They kept the petty criminals as well as some real ones at a small jail outside Mainz on the Rhine. It was an old Roman fort in disrepair. Some of the fine old inner walls were tumbled, broken, had been hauled off and reused. This meant the inside was open and airy, a sort of courtyard, and a few trees grew. The criminals ate bread and gruel and died together in the courtyard. They were friends. They were often thrown in pairs into pits they’d dug side by side with wooden shovels. Outside the fort, the countryside was flat and green. The sky was mostly iron gray, sometimes pale blue with streaks of clouds left by high winds. The mules were harnessed in the courtyard too. They walked in circles at the end of long spokes from a central hub to grind the grain and to lift water from the well. The prisoners built carts to be hauled by mules. The carts were sold at good prices and sent out to haul charred beams salvaged from a governor’s house burned down, hinges and iron spikes surviving to build new cells for the prisoners. Every few months a new cell was built. The oldest prisoners drove the carts, a guard behind them. On the way, they passed the smith, who worked his metal in his yard, just off the cobbled center street, hammering shoes for the horses, pounding fleurs-de-lis on shoulder armor, pouring metal into rotten teeth when the doctor was sick or out of town.

They waved. The gate was opened and the cart reentered and the mules were stabled and the prisoners ate lunches of turnips and bread on the steps. They told the others what they’d seen.

Once the guard said to a prisoner, “Come tie my boots. My laces are out of the ribbings.”

The criminals made a line in the courtyard. A petty thief was first. He tied the boots and bowed and departed. The guard untied his boots again for the next in line, a forger, who tied the boots. The guard untied his boots again for the next man, the killer of a child. The killer tied the boots up and then it was the same for all the criminals in the line. The last man in line had stolen someone’s wife. He bent and kissed the boots when he was done with the laces.