“My, my, my,” he drawls in German, “I am sure the whole of Pettau for years has longed to levy such an insult upon me. Indeed, I think it would displease a great many men were they to learn that only this fleshy, stupid peasant woman has the gall to do it.”

Siegfried gathers the spit on his thumb, ponders it for a moment. He alights on an idea.
“Luckily I am of a merciful sort. My mother raised me in Christ, to believe in forgiveness. In exchange for this wrongdoing against me, I offer this silly girl not my wrath but my most sincere blessing.” He crouches back down and locks eyes with Petra again, the corners of his lips curling with a comedic malice as he smears the spit in the sign of the cross on her forehead, intoning in his best Ash Wednesday voice, “In Nominae Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti, Amen…”

Before Siegfried even finishes, the two men in his company burst into shocked guffaws. They laugh as though if they do so hard enough God will look down on them and know it was only a joke. Siegfried joins them, proud of his own cleverness, his inversion of the situation. Yet with one eye he watches as Petra visibly quivers with rage and his keen ears pick up her mumble of “To Hell you’ll go, filthy bastard steward, to Hell…”
His smile vanishes.