The CRES code

Chapter Twenty Eight - Randall goes into politics

     The key to taking power, Randall knew, was dissatisfaction. Find a group of people who were dissatisfied with their lot in life, pretend to be one of them and lead them. During the five days they'd spent travelling from the south coast he'd spent every opportunity talking to the common people in taverns and carriages and the biggest current grievance in Saxony, the thing people complained about the most, seemed to be taxation, so that was what he was going to be the champion of.

     A few years before, King David had instituted a poll tax which was bringing to a head an economic discontent that had been growing since the middle of the previous century. There had been violent protests every few years which required the army to put down. The crackdowns brought peace for a while, as families mourned the deaths of loved ones or waited for them to be released from their prison cells, but it wasn't long before the tension was building again and so the cycle turned around and around, seeming to take about ten years for it to return to its starting point.

     As luck would have it, the last round of protests had been seven years ago and the discontent was growing again. The tension was building faster than it had the last time, though, because of a piece of legislation passed by the Council of Ministers called the Decree of Labourers that tried to limit the wages that had to be paid to manual labourers following the labour shortage created by the latest orc incursion.

     Randall had created a new identity for himself, therefore. Watt Fletcher. Formerly a mild mannered, law abiding family man who was heartbroken and angry following the death of his only son. He and his wife had been driven to destitution by the King's taxes, Randall told everyone he met. Randall had helped them as much as he could until he was also penniless, being forced to sell his family home and everything he possessed. His son's anger had boiled over against the authorities of his home city, Greyburg, and he had assaulted a tax collector, following which the police had arrested him and he had died a month later in a city dungeon. The wife had remarried but there had been no consolation for the father and he had fled the city in case, in his own anger and grief, he suffered the same fate as his son.

     The morning after his arrival in Elmton, Randall took the opportunity to tell the story again to the other guests in the Interesting Weasel's common room. "Even now, nearly twelve months later," he said to the wool merchant, his twelve year old son and the rat catcher who was passing through the city on his way to visit relatives in Lendaron, "I still feel a rage coming over me whenever I see a chalk dusted wig or smell a perfumed handkerchief. They have nothing but contempt for us. They think that, with the army and the police behind them, they can commit any atrocity and we will not dare to protest, that we will eat any swill they feed us."

     "It's the same everywhere," said the rat catcher. "In every city I pass through and especially in Lendaron itself. In Lendaron you can almost feel the anger rising from the common folk like steam from a haystack getting ready to burst into flames. That's where the first spark will be lit, you mark my words."

     Randall feared he might be right. The capital would be where the aristocrats would feel most secure and, therefore, where they would feel free to take the biggest liberties. That would be where the anger of the common folk would be burning brightest. That wouldn't do at all, though. His plan depended on his being at the forefront of the wave of violence soon to wash across the country, but he also needed to be here, in Elmton. The closest city to Gorsty Common, as the site of his secret underground facility had once been called. He needed this city to be his power base. He needed a reason, when he was rich enough, to choose that stretch of countryside to build his country mansion, that being the excuse he'd decided upon to dig in that particular spot. He needed the spark that lit the fire to be here, and he needed to be that spark.