his twitching and scratching, tormented by the dreams he never shared and the fleabites he did. And yet I was grateful for his company. The bearlike warmth of his body had kept me from shivering through the long winter nights when snow capped the roofs of the city and icy drafts crept through the house.
Spring had finally arrived. Ploughmen and vintners began once more to prepare their fields and people picked their way through the thawed lanes with renewed vigor, the memory of fresh fruit revived on their tongues. At long last the frozen river relinquished its hold on the boats trading goods up and down the Rhine.
Since the start of the year, Herr Gutenberg had been pushing us to complete a trial section of the Bible for the upcoming fair in Frankfurt, now only a few days away. He had swiftly invested Fust's money in five additional presses and even more compositors who, together with the other apprentices, had relocated to the Humbrechthof, a more spacious abode where the majority of printing was taking place. Peter and I, however, remained his special charges, sharing a bed at the top of his house. Peter was fast becoming a talented printer, while my fingers were still the undisputed masters of the type.
Work was progressing on the new Bible, a mammoth undertaking for which we had prepared thousands of pieces of type and countless reams of paper. Even at this rate it would take us another two years to complete the massive tome. My Master had planned on printing one hundred fifty copies initially, including thirty on the finest parchment, but already there was a growing list of subscribers: clergymen and patricians all hungry to see how our fabulous machine compared with the work of the most industrious scribes. There was even talk of our being in league with the Devil, for how else could we achieve identical copies of the same text so quickly? Of course, it wall all nonsense. It was simply down to our hard work.
Herr Gutenberg was busier than ever before. Each day, he refined the typeface a little bit more and resized the margins, experimenting with the number of lines he could fit onto each page. Everything had to be just so. He expected his Bible to be the most beautiful, legible book ever created: a tribute to his ingenuity, a testament to God's Holy Word and a profitable enterprise that would repay Fust's investment many times over.
Fust, for his part, was more often to be seen in Gutenberg's house, close to his mysterious chest, than in the workrooms. To him, the Bible was of only minor importance. Another project was occupying his thoughts. I wouldn't have been surprised to learn he was practicing the Black Art, secretly hoping to uncover the laws of the universe, for I frequently saw him poring over old manuscripts belonging to the Barefoot Friars, trying to piece together fragments of ancient texts: strange lines, runes and symbols that befuddled most minds. His fingers were black from the pages he perused and a heavy shadow haunted his eyes. Often, while I bent over my table, arranging words, he watched me — holding out a hand to stop me, as if testing the quality of my work. I shrank from his touch.
He timed his visits, I noticed, according to the waxing and waning of the moon, staying longest on those nights of total darkness, when even the faintest glimmer of light failed to illumine the sky. Tonight, only a splinter of moon was visible through the window at the top of our bedchamber, snagging a few clouds on its pilgrimage over the city. Yet it was enough to show me that the room was empty. Peter was gone.
At first I presumed he was on another of his nocturnal missions to see Christina, Fust's dark-haired daughter. He had developed quite an infatuation for the modest, kindhearted maiden. On religious days, when work was suspended on the press, he could be seen lingering outside the walls of Fust's house like an exiled lover — and by night, in our bed, he could be heard chattering about her beauty. But Peter was not with Christina tonight.
From somewhere deep in the house came voices. Whispers. Traces of movement scudded across the print room below, as though someone were dragging Fust's chest out of hiding and sliding it along the floor.
Wiping the drowsiness from my eyes, I crept towards the stairs. The candle in its iron holder had burned down to a tallow stub that gave off a fatty, rancid smell, but no light. I stumbled, trying to find my way in the dark. Shadows moved around me like quicksilver.
I descended slowly, careful not to make a sound. Even the slightest creak of wood might betray my eavesdropping ears.
The room below was aglow with red light. From the stairway, I could see that the fire was a riot of flame, a phoenix reborn from the ashes. Shapes dashed and flickered along the walls, dancing round the press like devilish minions.
I stepped nearer.
Fust was bent over the horrendous chest, which he had dragged towards the flames. Muttering an incantation I could not understand, he ran his fingers along the sides of the box. Then, in a deft movement, like a scribe replenishing his quill, he dipped them in a cup that Peter held out before him.
I nearly collapsed. The ink was dark and thick, like blood.
Quickly, Fust coiled his hands round the serpents' heads and fed them each a bubble of liquid from his fingertips. The fangs seemed to bite into his skin and then slide together at his bidding. The lid yawned open.
Had my eyes deceived me? Were the fangs not poisonous, as I had always believed?
I inched closer.
The press stood like a monster chained to the floor in the middle of the room and I ducked beneath its wooden belly, wedging myself between its protective legs.
From the top of the chest Fust now pulled out a pale silver-green animal skin. I caught my breath. He held it up to the light, where it immediately absorbed the glow of the fire and turned red like a sunset — a blood-soaked battlefield.
Amazed, Peter held out a hand to stroke it.
Fust batted him aside. 'Psst! Do not touch,' he hissed as he draped the layers of skin on the floor and plunged his hands deep into the dark interior of the chest.
My eyes widened further as he withdrew a long billowing sheet of paper, which seemed to ripple and stir with life. I had never seen such a spectacle before. It was an enormous wing of parchment! The paper was as white as
