bronze-skinned merchants had set up a foreign coastline of fruits and fragrances. Horns, sacks and pouches full of ginger, saffron, aniseed and almonds lay next to the stickiest dates from northern Africa, which clung to the roof of my mouth as I chewed them.
I had just stuffed a flame-colored powder that ignited a fire in each nostril when Peter tapped me on the shoulder and waved several coins before my eyes.
'Herr Gutenberg says we are to enjoy ourselves,' he said with a grin. 'I know how we can spend it.' His eyebrows performed a mischievous jig on his brow and he steered me towards the door.
I glanced back at my Master's stall, which he had erected near a man in a preposterous cockerel-colored outfit, who was selling rolls of leather for binding books. Beside him, a heavyset man with a warty nose flogged gory prints of martyred saints to pilgrims, who devoured such things in their devotion.
The Bible had been attracting a large amount of interest since the opening of the fair. Fust, in fact, was having to fend off merchants, all clamoring like pigs at a trough to see the quality of the print.
'Why, this is neater than a scribe's hand,' I heard one say. 'I don not need my lenses!' He waved a pair of pointy bone spectacles in the air as though my Master had performed a minor miracle.
'How do you obtain such results?' asked another, laying his hands on a sample of paper and holding it up to the light streaming in from the narrow windows.
Fust swatted away his fingers. 'You may admire, but not touch,' he hissed. His eyes caught mine from across the room and I flinched. All the way from Mainz, he had been breathing down my neck, trying to determine why he could not yet read from the magical paper in his chest. I was afraid that he would soon discover the pages in my toolkit, which I now carried on my person at all times, and throttle me.
'But the words are written back to front,' objected a third, dour-looking man with ashen lips. He was examining a tray of type I had set up specifically for the exhibit. 'What manner of devilry is this? The Word of God must not be interfered with in this way!'
I did not get to hear more. Peter grabbed me by the elbow and tugged me up the stairs.
I had to shield my eyes against the pandemonium outside. Acrobats tumbled and rolled in the square, dentists and quacks extracted teeth and coins from the vulnerable and weak, and vendors called attention to wild and wonderful beasts brought in just for the occasion: flightless birds with ungainly necks and massive pack animals with enormous ears and hides like wrinkled men. The air was full of smells and noise, chaos and confusion.
Away from the hall, Peter reverted to a little boy. He bobbed in and out of the crowds, swiping small rounded loaves from the street-sellers and juggling them in his hands before biting into them hungrily and running away from their catcalls of abuse.
For a while, we amused ourselves by leaping over barrels and coils of rope in the coopers' district — just one of five tiny lanes abutting the main square like the fingers of a hand — and ended up, breathless with exhaustion, outside a house the color of dried ox blood. It stood on several wooden plinths like a fussy woman trying not to get her skirts dirty.
Nearby was the Plague House, a darkened building marked by iron crosses above the shuttered windows. We dared each other to stand outside its ominous facade for a count of ten while hopping on one foot to ward off the evil eye of the gorgon carved into the wooden pediment above the door. A bailiff, however, chased us off, telling us to be more respectful of the dead.
Stonemasons were busy extending the tower of the cathedral in the distance, and we moved closer to investigate. The city reverberated with the sounds of chisels and hammers, tap-tap-tapping in the air. The sky snowed chipped stone. Tall ladders, lashed together with ropes, zigzagged up the side of the building and an intricate system of pulleys and wheels spun in mid-air, hoisting baskets of stone bricks up to the masons, who stood on thin walkways high above the earth to receive them. Laborers loaded with mortar scurried up and down the ladders like ants.
Just looking at them made me dizzy. One foot wrong and the whole structure would come tumbling down faster than the Tower of Babel. I much preferred the safety of the press…
The thought reminded me of he dragon skin and the need to get as far away from Fust as possible, and I felt the city crumble around me. It was no good standing still, enjoying myself.
Peter grabbed me by the elbow. Lured back by the smell of food, we returned to the market. Spoiled for choice, we each selected a steaming frankfurter from the sausage stands and spent a long time licking the fatty juice from our wrists. A discordant blast from a trumpeter atop St. Nikolai's Church alerted us to an important arrival by river, and so, still chomping on our sausages, we headed the short distance to the quay, just in time to see a three- masted boat from the Low Countries glide like a wicker swan towards the custom tower.
A rotund man disembarked, followed by a retinue of servants, all carrying chests full of cloth. He cut a grand, distinguished figure.
Peter sucked in his breath and looked forlornly at the small velvet purse he had purchased for Christina. 'It's not very much, is it?' he said. It was all I could do to prevent him from tossing it in the waves.
A hoary old gentleman stood on the quayside to greet the newcomer. He bowed so low I feared he would kiss the ground beneath the stranger's feet. Together, they marched across the road to one of the finest residences in Frankfurt: the Saalhof, where the most important dignitaries were housed — unlike the communal inn where Peter and I would spend the night.
Tiring of the spectacle, we worked our way back towards the old quarter, losing ourselves in a maze of tight, twisting lanes. By now we were thirsty and the gleam of the remaining coins in Peter's hand had rekindled a spark in his eye.
'Follow me,' he said as he spotted a nearby alehouse.
The Little Lamb was not as innocuous as its name suggested.
A dark hovel, it shrank into the corner of an overgrown courtyard, surrounded by tottering houses that blocked out the sun. A well in the middle of the yard had long ago dried and was now choked with filth.
Like a mongrel with its tail between its legs, Peter sidled up to the tavern and pushed his way inside.
The room was thick with smoke. People played at dice and draughts over large, upended barrels, and the floor was slick with straw. I did not care to look down, but followed Peter as he threaded his way through the crowd and ordered two flagons of apple-wine from the innkeeper, a boarlike man with tusks for teeth.
Clutching our sour-smelling drinks, we dived into a back room, away from the noise and commotion out front.
The room was empty, apart from a slovenly individual lying in a pool of vomit in the corner. Peter paid him scant attention, but walked over to a bench and started speaking on his favorite subject: Christina. His voice swooned whenever he mentioned her and I stared moodily into my drink, letting the smell of rotting apples fester in my nostrils. I did not like to admit that I was jealous.
'Ah, young love,' murmured the man in the corner, looking up at us with two unfocused eyes. 'You can never trust the heart of another.'
Peter paused in his description of Christina's beauty and frowned.
'
Peter, however, detected something in the accent and studied the man more intently. Huge continents of dirt had drifted down his clothes and his face was streaked with grime. It looked as though he had spent a lot of time sleeping in fields…or else on taproom floors.
'Love speaks with a false tongue,' the drunkard lamented aloud, continuing his bitter soliloquy. 'It kisses you in one ear, then turns with a hiss to bite the other…'
'Enough!' Peter slapped his iron flagon on the table before us. 'What do you know of love, friend?' His voice was venomous.
'Plenty,' replied the man, with a simpering smile that revealed several missing teeth. 'My heart has been broken more times than years you've been alive…boy.'
Peter did not rise to the insult, but leaned closer to whisper something in my ear. Then I noticed what he had.
