There's something in the Water.

Once upon a time Queen Hyacinth the kindhearted was travelling through a poor village, observing the locals using the same water for drinking, draining, and crapping and said “I would like to do something to make sure my people can have clean water”.

The people looked at the pond of mud they used for cooking, laundry, draining the waste of their livestock, and for bathing, then looked at her and said “are you calling us smelly?”

She smiled to herself, sometimes people need time to get used to change she thought, but yes they were quite smelly, it was definitely time for their annual bath.

“Yeah, what’s wrong with the water we’ve got?” they murmured “tis the finest water around, it’s ours and we like it how it is. If you make it in to beer you can even drink it. Why should we have to change the way we get our water just because the next village has a rotting pig in theirs? You can’t expect every small village to have a pig carcass.”

The Queen had the young Princess with her who had found a dead rat in the bowl of water they’d been offered on arrival to refresh themselves. “Put that down dear”, said the Queen, “we might just wait until we get back to the castle to have a drink, mummy will probably be quite thirsty too by then I would imagine.”

All of the nobles running things were Norman whereas the Saxons who were there before them, filled the lowliest of roles. The good Queen said “we need a Saxon voice at the table”. “Let them get there on merit” said the lords, “they can’t be expecting any special treatment”.

“Hear hear” said many in the crowd, “we don’t give a crap where our water comes from”, which was ironic, “we’re more concerned at Saxon privilege, we’re sick of it”. The Saxons looked around at each other - what was this Saxon privilege they were talking about? Surely they were jesting.

“No one ever got sick from our water”, said one. “What about Mary?” said another, “she was pretty sick after she drank it without turning it into beer ask her if she got sick.”

“Can’t”

“Why not?”

“We buried her last week, day after she drank the water as it happens”.

“Was she dead?”, the conversation deteriorated into a discussion as to how sure they were of Mary’s state of health immediately prior to her burial.

“Well if things are working for you there is no need to change them” said the Queen, “clearly you’re happy with your water the way it is”.

The townspeople at first celebrated their victory, but soon started a new grumbling, “You still have to take responsibility for all of it though, you are the leader, you have to be accountable.”

“Even though you refuse to let me help and say you’ll keep doing your own thing?”

“Yep”

“Even though you’re happy with things just the way they are?”

“Well actually every summer the pond goes dry and we end up having to drink our own piss for a few weeks, been happening for years. We’ve ask for a better solution, maybe a cistern for keeping the water in, or an aqueduct for bringing more water.”

We’ve been asking the Duke to do something about it since Hilda the Elder was just a wee one, but he always says ‘there isn’t enough money’, we think that’s what he says it’s hard to hear over the splashing from the fountains in his swimming pool”.

Some people, who were just random members of the public, said they thought clean water sounded like a good idea in principle but more importantly questioned why the Saxons would be getting a free ride, that really wouldn’t be fair.

Others said it was better before Hyacinth was Queen, all this coming round and asking “do you want me to look after the water for you?” - it’s too much to take.

You knew where you were with the last ruler. He’d come into town, shake your hand, give you a good hard knee in the bollocks while telling you to produce more, then wave good bye saying “thanks very much, thanks very much” as the village cheered his benevolence.

The good Queen listened and thought perhaps she ought to meet with the nobles instead so headed to the largest city, the commercial centre, the City of Sales. Surely they would see it made sense from a financial point of view even if they weren’t concerned by floating bits in the water.

In the town square was the office of Duke Wayne the Brown. The Duke had hand drawn pictures of the local scribe Simon a Dale on to the privy so all who used it  would see. The towns people thought this was a bit weird putting a picture of a wise, but powerless, scribe upon the latrine but Duke Wayne said it was the only way of showing the young whippersnapper who was boss.

While she was present Sheriff Hooton barged in like he owned the place in his leather boots and gloves, he put his feet up on the table and sighed.

“Hard day?” asked Wayne. “Yeah, it was tax collection day, I had to go round all the mothers that I’d told to pay up by today or their youngest one would get it. A bit disappointing this month, two of them had actually come up with a penny”. “Still” he said wiping shards of infant skull from the heal of his boots, “didn’t get dressed up for nothing”.

The Queen also spoke to the Duchess of the capital, Tory the Green, who welcomed the offer. Truth is their water stuff was in a bad way. Sometimes the sewerage ran straight into the harbour where they fished and when the weather was bad, which it often was, torrents of water flowed through the streets sometimes carrying small livestock or children away to their watery doom.

So having someone with so much power offer to help sort them out was a godsend.

The good mayor did warn the Queen to watch out for outlaws in the forest who had been exiled.

Robbin’ da ‘Hood lives in that forest, he hides with his band of Merry White Men and swoops robbing from the poor in order to take for the rich. Then he taunts his victims, it’s awful,  “what’s going to happen to the wealth?”, he smirks, “it’s going to trickle down” they whimper in response to avoid being struck again, and he and his mate “Little Dave” bend over laughing until tears roll down their cheeks “it trickles down!”

A group of three noblemen, including Duke Wayne, presented themselves to the Queen. They said “we are three wise men and we are wise, but most importantly we are men so we know about things. We don’t want a water solution imposed on us, we’re very important and if you do that we’ll be less important and we don’t want to be less important that’s the reason we got into being noble in the first place”.

“Look, the thing is these are our cesspools, our ditches, our sewers they belong to us you can’t just take them away.”

“No one is planning to take them anywhere, we’re just offering to upgrade and run them.”

“Well we’re not having your plan, it’s your plan. We’ve come up with our own plan.”

“You mean the one that maintains the status quo but provides you with a cheap line of credit.”

“Yes, the consensus plan”, said Duke Wayne, “and if you note we now retain ownership of our cesspools and other assets”.

So in the end the Queen did not make the water clean or well managed and left the nobles in control. And the next time there was no water to drink do you think the people complained that the Duke had let them down? Did they bollocks.

They wailed and threw themselves upon the ground bashing their fists about the earth in frustration and rage bellowing “the Queen has let us all down, down with Queen Hyacinth, why doesn’t she care about our water!”

And the nobles who had rejected the offer of help mumbled that this really was an all-of-kingdom problem and they couldn’t be expected to sort it out themselves.

For now the Queen poured herself a drink, and it wasn’t water.

Better safe than sorry.

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