Episode 4: “Waiting Forever for Guests Who Said They’d Pay Later, I Lost the Firewood for Winter”
Half the guests hadn’t paid on the day they stayed.
The night before, with dry straw and a clean water trough, the driver had stayed until his second night. If the inn took care of the horses, guests stayed longer. But that didn’t mean the money stayed with them.
I set the old ledger on the desk. It wasn’t a page from after we rebuilt the inn, but a record of credit stretching back to when Maren’s husband was still alive.
“Are we still waiting on all of these?”
“They said they’d pay.”
“When?”
“Next time they come by.”
The day they’d come next wasn’t written in the ledger.
The inn charged one denari for one night’s stay. A horse cost ten denari per night. Looking at each small debt by itself, the trouble of going after it seemed greater than the amount owed.
But small amounts didn’t disappear. They piled up until there wasn’t enough to buy firewood when the time came.
The inn’s money didn’t just move in large amounts, like horse fees. Half a denari for a meal. Half a denari for a room. One denari to leave a wagon on the property. If small amounts leaked out every day, there’d be no fire in the kitchen on a winter morning.
“Couldn’t your husband refuse to extend credit?”
“I don’t think he did.”
“He didn’t want to lose people’s trust.”
“If protecting that trust makes the inn disappear, there’s no point.”
Maren held down the corner of the ledger. Until now, she hadn’t separated the guests who made promises from the guests who left a record behind.
If we were going to wait, we had to decide how long. If they were going to repay us, we had to decide how.
I placed a finger on the credit page.
“We’ll count everything today.”
Maren’s face clouded.
“Won’t that make people angry?”
“To keep them from getting angry, we’ll show them only the amount and the date. If they can’t pay, we’ll change it into something they can pay.”
“And what about the people who still won’t pay?”
“We’ll decide in advance the next time they stay here.”
If we left credit as an act of goodwill, winter would finish off the inn first.
When I turned the page, thin lines of writing filled it.
One denari for a room. Half a denari for a meal. Water for a horse. The charge for leaving a wagon overnight. Each entry was small.
Together, they came to forty-eight denari.
“Forty-eight denari.”
Maren counted it again under her breath.
“That’s almost half of the money we took in cash.”
“There were separate records, so it was invisible.”
I marked the unpaid entries. Twelve of them. Four debts of two denari, four of three denari, two of five denari, and two of six denari.
The numbers added up to forty-eight.
Once everything was on a single page, we could see who had left how much unpaid. Just seeing it changed the order in which we should pursue them.
“Do we really not need to write down their names?”
“If you remember their faces, that’s enough. What matters isn’t who’s at fault, but how much they’ll repay and when.”
That afternoon, I stopped one of the travelers passing along the highway. He was a man who’d eaten at the inn long ago and said he’d pay us next time.
“You have a debt of two denari.”
The man searched his pockets. He had only one copper coin.
“I’ve got one today. I’ll pay the rest next time.”
“Then we’ll write down the day you’ll come next. If you can’t make it, you’ll leave one coin when you leave your wagon here.”
The man stamped a wooden tally.
The one denari I received was small. But for the first time, a line had been drawn across a page that had held nothing but blanks.
Maren kept looking at that line.
“Before, it ended with them simply saying they’d pay.”
“We’ll turn words into amounts and dates.”
By evening, we’d visited three people. We collected seven denari in cash, and made agreements with two others to pay one denari each time they stayed at the inn.
A promise wasn’t cash. Even so, having a promise in a defined form was better than having no path back at all.
I divided the forty-eight denari in credit into three groups.
What could be paid immediately. What could be paid the next time they stayed. What they couldn’t pay right now.
The first group came to seven denari. The second came to twenty-one. The last came to twenty.
If we pursued everything the same way, the inn would lose all its time. If we waited without deciding anything, everything would vanish.
“What if we have the twenty denari they can’t pay right now repaid in firewood?” Maren suggested.
“If the guest has firewood, we can accept it. If they don’t, one denari the next time is fine.”
One bundle of firewood was worth one denari. Twenty bundles would keep the kitchen warm in the morning and the guest rooms warm at night through winter.
I wrote the methods of repayment in the ledger as well.
One denari in cash. One bundle of firewood for one denari. One meal was worth half a denari. As long as the value was the same, we could count it even if the form was different.
There was no need for technical terms. All we needed was what had been paid and what remained.
The next morning, a wagon loaded with firewood arrived at the inn.
It was the family of a guest who’d said he couldn’t pay yet. They unloaded ten bundles of firewood along with a wooden tally.
“We’ll pay the remaining ten denari by spring.”
“Instead of waiting until spring, we’ll leave the next promised date on the wooden tally.”
Maren counted the ten bundles.
Firewood was heavy. That made it difficult to fudge the amount.
That evening, another five denari came in as cash. The total returned was twelve denari. The remaining thirty-six denari now had repayment dates and forms attached to them.
I wrote on the edge of the ledger that we needed twenty bundles of firewood before winter.
“Twelve denari came back. If we get another eight, we can buy the firewood.”
“Are you going to wait for the money to come back before buying it?”
“Winter won’t wait for us.”
Collecting the debts and preparing for winter were on the same page.
Maren looked at the empty firewood rack.
From that day forward, we put up a small sign in front of the inn.
Before guests stayed, we confirmed the room charge, meal charge, and horse charge together. If they wanted to pay later, we left the date and amount on a wooden tally.
It wasn’t a sign accusing guests of being untrustworthy. It was a sign to keep the inn from forgetting.
The next guest said he wanted to pay later for half a denari for the room and half a denari for a meal.
Maren didn’t turn him down right away.
“When will you come next?”
“In ten days.”
“And if you can’t make it?”
“I’ll leave my wagon.”
“Then you’ll pay for two visits the night you leave your wagon.”
The guest nodded and stamped the wooden tally.
That night, another guest put down three denari in advance. Little by little, the habit of deciding the amount before creating a debt began to spread.
I counted the money that had come back while looking over the ledger.
Twelve denari in cash. Ten denari’s worth of firewood—ten bundles. Twenty-two denari in total.
Of the forty-eight denari in credit we’d had until the day before, twenty-two had returned to the inn’s hands.
The remaining twenty-six denari had become wooden tallies marked with dates. It wasn’t cash yet, but we knew where it had gone.
Maren called over the town’s firewood seller.
“Can you sell us twenty bundles today?”
“One denari a bundle.”
“Twenty denari.”
I combined the twelve denari in cash we’d recovered with the money remaining from the night before. Even after paying twenty denari, we’d have enough left for meals and oats.
We carried the firewood one bundle at a time to the dry area behind the inn.
Tina counted them.
“One, two, three… twenty.”
The stacked firewood was still a small pile.
Even so, it would keep one winter morning bright.
Maren hung the wooden tally from a post by the firewood rack. The repayment date, the date received, and the remaining amount. All three were visible.
“It wasn’t that I forgot about the debts. I just kept myself from looking because I thought they’d come back.”
“If you look at them, you can decide how they’ll be repaid.”
Next to the ten bundles received, the wooden tally by the firewood rack said that ten denari remained. The firewood hadn’t turned into money. Only the form of payment had changed.
If it was something the inn could use, we could assign it a value and accept it. Half a denari for a meal, one denari for a bundle of firewood. Disputes arose later because the value of goods hadn’t been made clear.
I checked the wooden tallies one by one. Anything without a repayment date wouldn’t be left blank.
“This guest gets until the next full moon.”
“And if they don’t come?”
“One bundle of firewood. If they don’t have firewood either, the next stay has to be paid in advance.”
For the first time, Maren stated the conditions herself.
Outside, firewood thudded as it was stacked.
The forty-eight denari in credit had shrunk to twenty-six. We had twenty bundles of firewood for winter.
The inn now had returned money and burnable wood lined up inside it.
That night, the blank spaces on the credit page increased.
They hadn’t vanished. We’d simply written down the repayment dates and remaining amounts.
Whenever a guest said they’d pay “later,” Maren began reaching for a wooden tally.
The twenty bundles of firewood for winter were stacked in the dry area behind the inn. Instead of waiting for money, we’d turned it into something we needed.
The next thing threatening the inn would be the cargo guests left in our care.
If cargo went missing, the inn wouldn’t just have to repay its value. We’d have to replace what was inside, too.
The remaining debt was twenty-six denari. It hadn’t disappeared yet, but we could see when it would come back.
We carried the twenty bundles of firewood behind the inn and stacked them somewhere the rain couldn’t reach. Wood that could be counted one piece at a time was more dependable than a vague promise.
The next morning, Maren confirmed the amounts with the guests before anything else.
“The room is half a denari. The meal is half a denari. If you’re paying later, we’ll leave today’s date on a wooden tally.”
The guest nodded and set down one copper coin.
For the inn, that single coin marked the beginning of a new habit.
The next thing we needed to examine was the cargo guests left with us.
Even if the cargo got wet or the box broke, we couldn’t claim it had happened outside the inn. From the moment we accepted it, it became something the inn was responsible for protecting.
Maren lifted one of the boxes sitting in the corner of a guest room. The clasp on the lid had come loose, and a bit of cloth poked out.
“Whose cargo is this?”
“It belongs to tonight’s guest. Once we accept it, we need to decide where it goes.”
“I used to just put things wherever there was room.”
“A place with room isn’t necessarily a place we’re protecting.”
I made sure the box wasn’t beneath a leaking section of roof. I moved it a little farther from the floor, too. If it got wet, the contents would be damaged. If it was stolen, we’d have to compensate the owner.
The next gap was the place where we kept guests’ cargo itself.
I looked at the box sitting beneath the eaves where the rain could reach it.