The three spies dodged into a darkened lane between streets. When they emerged on the city square again, stealthily glancing in all directions, there was not a sign of Roman watchman, soldiers, women. Thamyris drew his sword in a blind fury of balked passion.
“Clowns—blackguards,” he stamped. “You were too slow! We have lost them,” and he struck in impotent rage at his terrified tools. They obeyed his injunction of but a moment before and took to their heels down the dark lanes.
The turnkey of the prison sat nodding over a tankard of wine in a little room off the entrance from the square. A Roman watchman had roused him and the two were examining, by the light of the soldier’s brass lantern, a pair of emerald earrings set in Damascus filigree.
“Good jewels—not false—by Jupiter—ten years’ wages; and what do you say she wants?”
“To see the wounded teacher rescued from the mob to-night; but she has disobeyed her mother, refused to go to her affianced husband, and been turned out in the streets as a courtesan. She refuses to wear a courtesan’s red band round her brow; and by Iconium law, she will be burned at the stake for that. These independent cities on the Roman Road have their own laws.”
“What’s that to us? The jewels are good! Take her to the prisoner’s cell; but he is a Roman citizen. He must not be harmed without trial.”
The watchman went back to the cloaked figures in the corridor. He led them without a word down the long passageway lighted dimly by iron candles with flaming pine knots. Before one cell tramped another Roman soldier. The watchman spoke to the guard in a low voice. He came back to the women.
“He says—what will you give him to let you in?”
Thecla drew a silver mirror from her girdle.
The watchman went back to the guard. Again, there was a conference under the light of the pine faggot in the iron clamp against the stone wall. The silver mirror was being examined. The watchman returned to the women.