“And for the bigger work?”
“Alack, that does not come so often, but it’s eight dollars for cutting off a man’s head, that is with an axe: with a sword it’s ten, but that may not occur once in seven years. Hanging is fourteen rix-dollars, ten for the job itself and four for taking the body down from the gallows. Breaking on the wheel is seven dollars, that is for a whole body, but I must find the stake and put it up too. And now, is there anything more? Ay, crushing arms and legs according to the new German fashion and breaking on the wheel, that’s fourteen—that’s fourteen, and for quartering and breaking on the wheel I get twelve, and then there’s pinching with red-hot pincers, that’s two dollars for every pinch, and that’s all; there’s nothing more except such extras as may come up.”
“It can’t be very hard to learn, is it?”
“The business? Well, any one can do it, but how—that’s another matter. There’s a certain knack about it that one gets with practice, just like any other handicraft. There’s whipping at the post, that’s not so easy, if ’tis to be done right,—three flicks with each whip, quick and light like waving a bit of cloth, and yet biting the flesh with due chastisement, as the rigor of the law and the betterment of the sinner require.”
“I think I might do it,” said Jens, sighing as he spoke.
“Here’s the earnest-penny,” tempted the man at the folding-table, putting a few bright silver coins out before him.
“Think well!” begged Sören.
“Think and starve, wait and freeze—that’s two pair of birds that are well mated,” answered Jens, rising. “Farewell as an honest and true guild-man,” he went on, giving Sören his hand.
“Farewell, guild-mate, and godspeed,” replied Sören.
He went round the table with the same farewell and got the same answer. Then he shook hands with Marie and with the man in the corner, who had to let go his hat for the moment.