Curious gazes gathered on Lawrence.
“Oh my, my. Isn’t that the owner of Spice and Wolf?”
Even though the sky was bright, it took a while for the sun to show itself in this land cradled by mountains. The village was still covered in a faint darkness, and it was difficult to see a distant person’s face. Currently, the various bathhouses’ maids gathered and quietly gossiped in a corner of the village and suddenly began to create a clamor, like pigeons that began to cry when they saw nearing crows.
Lawrence stepped into the snow and stood there, with a smile as vague as his white, wavering breath visible in the cold. He let down the firewood he was carrying.
There were several places that the maids and village women gathered in this predawn hour. There was the water mill and the well and so on, but the place that Lawrence had come to today was the communal bread oven.
“What’s happened to Hanna? Is she ill?”
“I wonder if his daughter is sleeping in.”
“Have you forgotten? His daughter has bravely gone off on an adventure. I wanted to do that a long time ago, too.”
“Oh, is that so? This was the only place I knew outside of the town I was born in.”
“But it’s a surprise to see the master himself come here. Do you think Ms. Holo is ill, too?”
“Oh, that’s terrible. We must go pay her a visit.”
Once or twice a week, these women came here to bake all the bread that each household and bathhouse required. Life here was dull, so the only thing they could do for fun was gossip about the village.
Originally, this was work for the maids or, if they could not do it, the young wives or helper girls. So if a man came, that was enough to spark chatter. Even Lawrence thought he looked silly carrying firewood on his back and the kneaded dough, wrapped in a cloth, underneath his arm.
At this rate, it’ll look as if my wife ran away from home, no?
But Lawrence’s smile did not waver before this inconsiderate pigeon flock.
Their rumors spread rapidly throughout the village. Though he had spent over ten years running a bathhouse here, he was still treated like a newcomer, and he could not let his guard down.
Instead, he cursed how he had been forced into this job, as he imagined his wife Holo, who was likely still idling away at the bathhouse.
“No, we’ve received a sudden guest. The other two have other important business to attend to, so I came today.”
When he spoke, the women’s idle chatter suddenly stopped.
“Oh…Don’t tell me that person is staying as a guest at Spice and Wolf?”
“How troublesome that must be.”
She did not seem to be simply picking at crumbs of the conversation, and in fact her expression seemed sincere.
“Do you think they first stayed at Yoseph’s?”
“Oh yes. It’s the oldest bathhouse in the village, you know.”
“Then Abel’s?”
“And then Ramaninov’s after that.”
They listed off the names of bathhouse masters one after the other. They were the children and grandchildren of various people who came to this village from all over to start bathhouses, so they all sounded unique.
“Do you think this means he’ll be staying at different places until spring?”
“He’s always making such an unhappy face, like something isn’t right.”
“Oh, I know. He has so many demands, like having his lunch made so early in the morning. It was such a fuss! But he paid so well…”
“Hey, don’t be distracted by tips. My husband thinks he’s most likely investigating the village.”
“My! Do you think our guest is from that other hot spring village they might build on the far side of the mountain?”
“But he really doesn’t use the baths very much for that.”
“True. If he were planning on building a new bathhouse, you think he’d be looking all over the village.”
Their conversation flowed as though their lines had been written beforehand, and their speaking habits were so similar it was difficult to tell who was who in the faint darkness. As they came together every week to bake their bread, their ways of thinking also began to resemble one another.
As Lawrence watched them, he finally understood why Holo had made it seem like it was so childishly difficult for her to get out of bed.
They treated her differently, especially since she was a newlywed, but more importantly, she was the young mistress of a bathhouse where none of them worked. They kept to themselves for the most part. Though this was their own way of being considerate and knowing their place as hired helpers, this treatment was the most difficult for Holo to bear.
“Well, if he’s at your place, Lawrence, then that means his tour will finally end.”
He heard his name being spoken and snapped back to the present. At the same time, even before he caught up with the conversation’s context, he automatically smiled. He had learned through experience that if he maintained a pleasant expression, any situation would turn out better.
“I’m sure he has been frowning since his arrival, but it’s best to pay it no mind. He’s been like that at every house. It hasn’t been long since you’ve started your business, so I can imagine he’s been nothing but trouble…”
“There were people like that long ago, too. Such unreasonable customers!”
“That was back when you were still young…Over twenty years ago, I think?”
“Excuse you! I’m still young!”
It made Lawrence smile to watch the two bicker like close sisters, their true thoughts and emotions plain in everything they said. His bathhouse had been around for a little over ten years so it “wasn’t that old yet.”
The first place this guest stayed at was Yoseph’s bathhouse, the oldest in the village. It then naturally followed that he chose to stay at Spice and Wolf right before leaving the village because it was the newest.
It seemed it would take even more time to fit into the village.
“Well, anyway, I think it’s about time that everyone’s gathered.”
While they chatted like lively children, one spoke up, bringing them back to reality. Since the communal oven was not in the center of town, where the church bell could be relied on, time was nothing but an estimate. And since how much bread each person needed depended on the household, there was never a reason for every villager to gather and bake bread at the same time.
“All right, then, let’s draw straws.”
One woman took a bundle of twigs that lay next to the oven and wrapped it in some cloth hanging from her waist.
But the ends of all the twigs were the same length and poked out a bit from the impromptu bundle.
“Are these new? No cheating!”
“I’m getting old, so even if I did cheat, I wouldn’t be able to see which is the short stick in this darkness!”
They all laughed together, and one by one drew a limb from the bundle. Each twig was of a different length, and the longer the twig, the happier the person. Lawrence was the last to draw, and as if planned, his was short.
“O-oh, my…”
“Hey, are you sure none of you cheated?!”
There was an awkward atmosphere among the women. This draw was to decide who used the oven first.
No one wanted to be first when using the public oven. Though each person had to prepare their own fuel and materials to use the oven, it took quite a while for it to heat up. The first person to use it had to prepare extra fuel to get the oven going since it would have gone cold overnight.
“Oh no, actually, this helps.” Flustered, Lawrence cut in. “I don’t know what complaints we would get if we made that crabby guest wait. If I were last, I would probably ask to be first.”
The women were surprised, knowing that should their process’s fairness be doubted, they would lose face, so they all smiled at once, relieved.
“Well, if you say so…”
“It’s a good thing
, definitely, if you think about time. Here we have some people who use too much firewood and bake their bread into ash!”
“Hey! That’s because I was so busy talking! And that was a long time ago!”
Their brightness had returned.
Lawrence smiled, relieved. He opened the oven lid, lining the insides with his firewood and lighting it.
It seemed there was still some time before they could see the sun over the mountains.
Though the freshly baked bread was wrapped in cloth, it still gave off warm steam. On the way, he stuffed his mouth with a piece of the soft bread, and by the time he reached home, the sun had risen high in the sky.
It was quite the challenge, baking bread with women whose hands and mouths worked equally hard, but between the clear sky and the smell of freshly baked bread, it also accorded him a wisp of energy.
Thanks to that, when he returned to his bathhouse on the outskirts of the village and saw that guest, standing silently outside, he was able muster the hospitality to combat the unpleasantness.
“Sorry to have kept you waiting.”
“Hmph.”
The small old man grunted discontentedly. He held the lunch that Hanna had made for him, and he stood under the eaves as though waiting for the bread. In addition to the guests who stayed for the baths, there were also those who stayed for the mountains, such as hunters and woodcutters, so it was not unusual to see patrons go out in the morning.
However, the way this old man was dressed, it did not look like he was prepared for any trade Lawrence knew.
He wore a fur-covered conical hat that was shaped like a bowl on his head, bear fur on his feet, fox fur on his shoulders, deer leather gloves on his hand, and a rather rough-looking hatchet slung behind his back. His rucksack seemed to be filled with all sorts of things, but Lawrence could not tell what was inside. The guest’s purpose was a mystery, and he almost never used the baths.
The old man tried to grab the entire package of bread as Lawrence approached him.
He seemed confused—it was far too much bread for lunch, and as though the old man realized something, he conceded and withdrew his hand. Lawrence watched and felt a strange feeling pass through him, so he took three pieces of the fresh wheat bread and wrapped them in a separate cloth. As though carefully appraising him, Lawrence passed the bread to the old man. The elderly guest remained silent, but he nodded his head slightly and walked off without a word.
He was gruff, but it was not as though he had no manners.
Lawrence watched him leave and tilted his head. He was most likely not a bad person, but there was a brooding manner about him. The old man went off down the hill in front of the bathhouse. When Lawrence could no longer see his receding figure beyond the trees, he went inside and could smell something good coming from the dining hall.
On the long table was his breakfast, which seemed to have been served quite a while ago. Baked beans, thick-cut bacon, slices of cheese, and the last of the cured herring they had ordered last fall. It seemed to be the same as what Hanna had given that odd guest for his takeaway lunch. There was no mistaking that she had saved herself some trouble and decided to make Lawrence’s portion, as well.
And there at the table, always present wherever it smelled good, sat Holo.
“You’re late. Your poor breakfast has gone cold.”
She glared at her husband, who had just come back from baking bread in the cold outside.
“I told you, they pull straws to see who bakes when. This is what it’s like when I’m first.”
On top of that, this was a job that Holo was supposed to do as the innkeeper’s wife. As he argued against her unreasonable complaints, he gave the rest of the fresh bread to Hannah, who had just emerged from the kitchen. She took out three pieces from the cloth for Lawrence.
Not two, not four, but three? Lawrence looked at her quizzically, and she just smiled mischievously. Confused, he took the bread and sat down, and then he finally understood.
They ate breakfast not facing each other across the table, but side by side. In the middle of the two chairs sat a ceramic jug, filled with wine.
Before he could argue that it was too much for the morning, his eyes stopped at Holo’s empty cup. Finally, he realized what Hanna was planning and noticed Holo.
“If you’re going to blame me for doing poorly on a job you don’t want to do…” He pulled out a chair and sat next to her. “…Then you should have done it yourself, no?”
He set two pieces of bread down on his plate and one on Holo’s.
“They might compliment you out of jealousy since you always look so young.”
Holo had the appearance of a teenage girl, and she stared at her husband, having taken offense. But Holo was not a girl, nor was she human. Since no one else was in the bathhouse, she was not hiding the ears on her head or the tail on her behind. They were a reminder that her true form was a giant wolf that could easily swallow a person whole, a spirit who resided in wheat.
“And treat you with their well-intentioned distant formality for newcomers.”
After Lawrence spoke, Holo reached out for the ceramic jug. Her small hands gripped the handle of the jug, which was much too big for her, and sloppily poured wine into Lawrence’s cup. She always only poured for herself, so Lawrence could not help but laugh at her obvious behavior.
“If you’d gone, you definitely would have been hurt.”
Holo once lived in an area called Yoitsu, but on a whim, she traveled south and stayed at a village there for hundreds of years, watching over the growing wheat. Why she did so in the first place had been lost in the flow of time, and she had even forgotten the road home. In her solitude, she had become like a stone.
That was when Lawrence met her, and this was where they ended up.
She called herself the wisewolf, cunning and sage, but she was also vain and easily became lonely.
Had she been the one at the bread oven, while she would have managed to smile at the maids’ insensitivities, he could easily imagine her becoming quickly exhausted.
“Well, I used to be a merchant. I chatted a lot with them and gave a good account of myself.”
Lawrence spoke pointedly, but Holo said nothing. She split the bacon and placed a piece in front of him.
When she usually split it, no matter how he looked at it, her own portions were always bigger. But this time, the sizes were the same.
“So I’m not mad. It’s simply how we divide the labor.”
He took the second piece of bread on his plate and split it in two, placing the larger piece on Holo’s plate.
“And so you’ve watched our odd guest for me while I was out, haven’t you?”
Holo finally looked up at Lawrence, her lips scrunching up in a sour expression, as though she were gnashing her teeth.
Lawrence softly kissed her cheek and turned to face his food.
“But for now, breakfast.”
Holo carefully watched Lawrence for a while but finally began to eat.
Her big pointed ears and tail were flicking happily.
“I do not believe he is wicked. I can sense something like his core.”
This was new for Holo, who usually had a rough time evaluating normal people.
The guest in question had arrived suddenly a little after noon the day before. “Do you have a room?” he had asked quietly, in a way that was difficult to hear. Lawrence had heard that there were those who would spend an entire winter moving from bathhouse to bathhouse.
But when Lawrence, overpowered by his presence, nodded, the guest had silently placed a gold lumione coin on the register book. This was enough for a family of four to live modestly for a month. It was far more than enough to stay for the two weeks he had requested.
However, to make a two week’s stay worth a gold lumione required effort. Lawrence offered musicians and dancers, but the old guest shook his head and refused it all. He only asked for one thing—a packed lunch, early.
He was
definitely odd, but he was too unhurried for someone who might be on the run after committing a crime in another town, and it did not feel as though he was sensitive enough to be discontent with every bathhouse he had stayed in so far. Really, he did not seem to have any interest in the baths or rooms at all.
The place this peculiar guest had stayed at before coming here was the most reliable bathhouse in the village.
There lived a boy who was the same age as his daughter, Myuri, and they had often played together as children. His name was Kalm, and just the other day he had come to Lawrence asking permission to marry Myuri. He was a good young man, and Lawrence did not mind having him as a son. His father, Cyrus, seemed grumpy, but he was not so bad once one got to know him. After that odd lodger showed up, Cyrus stopped by Lawrence’s bathhouse and told him everything he knew about the man.
Whenever that old man changed houses, the previous host would relay information to the next, and this meant that all the accumulated intelligence had safely reached Lawrence in the end. Of course, he told Holo the Wisewolf this information.
“I suspect he may be a medicine man.”
“Medicine man?” Lawrence repeated, and Holo nodded. Her gaze was trained on the fresh wheat bread.
Today, their bread was a pure-white wheat bread, as it was the least they could provide to a guest that had paid them a whole gold lumione. The loaves were sweet and soft, and it was easy to eat plenty of them.
But Holo had put a gash in the bread and filled it with beans and bacon. It reminded him of a boneheaded cat when his greedy wife suggested putting one delicious thing with another would just make the result even tastier. With a big smile, she bit into the fluffy bread.
“Hmm, nom…gulp. Aye. Because—”
Lawrence cleaned off the skin of a bean that had gotten stuck to her cheek and urged her to continue.
“There is the smell of herbs about him, as well as a metallic scent coming from the items he carries on his person. There must be a sickle or the likes.”
“If he’s a traveler, then he would definitely have herbs and a short sword on him. Maybe that’s not it?”
“’Tis easy to tell for those who are used to smelling herbs. No, since I know the smell, I have smelled it somewhere before…”