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befuddled Karl stammered, “I … I have seen only men beginning for the fields. I am seeking Father Pious … m’mother is taken ill… and …”
    “Say again … any strangers?”
    “None, sire!” cried the boy. “I swear it.”
    The indignant officer thrust the boy to the ground and mounted his horse. “You had best be speaking truth. I know you … you’d be the baker’s son at Weyer, and I’ll have you beat if you be lying.”
    Karl, uninjured and wishing only to please, climbed to his feet cautiously. He called timidly after the man. “M’lord, who should I keep an eye for?”
    The soldier turned in his saddle and answered, “An abbey guard was assaulted and lies near death. We’re looking for any strangers, any at all.”
    Karl offered an agreeable nod to the departing horsemen, but his heart felt a sharp pain. This cannot be Wil’s business—nay, not Wil. What cause would he have? he wondered. A cold dread swam through the boy’s veins and he felt its chill. Oh dear God, let no guilt be on my brother.
    He pressed on to the double-floored home ahead of him. “Good,” he sighed, “there is smoke at the roof… they are about.” As he neared the wood-sided house he saw Father Pious’s housekeeper carrying eggs from the fore-yard and he called to her loudly. “Frau, Frau, I needs see the Father.”
    Startled and not pleased in the least for an unexpected daybreak guest, the indignant woman clutched her egg-laden apron with both hands and scurried through a gaggle of honking geese to the rear of the house.
    Karl, slightly annoyed at her reception, strode to the front door and knocked on it boldly. He waited respectfully and took a moment to look about the gray light of early dawn and smell the fresh morning’s air. With growing impatience he knocked harder. “Father Pious?” His pleas went unanswered and he raised his eyes to the shuttered window above him. “Father Pious, Father Pious. Please … it is Karl, Karl of Weyer… the baker’s son.”
    The shutter flew open and a bleary-eyed priest glared at the early-morning intruder.
    “Why be ye about before lauds, boy? … Ach … never y’mind, I’ll attend you forthright.”
    Karl, relieved for an answer despite its bite, waited for the wide door to open, only to be distracted by what appeared to be a fleeting figure darting near the edges of the winding road. He turned full-face toward the roadway and strained to see what was about when the door flung open behind him. Karl jumped and spun on his heels to face the bulging, red eyes of a most disgruntled and disagreeable Father Pious.
    “What on God’s blessed earth do you demand of me ‘fore lauds, Karl?” bellowed the priest.
    “I’ve urgent need of you, Father.” Karl bowed respectfully and knelt to one knee.
    “Truly? And has the hour poached thy respect, boy?” whined the churchman as he extended his arm. Karl, astonished at his indiscretion, dropped his other knee and kissed the priest’s hand.
    “Father, forgive me, please forgive me….” Had not the vexed priest dragged the boy through the doorway there is little doubt that poor Karl would have continued his repentance ’til terce!
    “Enough … I forgive thee.”
    Pious slammed the heavy door shut and ordered the young boy to stand by the cook-fire that his dour housekeeper was stoking. The priest dragged the woman by the nap of her heavy gown to the far wall and leaned close to her hardened face to instruct her in harsh tones. Karl, uncomfortable and embarrassed, used the delay to study the priest in the light now filtering through the glassed window behind him.
    Father Pious was a balded, corpulent sort caught between the vigor of a younger man and the acumen of an older one. Karl thought his face to be as white as sun-bleached flour and as round as a plough-horse rump. His puffed cheeks squeezed his eyes nearly in half, like those of an overweight boar, and his quivering jowls hung over a broad, uncompromising jaw.