Franz Troglauer asked that the bill be read to him.
The innkeeper raised her eyes from her measure. For three days, the broadsheet had been affixed above the counter—high enough to catch the daylight, low enough for any patron to scrutinize the description. It promised a reward of one hundred florins for the apprehension of a man who had just ordered a drink. Maria had known him the moment he crossed the threshold. She had gone on drying the very same glass.
“You know your letters,” he said.
It was not a question. His cloak bore the dust of the road, his boots an accumulation of old mud. Nothing in his dress marked the captain of a band; yet Maria had learned that dangerous men resemble, above all else, those who might walk into one’s home. She set down the glass and began with the magistrate’s official preamble. Troglauer listened as one listens to the price of wine: with the plain intent to haggle.
When she reached his name, he smiled.
“And do you reckon he is worth so much?”
“I do not fix the bounties.”
“You post them.”
The room held but two other customers. A merchant slept at the far end of the trestle; a stable-boy was mending a strap near the door. Maria wished the merchant would wake, then reflected it were far better he slept on. A waking man might utter some folly. A sleeping man demanded no choice of her as yet.
The Seat Against the Wall
Troglauer sat with his back to the partition. He understood that precaution as intimately as Maria knew her glassware. From there, one commanded a view of the entrance, the courtyard, and the narrow staircase mounting to the chambers. He laid down his coin before she had served him. She looked upon the pieces without touching them.
“That one is good,” said he. “You may take it.”
“I have not refused it.”
He spoke then of Mantel, where he was born, of the roads and the gaols a traveler might encounter without having advanced very far. The ease of his tone made the discourse all the more oppressive. Maria would have preferred an open threat: she would have known what to answer. Instead, he offered the small talk of an ordinary patron, leaving her the burden of remembering the rest.
Her husband, in years past, had bought a piece of cloth from a wayfarer. Some weeks later, an officer had arrived to inquire into its provenance. They had been forced to account for the bargain, recall the price, describe a face. The cut of cloth had left the house; the suspicion had lingered. Maria knew what merchandise cost when the seller vanished into thin air. She had no desire to learn the cost of a man.
“A bed?” she asked.
“Bread first.”
He was hungry. The discovery did not render him gentler, but it unsettled the tidy image the poster had provided. A description does not eat. The man, however, followed with his eyes the blade slicing the loaf, waiting for his portion to be brought. Maria felt a sudden resentment rise within her, one she had not foreseen: he might well have chosen another roof.
Articles of Sale
The stable-boy rose to go out. Troglauer turned his head.
“Where are you off to?”
“To the stable.”
“The horses can wait.”
Maria set the pitcher down between them.
“Mine cannot. They belong to guests who pay as well.”
He held her gaze for a long moment. The lad stood motionless, the strap still in his hand. At length, Troglauer returned his attention to the loaf. Maria gave an imperceptible nod; the boy slipped out. She had entrusted him with no message. She only prayed he would remain outside until the traveler had departed.
“You have authority,” said the stranger.
“In my own stables.”
He laughed, this time without mirth. Then he inquired whether the judge of Parkstein ever passed that way. The name altered the very air in the room. Maria was not ignorant of the threats laid to the fugitive’s charge; a single answer might point a trail. She replied that she kept no journal of the judge’s travels.
“Yet you keep accounts.”
“Debts.”
“A trusty memory, then.”
He drew toward him the ledger lying at the edge of the counter. Maria reached out her hand, then withdrew it. He turned the leaves, paused before a sum, and asked whether the debtor was a man of means. She answered that, had he been, she would have pocketed her money long ago. He shut the volume. For several seconds, she thought he meant to carry it off; he merely pushed it back.
The bounty remained hanging above their heads. One hundred florins would have paid for many a provision. Maria knew this with a precision that brought shame upon her. She knew, too, the frailty of her window-shutters, the dry straw in the outhouse, and the long hours her daughter spent unattended. The government promised to reward a deed; it did not promise to sleep thereafter under the roof of the one who had performed it.
A Line in the Ledger
The merchant awoke. He called for his mount, grumbled over the lost hours, and asked who the fellow seated against the wall might be. Maria answered before Troglauer could speak:
“A traveler who has finished his meal.”
The outlaw rose. He heard the permission as clearly as the dismissal. At the door, he paused to cast another glance at the broadsheet.
“You will be able to say you read it close at hand.”
He departed without taking back his change. Maria waited until the sound of his footsteps had entirely died away, then deposited the coins in a separate jar. She wished neither to misplace them nor to mingle them with the day’s receipts. This scruple afforded no protection. It served only to stave off the hour when Troglauer’s silver must buy her flour.
That night, she opened the ledger. Beneath the day’s date, she recorded his name, the repast, and the sum received. She had not gone to fetch the watch; she had provided neither horse nor intelligence. Should someone come to question her, they would find at least one entry she had not contrived after the fact.
In December of 1800, word of the capture arrived: Troglauer had been taken near Freystadt and conveyed to Amberg. Maria heard the merchant boast that he would assuredly have recognized the villain. She went about her labor. The stable-boy, who remembered the harness-strap right well, held his peace also.
The following spring brought news of the sentence, followed by the hanging on the sixth of May, 1801. The broadsheet was taken down from the wall. Maria folded it and slipped it into her ledger, at the leaf of that afternoon’s meal. Her daughter asked why she kept a piece of paper that could no longer fetch a copper.
“Because it did not tell the whole tale.”
The girl read the description, then the account, and could not perceive the difference between them. Maria made no effort to explain. The one paper stated what the state would give for the man. The other preserved what he had paid to sit beneath her roof. Between the two lay an afternoon whose terror no authority would ever repay.