“And where are they?”
“Gone.” He waved west. “Back with Horn, fighting Bernhard, I suppose.”
Larry frowned. “And there were no replacements sent?”
“Yes, but they came late. And not many of them. They contracted Plague on the way to us”—he crossed himself ardently—“and almost half were dying as they got here. The rest were very weak.”
“And so there are too few left to man the gates?”
The guard looked east. “Well, I do not know. They are not stationed in the town, you see.”
“Not in town? Where are they?”
“The abbey at Heggbach, about six miles east.”
“There is a hospital there?”
The fellow looked uncomfortable. “No.”
“Then what?” snapped Thomas. “Why send them to the abbey?”
“To keep them away from us,” the man mumbled. “The abbess and many of the nuns—they had already died of the plague, there. The survivors had gone elsewhere: there weren’t enough of them left to maintain the abbey. Besides, they were too weak to live on their own.”
“And none of you helped them,” finished Larry in a flat tone.
The guard stared back in faint defiance. “There was nothing we could do. By the time we learned, a third of the nuns were dead or nearly so. And besides, they are not our responsibility. At times, they had been most troublesome. The abbess of Heggbach was frequently in dispute with the abbey’s tenant farmers, many of whom live much closer to our walls, and who sought our intervention. Which made for trouble with the abbey.”
Larry stared at the man. “So when the sick replacement garrison showed up, you sent it into quarantine at Heggbach Abbey. Where I presume you expected them to die.”
“I expected nothing!” shouted the weaver-watchman. “I am a simple man given an old gun to guard a gate. I am not consulted on such things. I just hear news like everyone else. If you wish to complain to the Burgermeisters, they should still be in the Rathaus—although not for much longer.” He sent an appraising squint toward the end of the tower’s lengthening shadow.
“Fine,” said Larry with a sharp nod, “we’ll do that.”
***
Following the guard’s directions, they moved toward St. Martin’s cathedral, angling south through the reasonably wide streets once they came upon it. Thomas chose his calmest tone, and began. “I say, Larry—”
“I know,” the American shot back, “I was pretty tough on that poor guy at the gate.”
“Rather. Why?”
“I guess because what he said pushed my buttons. Yeah, I understand why they did what they did: they had the plague at their gates, and a reasonable chance of keeping it out if they were careful about how much external contact they had. But damn, so many towns around here made such an easy accommodation with turning away people in need, with turning a blind eye upon human suffering. Just like they did during World War II, up in my time.”
Thomas considered. “Larry, I claim no expertise in what your histories call the Holocaust. I will simply observe that villainy, bigotry, and genocide have a long history of traveling together. The same up-time processes that enabled mass production were no less an enabling factor for mass destruction.
“However, in this time, what you see as an easy accommodation with cruelty may simply be the exhaustion of hoping for fairy tale endings. I notice in your American history that things almost always came out right in the end, as though there was some guardian angel watching over the fate of your nation. As best as I can tell, some of your more gullible leaders actually believed there was. But here, you are dealing with persons brought up on unremitting rounds of war and plague, of whole generations sucked into the maw of death.” North looked up as they fell into, and then out of the shadow of the cathedral. “You Americans never had a reason to lose hope. These poor sods were born into a world where there wasn’t any hope left.”
Quinn nodded slowly, pointed. “There’s the new Rathaus, at the head of the market place. Ready for a frontal assault on close-minded and quarrelsome bureaucrats?”
Thomas sighed. “Oh, yes: I live for the thrill of that particular battle.”
***
After navigating the closing bakers’ stalls crowded along the arcades of the Rathaus, they made their way inside. It was the same scene of impermanence and frenzy that Thomas had seen in small city Rathauses throughout Germany. Often used for general meetings and other large gatherings, the ground floor of such buildings were rarely furnished with fixed partitions. Field chairs, stools, and folding tables abounded, as did arguments, exhortations, and idle chatter. Quinn waded manfully into the chaos, fixed upon a young fellow who was just preparing to run a message, flashed a kreutzer at him.