"Question?" she said. "You come from Herr Knupf? I'm an old woman but I do no wrong, and there is no one can accuse me of heresy. I am in church every week, and more than once; I keep peace with my neighbors and there's none can say a mystery about me—"
The woman, Jonas thought, was full to the eyebrows with words. Probably, he told himself, trying to be fair, she didn't have anyone to talk to, until a stranger came along.
He sighed briefly. "I do not come from the Inquisitor," he said truthfully, "nor is my question one that should cause you alarm."
The old woman pondered for a minute. She leaned her elbows on the window sill, getting them muddy. But that, Jonas thought, didn't seem to matter to this creature, apparently.
"Ask," she said at last.
Jonas put on his most pleasant expression. "Madam," he said, "I wish to know if there be any family in this town to give room to a wayfarer—understanding, of course, that the wayfarer would insist on paying. Paying well," he added.
The old woman blinked. "You looking for an inn?" she said. "An inn in this town?" The idea appeared to strike her as the very height of idiocy. She covered her face with her hands and shook. After a second Jonas discovered that she was laughing. He waited patiently until the fit had left her.
"Not an inn," he said. "There is no inn here, I know. But a family willing to take in a stranger—"
"Strangers are seldom here," she said. "Herr Knupf watches his flock with zeal."
Which meant, Jonas reflected, that he was in a fair way to get himself burned as a heretic unless he watched his step carefully. "Herr Knupf's fame has reached my own country, far away," he said with some truth. "Nevertheless, a family which—"