Time Slips & Tax Thieves, page 8
part #4 of Time Travelling Taxman Series
On the other, was the tyrant, whose vanity and cruelty fueled these madmen, whose army apparently persecuted them. Whose army would, no doubt, persecute him, Nancy, Freddo and Justin, if it got the chance.
He felt something like a pawn on someone else’s board. And while he usually loved chess analogies, this one left him uneasy simply because it encapsulated the situation perfectly. He was a nobody, pushed by forces beyond his control into a conflict that was not his own, to further someone else’s ends. On his side of the board, the mastermind shoving him into danger was Whod, who seemed more than willing to risk a few pawns to get what he wanted. And on the other was the defender, who wouldn’t think twice to exterminate a row full of enemy pawns if he got the chance.
And here he was, with no other options, no other plays. He could only move forward in the direction Whod pushed him; forward, into danger; forward, to death or capture, like a good little pawn.
Warwick-on-Eden was a smallish city, situated on the banks of two intersecting rivers. They approached carefully, and Alfred had the opportunity to get a good look at the town. There was, he thought, a distinct transition in the architecture and borders. Near the river, there seemed to be an older settlement. The buildings were humbler and more weathered.
Stretching out from this central area, though, the city expanded in newer buildings, wider streets, fresher facades. He saw shops and a great, bustling, open-air market. There was a cathedral, too, its spires reaching high into the midday sky. At the outskirts of Warwick-on-Eden, farms dotted the landscape. Sheep grazed in pastureland, and fields of crops stretched down the river banks in all directions.
And for half a minute, Alfred forgot his fear and anxiety, and simply marveled at the sights before him. In all his life, he’d never imagined he would see history like this, so fresh and real. It was like stepping into the pages of a textbook, except that that textbook was living and breathing all around him. These buildings were not reconstructions, not ruins from a thousand years ago. The people were not long dead and buried, pieced together snapshots of lives come and gone. These medieval structures, these medieval people, were as real as he was.
And, for better or worse, Alfred was one of them now. That rather sobered the taxman. It was one thing to appreciate the spectacle of medieval life as a casual observer. He could appreciate the thrill of that. But to live it? Images of parasites and disease, of hunger and malnutrition, crowded his brain, driving away any of the charms that had filled it a moment before.
“You see the building near the cathedral?”
“The one with the crowds outside it?” Alfred wondered, peering at a large, two story stone building. It looked so fresh and new that he could imagine construction wrapping up a few minutes ago. The great windows that lined its face glimmered in the sunlight. A dais had been erected in the square outside, and throngs of visitors mulled around it.
“That’s the one.”
“We’ll never get by that many people,” Nancy protested. “Especially if we try to sneak something out the window: someone will see us.”
“It’s early yet. The ceremony starts at twelfth bell.”
“Oh.”
“Once it starts, that prat will give a speech. Then the doors will open, and people will start milling in.” He shook his head. “Trust me, Missy Nancy, they’ve seen the exterior. They’ve seen it being built. They pass it every day on the way to their fields or the mill or the mine. What they’re really interested in is the interior. Once those doors open, they’re all going to be inside.”
“I’m not sure that helps us,” Justin observed. “That just means there’ll be a crowd of people inside, between us and the medicine.”
Here, the outlaw shrugged. “Well, that’s where your ingenuity comes into play. You’ll have to figure something out. I’m sure you’ll do just fine.”
“Well,” John said, “you jesters ready?”
“Bards,” Alfred reminded him.
“Whatever.”
The taxman frowned. He was trying to think of some way to stall, and trying to think of a scathing comeback; and the multitasking was not going his way. He was drawing blanks on both fronts.
Here, Nancy intervened. “We’re ready.”
“We are?” Freddo asked.
She nodded briskly. “We are.”
“Great,” Robert nodded. “You should head out then and start mingling. Try to act like locals, so you don’t draw any eyes.”
“Got it.”
“Oh, and one other thing.”
“What?” Alfred wondered.
“You’ll need to leave your weapons.”
“Wait…what?”
Robert nodded. “The tyrant won’t allow weapons on the streets. You’ll need to leave your weapons behind.”
“Hold on,” Freddo said. “You mean…we’re supposed to go rob some place – unarmed?”
“And you’re only mentioning this now…because…?” Justin added.
“I don’t write the laws, friends,” Robert protested. “If you march into town with a sword strapped to your belt, they’re going to arrest you before you get near the hospital.”
“It’s fine,” Nancy said. “We don’t need swords.”
“It is?” Alfred asked, his eyebrows making a beeline for his hairline. “We don’t?” She flashed him a look – the kind of look that said don’t argue. And, mustering every ounce of restraint, he said, “I mean, yeah. We’ll be fine.”
Robert clapped him on the back, and he nearly toppled under the blow. “Good. Excellent. Good luck to you, my friends. We’ll give you a quarter hour after we see you go in. Then, we’ll make our diversion.”
Chapter Fourteen
“Tell me you’ve got a plan, Nance. Please tell me you’ve got a plan,” Alfred pleaded as soon as they were out of earshot of the outlaws.
“Please tell me it doesn’t involve robbing a freaking hospital,” Justin added.
“Yes. Well, kind of. For the plan, I mean. And, no, I have no intention of robbing a hospital.”
Justin breathed a sigh of relief at the same moment Alfred did. “What’s the plan, babe?”
“It’s not a full-fledged plan, exactly. More like a…a strategy.”
The taxman glanced askew at her. “How detailed is this strategy, exactly?”
“Not very.”
He groaned. “I was afraid you were going to say that.”
She took his hand and squeezed it. “I think we need to get the hell out of here.”
“So…your strategy is ‘run away’?” Justin frowned.
“Pretty much. The Freemen are clearly nuts. But this Lord Rickman? We know nothing about him. With our luck, he’s as batty as they are. Maybe worse.”
“We could use the crowd as cover,” Freddo agreed. “Head into the hospital, wait for whatever distraction they’re planning, and then disappear into the forest in the opposite direction.”
“Preferably,” Nancy agreed, “following a road this time.”
“God yes,” Justin nodded. “From what I can tell, Yngil-wode goes on forever. We could end up starving to death before we found the next town.”
“We don’t know what’s out there, though, darling,” Alfred worried. “What if the next town we come to is hostile? What if Rickman’s men find us, and don’t buy our traveling-bards routine?”
“I don’t know,” Nancy admitted. “But we can’t stay, Alfred. We can’t help them rob a hospital.”
“No,” he agreed. “We can’t.”
“And if we go back empty-handed…”
“Robert’s men already want to string us up for target practice,” Freddo reminded him.
“Oh Nance,” he said, and his tones were raw. The enormity of their shared misery for a moment overwhelmed him. It had been one thing among friends, as he’d thought the outlaws not long ago. But now to find themselves alone in this strange and hostile world? To know that Nance, his Nance, would be stuck here, without any of her computers or her gadgets or the awful tv shows she loved so much? Without real medicine or good doctors, in a world where a scratch could lead to death? He cursed the miserable luck that sent them to a time like this, that had opted to strand them in a strange past instead of a technologically advanced future. They could have been sent into a world where medicine had evolved, where life was easier and better. Instead of this place and this time. “Oh my Nance.”
She squeezed his hand again and leaned in a little closer. “We’ll be alright, babe.” She smiled at him. “As long as we’ve got each other, we’ll be alright.”
Justin, meanwhile, wrapped an arm around Freddo, and the two men exchanged a warm gaze. “It sure as hell isn’t how I planned the rest of my life,” the former declared after a moment. “But it doesn’t look like we’ve got any other choice.”
“I know,” Alfred said. Then, he frowned. “Sugar cookies. I left my backpack at camp.”
“What’s in the backpack?”
“Sunscreen.”
“Oh,” Freddo frowned. “What a waste.”
“And the generator.”
“Well, it doesn’t work,” Justin pointed out. “So not much loss there.”
“I know. Still…I hate to leave it.”
Nancy nodded slowly. “Me too. It’s not likely that I can fix it, but I’d rather have it than not.”
“Well, we can’t head back there,” Freddo said. “Not if we don’t rob the hospital.”
“And we can’t rob a hospital,” Justin decided. “That’s way too messed up.”
“I guess it’s a loss, then,” Alfred concluded.
They were nearing the throngs of people now. “Just act naturally,” Nancy put in. “Like we live here. Like we’re curious about this new building.”
“Soon enough, we’ll be able to get the hummus out of here.”
The hum of voices grew louder as they approached, and the general feel of those tones was excitement. Smiling faces and eager voices joined together, to present a great, formidable host of happy people. If Alfred had a top-ten list of worst-ways-to-start-a-day, large groups of happy, talkative people would have ranked somewhere around cold coffee and getting hit by a bus.
Consequently, he grimaced as they merged with the crowd, exchanging the smiles he was showered with for steely frowns. A few people drew back in surprise, but most seemed not to notice. The excitement of the day was apparently too infectious for his disapprobation to make any headway with them.
Slowly but surely, they made their way to the middle of the crowd so that they were facing the dais. “I don’t know what time it is,” Nance said, “but we’ve got to be close to noon.”
She was right. A few minutes later, the cathedral bells chimed out twelve counts. And then a man strolled onto the platform, to the sounds of cheers all around.
He was of average height and build, in his late-twenties or early thirties, Alfred thought. He was handsome, at least among his unwashed, unrefined peers. He smiled at the crowd, which made the taxman frown a little deeper. He didn’t have much experience with lords, but he assumed they were something like politicians of their own age; and he had a deeply entrenched mistrust of smiling politicians. Like used car salesmen offering great deals and waitresses trying to sell you on the special of the day, it never boded well.
“People of Warwick-on-Eden.” Another round of cheering rose from the assemblage, and Alfred’s grimace only deepened. The bar, it seemed, for pleasing these people was low indeed. “People of Cumberland.” Again, they cheered.
Good God. He had a flashback to comm class, and the perpetually unsatisfied instructor who graded his speeches. Why couldn’t Mister Avery have been as easy to please as these clowns? He might have gotten an A in that class, instead of barely passing.
“Thank you for being here today, to witness history in the making. Today, we unveil a revolution in Cumberland’s commitment to the people of our shire. No more does our care fall on the shoulders of one or two overworked men. No more do the sick and injured wait for days or weeks for help. No more do they turn to quacks and conmen, who will exploit their illness to line their own pockets.
“We all remember last winter, when young William fell into the Eden. Apothecary Anvers was on a house call two villages over, and by time he returned, the boy was almost dead.
“Now think if we had had the hospital then. He would have been seen right away, because we’ll have physicians on staff, all the time. The sick and injured will have a place to come, where they know there will always be a doctor. And if someone is too ill to move, or an apothecary has to make a house call somewhere, there’ll still be people here to tend the sick.”
Lord Rickman scanned the crowd, and there was a look of genuine satisfaction on his face. It sat poorly with Alfred, in whose mind this man was a monster. He was finding it difficult to reconcile the evident pleasure Rickman took in his hospital scheme with what Robert had told him.
“This is the first such project Yngil-wode has seen, but it will not be the last. As we’ve built roads to connect our towns, and schools to teach our children, Cumberland will build hospitals too, to care for our people in our darkest hours. This is what Cumberland is. This is who we are.”
Applause broke out around them, and Alfred threw his hands together in a good affectation of enthusiasm. Nancy leaned in, meanwhile, whispering, “Are we sure he’s the bad guy, babe? I mean, he does not sound like a bad guy.”
“It’s got to be a cover,” the taxman reasoned. “Some kind of benevolent dictator routine.”
She nodded slowly. “Maybe.”
His lordship, meanwhile, raised his hands to quiet the crowd. “Thank you, but I have earned that applause no more than any of you. And less than some – less than those who have labored for months designing and constructing this facility. Less than those who will staff it and will provide succor to the injured and ill. It is they who deserve our appreciation.”
Another round of applause broke out, and this time he didn’t interrupt. When it concluded, he said, “Well, without further ado then, it’s time to see what your endeavors have wrought, Warwick-on-Eden. Let the tour begin!”
Chapter Fifteen
It took a few minutes, but they managed to jostle their way through the crowd and into the hospital.
It was not much like any hospital Alfred could recall. There were patient beds, of course, but they were in large, communal rooms. The idea of how quickly germs and disease might spread in such an area filled the taxman’s mind, and he shivered at the prospect.
It was a largish building, as he’d seen from the outside, divided near the front into large rooms. The first of these was a kind of waiting room, with benches for visitors and a central staircase. This, though, was blocked by a gate, on which hung a sign printed in a scrolling font, “Administrative wing. Authorized personnel only.”
Past this atrium were several shared patient areas.
Staff stood in each sector, answering questions from visitors as they passed through. “This is the children’s ward,” Alfred heard a prim matron say. She wore a long, dark dress, with her hair gathered at either side of her face and secured in a lightly-ornamented fabric caul. “On average, Warwick-on-Eden alone sees fifteen significant injuries to our children a month. The numbers from our surrounding communities are even higher. Most common are broken bones, but…” She smiled. “Any parent will tell you, youngsters manage to get themselves into all manner of trouble. This ward will provide a space for them to be treated first, and to heal second, if their injuries prevent an immediate return home.
“This will lift a burden from parents, who have other children and fields and homes to manage at the same time, and it will ensure that an apothecary is always at hand, if needed.”
They moved on to another wing. A tall man with pinched features was explaining, “This room and the next are the adult wings. This is short term patient-seeing, and the adjacent chamber is for longer-term recovery. Here is where we will set broken bones, treat lacerations and burns, rehabilitate those recovering the use of limbs, and so on.
“In the rear of the facility you will find private rooms. Those are for sufferers afflicted with bad vapors.” Here, his eyebrows raised toward the center of his forehead, and he spoke in confidential tones. “The private chambers will ensure that vapors do not spread to other patients in the vicinity.”
“Vapors?” Justin whispered. “What the hell are ‘vapors’?”
“It’s pre-germ theory thinking,” Freddo said. “Post you-pissed-God-off or you’re-possessed, and pre-germ theory.”
“Oh.”
“They got the causes wrong, but it was still a huge leap forward in treatment. Because the solution to bad air is often the solution to preventing and treating illness: get rid of the infectious, putrid and nasty stuff.”
“But in our world,” Nance mused, “they didn’t get there for centuries yet.”
“No,” Alfred agreed. “And despite developing some really bizarre theories on taxation, they seem to have made strides in medicine a lot more quickly than in our reality.”
“All of which is nice,” Justin said, “but it doesn’t help us with our mission: getting the hell out of here.”
Nancy nodded. “Robert said they were going to give us some kind of signal, and create a diversion.”
“I wonder if he’s waiting for us to find the medicine first?”
“I’m guessing it’s upstairs,” she suggested.
“Why upstairs?”
“Because that’s the administrative wing. All the patient areas are downstairs. I’m guessing they’d keep the medicine locked up with the administrators.”
“That makes sense,” Alfred agreed.
“So…are we actually going to try to find it?” Freddo frowned.
“We may have to. We won’t be able to disappear without a diversion. And if Robert isn’t going to create one until he knows where the medicine is…”
