Contents

The Gutenberg Rubric

Seven

FRANK LEFT KEITH and Maddie at the San Diego airport, going straight to Mainz himself to arrange the Guild meeting, while the couple went to Salt Lake City. Keith had found two almost identical notices in a genealogical chat archive that had been retired for over ten years. The postings were apparently for the same book with the same phrasing and description. One citation was to the Family History Library in Salt Lake City and the other to the National Historic and Genealogical Archives in Indianapolis. They decided to go to Salt Lake first since it was closest, but Maddie left messages for a friend who worked at the NHGA to ask for help in locating the book.

Salt Lake proved to be a dead end. The librarians could find no record of a Gospel that matched the description in the notice. “I’m sorry,” the librarian said as she shook her head. “It’s not that unusual to have people mix us up with the NHGA. Probably, the person who posted these notices either wasn’t sure which one or posted one then posted the other when they found out the first was incorrect. They should really make note of that kind of thing. Would you like me to call NHGA for you?”

“That’s okay,” Maddie said. “I’ve already put in a call to them and I expect I’ll hear back soon.” They thanked the librarian and left.

“We could have flown straight to Indianapolis,” Keith said. “Now we won’t be able to get to the NHGA until morning.”

“Well, let’s head for the airport. We’ve got the 11:00 flight, and even if it is too late to get there tonight, we can get some rest in Indianapolis and be at the NGHA when it opens in the morning,” Maddie said.

“Always looking on the bright side, aren’t you?” Keith said. “How did I ever manage to find such a good sport?”

“It is kind of like a game, isn’t it?” Maddie asked. “You find a clue here and follow it to there. I’ve decided to make the best of it and just keep following the clues... and you.”

The couple arrived in Indianapolis at 6:00, had dinner, and collapsed in their hotel room. Keith was tired of traveling with his injuries and examined his pain medication carefully to see that he would have enough for a trip to Germany. Random, blinding light flashes in his bandaged eye left him disoriented and his head throbbing. The number of pills in the bottle was dropping at an alarming rate. He was not much company as Maddie bathed the eye and bandaged it, then applied a cool washcloth to his forehead.

In the morning, Keith and Maddie walked to the National Historical and Genealogical Archives about a block away. Maddie was thankful for the new wool coat and warm clothes Frank had insisted on. It might get warm later in the day, but it was just above freezing when they left the hotel. They were just two of the crowd of genealogical researchers lined up waiting to look at some of the billion plus family records, books, and microfilms kept in the building. They met their guide at the information desk at 9:00 sharp. Leslie Hayden, the librarian who showed Keith and Maddie around the collection, was friendly and outgoing. Though much older than Maddie, the two had done their undergraduate work together years before. Leslie exemplified the dedicated and friendly staff the Archives were known for.

“Of course, what you are really looking for isn’t on any of these floors,” Leslie said as they completed the tour of the second basement. “The rare books that you want to see are on the next level down. Isn’t it funny how your rare book collection is on stilts six stories above ground and ours is buried three stories below? We’re really worlds apart!”

They were worlds apart in more ways than the locations. Maddie’s collection of rare books was carefully acquired from estates and wealthy families, sometimes from churches, or other universities. Each purchase was deliberate and evaluated both before and after the transaction. Most of the Archive’s acquisitions were donated by individuals who had a few family heirlooms to dispose of. Anything that had a family name in it was actively solicited. The speed of intake was such that the typical book was catalogued and shelved with just one criterion: old or new. If the book appeared to be over 150 years old, it was deemed too valuable to be shelved in general collections and was sent to the stacks, which in this case were located underground. Its treatment in the stacks was little different than that in the public portion of the library, but restricted access meant there was less handling of the volumes.

It was amazing to Keith that there were so many people in the public portion of the library whose method of research was to go down the shelves and pull every volume off and examine it. No doubt it was likely to turn up an unexpected reference, but the task was tantamount to cataloguing Maddie’s freckles—a thought that brought a smile to his lips.

“This portion of the library is off-limits to the general public,” Leslie said, “but since you are visiting scholars and librarians yourself, I got you special dispensation.” She led them to a small room with shelves on all walls and a table running down the middle. “Have a seat here,” Leslie said, “and I’ll go fetch the book you want to look at.”

Maddie sat at the table and Keith nearly collapsed at her side.

“Are you okay, darling?” she asked him. What could he say? Maybe checking himself out of the hospital so quickly and then bouncing cross-country hadn’t been such a good idea. Just last night, Maddie had discovered another bruise on his back that seemed to be growing instead of shrinking. And the headaches were certainly aggravated by the number of hours he had spent staring one-eyed at his computer screen.

He closed his eye and rested, leaning against Maddie.

In an impossibly short time, Leslie arrived with the book they had requested. It came in a plain canvas bag with a reference number stamped on the side. The catalog description had simply said, “Old Bible, inscribed ‘In memory Elyssa and Bjorn Wyrich—undated.’”

“We have hundreds of these old Bibles in the stacks,” Leslie said as she laid the book on the table. “If it’s in a canvas bag like this, then usually its condition isn’t too good. So be careful with it and if any pages fall out, try to stuff them back in the right order. You probably won’t need to look at anything but the first few pages. Usually that’s where the family records are kept. Let me know if you need anything else and just drop it off at the information desk when you are finished.” Leslie left them alone with the book.

“Just stuff the pages back in the right order?” Maddie asked incredulously. “I can’t believe Leslie is so cavalier about it.”

“The value of the documents here is in the data about families,” Keith said. “The books themselves are no more than containers. Like she said, they have hundreds of old Bibles. It’s where people kept family information. We can count ourselves lucky that they don’t just cut the dedication pages out and discard the rest.”

“Still….”

They opened the ties on the canvas bag and slid a worn and tattered leather-bound volume out onto the table. Maddie gasped when she saw the binding and held out a hand to stop Keith from opening it. She rummaged in her purse for a moment and pulled out two pairs of lightweight white cotton gloves. She handed a pair to Keith and pulled on the other herself.

“It’s probably a little late for this,” Keith said, pulling a glove over his bandages. “This book is worn to the point of falling apart.”

“There’s no sense in contributing to its deterioration,” Maddie responded. “Here. Let me open the pages. I know how to handle these.”

“Dr. Zayne,” Keith smiled. “May I remind you that I, too, have studied the care and preservation of texts?”

“Yes, Dr. Drucker,” Maddie said, blushing a little. “But your degrees were done with two hands. Besides, you didn’t bring any tools with you.” She returned to her open purse and withdrew two velvet page weights, a small suction cup, and a thin Mylar bookmark. With these at her side she gently propped the book on a reading stand on the table and opened the cover.

It was huge in length and breadth, but thin in depth compared to other Bibles of the era Keith had seen. As worn as the volume was outside however, it was pristine on the inside. Pencil marks on the inside front cover identified the acquisition date and library call number. The book had been donated in 1983. The rest of the words were smeared beyond recognition.

“Pencil!” Maddie exclaimed. “I don’t believe it.”

“It’s pretty common,” Keith said. “Lots of books are identified in pencil because of the belief that it causes the least damage. They don’t think about how the graphite smears and leaves prints. It’s interesting that this is plain-bound. Most of this sort from the 16th century have marbled book paper on the inside covers. This appears to be a fairly coarse rag paper.”

“Yes, but the facing page is vellum,” Maddie said. “It looks like the survival of the book might be due to the quality of the paper it was printed on.” Maddie applied the tiny suction cup to a corner of the facing page and lifted it enough to slide the Mylar strip between it and the next page. She released the suction cup and raised the page with the Mylar bookmark. They stared at the page in startled silence.

After a blank sheet, a beautiful, hand-painted dedication page bore the inscription mentioned in the catalog. Keith quickly pulled out a small digital camera and fumbled to get a picture of the page. Maddie took the camera and carefully focused on the page, following Keith’s instructions regarding angle and framing. Beyond the dedication page, the vellum sheets were crisp and the simply illuminated chapter heads were elegant. The book contained only the four Gospels. A blank back leaf was the last thing between the tattered covers.

“Is this your grandfather’s work?” Maddie asked. “It’s almost as if a new book was bound in an old binding,” Maddie speculated. “It can’t really be what it appears to be, can it?”

“If you mean the Gospels from a Bamberg 36-line Bible,” Keith responded, feeling suddenly rejuvenated, “then yes, it could be.”

“But there is no known record of such a book having been printed,” Maddie protested.

“Actually, there is,” Keith said. “Most of the 42-line Bibles were bound in two volumes with a few bound in three. But the extra 200 pages of the 36-line Bamberg made it suitable for four-volume binding. This could simply be the third of four volumes, the others lost.”

“How did you ever find it?”

“The search I did cross-referenced names of Gutenberg’s known associates and the significant locations around Württemberg ,” Keith said. “It was no small task.”

“What name came up?” Maddie asked.

“At various points in the catalog, donors were listed. One of the monastery’s benefactors was a Baron von Hussen. The Baron’s wife was Marie Humery. There is no direct evidence of a relationship with Gutenberg’s second partner, but the name was enough to bring up a flag in the search routines.”

The search results generated from the spiders connected names and places that would have taken Keith days or months to find in any traditional way. Much to his surprise, the von Hussens had appeared on one of the many ship manifests from the Württemberg migration to America in the middle of the 19th century. It was the settlement of the estate of a great grandson in 1983 that led to the donation of the book to the NHGA. Keith was certain the book was the same one mentioned in the catalog.

“Who are Elyssa and Bjorn Wyrich?” Maddie asked. “The name sounds sort of familiar.”

“They would be Johannes Gänsfleisch von Gutenberg’s grandparents on his mother’s side,” Keith said.

“Hmmm.” Maddie pondered. “That means there has to be a disconnect someplace. The Bamberg 36-line wasn’t printed until at least 1460. Gutenberg’s grandparents must have been long gone by then.”

“This is a memorial page. It says ‘In memory Elyssa and Bjorn Wyrich, husband and wife, interred in Bamberg,’” Keith said. “Perhaps Gutenberg’s grandparents played an important role in his life while he was young. Look at the last part of the inscription.” Maddie looked over his shoulder.

“My German isn’t good,” she said. “Is that the name of a priest?”

“Dieter von Isenberg, Gutenberg’s friend and priest, who apparently interred his grandparents. By the time of the Bamberg Bible, Dieter von Isenberg had ascended to the position of Archbishop of Mainz,” Keith said.

“That’s it,” Maddie interrupted. “The Mainzer wars. He was ousted by Adolf somebody who was the Archbishop that recognized Gutenberg’s contribution and gave him a pension.”

“Yes, but Dieter outlived his rival and became Archbishop again upon Adolf’s death,” Keith finished. “Dieter was never removed from Adolf’s court. He was simply deemed too radical a reformist to hold the position. Adolf attacked on the Pope’s orders. In spite of about 400 citizen casualties, Adolf seemed to be a fair leader when his position was secure. The treatment of Gutenberg was a good example of that, but was probably suggested by Dieter.”

“So where does that leave us?” Maddie asked. “I got a lot of instruction from Frank yesterday, but it all left more questions.”

“Guild lore says that Gutenberg was entrusted with a secret that had to be protected for a future age,” Keith said. “He divided clues to the secret and hid them in two places. One was in the rituals of the Guild itself. That’s why the page we examined at Granddad’s is so important. If we lose part of the key, we can’t complete the secret.”

“Sounds very mystical,” Maddie laughed.

“Well, guilds all had secret rituals and things they were supposed to protect,” Keith said. “Wait until your Journeyman initiation. One of the reasons the Guild didn’t elevate another third degree Master after Errol is because no one knows where the other half of the mystery is hidden. A second degree master is elevated about once every fifty years in order to make sure the rituals still work, but no one has ever found the other half of the secret.”

“And you’ve been looking for it all your life?” Maddie asked.

“Sounds pathetic when you put it that way,” Keith winced. “What we know is that there were Guild rituals and the other codex. It has always been surmised that he was secretly printing this other book at the same time as the Bible, and that was the cause of the falling out with Johan Fust, his financier. The hiding place has remained a mystery.”

“But now you think you might have found the other Gutenberg,” Maddie surmised.

“I’ve been thinking for quite some time that perhaps it wasn’t another book that Gutenberg printed, but was one that he owned,” Keith said. “The assumption about the secret project is entirely conjectural. What got me thinking about this particular book were not the names of the people in it, but the name Johan Humery.”

“Did Germans have any other names besides Johan? Who was this one?” Maddie asked.

“The immediate answer is that he was the person who gave this book to the monastery for safe-keeping.”

“I’ll bite,” Maddie laughed as they turned and examined another page. “What is the long story?”

“Conrad Humery was Gutenberg’s second business partner in Mainz, after he returned from his exile when Adolf became archbishop,” Keith said. “Humery was Gutenberg’s sole heir and inherited everything in the estate. Presumably, Johan was a grandson and either father or brother of Baroness von Hussen.”

“So the fact that he had a Bible—or Gospel—that matches the type of the Bamberg Bible…”

“That Gutenberg designed and probably sold to the printer of Bamberg,” Keith added.

“And the fact that it contains the names of Gutenberg’s grandparents,” Maddie continued, “leads you to believe Gutenberg owned it.”

“It seems reasonable,” Keith answered.

“We can’t even verify that it is that old,” Maddie said.

“No,” Keith responded. “That is why I need you to work a little more magic.”

“What?”

“Go request this book on behalf of your library to examine it under laboratory conditions,” Keith said. “We can have it shipped, but see if you can get it expedited so we can take it with us.”

“Back to The Whit,” Maddie said flatly.

“No. To Mainz,” Keith answered.

Maddie sat and thought about the request as she turned through a few more flawless pages.

“If we verify that this is not only a book printed from the Bamberg type at the same time as the three volume Bible, but was also owned by Gutenberg with his family names in it,” Maddie said, “what would it be worth?”

“About $14 million,” he answered. “There isn’t a library in the world that couldn’t use an extra $14 million.”

“And I suppose you know one that would pay for it.” Keith just smiled back at Maddie. She scooted her chair back. “This could take a while,” she said. “Don’t bleed on any pages.” She left the room.

Keith doubted that she would be successful, but the task promised to give him at least an hour to examine the book alone. There was something else he had noticed about this strange volume that he wanted to investigate, and Maddie would not have approved.

He returned to the inside front cover. He thought it was strange that the cover paper was plain instead of marbled, and that it was a rag paper and not vellum like the remainder of the book. He also noticed that the paper had come loose at the bottom of the binding and the padding pages had slipped down to expose an edge. He could be wrong, he supposed, but the padding pages looked like vellum.

He carefully inserted the plastic book mark under the edge of the cover paper and began to work it around, loosening the rest of the edge as he went. Soon he was able to lift the edge up just enough to insinuate the suction cup beneath the book paper and grasp the first of the padding pages. What he pulled out was one of printing’s rarest finds. He held in his hand the rubric for the Bamberg Bible. As he continued to extract sheets of padding, first from the front cover and then loosening the cover paper from the back cover, he found twelve perfect velum sheets of printing.

These sheets would make no sense to an average person. They contained what appeared to be a random collection of letters, finely printed in columns and lines that mimicked the design of the Bible itself. These were the missing letters of the printed Bible. Even though Peter Schoeffer was including engraved initials printed in color in the Psalter of 1459, the Bamberg Bible was printed with blanks where a scribe was supposed to paint the graceful illuminations and red letters that appeared in the final work. The rubric was the guide that told what letter went in the next blank spot on the page. The rubric was normally printed on lower grade paper, sometimes bound into the book, but more often discarded with the scribe’s notations scribbled on it. This was a rubric for the entire Bible—not just the Gospels—printed on fine velum and hidden in the cover of the book.

Keith was certain that he had found the real codex.

He intended to make every effort to acquire this Bible on behalf of the Gutenberg Museum in Mainz, but he had to get the rubric out of the library and to Mainz as quickly as he could.

While Keith was contemplating his problem, Maddie burst through the door. Keith must have looked ready to pass out, judging from Maddie’s reaction to seeing him. She rushed to him and felt his head as though he had suddenly contracted a fever in addition to his wounds.

“We need to leave, Keith,” she said before realizing what she was looking at. “You’re sick.” She paused seeing the loose pages lying on the library table. “What is this? What have you done?”

“The secret of the book was hidden in the covers. They’re perfect,” Keith said. He could see Maddie struggling with the act of vandalism and the importance of the discovery that Keith was communicating to her. Her excitement was apparently winning out when she abruptly repeated herself.

“We have to leave now.”

“Our flight isn’t for hours yet,” Keith protested. “And I have to figure out how to get these loaned to us right away.”

“It’ll never happen,” Maddie said. “Even getting the interlibrary loan of the book is going to take an act of God.” She grabbed her coat from the back of the chair where it had been deposited when they came into the room. “Gather the pages up,” she commanded. As Keith complied, she laid her coat open on the table and began tearing out a seam in the lining. “Put the book back in the canvas bag.” Keith obeyed and Maddie inserted the pages of the rubric behind the lining of her new coat. She put her coat on and marched Keith with the canvas bag out the door to the information desk.

“Please tell Leslie that we’re sorry we missed her when we left,” Maddie told the woman at the information desk pleasantly. “I’m afraid we have to run to the airport. Better get that right back in the vault—I mean stacks—where it belongs.”

She turned and hurried Keith out the door as quickly as she could. They nearly ran back to their hotel room to remove the pages from Maddie’s coat lining and place them in the archival box in which they were carrying the monastery manuscript. Then they checked out of the hotel and caught a cab for the airport.

Once they were through security and waiting at the gate—for two hours, Keith noted—he turned to Maddie and confronted her.

“What on earth inspired you to take those pages and rush out of the library, Maddie?” Keith asked.

“Darling—” Maddie said softly, “and you are my darling—you aren’t thinking clearly. I know that with your injuries and the drugs things move too fast sometimes.” Keith had to admit she was right about that. He resisted the impulse to check his watch to see if he could take another painkiller yet. But… “In spite of their name, the NHGA isn’t a public library, or a university library, or a government archive. It’s privately held and isn’t a part of any of our interlibrary loan systems. It could take months to get the book transferred, no matter how many forms I fill out or to whom I talk. If they even had an inkling the book is as valuable as it is or that you found a rubric in it, it would never be allowed out of the archives. These people might not be as skilled as you and I at evaluating what they have, but they are jealous about keeping it. I had to get us out of there as quickly as possible so there was no chance they’d discover what we know.”

She’s right, Keith thought. If I were thinking clearly, I’d have acted more quickly, too.

He took another pill without looking to see what time it was and was scarcely aware when the gate agent wheeled his chair down the jetway and Maddie settled him into his seat. After changing planes in Washington, D.C., they relaxed for the overnight flight to Frankfurt.

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