“There were two, a man and a woman. The same that came.”
“Where were they bound?”
“I didn’t ask.”
“Why do you know so little?”
“Because I’m no fool.”
“It’s knowing little that makes a man a fool.”
“No, Master. Fools aren’t made, they’re born. And only a fool wants to know more than what’s needed.”
“There’s more that I need to know. Go to the Barracks and look at the trunk, then tell me what you know of it. And learn something of it, and Knipper, and the passengers, and what passes under your roof, innkeeper. It begs imagining that you know so little.”
There was no anger in what he said, or even suspicion. It was just a statement. Gustavus nodded. “Yes, Master.”
“Magistrate Caiaphas is here?”
“He is staying here.”
“Why has he come?”
“For his own reasons.”
“Why for Knipper, and not for anything else for all these years? All the years Knipper drove, he never brought Caiaphas. It was Knipper not driving that brought him. There are reasons, his own, you say. I’d like to know them. Do you know them?”
Gustavus only said, “They are his.”
“It would be worth an Inquiry to learn them,” Gottlieb answered. “Tell him I’ll see to him tomorrow, and to have his reasons ready. Tell him the questions will be harder than last time we met. You know they will be, keeper, so tell him. And the boy who drove the coach from Strasbourg?”
“He’ll be in Knipper’s room, Master. His name is Abel.”
“I’ll see to him now.”
I’d never seen Knipper’s garret at the Boot and Thorn. In it, I still didn’t see it. I saw a bed of planks with a straw pallet, and a floor of planks, and a shadow everywhere else, and a candle on a stump table. On the bed was Abel, sitting, not as hulking as Willi, but strong like any stable hand with yellow hair like straw and a block jaw and angry blue eyes like bruises, and he wasn’t glad to be wakened. But Gottlieb had no regard for the man’s sleep.
“I have questions,” he said.
“I won’t know your questions,” Abel said. Caiaphas’s speech had been jagged like broken ice, and Abel’s was jagged like gravel.
“You’ll know them. Are you from Strasbourg?”
“I know that and I am.”
“Did you know Knipper?”
“I knew him.”
“What’s the inn in Strasbourg?”
“The Broken Shield.”
“Who keeps it?”
“Dundrach’s the keeper.”
“Were you there when the coach came in? Did you unload it?”
“I unload the luggage and carry it.”
“You took down the trunk?”
“I did, and was all I did, and set it by the coach wheel.”
“Who opened it?”
“It was opened and Knipper was in it. It’s no matter who opened it.”
“Who opened it?”
“I didn’t.”
“Did Dundrach?”
“No.”
“Whose trunk was it? Which passenger?”
“None of them opened it. It was none of theirs.” Abel’s shoulders were hunched and his head tilted like he was expecting a blow, but I saw that he might be ready to give one, as well. If he were to strike Gottlieb, as Inquisitor, it wouldn’t go well for him. Gottlieb himself showed no anger, though not patience, either. But he leaned forward, closer toward Abel, held him in an unblinking gaze, and said, “Did Caiaphas open it?”
“What if he did?”
“Why him? Why was it a magistrate who opened an unclaimed trunk? It should have been the innkeeper.”
“I’m not saying he did.”
“You’ve been told not to. By whom?”
“I didn’t say anything!”
“Dundrach? Or Caiaphas himself then. What did he tell you?”
“Old Vulture? Nothing. Nothing to me.”
“Why was the driver from Basel arrested?”
“For bringing a corpse into the city.”
“Who ordered that arrest?”
“Old Vulture, and ask him why.”
In the bare candlelight, Gottlieb seemed less and drier than ever; but dead wood was harder than green. He stared at the sullen lout for minutes, longer than he’d been silent with Gustavus. Abel seemed to sense there was danger to himself.
“Vulture,” Gottlieb said. “Magistrate Caiaphas, you mean.”
“Yes, that’s him.”
“You’ll be away in the morning, to Bern.”
“I’m to Bern, then back, then to Strasbourg, and I’ll never be here again, if they whip me I’ll still never be here again.”