Spice and Wolf, Vol. 14

  Elsa seemed to share that opinion. Because it had been rather suddenly decided that she would stay with them, they had hastily arranged for a straw mattress to be brought in, but as far as Elsa was concerned, it was a grand indulgence.

  “Not even the village elder sleeps on a bed so fine!” she had said with a sheepish smile. And the rapidity with which she had fallen asleep after lying down exceeded even the notoriously sound sleeper Holo, which proved the truth of Elsa’s claim rather thoroughly. Elsa’s soft snoring arose so quickly that Holo had sat up in annoyance, just to prove that it was not her.

  Though she was strict with others and with herself, because such human aspects of Elsa remained made her very easy to become fond of, barring other conflicts of interest. The way she interacted with Col, too, was very different from Holo’s puppylike indulgence of him and similarly different from Fran’s danger appeal.

  So Holo had probably gone along with them to the morning prayers simply to protect her territory. She might claim that she did not care to whom Col became attached, but from her stiff facial expressions, it was easy to imagine.

  The more she acted like the wisewolf she was, the more amusing she became.

  Considering all that, Lawrence felt a little pleased and proud of himself since she had revealed her true feelings to him alone. If she caught on that he had realized this, she would tease him mercilessly as backlash, but fortunately, he was the only one in the room. Lawrence smiled and yawned, cracked his neck, and got out of bed.

  Although they had received most necessities from Hugues back in Kerube, there were a few things that needed to be prepared. He needed to go to the stable and check on the state of his other companion there, and there were food and fuel provisions that needed to be bought for the next leg of the journey.

  If the shops were selling freely there would be no problems, but if he was unlucky and there had been a rush of customers, there was the possibility of waiting days for his orders to be filled.

  Given that the inns were all filled, that unlucky prospect bore consideration. If it came to that, his quickness as a traveling merchant would be a virtue. He finished his preparations, informed the innkeeper of his plans, then went out into the town.

  Lawrence realized it had been some time since he had ventured out early on his own to lay in supplies. Perhaps thanks to the fine weather, his body felt light and his heart excited.

  But he knew that even as the sun rose, it would also set. It was nice to be alone, but only when one was not truly alone.

  Lawrence set out onto the streets. The breath fog from people walking merrily along rose as he went, illuminated by the morning sun.

  When Lawrence came to the marketplace, it was crowded even before he entered it.

  There were mules loaded heavily with green, frost-resistant vegetables, and men carrying barrels full of vinegar so strong it made the eyes water. There was a cart filled with rock salt that was accompanied by armed guards and which bore the seal and standard of some nobleman. Lawrence did not know if it was meant for this marketplace or on its way somewhere else, but it was amusing to watch sharp-eyed youngsters be chased off by the guards like so many flies. Perhaps they were trying to pick up any bits of salt that fell to the ground and turn them into a bit of spending money.

  If such a heavy guard was necessary, then the profit from sneaking salt as false stone statues must have been sizable. Lawrence thought of Eve, who had sneaked right out of town one night and was now surely doing business somewhere in the south. He found himself less envious than simply astonished.

  Such thoughts occupied his mind as he wandered the marketplace, inhaling the myriad scents that wafted from the stalls as he walked by each one. If there was this much in the market, buying what he needed ought nary be a trouble.

  He passed barrels filled with carp, which splashed water up as they swam vigorously about, and arrived at a cheese monger’s shop, with cheeses lined up for display. Cheese did not spoil quickly, and it was filling. And there was another way to eat it, he had learned long ago, that he would remember until the end of his days.

  The cheese was put to the flame, melted as though one was boiling water. Then bread or anything else could be dipped generously in it and eaten.

  It was originally a dish from the south, but the colder the weather the more magnificent it became. Lawrence got excited just thinking about how enthusiastic he imagined Holo and Col would be to try it.

  As he imagined the scene, Lawrence became aware of the shopkeeper’s appraising eye on him. The man was placing a large, square-carved stone on one side of a great set of scales.

  Lawrence rubbed his face as though blaming the cold, then erased the smile from his face and raised his voice. “I’d like a wheel of cheese! How much?”

  Given the number of foreign travelers, the shop did not bother with anything that indicated prices. Moreover, at Lawrence’s question, the thin shopkeeper—who looked more like a shepherd than a cheese monger—only continued to look at Lawrence curiously.

  “That one, for example,” said Lawrence, indicating the large wheel about to be weighed. The shopkeeper’s apprentice also awaited the master’s orders, his face red from effort as he manhandled said wheel.

  “Ah…I suppose you arrived yesterday or today, eh?” replied the shopkeeper finally, like an old man who was hard of hearing. He then gave his apprentice the signal to put the cheese on the scale.

  A baker’s scale was big enough, but the balance beam on this one was even thicker. The chains, too, were free of any ornamentation at all—it was a very utilitarian device, and it clanked loudly when the cheese was loaded onto it.

  “I arrived the day before last. Heading even farther north.” Lawrence swallowed back anything else he might have said after that, as the shopkeeper suddenly looked over his shoulder and reached for an iron rod. At the end of the rod was a small plaque, with writing carved into it. Standing on tiptoe and looking farther into the shop, he could see the box into which the plaque end of the iron rod had been thrust.

  Within the box smoldered charcoal, which heated the brand such that it could mark the cheese.

  “I see. Bad luck, then.” There was a hissing sound, and soon the fragrant smell of charring cheese hit Lawrence’s nose. “It’s not neglect that there are no prices out. These have all sold.” Lawrence barely had time to make a sound of surprise before the man continued, “That one, this one, and this one here, too, are all being taken away today. It’s good to have the rush in business, but it’s dizzying, too. And I’ve got to endure the sad faces of all the unlucky travelers, too.”

  Lawrence did not put his hand to his face, instead managing a chagrined smile that was still probably rather pathetic. “Well, it’s nice that business is good.” Even a few weeks before, the trouble with the furs, the aftermath of the cancellation of the northern campaign, and the heavy taxes would have all but stagnated the marketplace.

  “Aye…the business came back all of a sudden, truly. I suppose it’s something like the weather. When it’s nice out, people come and shop. Don’t you think?”

  A merchant who dealt in something that kept so well as cheese did could surely live a well-kept, easy life. The fact that he seemed a bit musty was due in part to Lawrence’s own youth.

  “I quite agree. Incidentally, is tomorrow’s cheese also spoken for? Or the day after’s?” Lawrence asked, at which the shopkeeper nodded heavily. The queue was apparently very long indeed.

  Lawrence scratched his head in consternation, and the shopkeeper pretended to ignore his predicament. “Our cheese goes well with wine, though. The taverns keep quite a stock on hand.”

  “Huh?” Lawrence looked back at the shopkeeper in surprise, but the shopkeep was already pretending Lawrence was not there, instead busily giving orders to his apprentice.

  Though he could not say so openly, the shopkeeper had essentially told Lawrence that if he went to a tavern, they might spare him some cheese there.

  A town se
parated its specialties, such that the cheese monger sold cheese and the tavern sold wine. The cheese monger could not operate as a drinking establishment, nor was the tavern allowed to sell cheese in quantity.

  But there were always exceptions to the rules.

  Apparently this shopkeeper was of an accommodating disposition.

  “My thanks to you. I’ll give that a try this evening, then,” said Lawrence.

  “Aye, you do that. Oh, and—!” The shopkeeper called to Lawrence as the latter began to walk away. “It’s going to be much the same for anything else you want to buy. Don’t bother looking at the shops—it’s the storehouses you’ll want to peek in.”

  Lawrence found himself briefly lost in thought at these words, and he was soon carried off by the flow of people. The cheese monger was soon out of sight.

  “It’s the storehouses you’ll want to peek in”—that was another thing that ought not to have been said out loud.

  And just as the shopkeeper had said, Lawrence soon discovered that of all the goods he had hoped to find in the market, he could get none at all, or not enough, or else the only thing left were the scraps none of the other customers would buy.

  And yet the prices were not so very high. What kept running through Lawrence’s head was the earlier trouble in Lenos, with the furs.

  The market was so busy it made a merchant like Lawrence almost angry to be in it, so he left, making straight for a less-crowded street.

  His destination was somewhere no proper merchant would be at this hour: the Beast and Fish Tail.

  Before the Beast and Fish Tail’s back door there stood a wagon, loaded with various crates and barrels—and counting them with visible irritation was none other than that same barmaid.

  Despite her brusqueness, the boy minding the wagon was only too happy to answer her every question as she demanded this or that piece of information from him.

  She was a marvelous witch of a girl. But could she hear the voice in his mind that said so?

  Lawrence waited for her to finish purchasing what goods she needed, then picked a likely moment to approach. When the barmaid looked over her shoulder and noticed him, she was utterly unmoved. “Goodness, you’re early today,” she said, as though their exchange the prior day had never happened.

  Or else she had given up on pushing and was going to try a pull instead.

  “Quite. Haste can be a virtue, after all.”

  The girl scratched something into a wax-covered board, then looked up at him as though she were counting money given to her by a drunkard. Then she sighed. “So, what profit is it you’re chasing this time, eh?”

  It was obvious he was interrupting her work, but Lawrence kept his affable smile up and answered proudly. “Nothing like that. I was hoping you’d let me buy a little from you.”

  The barmaid’s expression was the very epitome of a suspicious face. She raised one eyebrow, and the Huh? she was thinking to herself was entirely obvious. “If taverns start selling goods, the town would be in chaos. Why not go to the marketplace? I’m a little busy here.”

  Having finished her count, the girl tucked the board under her arm and poked her head through the back door, shouting something into the tavern. She certainly was not going to bring all these goods inside herself, so perhaps she was calling for the master of the shop.

  “I’m sure you are, if you’re planning to use all of this in your cooking.”

  She kept her head impudently in the doorway, with her nicely shaped rear facing the street. If she had had a rabbit tail, it would surely have been twitching.

  The barmaid finally turned to regard him, a look of frustration on her face. “These are extra supplies, in case of hardship.”

  “I’ll bet they are,” said Lawrence with a smile. The barmaid averted her gaze and scratched her head. She was obviously unsure what to do. “I’ll pay in cash. Gold coin, if you like. Or”—he offered the choice he would give in any normal business transaction—“would smaller coins be better?”

  The girl finally sighed. “I see,” she said. “I see how it is. As soon as you figured things out, you came straight here. Where’d you get that idea, I wonder?” She looked up at the sky as though she had dropped her coin purse somewhere, hands on her hips, eyes closed.

  Every one of her exaggerated gestures was deeply amusing. If she quit her job at the tavern, she could surely find work as a dancing girl.

  “The value of coin is rising, isn’t it?”

  The girl nodded at Lawrence’s words. “But these truly are emergency supplies.”

  Lawrence briefly greeted the shopkeeper, whose head had just emerged from the doorway. “I’m sure they are,” he said.

  Only very recently, the town had been in chaos.

  Regardless of how accustomed the residents were becoming to such conditions, its effects were unmistakably lingering—especially when it came to trade.

  Just yesterday, Lawrence had been reminded of when he and Holo had first come to this town and been swept up in the fallen noblewoman and brilliant merchant Eve’s fur-trading schemes.

  The city had then decided that, in exchange for selling furs to foreign traders, they would accept only cash.

  Furs were much more profitable to sell after being processed and turned into clothing, rather than as a raw commodity. Thus, the craftsmen who made their living by the processing of fur had absolutely no desire to sell their furs to outside traders.

  But it would have been difficult for the city to outright ban the sale of furs to foreign merchants. In the worst case, there could be violent rebellion on the part of those merchants. So using the Church, they required that all business be conducted in cash. Since no one traveled long distances carrying large amounts of coin, this seemed like a splendid plan. There was no ban on sales, but there was simply nothing to purchase with.

  It was thought that this would settle everything, but the Church that handed down this decision added another condition that made things complicated.

  The Church had its own coffers, which were always full of money. And in order to solidify their power base, they sought someone through whom they could lend money to the outside. And thus did they loan a large amount of money to the foreign merchants.

  The furs were bought up by the foreign merchants, and the enraged craftsmen rioted.

  That was about the end of the story, but such disturbances always leave their claw marks behind.

  The consequences here were that, since the merchants had bought up the furs and fled, the town’s money was now concentrated in the hands of a very few.

  And whenever there was such concentration, instability came with it.

  In this case, the value of the currency shot up.

  “Since the riot, it’s like the money’s dried up from the town. There’s no money anywhere you go. It vanished like smoke. Even if you allow that many trades happen on credit, you still need small coins. We’re in real trouble,” said the barmaid, as they talked in the tavern’s cellar.

  Its walls were lined with all the things Lawrence had been unable to buy in the marketplace.

  “They say anything scarce becomes dear,” said Lawrence.

  “There’s too much cash in the hands of the fur dealers. But because coin shortage is a problem for any town, it’s not as though we can import some coppers. And now, even a dull copper is starting to look as brilliant as any gold.”

  During times of cash-only business, the clever ones would bet that the value of currency would eventually fall to its former levels, but while it was high, they would buy as many goods as they could.

  And that was why the marketplace’s condition was as strange as it was.

  “And as a tavern, you can easily avoid any accusations that you’re speculating. Very clever.”

  Lawrence wrote his prices on a wooden slate and handed it over. The barmaid wrinkled her nose and rewrote all the figures.

  “Too high,” said Lawrence.

  “Feel free to try your luck in the m
arketplace.” Constantly dealing as she did with so many drunken patrons, the girl was tougher than any grizzled merchant. Her position was strong—they had no need to sell Lawrence anything.

  “Understood. But I’ll be expecting quality.”

  “Heh. That’s a compromise I can make.”

  Given the satisfied way she looked at the slate, it was all too clear how cheaply the tavern had originally obtained the goods. There was no winning against an opponent with cunning, capital, and nerve.

  “Still, I’m a bit surprised,” said the girl.

  “Oh?”

  “That you’d come alone.”

  “I’ve come alone more times than not.”

  The girl put her index finger to her chin. “I suppose that’s true,” she murmured.

  “My companion told me not to think that a jewel can shine alone, though.”

  Hearing these words, the barmaid’s smile was as bright as any gem. “So, will the next few days be all right?”

  “Yes, if you please.”

  “And it would be best if you could take delivery in the morning, although not too early. We’re a tavern, after all.”

  The girl seemed like the sort who rose with the dawn and immediately got to work, but there was a certain charm to the idea of her lolling lazily about in bed for a while, too.

  “Understood. Not too late, not too early.”

  “Timing is of the essence, after all.”

  Lawrence mused that he had heard those words an awful lot recently, and then realized there was one more thing he had meant to ask.

  “Has the letter come yet?”

  “Speaking of timing, no, not yet. If it’s urgent, I’ll have it sent to your inn once it arrives.”

  “If you please,” said Lawrence and took his leave of the girl.

  She deliberately betrayed no particular regret at parting, not even looking at Lawrence. Instead, she vaguely waved the slate in his general direction.

  Though traveling merchants made their living amid hellos and good-byes, they could not hold a candle to those who worked in taverns. The world was a big place, and there was always a bigger fish.