by Rachel Ford
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…”
“That doesn’t mean we have to actually tell them,” Nancy cautioned. “All we really have to do is sneak upstairs and open a window. They’ll think we found it, and do whatever they’re planning to do. Then we get the hell out of here.”
“Nance,” Alfred chided. “Language.”
She and Justin raised eyebrows in unison at him, but Freddo nodded his approval. He shrugged, unrepentant. Their situation was dire, but there was no need to sink into the barbarism of vulgar language. As far as he was concerned, once they lost sight of their humanity, they’d lost the fight already. And what was language but the barometer of humanity?
“Anyway,” she said, a hint of annoyance in her tone, “does that sound like a plan?”
“It does,” Justin agreed. “I can’t wait to get the hell out of here too.”
Freddo frowned at him, and the deliberate emphasis he applied to the word hell. “Babe,” he said. “Come on.”
Justin smiled to himself, as if at his own private joke.
Alfred shook his head, determining not to be baited by the other man. “Do you think they’re going to allow us upstairs?”
“Probably not. We’re probably going to have to try to get up there unnoticed.”
“And with all these people around…how the h…” Nancy pulled a face, adjusting her phrase mid-word, “hummus are we supposed to do that?”
Alfred smiled at her for the effort and didn’t even mind that she rolled her eyes at him. “We’ll never get by at that main staircase. But there’s probably backstairs. We just need to find them.”
“If they exist…” Justin said.
“Right,” the taxman nodded. “Let’s go find out, then.” He slipped his hand into Nance’s as they walked, and the four of them meandered toward the rear of the building.
They met more hospital staff, all of them dutifully explaining the function of a room or a bit of apparatus, or answering questions posed by visitors, or simply listening to concerns. At the far end of the building, though, near a series of private rooms, they found another staircase.
It was narrow and tucked between the outer wall and one of the rooms, with tall steps and a steep incline. A far cry from the grand staircase in the atrium, he noticed. But while a rope barrier, with another sign warning of no admittance, hung across it, it would be easy to get past.
“There it is. Let’s go.”
“Not yet,” Nancy whispered, leaning in to kiss him. “Behind us.”
He threw a furtive glance in the direction they’d come and saw a handful of people making a concerted effort to look away. He smiled at how simple but effective that was and kissed her again. It was really the best of all worlds: not that he needed one, but he had another excuse to kiss Nance, and the public display of affection made everyone else feel like they were intruding.
Sure enough, the visitors milled into one of the private rooms without another glance in their direction, and Justin snapped, “Jesus, can we get on with it? You two can get a room later.”
The taxman decided to file that knowledge away for later. If that was all it took to make Justin want to run for the hills, it could prove very useful. In the meantime, though, he held the rope up for Nance and then slipped under it after her. The other two men followed a few steps behind.
They crept up the stairs with careful, measured steps, pausing now and again to listen. The staircase was narrow, and they had to ascend single-file. It was dark, too, with the only light being what came from the halls above and below.
As they neared the top, Alfred tried to get ahead of Nance. If they were walking into a trap, better, the taxman thought, him than her. She, though, was too focused on the mission to notice what he was doing.
She poked her head out, and in a moment flashed a thumbs up at them. Then, she crept forward, into the hall.
Alfred threw a furtive gaze onto the landing and followed. The administrative floor stretched the length of the hospital, but less care had been taken in its interior design than below. The furnishings were perfectly serviceable and everything was bright and fresh, but there was less emphasis on comfort. The offices contained desks and functional seating, but there were no cheery potted plants like he’d seen in the atrium, no colorful tapestries like he’d noted in the children’s wing.
There were bedrooms here, too, as austere as the offices. They contained dormitory-style beds, sometimes two to a room. At first, the taxman wondered if these were more private hospital chambers, but the personal effects he saw in the occupied rooms seemed to relate to the profession. “They’ve got live-in medical staff,” he realized.
“Let’s just choose one of the bedrooms,” Freddo suggested. “Robert’ll never know the difference.”
It was sound thinking. It meant they did not have to run any further risk of exposure by traipsing about a restricted wing of the building. They could just be done with the entire mad caper.
Nancy slipped into an empty bedroom, and they followed. There were no personal items here, and it looked like the room was not yet occupied. She headed to the lone window. “Alright. Moment of truth.”
Alfred joined her, and together they lifted it. It was heavy and didn’t move as easily as might be hoped. Still, grunting as the wood frame caught and hesitated, they managed to get it open. Then, the taxman poked his head out the window, gazing into the forest in the direction they’d left Robert and his band.
He could see nothing. If they were still there, the browns and greens of their clothes camouflaged them well among the browns and greens of Yngil-wode.
“They’re out there,” Nance reassured.
He nodded, smiling to himself at how well she knew him. “I know, babe. Just…I hope they move it. I don’t want to hang out here any longer than we have to.”
Chapter Sixteen
Alfred had heard the adage “be careful what you wish for” plenty of times. He rarely had the opportunity to see it in action, though.
Today, compliments of Robert Whod and his cheery band of imbeciles, he got the chance.
Less than a minute passed between that thought and Robert’s diversion. It came in the form of a volley of flaming arrows. Alfred was, in fact, still peering out the window when it happened. Nancy, Justin and Freddo were discussing their exit strategy behind him, oblivious to what was happening outside.
He squinted into the horizon, at the tiny pinpoints of light that seemed to be arcing out of the trees. Coming closer.
And closer.
He comprehended first that, whatever they were, they were headed for the hospital. A second later, he realized that this must be Robert’s promised diversion.
Only then, as the blazing projectiles drew near enough that he could see the flames flickering along them, did he fully understand.
Alfred loosed a yelp of terror, and turned away from the incoming arrows. He threw an arm around Nance, who was standing in line with the open window, and dove for the floor.
“Ow,” she cried as they crashed to the ground. “What the hell, Alfred?”
He didn’t need to respond, though. The heavy thwack of an arrow planting in the wooden floor, and the whoosh of flames was answer enough. Nancy pushed up on an elbow, staring in mute horror for half a second. “Oh my God.”
Freddo, meanwhile, screeched, “Fire.”
Justin raced for the bed and pulled a blanket off it. Nancy moved to stand at the same time Alfred did. Together, all four of them descended on the flames, and with the blanket and their feet, were able to stamp them out before they spread. The arrow, its shaft shattered now, lay smoldering on the floor, the flaming rag tied to it extinguished. Heavy smoke filled the room, but the extent of the damage was minimal.
Nancy turned to Alfred. The taxman was panting with fright more than anything else. “Oh my God,” she repeated. “Those fucking morons almost lit the building on fire.”
He was too addled to object to her language this time. He simply nodded.
“That was their diversion?” Justin gaped. “A flaming arrow?”
The use of a singular descriptor caught Alfred’s attention. He remembered the volley he’d seen – dozens of fire arrows, all of them coursing straight toward the hospital. “Actually…there was more than one.”
