Contents

The Gutenberg Rubric

Thirteen

ON THE 100TH BIRTHDAY of the Gutenberg Museum, 600 years after the birth of the inventor, the museum opened a new, expanded space and exchanged the old stone façade for one of glass. A sculpture fountain in front of the building was a welcoming sight to Keith and Maddie as they approached. They had met the police contact in the hotel and he preceded them to the museum so they arrived alone. Uniformed police patrolled the central square with muzzled dogs, circling the block and the open square on which the museum was located.

“Nothing subtle about German security, is there?” Maddie asked.

“It’s okay with me,” Keith said. “This place is like home to me and the more secure it is the better. We wouldn’t have risked as much by entering from underground.”

“We could enter from underground?” Maddie asked.

“It’s something that I couldn’t reveal to Fry. I don’t really expect to spend six hours in the few rooms of the museum, though an hour showing off the display to you is certainly in order.”

“Then we are going to the vaults?” Maddie asked.

“In a matter of speaking,” Keith said. “You might call it visiting the catacombs.”

They made eye contact with the police officer assigned to watch the entrance and then proceeded to examine the exhibits that include three copies of the Gutenberg Bible in light-controlled rooms and ultraviolet filtering glass cases. After an hour they reached the Gutenberg workshop where a demonstration of the huge screw-press representative of 15th century printing had just been held. After the room had cleared, Keith took Maddie’s hand and ducked under the rope barrier separating the area from the rest of the museum. In a moment they had slipped behind the painted scenery depicting the print shop and stood before an unmarked door. The door was unlocked and Keith and Maddie stepped through into a stairwell.

“Is this like the stairs in Rolf’s home?” Maddie asked.

“Exactly,” Keith answered. “One of the reasons the museum is as vibrant as it is today is because of the catacombs. In World War II, the museum was actually bombed repeatedly by Allied forces. It is really a maze down here,” he continued. “It connects all the way over to Rolf’s house and down several more levels.” After 15 minutes of twisting through low-ceilinged tunnels, Keith opened another door and Maddie found herself facing Frank and Rolf in the lab.

“That’s amazing!” she said. “You could pop up anywhere.”

“Only if you happened to know that four stories under the city of Mainz there is another city,” Frank said. “I was beginning to wonder if you were showing up this morning.” Keith quickly related events with Agent Fry and how the square was being patrolled. Maddie added that they did not have cell phones as the agent was holding them to prevent calls to unknown parties.

“It is of no concern to us,” Rolf said. “Unless you were followed into the catacombs from the museum, you are far removed from the dangers above.”

“The Black River may mean more than the literal ink,” Maddie insisted. “Maybe it simply means the line of type. The rubric could be just what rubrics have always been, the key to the message, not the message itself.”

“But how do we find the message?” Rolf asked. “We do not know what kind of key it is.”

“What if the rubric is actually a grille,” Maddie said. “There must be some reason it was in the bound copy of the Gospels. If you lay it over the pages of the Gospel and poke holes through the nicks maybe they point to the letters that spell out Gutenberg’s secret.”

“Poke holes in a 500 year old printing?” Dr. Schneider exclaimed. “That’s vandalism!”

“Biblio-terrorism,” Keith said chuckling. “But we don’t have to literally poke holes in the text. We have technology now that Gutenberg didn’t even imagine then.” He called up the pages on the computer screen and created a mask for the image that showed only the position of the nicks. Then he called up a high resolution image of the Bamberg Bible and laid the mask over the first page. He began reading out the letters that were below the mask. The result was gibberish.

“It seems that this could take a long time,” Keith said. “If it is a grille, we don’t know which page of the rubric is first, second, and third. And we don’t know what page of the Bible to lay each page of the grille over. I can write a program that will capture the letters from every page of the Gospels under each page of the grille and read out the results, but it could take a long time.”

“You’ve all spoken of Gutenberg’s other book,” Maddie said. “Where is the reference to that?”

“We don’t have an actual reference to it,” Frank said. “It’s more like a legend that has been handed down through the ages in the Guild, that someday we would find his other book and then we could discover the secret.”

“So we won’t actually know the reference unless we read the whole letter that our fragment came from,” Maddie said. “Can’t we look at it?” Frank looked at her thoughtfully and then nodded his head.

“I confess, I’ve been thinking the same thing,” he said.

“Impossible!” Dr. Schneider exclaimed. “The letter is locked in the strong box and only a third degree master can open that lock.”

“Exactly what I was thinking,” Frank said. “Keith, can you and Madeline set up a program to run the grille. If it takes a long time, we’d better get started. Rolf, would you join me?” The old man rolled his chair behind Frank into the next room.

Maddie pulled up a chair beside where Keith had the image up on screen and was adapting a standard application—commonly used for comparing two versions of documents for authentication purposes—to collect the data beneath the photographic masks that Keith created from the rubric. If the grille was laid over a text document it would be a fairly simple process that wouldn’t take more than a couple of hours to run. But they were dealing with images of printed pages. Each time the grille hit a character, it had to identify the character from its shape. This was fairly well-tested optical character recognition, but there weren’t any plug-ins for German Fraktur-style type. Added to that, there were sometimes three or four similar designs for a given character and the optical character recognition algorithms could be comparing letters for hours. When it was done, there would still be errors that only human eyes could resolve. Maddie was right. Someone needed to look at the whole manuscript and not just the fragment that had been recovered. The only person who could look at the rest of the letter was a third degree master alchemist.

“This was a brilliant idea, Maddie,” Keith said. “What made you think of it?”

“I had a lot of time to think last night while you were talking to Agent Fry,” she said. “I just figured that the most common form of code in the Middle Ages was sending a grille that could be placed over a known text. It seemed like it would work here. How are you feeling?”

“Running on adrenalin,” Keith responded. “It’s probably time to head out of the museum. And now that you mention it, my body’s starting to beg for more painkillers. If I take them down here, I might collapse and go to sleep like I did on the plane. I don’t want to miss something important.”

“I’d wake you for it if it came up,” she said seductively.

“Oh, I certainly hope so,” he said kissing her. They reluctantly broke the kiss and Keith went back to the program.

“Keith, does it make any difference what order you compare the pages in?” Maddie asked.

“Not to the program,” he responded. “I usually start from the front and go forward unless there is a reason to examine a particular part first. Why?”

“I was thinking that we should start with the fourth Gospel.”

“Why?” he asked.

“It just struck me that if we are looking for Gutenberg’s other book, we should start with the Gospel of Johannes.” She looked at him as he turned to stare into her eyes. Then he swept her into another deep and passionate kiss just as Frank and Rolf came back through the door.

“Entschuligen Sie!” Rolf exclaimed when he came through the door. He glanced at Frank who chuckled to himself.

“Herr Doktor!” Keith exclaimed.

“I take it you have found the meaning of the code?” Rolf asked.

“Not yet,” Keith explained. “But my beautiful, charming, and brilliant partner came up with another idea that may help make the process a little shorter.”

“What is that?” Frank asked.

“Start with the Book of John.”

“Set your program running and let’s talk,” Frank said. “We have Guild business to discuss. Maddie is a member of the Guild now, so she is welcome to listen in. But this will involve you even more than you already are.”

Keith executed the program and turned to face his mentors.

“It’s so exciting, Keith,” Maddie said in their hotel room. “A few days ago I didn’t know the Guild existed, and tonight I’ll be initiated as a journeyman and you will be elevated to third degree master! You’ll be the first since my grandfather.”

“Maddie, the Guild is over 500 years old—almost 600,” Keith said. “The rituals haven’t changed in all that time. When an apprentice is brought into the shelter of the Guild, it is a pretty simple ritual. You don’t want to scare away the young. But Frank wants to initiate you as a journeyman. This time it is not just tasting the ink. It is literally getting it in your blood.”

“They want to inject me with it?” Maddie said, genuinely horrified.

“Not exactly,” Keith said. “He pulled his bathrobe down over his shoulder. “This tattoo?” he started. “It was outlined on the night of my journeyman initiation. Tonight, Frank will cut the final part of the design into it. And you will get yours.”

“Yes,” she said hesitantly. “It won’t be something I’ll regret, will it?”

“I hope not. It’s not like it will be huge or obnoxious or anything like that. But it is going to put a mark on that flawless skin of yours.”

“Flawless? This freckled bag that keeps my insides in?” she said. “I’m not worried about a tattoo. I can stand the pain and I want to be part of the Guild. But, I’m wondering… Could I have my grandfather’s mark? The anchor and dolphin?”

“I’m sure granddad would think that was an appropriate honor.”

“You’ll be there for my initiation, too, won’t you?” she asked. She moved toward Keith and traced the outline of his tattoo.

“I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” he answered. She pushed the robe further off his shoulder and in a moment it dropped to the floor.

“Maybe I should count the freckles where you are going to have the tattoo, so I’ll know how many get covered with ink,” Keith said pulling her toward him. Keith pulled her robe off her shoulder and caressed his lover softly. Maddie melted toward him.

“Darling?” she asked softly.

“What my love?”

“You’ve actually passed all the tests to become a third degree master, haven’t you? This is just a formality tonight, right?”

“No.” Keith sighed. “I don’t know if I can pass the tests tonight.”

“Of course you can!”

“Perhaps I could with two good eyes and two good hands,” Keith said. “It gets harder the further you go,” Keith said softly.

“Doesn’t it though,” she sighed.

“I mean the initiation,” Keith said.

Only a dozen active members of the Guild still lived. Of those, only Frank and Rolf had seen the third degree initiation. That had been the initiation of Maddie’s grandfather. Whatever the trial that was set before him, Keith knew that it would require everything he had learned and knew in order to pass it. Electronic tests and computers wouldn’t help him tonight, and if he failed, the secret would remain hidden. It would be a sign that the time had not yet come.

“What do you have to do?” Maddie asked.

“I don’t know what will be expected of me,” Keith said. I know that it won’t be easy. It’s sure to involve casting metal. That is the alchemist’s art. If they expect me to turn lead into gold I’m sunk.”

“That’s myth. You can’t transmute base metals into precious.” She laughed. “No. Tell me you can’t.”

“I’ve done a pretty good job with silver,” Keith said nonchalantly.

“What?” Maddie asked.

“It was part of the second degree initiation,” Keith said. “Of course you can’t literally turn lead into silver, but I had to mix an alloy that was the same weight and density as silver using only elements that were available in Gutenberg’s day. You know the atomic chart only had 14 elements on it in 1460.”

“You’re kidding!” Maddie said. “What did you mix?”

“I went with the traditional printer’s elements,” Keith said. “The alchemists of Gutenberg’s day used mostly lead, tin, and antimony. By the time I took my second degree initiation, I had done volumes of research on the composition of Gutenberg’s ink and type, and had done spectral analysis on half the books in the museum. So the other masters were a little surprised when I added copper to the mix. I came out with an alloy that when stamped into a coin was exactly the same weight as a coin made of pure silver from the same mold.”

“That’s amazing!” Maddie said. “So don’t tell me you’ve counterfeited silver coins.”

“No,” Keith said, “but it wouldn’t be that hard to do. All you would have to do is silver plate the slug and it would weigh and look the same as silver. How do you think they managed to start using steel cores in quarters and still have the same weight? Hardness and color are the real problems. Lead still melts at a lower temperature than silver does. A good hot hand and you could fold a fake coin in half.”

“So any ideas about what you will have to make tonight?”

“I don’t know,” Keith said. “A missing puzzle piece, a jewelry setting, a key, a ring, or just about anything. The problem is I don’t know if I can do it.”

“Of course you can,” Maddie reassured him. “They wouldn’t even ask you to if they didn’t believe in you.”

“Thank you, love,” Keith said. “I’ve had plenty of opportunity to test my alchemical skills. I know I’m capable. But with the damaged hand and eye, I’m not working with a full toolbox. You have to be able to feel and see what is happening. I don’t know if I can do it like this.”

“Let me see your hand,” Maddie coaxed. Keith held it out to her and she began the ritual of dressing his wound, taking off the old bandages and examining the hand gently. She carefully applied the salve they had been issued at the hospital. Most of the smaller cuts had healed over and showed pale thin skin. There were still a few scabs, kept soft by the salve. Worst were the six stitches between his thumb and the center of his palm. That was where he had caught the biggest piece of glass. That cut made flexing his hand difficult and Keith had complained of numbness in his thumb.

“Maybe I can reduce the bulk of the bandage, at least,” Maddie said as she began cutting gauze and tape. True to his word, Fry had left fresh dressings and Keith’s prescription drugs in their room. When she was done, Keith did have more flexibility in his hand even though it felt odd. His eye was another matter, however. When Maddie removed the bandage to apply drops, Keith only saw a blurry light. At least the flashes had stopped. Maddie swabbed the eye and washed it to remove any crust that would come loose. Then she bandaged it back up.

“I’m sorry I can’t do anything else about your eye, darling,” she said. “I hope you can make it okay tonight.”

“I hope so, too,” Keith said. “I almost thought I could see a little while you were cleaning it this time. Do you know what’s most important now, though?” he asked.

“That you have your health,” Maddie affirmed.

“No, that I have you. You are much better than health.”

“Are you saying I make you sick?”

“Love sick,” Keith laughed. “If I had two eyes, I could count your freckles twice as fast. Now let’s see, where was I?” He rolled over with Maddie on the bed and pointed to a freckle below her left breast. “Twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine,” he counted pointing randomly to freckles on her torso.

“Wait,” Maddie said. “You counted that one twice.”

“Which one?” Keith asked, shocked.

“This one just above my navel. I distinctly remember you counting that one in El Centro,” Maddie laughed.

“No!” Keith exclaimed.

“Yes, I’m sure.”

“Well that tears it,” he pouted. “Now I’ll have to start all over. One,” he said kissing the tip of her nose.

“Two,” she said kissing his lips.

“Three,” he mumbled. Then they lost count again.

Comments

Please feel free to send comments to the author at nathan@nathaneverett.com.