It is said that the farther away one goes from the bustle, the more potent the water becomes and the higher the quality of bathhouse.
That was because digging for water was hard enough as it was, and erecting a building afterward was also quite the hassle, so without enough funds, one could not even manage opening a business.
Therefore, it was without a doubt that this place, which could only be reached by entering the woods and at the top of a steep hill, was being supported by quite a lot of money.
The building itself felt simple, but I could tell it was bustling on the inside.
Like a re-creation of the scene at the port, there was cargo piled here and there.
I spotted the wheat, fish, and cured meat right away. Sausages stuffed to the point of bursting were literally overflowing from their crates. There was a row of earthenware jugs common in the south that must have contained olive oil. It had most likely been a special request by one of the terribly selfish southern priests or nobility, but when I thought about how much time and money it would take to bring it here, I could not help but shake my head. Though I could not see inside the other crates, their containers were well-made, so they were likely various high-quality, luxury goods.
And there was branding on this cargo as well.
The design was easily recognizable from a distance and even hung from the bathhouse eaves: the image of a howling wolf.
It was the sign for the bathhouse Spice and Wolf.
“Oh no! Why doesn’t it add up?!”
Suddenly, as I wondered if that was a loud voice I heard coming from behind the cargo, a small head popped up. There was a child with a strangely colored hair that resembled flecks of silver mixed in with ash.
“Hey, Brother! Something’s definitely wrong!”
Rather than a servant, this was the child of the bathhouse master. Her hair was rather long, indicating that she was his daughter. Waving about the slate she held in her hand, she turned to face the bathhouse entrance and hollered. Just as I furrowed my brow, thinking it unbecoming of a young lady to speak in such a loud voice, I saw her grab something from a cloth bag nearby and stuff it into her mouth. What a tomboy she seemed to be.
“I counted it over and over, but there’s not enough wheat! And I think there’s some rye mixed in here, too! I told you they can’t be trusted!”
Though she was still small, I was impressed by how good her judgment was.
Once ground up, it was hard to tell flours apart. Even more so once they had been mixed.
Even once kneaded with water, no one besides a baking artisan would notice until it was too late.
As I considered this, there came another voice.
“What is this ruckus? How noisy you are.”
Appearing from inside was another girl, a perfect match for the first one.
A cloth was wrapped loosely around her head, flaxen-colored hair peeking out from under it, and she was slightly taller.
I wondered if she might be her twin sister, but this girl had a peculiar presence about her.
“This isn’t all the flour we need, and I think some of it’s mixed up. Also, where’s Brother?”
“Little Col was invited to the baths by those geezers. But mixed together, hmm?”
The silver-haired girl modestly stepped out of the way of the flaxen-haired girl, giving her space.
The latter brought her nose closer to the sack of flour.
“Hmm. Regardless, ’tis likely we do not have enough due to how chaotic the port is. Not much we can do in this season.”
“Should I go check?”
The silver-haired girl asked, but the other quickly smacked her on the head.
“Fool. Are you going to play?”
“N-no…”
“There are plenty of idlers in the house. Have someone bring this in and have them go check while they can.”
“Awww…Can I go with them?”
When the silver-haired girl spoke, the flaxen-haired one fixed upon her an icy gaze, and she recoiled, like an ermine discovered by a fox.
“And who is this?”
From beyond the large number of crates, the flaxen-haired girl motioned to me.
It seems they had finally noticed me.
“Huh, I wonder. I dunno.”
“You little fool…”
The silver-haired girl seemed dissatisfied at the exasperated tone directed toward her, but she shrank back when glared at.
It was rather clear who was superior in this situation, so though they seemed quite alike, they were perhaps sisters separated in age. The one I presumed to be the older sister spoke in a rather old-fashioned manner, so perhaps she had been sent here from a faraway land to wed or had learned to speak from an older person.
That was what I imagined, but it was not consistent with my guess that she was the other girl’s sister. It was unusual for a groom to bring both sisters into his home.
In terms of my work, things that did not logically add up strangely caught my attention.
As I thought about it, the older girl called over the cargo to me.
“And who are you? Perfect timing if you are here for mendicancy. There are plenty of that sort in the baths.”
The way she said “mendicancy” was muddled, and it was oddly endearing. What a strange girl she was.
For the moment, I straightened myself and began to speak.
“My name is Gran Salgado. I came here on the introduction of Abbot Bauha, who is staying here now. Perhaps you have heard already that I will be staying with you this winter?”
Despite my announcement, the girl’s reaction was not very pleasant. She did not even bother to hide her suspicious gaze.
It was perhaps due to how I was dressed. I wore layers of long robes, the hems completely frayed away, and hanging around my neck was a string of bunched garlic for use as both preserved food and bug repellant for sleeping outdoors. My walking stick was about my height, one I found on the road, and it had been a great help keeping away stray dogs and measuring the depth of mud and even drying my linens. My beard had not been shaved for a while in order to keep me warm.
Due to my state, I was painted black with dirt, from my fingernails to the crevices of my wrinkles.
Of course, I might be seen as a beggar.
She had mentioned mendicancy likely because it was impossible to live as a beggar deep in these cold mountains.
“Hmm…Well, I suppose there are many sorts of guests.”
“If you do not have a room, I do not mind sleeping in the shed.”
“No need. Perhaps I should say…I worry about something else.”
“Something else?” I asked in return, and it came to me. “Pardon me. If you are worried about fleas and lice, then I shall go cleanse myself in the river.”
This bathhouse was a gathering spot for those of a certain degree of wealth. It was not cheap roadside lodging.
“That as well, but actually…”
She sniffed lightly, then grinned.
“I am surprised to see you might be a genuine article. Despite your dress, you smell of nothing. Perhaps you are the type to prefer beans and water over meat and alcohol? This is not a hermitage in the wilderness.”
“Ah, I see.”
I gave a slight chuckle for the first time in months.
“Asceticism is meant for us to regulate ourselves, not an excuse to force beans and water on others. And God allows the occasional break.”
“I should hope so. Myuri.” The flaxen-haired girl spoke, and the girl with silver hair stood up straight. “Bring this man to the baths and prepare the grooming razor and soaps and such. I shall put the cargo away.”
“Aww, no fair! Mother, are you going to snack in secret from Father?”
The girl named Myuri called the other one Mother.
I had not even imagined it, but once she mentioned it, they no longer felt to me like sisters but mother and daughter.
What surprised me the most was how young the mother was.
“You fool. I shall be doing no such thing.”
“You definitely will! There’s a pot of sugar here! That’s not fair! I want a taste, too!”
As they interacted, they still did really seem like sisters.
At any rate, watching them brought a smile to my face.
Either would be spectacular if they served as the face for the bathhouse.
“Now then, what is it I should do?”
I posed the question with a bit of a strained smile, to which the mother smacked her daughter’s head, and the daughter glumly showed me inside.
The choir sang and the dancers swayed in time to the musicians’ performance. There were those entranced by their performance, those engrossed in conversation with wine in one hand, and—oh God, those concentrating on games of cards and dice.
Perhaps they had either come here after a long journey, or they were used to it back in their homelands from working in relief for the poor or taking in wandering monks. But not a single person paid me any mind when I entered the bath in my tattered state.
I shaved my beard, cut my hair, and washed my body with the items provided by the bathhouse. Abbot Bauha noticed me as I was doing so, and I quickly grew familiar with a few others by his introduction.
It seemed the abbot and the others would be staying here until sunset, but I had things I needed to take a look at. I left the spring, wore the clothes borrowed from the bathhouse, and returned to the main building. It was a comfortable outfit made of linen, accompanied by a coat stuffed with plenty of wool to keep me warm.
It was so warm it almost made me dizzy, so I wandered about searching for my own usual clothes, and there I spotted that girl with the flaxen hair…though I was unsure if I should even call her a girl.
Beside her was an older man in his prime, and they sat rather intimately together.
I felt bad for interrupting such an affectionate atmosphere and hesitated if I should call out to them, but the girl soon noticed me.
“My, how handsome,” she said delightfully and cackled.
“Thanks to you, I feel refreshed.”
I gave my thanks, and after a brief smile, she winked at the man beside her.
“’Tis the guest who arrived earlier. How dirty he was, so I had him bathe first.”
She spoke without hesitation, yet it suited the air around her quite well.
But the man beside her smiled in embarrassment and admonished the girl.
“Pardon my wife. I’m the master, Kraft Lawrence.”
He gave his name, approached me, and offered his hands. Considering how he called her his wife, then that silver-haired girl must, in fact, be the flaxen-haired girl’s daughter.
There were perpetually young women among those who lived in the silence of contemplation and prayer, but this was unusual even among them.
I recalled the rumor of a business that thrived using magic.
The image of a witch who never aged crossed my mind.
“My name is Gran Salgado. I have come on the introduction of Abbot Bauha. I have heard that this land is the closest to the seat of God in all the world.”
“I pray every day that he is close, and not because he is here to scold us,” Lawrence, the master, said, smiling quietly.
As I was scrubbing the dirt from myself earlier, I listened in on the conversations of the bathing guests and managed to grasp that Lawrence was once a traveling merchant. I had the feeling that even if he had a tail, he would not be someone so easily caught.
“By the way, where might my luggage and clothes be? This set I have borrowed is a bit too warm for me.”
“I have taken your luggage to your room. Your clothes are being washed. Had I left them in your room they would have become bugs’ nests.”
“Hey now, Holo.”
It sounded like the name of the wife was Holo. It was an unusual name, but I felt like I had heard it somewhere before.
As I pondered, wondering if it had anything to do with heretical festivals, I felt the master’s gaze on me and I returned to my senses.
“Please excuse her. She is just so foulmouthed.”
“Oh no, I apologize for arriving in such a state. Abbot Bauha scolds me for it occasionally. I am not a hermit, simply indolent, which embarrasses me greatly.”
There were times I had, in fact, been mistaken for a heretic while scouting for heresy.
The virtues expressed in the scripture were obedience, chastity, and asceticism—it did not say it was okay to be dirty.
“But I see…If you are washing my clothes, then…”
“Why don’t you rest a while in your room? You must be tired from your long journey.”
“I appreciate the consideration. But despite my age, I have been excited ever since arriving. As I’m wearing such warm clothes, I thought perhaps I should take a walk around the village. If possible, I will also make my way toward the port. I heard earlier that there was some sort of problem with the cargo.”
The master, Lawrence, looked slightly surprised and turned to Holo beside him.
“Myuri was making quite a fuss that not all crates were there, that there was not enough wheat.”
“Is that so? Hmm…that was the new miller who came to the village to sell…I guess because it was so cheap…Oh, but we couldn’t allow a guest to do such a thing.”
“I am a naturally restless person, and I would enjoy wandering around a lively place rather than sit still before the fire.”
Lawrence looked at me apologetically, then smiled, as though changing his mind.
“Very well, then I would be truly grateful if you did. Actually, we had our hands full putting away the cargo that was delivered to us. Various foods would go bad if they got snowed on.”
“Leave it to me.”
The baths were full of guests, and a little ways down the hallway, I could hear pleasant chatter.
There must have been a fireplace there, with guests lazing around it. It cost quite a bit of money to stay in a bathhouse for a whole winter, which meant that there had to be plenty of guests who could pay that much.
I might learn the secret as to why this bathhouse flourished as it did as I asked around at the port for their cargo.
If they were using magic, then there might be rumors of them ordering suspicious goods.
And I also wondered about the youth of the bathhouse master’s wife, Holo.
“Well then, I will be off now,” I said in God’s name, beaming.
I understood how heading into the center of the village from a secluded bathhouse felt like ascending into the mortal world. The nobility paid large sums of money to stay in secluded locations for this feeling.
As I gazed at the hustle and bustle, keeping an eye out for any wanted enemies of God lurking about, I headed toward the port, and there was a commotion even greater than the one before.
“There isn’t enough!”
“This isn’t what we ordered!”
“What the hell is going on?!”
“Hey, someone send a boat and a messenger to Atiph!”
Several well-dressed men were making a ruckus.
All the cargo stacked there had been opened, their contents inspected.
From afar, it all looked to be flour.
“This is terrible! Or were they being clumsy when they stacked the crates?!”
One man turned his gaze to another dressed as a sailor. Many sailors were superstitious and gutsy, so of course this one could not sit still before such an enraged crowd.
“N-nonsense! You know how long I’ve been doing this work!”
“Urgh…Well, you’re right, you’re right…Sorry for doubting you.”
It seemed the men gathered here were all bathhouse masters.
I got an idea of what they were arguing about.
“Pardon me.”
I called out to them, and they all glared back.
“What? We’re busy now. Leave it for later.”
Perhaps due to the way I was dressed I loo
ked like an outsider, a staying guest, so they swatted me away like a fly.
However, I had a good reason to be here.
“I was asked to run an errand by the master of bathhouse Spice and Wolf, Mr. Lawrence. They received less flour than they had ordered, so I thought I might see if some of it was left here by chance.”
When I announced this, the men all looked up at the sky in exasperation.
“Damn, that makes all of us!”
It seemed all the village’s bathhouses ordered the same thing and had been swindled by a rotten miller.
“Argh, nothing’s gonna get done at this rate! We’ll get some horses and go off to buy the flour ourselves, assembly regulations be damned!”
A plump middle-aged man took off his hat and scrunched it up as he shouted.
The others reacted in shock.
“Come on, Mr. Morris, that’s no good. It’s a village rule.”
“That’s right! And my head hurts, too!”
Nyohhira was a village deep in the mountains, and the coming winter would bring deep snow. All their wheat must be imported. If they allowed one bathhouse to forestall the others, I easily imagined how quickly things would escalate into an all-out buying war. Especially since, if outside merchants caught a whiff of internal conflict, I could see them selling to the village at a high price.
It seemed Morris was already aware of this. He was especially well-dressed, so he must have had the funds of a higher-class bathhouse, even within Nyohhira.
As I pondered, Morris kept rattling on.
“I’m not upset because there’s just a little missing! After adding water and kneading it, I saw what I thought was wheat was actually all oats! I’d be ruined if I served that to my guests!”
Morris waved about the arm that was gripping the hat as he yelled.
There were several grades of bread: wheat, the highest; then wheat mixed with rye; followed by wheat mixed with chestnut or bean flour; then rye, bitter and dark; then rye mixed with chestnut or bean flour; and so on and so forth. Oat bread was the lowest of the low in this classification. Rather, since it did not rise very well, it was not something one could even call bread. It was typically eaten as a porridge, which was often distributed to the poor.
It was nothing more than horse feed in a flourishing land.
Spring Log III Page 4
