I and two others advanced to meet the three.
I started, "Are you in charge of the city?"
These three didn't look like they should be in charge of anything.
"No, My Lord, no one is in charge."
"What happened?"
"The plague killed off most of our leaders. Those left fought for control of the city. We, the people, killed the last of them as they were destroying us in their greed."
He won me over with, "We the people."
"I control the southern portion of the island with a line from Dereham to London to the mouth of the Thames."
"We won’t and can’t fight you. You are welcome to the city. Can you feed us? We are slowly starving."
"How many people are left in the city?"
"Several thousand at the most. It is hard to tell as many are in hiding."
There had been almost twenty-five thousand the last time I was here.
"I will have food and help brought in."
I wish I had considered mounting a radio and generator on a wagon. Instead, riders had to be sent back to Dereham, where the nearest radio was installed.
Tom Smith and I had talked about it before, and he was looking into building one but hadn't started before I left.
It took two weeks for a relief train to reach us. A wagon train, not a steam train.
I stayed in London and took a hard look at the city. There were whole areas unlivable by my standards. We wouldn't lose much if we burned the whole place down and started over.
After mature consideration, I decided we could move the remaining population into what was the City of London in the future. The buildings there were mostly stone construction and could be rehabilitated. The old Roman walls and gates were mostly still standing, though badly in need of repair.
I sent for a surveying crew to make a map of the city and decide what should be kept. With only two thousand people, we could build a sewage system that drained into a septic field. Running water was a must. I didn't want to have the open sore that London grew into in the future.
When the relief teams arrived and started work, many Londoners came out of hiding. The estimate of two thousand was low. Our census recorded over four thousand people.
Eleanor did me proud. She organized the relief column and doubled everything I requested, so we had enough.
Lady Agnes and her team had two MASH units on site. She instituted nightsoil pickup immediately with harsh penalties for dumping waste in the streets. You dumped it. You cleaned it up with your bare hands. It only took a couple of examples, before the streets were clean.
We also had clean water delivered to every neighborhood. People bemoaned how many were lost in the plague. I think just as many died from dysentery.
I also started a major project. The river Fleet wasn't the open sewer as it was in Victorian England. It was a slow-flowing river originating in Hampstead Heath. I proposed creating several large ponds near the headwaters. They would provide drainage for the Heath, opening up a large amount of farmland.
My real purpose was to create a stronger water flow down the Fleet, an underground river going through London. It is not far underground, and I wanted to expose the waterway as it went through London. To create a riverwalk like I had seen in San Antonio, Texas.
To pay for it, I created another corporation and issued shares. The corporation would own the land along the riverwalk. Though the shares were created, I held them all as it would be years before the project was profitable.
I was betting London would survive and grow as it had done many times in the past. I may be sentimental, but if I held all of England, London would be the Capital. It was good enough for the Romans. It would work for me.
Since the Thames was a natural barrier to invading armies from the north, we didn't extend the line of Keeps to the Channel. However, we did push a road through to open trade in the area. It would also allow a quick response if someone did try to cross the Thames.
Before the plague, London had the highest concentration of skilled tradesmen in all of England. Locals called the island Britanica, but England was set in my mind. Even after the many deaths, there were a lot of skilled workers.
As people were fed, brought back to health, and housed, the tradesmen began reviving their businesses. There were potters, tanners, and blacksmiths, to name a few. Any that wanted to see what we were doing in Cornwall were allowed to join a wagon train to Owen-nap.
Some of them, after seeing Cornwall, moved their families there and became employed. Others came back to London with their new knowledge and implemented those improvements. I encouraged those who returned by offering low-interest loans through the Bank of Cornwall. For old times' sake, I built the bank on a street that would have become Threadneedle Street. Instead, the area was becoming the Wall Street of England.
Shortly after taking possession of London, a seedy-looking man approached me. He told me he was a messenger from the London thieves' guild. I had to pay them a monthly fee to keep peace in London.
In my position as Count, I passed high justice on him. I was a judge, jury, and executioner. I had him hanged that afternoon. Later in the day, a riot started in the small marketplace. My troops quelled it quickly.
When one of the rioters was identified as a member of the thieves' guild, they were hanged immediately. I didn’t even bother with the formalities. Their name was written down so we knew who they were, and then they were executed.
There were no more extortion requests made.
Any thief caught committing a crime was sent to Arette to work as a laborer in the oil field and road building. Once more, many of those sent there ran. Too bad.
Before the criminals were sent off, a record was created for each. If they showed up in our area once more, they would hang. We took a written description, and their fingerprints. It would be interesting when we had our first match.
The fingerprint files were kept by our special detachment of soldiers. We called them policemen. They patrolled the streets of London night and day. If a crime was committed, they would investigate. Granted, it was early days, but the crime rate was low.
To help reduce crime, I introduced street lamps. These burned fuel oil from a new fractionating tower in Arette.
Word came from Wendon that a huge Viking fleet of forty ships had been spotted off the coast by one of our schooners. The schooner chased and fired on them for three days. They destroyed twenty-seven of the Viking longboats, forcing them to turn back.
The only reason the schooner let them go was they ran out of cannonballs.
Trade ships from the Franks came up the Thames. I don’t know what they were expecting, but they found a city well on its way to recovery.
Though a much smaller city both in population and buildings. I had all the buildings outside of the City of London torn or burned down. We recovered a lot of stone and used it for new buildings.
In the City of London, where everyone now lived, sewer pipes were laid down in trenches in the middle of each street. These trenches were ten feet deep and five feet wide. Clay pipes were then installed to carry the sewage. There were also openings for rainwater to pour into and be discharged into the Thames.
The waste pipes led to a pumping station where the waste was sent further along to a huge septic field in Essex. This was the only facility we built north of the Thames.
The trench walls were poured concrete and roofed over, with access points built on every other block.
This would allow ease of access so we wouldn’t have to continuously tear up the roads. Once the sewage pipes were laid and the trench roofed over, concrete was poured for the street surface. Sidewalks were installed on the double-wide streets.
My London would be a planned city, one of the best in the world.
All while the Angles in the north were moving south into my territory. The campaign to entice them to migrate peacefully to Cornwall was working.
King Ine must be more than livid by this point. Even though he had done nothing to aid these people, he thought of them as his property. Knowing this, I ordered more scouts on our northern border.
I had a Keep being built on the Thames at the same location where the Tower of London would have been built in the future. It was a defensive point against any ships coming up the Thames. It had ten cannons mounted on its high walls.
There were also cannon batteries on the south side of the river. I felt confident we could repel any invasion attempt from the river.
I thought about a wall around the city proper but decided against it. With cannons, the day of the wall was past. Instead, a ring of Martello Towers was put in place.
The towers were the traditional forty feet high with eight-foot thick walls. They would have a garrison of twenty-four men who lived on the second floor. The first or ground floor held the food supplies and the shell and powder storage magazine. A hand-operated elevator would take the shells and powder to the roof.
Unlike seaward-facing Martellos, we assumed the tower could be attacked from any direction, so we had four cannons mounted on the rooftop. They could be moved on a pivot so we could have three cannons facing any part of the quadrant.
Water supply tanks would be supplemented by rain collected on the rooftop and funneled down to the water storage.
Entry and exit to the towers was down a ramp at ground level to a door at the basement level. The ramp was covered halfway down with a mound of earth, which could be collapsed at need.
There would be a spark gap radio at each tower, with orders not to use the radio except when an attack was approaching. We had too many radio stations on the same frequency. They were welcome to listen all the time but not to use them unless it was an emergency.
The Martellos were a mile and a half apart, so they had interlocking fields of fire. There were thirty of them surrounding London. This left plenty of room for expansion of the city. In the meantime, the land between the towers and the city proper could be used for farming.
We could build five towers for the cost of one Keep. Using Keeps to defend London from the north would have required eight of them, making the towers more economical.
The railroad was now being extended from Dereham to London. We built it at least ten miles south of the fortified line with the road connecting the Keeps. This was to prevent northern invaders from breaking the tracks. Not that they couldn’t do it, but the Keeps would see any large groups and intercept them.