Contents

The Gutenberg Rubric

Ten

AFTER THEIR NAP, Keith and Maddie stopped in the hotel restaurant and ordered black coffee. He looked around the café as they waited for the coffee to be delivered. A man in a gray suit too small for the width of his shoulders sat at a nearby table and seemed never to take his eyes off of them. Another man slouched near the entrance to the café reading a newspaper. A young man stood in the lobby engaged in texting on his cell phone. Two women sat at a sidewalk table sipping coffee and talking animatedly.

“It would be a lot more comforting having a bodyguard if I knew which one it was,” he whispered. “Any of these people could be either a security guard or a terrorist. They should all wear nametags.”

“Whatever happened to the days when the good guys wore white hats and the bad guys wore black ones?” Maddie agreed. “In fact, whatever happened to good coffee?”

“It wasn’t supposed to be good coffee,” Keith answered. “Just strong. Come on. We’re only a few blocks from Dr. Schneider’s house.”

“Why are we going there? We could have stayed in bed.”

“Dr. Schneider has access to certain tools that we need,” Keith said. “Let’s just say that the Guild is an underground society.”

They stopped at the door of a house in a long row of buildings so close together that they touched. A ramp led up to the door in addition to the steps. Answering Keith’s knock, a man in a wheelchair opened the door. As he slipped inside, Keith looked behind him to see which of the people he had spotted were following him. He saw three people, but none looked familiar.

“Guten Morgen, Herr Doktor Drucker,” the old man said to Keith. The two talked casually in German for a few moments and then Keith turned to Maddie.

“Herr Doktor Schneider, hier ist Fraulein Doktor Zayne. Doktor Zayne, Herr Doktor Rolf Schneider.” Maddie mumbled a quick “Guten Morgen” to the old man in Kennedy-esque German.

“Do not worry, Dr. Zayne,” said Dr. Schneider. “I speak English and welcome the opportunity to use it.”

“Dr. Schneider was my advisor in antiquities when I came to study in Germany,” Keith said to Maddie. “There’s no one better qualified to help us decipher whatever it is that Gutenberg left us.”

She smiled and warmly shook the old man’s hand.

“I’m very pleased to meet someone who was so influential to Keith, Dr. Schneider,” she said.

“Könen wir du sprachen?” Dr. Schneider said. Maddie raised an eyebrow at Keith for a translation. “Use first names,” Dr. Schneider continued. “Please call me Rolf. There is no need for academic formalities in my kitchen. Come and have coffee and tell me what you have found. We have not opened the box in your absence. Frank would not hear of it.” At the mention of his name, Frank stepped through the kitchen door and embraced the couple.

“Yes, please call me Madeleine,” she said as Frank led her back into the kitchen. They sipped coffee from Rolf’s countertop espresso machine with satisfaction. It was much better than the hotel coffee.

“We have a clue to the puzzle,” Keith said when they were served. “We have a page of the Schoeffer manuscript that talks about a treasure revealed in the other Gutenberg. And we have the other Gutenberg.”

“And you stole it?”

“It was an emergency. All we needed were the padding sheets. They are a rubric for the 36-line Bible,” Keith explained. “They were behind plain rag book papers in a bound copy of the Bamberg Gospels.”

“And what makes you think that all you needed was the rubric?” Frank asked. “We may still need to wait for an official transfer of the Gospels to an evaluation center in order to complete the puzzle.”

“I don’t think so,” Keith said. He hungrily accepted biscuits from the tin being offered. It was almost time for lunch, but Keith was starving for breakfast. “The Gospels were identical in every way to any other 36-line Bamberg. It just happened to be only the first four books of the New Testament.”

“What made you think the rubric was the key?” Maddie asked.

“There were three things,” Keith said. “First, a vellum copy of the rubric was bound into the cover. Vellum would normally have been scraped and reused or it would have been bound into the book as final pages as we’ve seen on a number of occasions.”

“Not exactly conclusive,” Frank said, noncommittally.

“That brings me to the second item,” Keith said. “The bound book was only the first four books of the New Testament—The Gospels—but the rubric is the full 12 pages of the Bible copy sheets. And they are unused—no scribe crossed out letters or made annotations. So, the message, whatever it is, must be in the rubric, and if the Bible is needed at all, only the Gospels will be required. I seem to recall that there is a 36-line New Testament in the collection.”

“Lots of speculation going on there,” Frank said.

“Which brings me to point three,” Keith said. He was used to this skepticism from his grandfather. It was the way they worked together when Keith was beginning his dissertation. Frank may have had no more than a high school education, but his probing questions and demand for more proof drove Keith to some of his best work. “I think there’s an anomaly in the rubric.”

“Now we’re getting somewhere,” Frank said. “Without that we could use any rubric for the Bamberg and any set of Gospels. What’s the nature of the anomaly?”

“You didn’t tell me there was an anomaly,” Maddie said.

“It wasn’t an issue when we took the pages.”

“What is it?” Rolf asked.

“There are nicks in some of the characters,” Keith said. “The printing is pristine. The substrate is crisp and clean, but randomly throughout the page, the characters have tiny wedges taken out of them. I didn’t have time to check every page, but the nicks occurred frequently enough on the first page that it stood out.”

“And what does that mean?” Frank asked.

“I haven’t the faintest idea,” Keith said. “It just struck me that such a beautiful piece of work shouldn’t have damaged characters in it. I know what you went through to shape characters in exactly the way Schoeffer’s type was worn. But these are a regular shape. There must be a message buried in it somewhere.”

“We should start by just reading the letters that are nicked,” Maddie volunteered. “Maybe they spell something out.”

“There’s enough of them,” Keith admitted, “and we should definitely check that. I’m guessing that we’ll find that there aren’t enough different letters to make out a message when taken in order.”

“Why not?” Maddie asked.

“Think of the rubric in terms of first letters of chapters,” Keith said. “Occasionally there is an entire line of text that will be inked in red, but mostly it is the grand capitals that are left to be filled in by the scribe. In English, the most common letter that begins a sentence is ‘T.’ I’ve never done an exact study of it, but I would guess that in German it is ‘D.’ The rubric for a Latin New Testament has more ‘Es’ and ‘Is’ than all the other letters of the alphabet combined.”

“You say the nicks are wedge-shaped?” Frank asked.

“Yes,” Keith said. He wanted desperately to pull a page of the rubric from the archival box for the four of them to look at, but good document preservation instincts kept them sealed in the box until they could be opened and examined under proper conditions. “It struck me that all the nicks are uniform in size and shape,” Keith said.

“Like arrow-heads,” Frank speculated. “Same size and shape, but not all pointing the same direction? Could be a path we have to follow.”

“Did he actually have to cast type in each letter shape?” Maddie asked. “I know he did a lot of different versions of the same character to accommodate mimicking the scribes and making the lines come out even.”

“We’ll have to get it under high magnification,” Keith said, “but I’m guessing the nicks were made after the characters were cast, and maybe even after they were set. It would be awfully hard to predict and cast characters that had to be set in a specific order through the body.”

“So, we need the laboratory,” Rolf said. “I see no reason to wait.” He led them to a door that Maddie had assumed was a closet, but when opened revealed a small elevator. “If you would not mind using the stairs,” Rolf said, “I will meet you below.” Next to the elevator was a second door that led to a stairway descending in the adjacent space. Keith surprised Maddie, however, by opening yet another door at the bottom of the stairs and leading her and Frank down a much longer set of stairs.

“Rolf guards one of the entrances to the Guild laboratory,” Keith said to Maddie.

“How many entrances are there?” Maddie asked. Frank chuckled behind her.

Keith glanced back at Maddie, remembering his own first time descending to the lab. He had entered through the museum and thought they were going into the basement, but the stairway went down six flights with no doors.

“I’m not sure,” Keith told Maddie, “During the war, everything was at risk. The museum was actually bombed. The caretakers had to find ways to protect the collection, first from the Nazis who were burning what they called seditious texts, then from the bombings, and finally from the Allies who saw victory over Germany as a way to gain a huge number of valuable artworks and spirit them out of the country. It was a wonder that any of the collection survived intact. You know that a Gutenberg Bible that went missing during the war recently surfaced in Russia. It was taken away and hidden during the entire Communist era and the Russians refused to return it to the museum from which it was stolen during or soon after the war. Part of the strategy here in Mainz was to wall off rooms and create a maze in the catacombs under the city. Nothing leads directly to anything anymore, but Rolf has a connecting laboratory just under his house. Other passages might wind for a mile before you connect to the hidden rooms.”

“Were you in Germany during the war, Frank?” Maddie asked.

“No. My family emigrated from here to the United States when I was only seven. But they maintained strong ties back here.”

They reached the bottom of the staircase and Frank opened a door on the right.

The laboratory they entered was as well-equipped and modern as the one Maddie worked in. She gasped when she saw it.

“Part of the work of the Guild,” Keith explained, “is the preservation of the art of printing as represented by the great works that have come from the press. This is actually a kind of teaching facility where Guild members learn every aspect of the printing arts, including hot-metal typesetting, cold-type, and even computer typography.”

“Keith is responsible for having introduced computers into the lab,” Frank said. “Most of my generation was not enthused about it. But it is part of the comprehensive package. It all has to do with the preservation of the word.”

Rolf was already in the room, an elevator door open behind him. “Now let us see this new discovery,” he said.

“Yes,” said Keith, clumsily donning white gloves from a drawer. Keith offered gloves to Maddie, but she had already pulled a pair from her purse and was opening the archival box.

“Rolf, Maddie is an expert in handling old documents,” Keith said. “Could I suggest that she arrange the pages for us to look at?” Maddie smiled at Keith.

“Wunderbar!” Rolf said. “It is difficult for me to move the documents from this chair. It is such a pleasure to have another professional in our work.”

The team was established. Frank sat to the side, occasionally asking a question or offering an opinion on a typographic characteristic, but letting the three scholars examine and discuss the work. The process involved spectral analysis of the ink, carbon dating a scraping from the vellum, and high resolution digital photography of the pages so that they could be examined under magnification.

Keith and Rolf had progressed far past the student/teacher phase of their relationship and were colleagues who knew how to work well with each other. They spoke freely, easily shifting from English to German and back with occasional Latin phrases thrown in. When Maddie used an Italian phrase to ask for clarification of a German one, they began including Italian in their mix as they discussed the documents in front of them.

Verification that they were dealing with a genuine Bamberg rubric came after comparisons of the ink mix and vellum age with documented analysis of existing copies of the 36-line Bible late in the day. But that merely meant that deciphering the code—if there was one—was still ahead of them. It was not long before they had eliminated the idea of simply compiling the nicked letters in order and reading them. The frequency of letter usage made a substitution code—basically a cryptogram—equally unlikely. A heated discussion on whether the direction of the nicks in the characters meant anything yielded no resolution. There did not seem to be a pattern or logic behind linking the letters together using the nicks as directional indicators.

When the work moved away from the actual documents to computer images of them that were manipulated on-screen, Maddie gathered up the originals and returned them to the portfolio. Keith and Rolf were bouncing ideas back and forth at an incredible speed.

Frank laid a hand gently on Maddie’s shoulder and said softly, “Finding it hard to compete?” Keith glanced up and smiled at Maddie.

“I’m trying not to feel like I need to,” she answered.

“Let’s take a break,” Frank said, much to Keith’s relief. As stimulating as the work was, he was finding it increasingly difficult to focus. His head was pounding and the light flashes in his left eye distracted him from the image on-screen. “I’d like to officially welcome Maddie to the Worshipful Society of Typefounders and Alchemists.”

Rolf began applause and Keith and Frank joined him. Maddie grinned and curtsied.

“Why, thank you very much,” she laughed.

“It is time to formally accept Dr. Madeline Zayne, granddaughter of Master Alchemist Errol Wadsworth, as my apprentice and to begin her initiation into the Black Arts,” Frank said. Maddie furrowed her brow as she heard this. The term seemed to puzzle her. “Printing is the black art,” Frank explained to her. “Because of the ink. We’ve never actually sacrificed a virgin.” Maddie looked startled at first and then laughed as she picked up on the black humor. “You are, however, about to learn both the art of printing and the science of alchemy,” Frank concluded. “Disciplines in which your grandfather achieved the highest mastery.

“I knew my grandfather was a printer, but I had no idea he was part of this,” Maddie said. “Is it very difficult to learn?” she asked, turning to him.

“You speak Italian?” he asked.

“Yes,” she answered.

“An easy language to learn, but a difficult one to master. It’s the same with alchemy. Easy to learn how to heat metals to the right temperature and what portions to mix. Very difficult to master actually blending them at the right stages.”

“Sounds like espresso,” she laughed. “You can have a machine grind the coffee to exactly the right fineness, heat the water to exactly the right temperature, and force it through the grounds at exactly the right pressure. But it will never compare to a shot pulled by a really good barista.”

“Yes,” laughed Frank in response. “Ordinarily we would ask your grandfather if he would sponsor you, but you’ve told us that he is too infirm to be of help.”

“How well did you know my grandfather?” Maddie asked.

“We spent nearly three years in the same chamber working on the Psalter,” Frank said. “In the Guild, we count each other as brothers and sisters.”

“You’ve had women in the Guild before?” she asked.

“Not many,” Frank admitted, “but a few. It doesn’t seem sensible to most women.”

“What doesn’t?” Maddie persisted.

“Things like swearing you to secrecy before I answer that question,” Frank smiled. “And you have to ask me to do that.” Maddie hesitated and then nodded her head. Keith watched the proceeding with nostalgia as he remembered the day he arrived in California to begin his own initiation with his grandfather. He was right. Most women Keith knew would never swear an oath of secrecy before they knew what they were keeping secret. It was a paradox. Maddie, after a minute’s consideration, turned to Frank and looked him squarely in the eye.

“Frank, will you sponsor me for membership in the Guild?” she asked. “I am ready to swear the oath of secrecy.” Frank smiled.

“I’m glad that was a carefully considered answer,” he said. “This is now an official act of the Guild then. I will sponsor you and administer this oath.” Rolf opened a drawer in his desk and removed a small vial and spoon such as would be used for measuring minute amounts of elements used in mixing ink and metals.

“Taking a small amount of printer’s ink on your tongue and swallowing it is symbolic of taking the craft and its knowledge into your body and mind. Will you accept this sacrament?” Maddie grimaced, but closed her eyes and opened her mouth. Keith could see she was thinking of the cyanide in the ink at the monastery. Frank touched her tongue with the spoon of ink. She grimaced, but swallowed it down and opened her eyes.

“Now repeat after me,” Frank said. “By the ink that runs in my veins, I swear…”

“By the ink that runs in my veins, I swear…” repeated Maddie.

…that I shall keep and maintain the secrets of the Worshipful Society of Typefounders and Alchemists as they have been kept since the day that Johannes von Gutenberg gave them to Peter Schoeffer. I swear that the ink I mix will stay forever black; that the type I set will be true and square; and that I will honor my masters and learn what they have to teach me. May the ink in my blood turn to poison if ever I am forsworn in this oath.

Maddie stood with a puzzled look on her face when she had finished the oath, then smiled.

“I’ve just had the strangest feeling of déjà vu,” she said to Frank. “Once my grandfather was helping me draw a poster for a school project—maybe first or second grade—and he reached over and touched a felt-tip marker to my tongue. He said that now we both had ink in our veins. He drew something on my arm and said that all the members of our club had a tattoo. He showed me the tattoo on back of his shoulder. I always thought it was something to do with the Navy or such.”

“Each of us has a tattoo,” Frank said. “It is part of the journeyman’s ritual—if you choose to go that far. It is typically placed on the left shoulder blade.”

“I’ve seen Keith’s flags on his shoulder,” Maddie said.

“Shields,” Keith interrupted. “Each of the tattoos is a printer’s mark from the days of the incunabula. The shields were the mark used by Schoeffer and Fust. A bit is added at each elevation.”

“I remember an anchor on Errol,” Maddie said. “That’s why I always thought it was from the Navy.”

“The anchor and dolphin of Aldus Manutius,” Frank said. “The last of the printer’s marks of the first half century of printing. Now you are ready to learn some of the secrets of the Guild.”

“Are there really secrets so valuable they can’t be shared outside the Guild?” she asked. “Every society wants to believe it has secrets that would change the world if they got out. Look at the Freemasons. Or even the CIA. The secrets they guard are never as potent as the members want desperately to believe. Is the Guild so different?”

“There is never as much power in knowing a secret as in keeping it,” said Frank. “Take the whole concept of black arts. We call printing and typesetting black arts because of the color of ink. We talk about ink in our veins and running like rivers from the presses. It is all a metaphor for putting ink on the page.”

Maddie suddenly got a far-away look in her eyes as she processed what he was saying. Frank paused as he saw her lose focus. She suddenly turned to him.

“That’s it!” she exclaimed. “Black ink running like a river from the presses. All a metaphor for putting ink on the page. The Black River. It’s in the letter fragment. The secret is hidden in the Black River. In the ink on the page.”

The ritual came to an abrupt end as the team huddled over the pages of the rubric again to discuss what the clue might mean and how Gutenberg could hide a secret in the ink on the page. Of course the mere fact that the letters were notched could be all that was meant in which case they were no further along than they had been. But they were sure there must be some other clue, perhaps in the formulation of the ink itself. Maddie examined one of the pages of the rubric under high magnification, a task Keith was unable to focus on with his single eye. He huddled near her suggesting things to look for.

Eventually, Keith slumped in his chair from exhaustion.

“I’m shot,” he said. “If I don’t get food and drugs sometime soon, I’m going to pass out.”

“And no wonder,” Frank said, looking at his watch. “It’s nearly midnight. We should never have let you stay down here so long.”

“There is food in the kitchen,” Rolf said. “We can leave everything here in the lab until tomorrow.” Maddie carefully boxed up the rubric and manuscripts before she turned to the stairs. Keith was standing at the door looking up.

“Rolf,” she said quietly, “can Keith use the elevator to go back up? I don’t think he can make the stairs.” It was only half an hour later that Maddie and Keith stumbled into their room and collapsed on the bed. Sleep claimed them immediately.

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