"Can you not?" cried Schouts. "Look you, Deacon Cochlaeus! If this man goes out of my hands, whether to his friends or to his foes, he will not go until I see a thousand crowns of gold on this table. Now you have my answer. I won't take nine hundred and ninety-nine. It shall be a thousand; and when you have brought me that many you may do as you please with him, for then he is yours, body and soul."
The robber had stood up, and, pushing back his chair, so that it fell to the floor with a noisy clatter, he went to the hearth, and, having kicked the logs together with his boot, stood with his back to the fire and looked to see how this emissary of the Inquisition received his ultimatum.
"Say seven hundred and fifty, my lord," exclaimed Cochlaeus, now standing. "A thousand crowns is such an enormous sum for a penniless man."
"'Tis William Tyndale's price, whether he is penniless or rolls in wealth," came the dogged answer. "And, as I said, I won't take a golden crown less, not even nine hundred and ninety-nine."
Cochlaeus paced the floor to and fro, his feet treading on some magnificent carpets which must have come from Turkish looms. He had no thought for all the luxury that was round him—the spoils of many a piracy. His thoughts were on the man for whose purchase he was bargaining, whom he longed to see crouching in one of the dungeons of the Inquisition, presently to be bound on the wheel and broken, or put to some other torture, and, if he had his own way, burnt in the open market-place of the city which he had dared to pollute with his shameless sheets!
But the price! This robber lord had the audacity to ask a thousand golden crowns, and as he had already protested, the sum was preposterous. Yet, before he came away to hunt down the arch-heretic, who was dealing such deadly blows at Mother Church, and spreading far and wide his pestiferous books, his fellow-Inquisitors had told him that a thousand, or even two thousand, golden crowns would not be too much if it would bring Tyndale into their power. They would be able to silence him for ever, and he would not then seduce the people to heresy.
Schouts stood with his back to the blazing logs, and watched the Churchman with a sinister look on his face, as he moved backwards and forwards, debating this question of payment to the bandit lord. As for the lord of the castle, he was smiling to himself, although his face was stern, to think that he was wringing out a thousand golden crowns from a Church for which, in his godless way, he had the most profound contempt.
"Well, Deacon, what decision?" he asked abruptly, when Cochlaeus seemed no nearer to it.
"I cannot decide," the Churchman protested. "The terms are so exorbitant. Who ever heard of such a sum—a thousand crowns—for one of Tyndale's stamp?"
Schouts laughed.