Siegfried backs out of the doorway and shuts the door, sparing himself the undignified sight of the young woman on her knees, clinging to her father’s clothes. Through the door, he continues to hear her screaming. Her words grow more and more incoherent until they become only sobs mingled with the protestation of other voices.

“My, this is terrible,” he says to Carolus.
“Yes,” mutters the other man, visibly exhausted.
“I fear I may have made a mistake.”
“A mistake, lord steward?”
“Yes. The obvious thing to do was to kill the son and scare the family into good standing. Now there is a screaming woman I will have to deal with.”
“Why didn’t you kill him, then? The son?”
“I really did think they had silver. At any rate, it is too late now, a trouble’s been caused.”

Siegfried sighs, peers up at the cloudless sky, talks just to hear himself talking, which he prefers to the muted wailing.
“My, Lord Frederick will be displeased. What use does he have for a peasant woman who speaks no German? She can’t even work in the household. Perhaps she could as a laundress, but times have changed mightily since my mother’s days wringing her hands out with lye back when there were fewer German women here. By my reckoning, the corpse of the brother would have been worth more than the sister alive, for at least it would’ve come with a promise of better labor. And we need peas for pottage in winter.”
“So what shall we do now, sir?” Asks Berard impatiently.
“What choice do we have? Ready the girl,” Siegfried tells him. “Bind her if you have to. You too, Carolus. I’ll wait with the horses. My, am I going to get an earful!”