When he reaches the castle gate, Siegfried is let in on first sight by the man standing guard.
“Lovely morning for you, Siegfried,” the guard says through his helmet, but Siegfried does not smile. He dislikes it when other people make his jokes for him.
The castle meets the top of the hill at an oblique angle. A row of small arched windows appear in the deep-set stone at regular intervals. Sometimes the cheeky masons reused scraps from the Roman ruins, embedded them in the walls, little faces and ornamented jokes, worn down through the years by rain and wind. It is impossible to see all of the castle in one glance. Siegfried walks past the entrance in favor of the stables, where a trio of men are waiting for him, accompanied by two young squires.

“My, am I here late?” Aaks Siegfried, noticing that two of the men are already armed, chainmail shimmering in the ever-emerging light. The third man is the aging marshal Ermenrich in plainclothes, a characteristic scowl on his bearded face.

“We’ve just come off night duty,” says the first of the two armed men.
Siegfried knows them vaguely. They are village men, little better than peasants with swords. The taller, more slender one is Berard, the shorter, more corpulent, Carolus. Siegfried frowns. “Won’t you be tired, then?”
The marshal speaks on behalf of his charges.
“Let them be a little tired. Three households -- it shan’t be a long day, Siegfried?”

Siegfried appears indecisive. “But there could be difficulties.”
“I should like to know them. Did you not say after Mass that two of the three will pay up?”
“Yes, but the third…”
“Who is the third?”
“The pea farmer.”
“Ah, the pea farmer. Is he not a member of your people, Siegfried? You will make short work of him, too.”

Siegfried ignores the slight. “You think that, marshal, but I know they shan’t pay.”
“They always pay.”
“Again, you would think that, but the situation is, to put it mildly, dire. Your boys may very well have to work rather than merely accompany my little jaunt.”
The two men look disappointingly at one another.
“What do you mean dire?” asks Ermenrich.

“The family has nothing. The crop is nonexistent. The son has been rendered by the bottle an invalid, the mother is bedridden, the father destitute. Only the daughter and father work, but even so, all they have goes to themselves for survival. Last year the mother gave us her only good dress, her very last possession. There is no dowry of which to speak for the daughter. The house itself is in shambles. What shall I do, marshal, with people like that?”
“Teach them a lesson,” answers the marshal with some obduracy.
“It would only be a favor to them,” says Siegfried, shaking his head. He turns to the squires.
“Now then,” he beckons softly, and they fetch him his armor.