WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Ceaseless

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◈ The Medieval Heretic King is Too Good at Developing ◈

Chapter 64: Bohemian Cement (3)

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A few days later.

Prague's square in the height of summer was as chaotic as a poked beehive.

Murmur, murmur.

People had poured in like clouds after seeing the notice recruiting workers for the sewer construction.

A considerable number of laborers had already left for the Sternberg domain reconstruction project, but plenty still remained in Prague: people who could not leave their hometowns and breadwinners who had to look after their families.

Daily wages paid the same day.

Three meals provided.

With such extraordinary terms on offer, it seemed every able-bodied man left in the city had flooded into the square.

I watched the scene not from the palace terrace, but beneath a temporary tent at the heart of the worksite.

"My lord. Gathering this many people is all well and good."

János Hunyadi thumped his heel repeatedly against the ground.

"Can they even dig this up? Making cement was great, but don't we have to dig the ground first before we can pour anything?"

"Why wouldn't they be able to?"

"Because this is Prague. It's nothing like the soft dirt roads of Sternberg."

János Hunyadi gestured toward the ground with his chin.

"This land has been trampled by tens of thousands of people and carts for centuries. It turns to mud when it rains, dries hard when the sun comes out, gets covered in dirt, then trampled again... Repeat that thousands of times, and it's practically rock. We'll be lucky if the workers don't break their wrists trying to strike it with pickaxes."

János Hunyadi was right.

The ground beneath a medieval city was as troublesome as modern asphalt.

The hardpan, compacted by centuries of accumulated filth, lime, gravel, and countless footsteps, was tougher and harder than most sedimentary rock.

Trying to dig through such ground with crude medieval tools was as reckless as tearing down a city wall with bare hands.

Still, I gave a small laugh and shrugged.

"You really do worry about everything. Did you think I'd tell them to dig with their bare hands?"

"Then what? Surely you're not going to use Gunpowder in the middle of the city?"

"I've prepared something quieter and more reliable than Gunpowder."

I gestured toward the square's entrance.

"Štěpán!"

"Yes, Your Majesty! Did you call for me?"

Štěpán, the construction overseer I had urgently brought from Sternberg, replied in a booming voice.

Having already rebuilt an entire domain according to my designs, he was the only person suited to oversee this unprecedented project.

"Unload the equipment. It's time to work."

"Understood! You lot! Get the cargo down!"

At Štěpán's shout, his assistants roughly shoved wooden crates from the wagons.

Rumble, crash!

The crates burst open, spilling their contents.

Thousands of shovels and pickaxes.

Yet their color was unusual.

There was none of the reddish rust typical of farming tools abandoned in a blacksmith's corner, nor the pale color of wrought iron.

Instead, they gleamed with a dark, heavy luster, black as though soaked in oil.

"All right, line up and take one each! Lose it, and we'll deduct it from your wages, so treat them carefully!"

Štěpán handed out the equipment to the workers.

One worker at the very front of the line, built like a bear, received a black pickaxe. His eyebrows twitched at the unexpected heft that traveled through his wrist.

"Oh... It's lighter than I expected, and it sits nicely in the hand."

He gripped the handle and swung it through the air a few times.

Whoosh, whoosh.

The sound of it cutting through the air was anything but ordinary.

"Good. Let's test it."

The man spat into his hands and rubbed them together, then spread his feet and took his stance. With a mighty shout, he brought the pickaxe down with all his strength.

"Hyaaah!"

Shunk!

"Huh...?"

A dazed sound escaped his lips.

There was none of the impact that should have traveled up his wrist. He could barely even feel resistance from the hard ground.

The man pulled on the pickaxe's handle.

Crunch!

A clump of soil, packed solid by centuries of trampling, came up in one piece. Even so, the pickaxe head remained smooth and shining, without a single scratch.

"What? Why is the ground so soft? Did it rain yesterday?"

Puzzled, the man swung the pickaxe again.

Thud! Thud!

The result was the same. Whether it struck rock or hardened soil, the pickaxe did not care. It bit into everything in its path as easily as cutting tofu.

Only then did the man cry out in excitement.

"Hey! This is the real thing! The ground is butter, butter! You don't even need to put strength into it! Just drive it down, and it digs in by itself!"

"What?"

"Really?"

The other workers, hearing that, began competing to drive their newly issued shovels and pickaxes into the ground.

Thud! Crack! Slice!

"It's true! The rocks just split apart!"

"Was digging always this easy? The dirt scoops right up!"

Exclamations erupted everywhere amid clouds of dust.

The shovel blades slid deep into the earth as though gliding through it. Even when they hit stones, the blades did not bend. Instead, they shattered the stones.

János Hunyadi shook his head in amazement.

"My lord, could those be...?"

"Yes. Steel farming tools produced at the ironworks."

Ordinary wrought iron was soft and bent under a hard blow, while cast iron was hard but easily broken.

Steel properly treated with heat was different. It was hard enough to smash rock while also flexible enough to absorb and deflect impacts.

Labor? Skill? Of course, both were necessary.

But when it came to digging, the most important thing was having good equipment.

János Hunyadi shook his head.

"Good grief. Using steel meant to pierce knights' armor on the battlefield for digging... One of those pickaxes could crack a knight's skull."

"You have to sweat in peacetime if you want to shed less blood in war."

I left the dust-filled worksite behind.

"Now that digging is solved, shall we go deal with the real problem?"

"The real problem?"

"Digging blindly won't do. We need to decide where and how to dig."

I entered the tent and spread out the city map I had prepared in advance.

"Honestly, extending sewer pipes through every alley and to the front of every house in Prague is impossible."

I boldly ignored Prague's tangled network of streets on the map.

"To do that, we'd have to tear up the entire city. Even if it took two years instead of two months, it would be difficult. If we dug up every alley, not even people, let alone carts, could get through. The city's functions would come to a halt."

"If you knew that, why did you make such a promise? You declared you would finish within two months."

"I never said I would connect every house."

I picked up a quill and drew a thick cross on the map.

They were the main roads stretching east, west, south, and north from Prague's royal palace.

"We choose our priorities and focus our efforts."

I tapped the cross on the map with my finger.

"We'll bury massive trunk sewers beneath only these four main roads. There is no time to dig up the alleys."

"Then what about the people living in those alleys? Are they supposed to keep getting soaked in sewage?"

"No."

I circled the intersections of the lines, as well as the areas around markets and churches.

"We'll build public toilets, public bathhouses, and laundries at the major hubs of each district."

"Communal facilities?"

"Yes. If we can't process every household's wastewater individually, we bring the people directly above the sewers."

I tapped the circles on the map.

"Think about it. Wouldn't it be far better to walk a little way and use a toilet with clean water flowing freely than to keep a stinking chamber pot in your home? The waste produced there will be carried directly out of the city through the sewer beneath it, making it very sanitary. Households can dispose of their wastewater there as well."

This was the hub-and-spoke urban sanitation system I had devised.

It was too soon to connect pipes to every tap as in a modern water and sewer system. We lacked the money, time, and technology.

There was only one answer.

Revive Rome's bathhouse culture.

If people gathered where the water was, the city's waste would only be produced in controlled areas, making it overwhelmingly easier to handle.

It might be slightly less convenient for each household, but there was no better way to rapidly improve sanitation across the entire city.

János Hunyadi looked down at the map and nodded.

"Hmm... It's certainly far more realistic than tearing up every street. If we only block the main roads, we can keep the merchants' complaints to a minimum. But what is this red line?"

What János Hunyadi pointed to was a separate line, much thicker and darker than the cross-shaped trunk road network.

It began in the deepest part of Prague Castle, where the king's bedchamber and office were located, then ran straight down into the central trunk sewer.

"This isn't connected to the other trunks, and it has no intermediate connections or stops. Surely..."

"It's my private line."

János Hunyadi narrowed his eyes.

"A private line? You mean you plan to bury that long pipe separately for your use alone?"

"Of course. A king can't use the same toilet as the common people, can he?"

"That's true, but... It doesn't sound like you, my lord. I thought you'd hate it because it's inefficient."

Inefficient. That was true enough.

Yet there were things one had to do, even if they were inefficient.

"No, I'm serious. I'm sick of seeing Šárka's face every morning when she empties the chamber pot, and more than anything, I want to preserve the dignity of my backside."

Medieval toilets were truly hellish, and being a king did not make much difference.

Even now, I either had to relieve myself over a chamber pot placed beneath a chair with a hole in it, or use a primitive latrine that dropped waste straight beyond the castle wall.

The stench was unbearable in summer, while in winter, the biting wind froze my backside.

"This is absolutely necessary for my mental health. I can compromise on everything else, but I absolutely must reclaim the sound of civilization: water rushing beneath my backside and washing the waste away."

"...Rushing?"

"Yes! A flush toilet! The great invention that washes away your worries through the power of water!"

I clenched my fist, raised my quill, and drew a design for a U-shaped pipe and water streaming down from a tank on the parchment.

"I'll apply a specially designed siphon principle to this private line. I'll install a U-shaped water trap to stop foul odors from flowing back, and place a water tank at the highest point of Prague Castle to secure water pressure. Then, with one pull of a lever, the waste will wash away on its own. We'll finally say farewell to those stinking primitive toilets forever!"

If this succeeded, I would have a flush toilet roughly two hundred years ahead of humanity. The thought alone made it impossible to contain my excitement.

János Hunyadi looked at me with an incredulous expression.

"My lord, your eyes are shining brighter than when you build cannons. Anyone would think you were searching for the Holy Grail."

"In some ways, it's worth more than a cannon. It will dramatically improve humanity's quality of life."

As a modern man who had tasted the civilization of the twenty-first century, I could endure life without a smartphone, but I could never endure a stinking toilet.

Imagining the flush toilet that would be installed in Prague Castle two months later, I lovingly stroked the red line on the map.

Footnotes:

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