The Skin Map by Stephen R. Lawhead Page B

disparaging look and answered in her own language. “Are you blind, girl?”
    The surly response knocked Wilhelmina back a step, but it made her more determined. “Please,” she said, “it is just that we are looking for a place to open a bakery.”
    “You can have this one,” the woman told her, “if you can hold your water until we’ve gone. And good luck to you.”
    “Now, Ivanka, there’s no cause to be rude,” said the man in the wagon, pausing to wipe his face with a dirty rag. “It is not her fault.” The woman lifted her lip at him, turned without another word, and went back inside. To Wilhelmina, he said, “Landlord is inside. You talk to him, good woman, and find out all you wish to know.”
    Without consulting Englebert, she stooped to enter the shop, which was almost empty save for two more rugs and a few wooden boxes. A long-faced, sallow man with a neatly trimmed goatee beard that only served to accentuate his already elongated face was standing at a wooden counter writing in a tiny book with a quill pen. Like so many of the men Wilhelmina had seen, he wore a long black coat and a white shirt with an odd little white starched neck ruff; his head was enveloped in a large bag hat of green silk with the flourish of a white feather sweeping out to one side. “Yes?” he said without looking up. “What is it?”
    Wilhelmina tried to think how best to phrase her request, and wondered if he, too, would understand her German.
    “Well? Speak up, man! I am very busy.”
    “Sir,” said Mina, “are you the landlord?”
    “Yes, of course.” He glanced around at her without moving his head more than necessary. “Who else should I be?”
    “I am certain I don’t know,” answered Mina. “Is this shop for rent?”
    “Why? Do you want it?”
    “Yes,” replied Mina rashly.
    “Sixty Guldiners .”
    “Pardon?”
    “Sixty Guldiners —for six months.” He returned to his little book. “Away with you. Come back with your father.”
    “We will give you fifty,” she said, “for a year.”
    “Get out!” said the man. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. Get out of my shop—and do not come back.”
    “Wilhelmina,” called Englebert from the door. “What are you doing? Come away.”
    Reluctantly, she rejoined Englebert on the street outside. “He wants sixty Guldiners ,” she told him, “for six months.”
    “That is too much,” said Englebert. “For a place like this”—he wrinkled his nose—“it is too much.”
    “I agree.” She frowned. “What is a Guldiner anyway?”
    Etzel gave her a curious look. “Do they not have such as this where you come from?”
    “They have similar,” she allowed. “But not Guldiners . What is it?”
    He lifted the hem of his coat and, after a moment’s fuss, brought out a small leather pouch. He untied it and reached inside. “This is a Groschen ,” he said, producing a small silver coin. “It is worth six Kreuzer .”
    “I see,” replied Mina, repeating the formula to herself. “One Groschen equals six Kreuzer .”
    “There’s more,” he said. “Ten Groschen make a Guldengroschen —or Guldiner , as we say.” He fished inside the pouch and brought out a larger silver coin. “This is a Guldiner —very good.”
    Mina nodded. “Ten Groschen make up a Guldiner . Got it. Are there any more?”
    “There is a new one called a Thaler —this is also very good, though you may not see so many of them. They are worth twenty-four Groschen .”
    “So, Thalers are even better,” observed Mina. She plucked the silver guldiner from between Englebert’s thumb and forefinger.
    The departing woman reappeared with another rolled-up rug under her arm. “How much?” she asked as she passed. To Mina’s puzzled look, she jerked her head towards the shop door and said, “Him inside—how much did he demand?”
    “Sixty Guldiners ,” replied Etzel.
    “The greedy miser,” scoffed the woman, handing up the rug to her husband in the wagon.