Siegfried throws open the shutters and the glassless windows reveal the innards of the house. It is a large house, made from strong half-timbering with a tall, thatched roof supported by heavy beams. The walls are limed to catch brightness; the floors lined with rushes to keep in the heat. On one wall are the two windows, on its opposite, the stone hearth.

Siegfried earned this house, and he takes great pride in it. It cannot be helped that he indulges in the luxuries reserved only for the highest members of the lord’s household: a large, canopied bed and two down-stuffed pillows, a table for four, a workspace for cooking, a shelf stacked with a fine set of wooden bowls and plates, two silver goblets, a chest for his clothes, various blankets and coverlets embroidered with silk, and a psalter.

When dawn alights the room, Siegfried senses the rightness of things. He dresses: braies, hose, shirt, surcoat, velvet mantle, belt, leather shoes. He polishes his longsword from tip to ruby-studded pommel, says a quick, superstitious prayer warding off its use, disguising his words in complaint.