Ten for Dying

Chapter Fourteen

Less than an hour later Felix was cursing the narrowness of the alley behind his house.

He hadn’t driven a donkey cart since he’d left the family farm in Germania to join the legions. He might have felt a pang of nostalgia under different circumstances, ones that didn’t involve secretly disposing of a strangled corpse. The cart’s wooden sides scraped brick walls as he urged the donkey through semi-liquid drifts of discarded vegetables and other slippery detritus better not investigated in the dark, or for that matter in such light as straggled down into the narrow way even in daytime. The stubborn beast refused to follow a straight line. Apparently donkeys were much stupider than they used to be.

Felix would have slung the body across the back of one of his horses but he feared drawing attention. Lying in the bottom of the cart, wrapped in a blanket, the corpse would pass for a sack of grain if anyone took any notice. Or so he hoped.

He kept expecting a contingent of urban watch to materialize in the alley mouth to block his way. When he had managed to maneuver the cart out of the alley and the wheels rattled over the street cobbles he began to feel easier. The further he could get from the house the better.

His relief lasted only a short time until he discovered the cart was too wide to be driven through the slit between the buildings opposite the mouth of the alley. He would have to travel in more public places than he had planned in order to reach the seawall, where his burden could be tossed into the water to become a plaything for Poseidon’s children, as Anastasia had delicately put it.

He had left her behind. If she wanted to betray him this was her chance. He’d know whether she was loyal or not when he got back.

His house was located on a side street off the Mese, conveniently near to the Great Palace and not far from the water. Tugging clumsily at the reins, he convinced the donkey to turn down the thoroughfare. The beast continued to plod slowly but erratically, veering from side to side. Torches outside shops shut for the night intermittently illuminated the street. A gust of wind blew grit into Felix’s face. Moon-silvered clouds raced through the sky.

The cart rolled into an oblong of light spilling from a doorway.

“Felix! Stop!”

What the voice stopped was Felix’s heart. Discovered? Already?

He raised his whip, ready to urge his reluctant animal forward, then he saw a familiar figure reeling out of the tavern, one Felix too often frequented. Or had until he met Anastasia.

“Felix, my friend, come and share a cup with me! How long has it been since we’ve saluted Bacchus together? You’ve been away as long as Odysseus.”

“I regret I’m off on urgent official business, Bato.”

To Felix’s chagrin the donkey decided to halt dead in its tracks, allowing Bato to stroll over to the side of the cart and lie against it.

“Official business, is it? That’s why you’re taking the imperial carriage?” Bato looked bleary-eyed into the cart.

“It’s a matter that calls for discretion.”

“Ah.” Bato exhaled pungently, leering up at Felix. “You are off to see a lady, aren’t you? Come my friend, are we not men? There is no need for prevarication. You have fallen under Circe’s spell.”

“Mithra!” Felix muttered under his breath. “I admit it,” he said loudly, “I’m on way to visit a woman, who is waiting impatiently.”

Bato made no effort to push himself away from the cart. Instead he banged the side. “And with such a conveyance? Do you expect to be so exhausted you’ll have to be carted home?”

“Hardly. I just decided to…to show her how things were back in Germania when I was growing up.”

Bato ignored his excuse. “I have it. You’re going to pretend to be bringing the cart back after repairing it, so her husband will be misled if he hears of your visit.”

Felix sighed, winked, tapped his nose, and flapped the reins. He didn’t like the way Bato was staring into the cart. The donkey started to trot with a jerk, almost jarring Felix from his seat.

Relieved of his support, Bato crumpled to the cobbles and sat there in the tavern light, waving after Felix. “Go sail the wine dark seas into the arms of your sorceress, Felix! When she grows bored, you know where to find your loyal old friend Bato.”

Glancing back over his shoulder Felix saw his inebriated friend shooing away a dog which had come to investigate the interesting offal in the gutter. Fortunately the street was otherwise deserted.

He had to get off this wide street. There were bound to be people about, not to mention occasional patrols.

With difficulty, Felix convinced the beast-or it convinced itself-to enter what was little more than a noisome crevice between tenements. Dark shapes swarmed around the cart and the wheels went over bumps that let out piercing shrieks.

The panicked donkey moved faster. Felix shouted orders, futilely. It didn’t respond to any of the curses he tried.

The cart careened through various gradations of almost total darkness, banging walls, splashing through blessedly invisible filth, turning corners when the way ahead seemed blocked. Not that the route mattered. Felix was not familiar with the back ways here. As long as he continued downhill, as seemed to be the case, he would reach the water, which was all that was necessary. Constantinople was a long, narrow peninsula. He couldn’t help but find the water eventually.

When the cart reached more level ground and emerged from its dark narrow passage into what seemed by comparison a blaze of light, he discovered he had been optimistic, not to mention badly disoriented. Instead of the sea wall he had expected, he faced a thoroughfare broader than the one he had fled and more brightly lit.

It could only be the Mese.

Felix looked back into the cart. His dark, shapeless burden still lay there. Had he expected it to get up and walk away?

Considering everything that had happened lately he wouldn’t have been surprised.

Now what? He hadn’t calculated on having so much difficulty navigating or driving. Craning his neck, he was able to spot the glow from the dome of the Great Church rising toward the moon, now visible, surrounded by a misty halo, in a gap in the gathering clouds.

Perhaps he had better brave the Mese. If he simply continued straight on, he could dump the body in one of the cemeteries outside the city’s inner walls. The worst risk of his being discovered had been near to his house, hadn’t it?

He ordered the donkey forward.

Few pedestrians were abroad and mostly in the noisy vicinity of taverns. Horses trotted by, thankfully none carrying military men.

Despite the muggy air, Felix kept getting chills. He couldn’t help recalling Anastasia telling him she’d been afraid the dead courier would reach up from the bath and put its cold hand against her back.

He resisted the urge to twist around to peer into the cart.

The eerie feeling that there was something there, reaching out, behind him, grew stronger. He could almost sense a hovering presence a finger’s breadth from his neck.

“Don’t be a fool,” he growled. He didn’t like the uneasy note in his voice. The courier was as dead as a grilled fish. No, Felix wouldn’t turn. Wouldn’t give in to irrational fear. He stared straight down the street.

He could hear the voices of those he’d interviewed at the church, describing the supernatural thieves they’d glimpsed fleeing, recalled the strange spectacle in the mausoleum, the dead frogs, the scarab on Theodora’s sarcophagus.

Who could say for certain what might be out here in the night?

Where was he?

Wasn’t that the fork, where the Mese split into a northern and eastern branch? The northern way led past the Church of the Holy Apostles.

“South, then!” Felix told himself, yanking at the donkey’s reins. The beast resisted, slowed. Exasperated Felix swung his whip. Too hard.

“Gently, gently, my boy. The whip is only to direct the animal,” he heard his father telling him.

The donkey leapt forward in its traces, jerking the cart. Felix grabbed his seat to avoid falling into the street.

The terrified beast would have tired itself out quickly but it didn’t get the chance. A gaping rut spared it the effort.

Felix saw the jagged hole looming an instant before the cart hit with a bone-shaking jolt. There was a sickening crack from below and the cart tipped over sideways as one wheel flew off onto the nearby colonnade.

His precious cargo slid out, hit the ground, and lay there in the bright illumination of a nearby torch, looking exactly like a dead body wrapped in a blanket.