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II
Not a cent
My first problem was getting to the registry. If I walked down the Main Shacks Road in my current nude state I would be in jail before we even started on tax paying.
Kit agreed to let me use the small white sheet that had once been on my bed; fortunately I had dumped it on Kit’s bed before the bailiffs had come. We fashioned that into a sarong-cum-loin cloth. To cover my breasts Kit worked quickly, ripped a sleeve off her long shirt, and tied it round my chest to cover my nipples. We picked up our ID cards from under the carpet piece, and ran to the registry.
At the Shacks Registry Office, one of the few permanent buildings in the Shacks, there was a queue. The authorities had agreed to build a registry office especially for the Shacks - until then an unofficial district that had sprung up on the seaside - because of the workload the Shacks provided, with taxes, enslavements, births and deaths quite common here. Kit and I joined the queue, just on time. They shut the gates after us; anyone who did not make it now would be prosecuted for tax avoidance, the maximum penalty for which was enslavement. We showed our ID cards to an official at the door, who checked our names off on a list. The police would now go after anyone not ticked off on that list.
The registry office was a small building, so the business of these mass tax collections was done out in the forecourt. Desks were laid out for each letter of the alphabet. There was also a desk with a queue of fully clothed men, giving an official one lira each - the poll tax for men being five times less than for women, enabling much more social mobility for men. The rest of the yard was women, mostly thin and tanned and some as scantily and desperately dressed as I was. I felt a pang of embarrassment at my state, but that was replaced by the fear that I would be facing debtor’s jail. It really was generous of Kit to allow me to use the fabric, as it would only be seized as debt repayment. I gave Kit a hug and went to join the ‘C’ queue.
“I’ll see you soon,” she comforted.
Eventually I found myself at the front of the ‘C’ queue. There was an official at a desk with a list of names. Many other officials were rushing round in the background. The Shacks Registry Office would be the busiest in the city today, as paying tax like this was only a resort for those who didn’t have a bank account that the state could take money out of automatically. Nobody in the Shacks had a bank account.
“Name?” the official grunted.
“Holly Cable.”
“ID?” I gave him my ID card. He looked up. “Five lira please, Miss Cable.”
This was it.
“Er,” I stammered, “I don’t have it…” I winced in fear. The official merely looked up, in annoyance at his time being wasted.
“What money do you have on you, Miss Cable?” he said irritably.
“Nothing,” I said with a dry throat, “not a cent.”
“Well, Miss Cable, I must remind you that failure to pay full poll tax on demand in cash results in the tax being doubled to ten lira automatically before any other action is taken.”
“Yes sir.”
“Okay,” the official said, waving his hand to some guards. “You are being arrested for failure to pay poll tax on demand.” Two guards now stood beside me. “These gentlemen will take you to see the evaluator on duty today; if your debt to the state can not be salvaged from amongst your possessions, you will be sent to debtor’s jail. Do you understand?”
I nodded my head. My throat was too dry to speak, and I was barely containing the tears that were welling up in the corner of my eyes. One of the guards grabbed my wrists behind my back and cuffed them with tie wrap handcuffs. Some of the girls in the queues around me were now staring intently. The guards powerfully grabbed an arm each and escorted me into the registry office.
I was sat down on a bench in the waiting room of the office. Three other girls, as skimpily dressed as I was, were already sat on the bench, like me handcuffed. I waited nervously. Clearly there were two evaluators working today; one girl was escorted into one office and the other into another office. From this last office, a girl – a typical Shacks girl who was no older than 17, tanned and skinny with scrawny blonde hair – was unceremoniously ushered out, crying. She was totally nude. Clearly the clothes she had been wearing had been enough to pay off her debt. She would now have to try to get home or procure some clothes from the market outside very quickly using presumably the only thing she would now own and be able to pay with, her body. If the police, who were now crawling the streets for tax evaders, were to pick her up, she would find herself back in trouble.
“We’ll give you a ten-minute head start,” she was told on the way out.
“Holly Cable!” a guard shouted from the other office. I struggled to stand up and walked over to the door. Once there I was pushed inside and the door was closed behind me.
Inside a state official sat at a desk with papers and a box on it. There were also three guards and an evaluator, identifiable by his white coat, who stood leaning on the desk.
“Holly Cable; owes ten lira,” the guard behind me announced to the room. The official at the desk looked up at me. He had being given my ID card and was writing my details on a form.
“Start with the clothes, Ted,” the official said to the evaluator, sounding bored and flustered.
The evaluator walked up so that he stood right in front of me.
“Hmm,” he said surprisingly loudly. “Seems like a simple piece of cloth and…,” he reached out a hand to fiddle with my top piece, “what seems like a sleeve of a shirt,” he concluded, speaking to the official. He turned back to me. “Is this right, girl?” Again I could only nod my head.
“How much for the cloth skirt thing?” the official asked.
“Simple cloth sheet; merely two lira.” I felt totally helpless as these two strangers appeared to barter my fate.
“And the sleeve thing?”
“Sleeve of a shirt; ripped, unusable again. Could only be used for fabric and then still no-one would buy it. Fifty cents if anything.”
“So that’s two-fifty,” the official concluded. He now looked up at me. “Do you have any other property at all, Miss Cable?”
“No sir, not at all,” I managed to say.
“Bailiffs will check your residence anyway. For now, take the clothes.”
“W-what…” I managed to say. My throat was dry and I gulped. I noticed I was sweating. I had known this was coming but I was still shocked.
“Miss Cable,” the official said impatiently, “these clothes, as your only property, will be taken as payment of your tax. They will be sold at auction within the week and the money raised from this will be deducted from your debt. As we estimate that this will be less than the 10 lira you owe, you will be sent to debtor’s jail. Understand?”
“Yes sir,” I said reluctantly. Of course I had known all that, but the reality of my situation was just hitting home.
The plastic handcuffs were cut. One of the guards was holding out the box to me.
“Strip please, Miss Cable.”
Hesitantly, I unknotted the shirt sleeve and slid that off my torso, my left hand quickly covering my breasts and my nipples, and dropped it in the box. In what was quickly becoming a repeat of yesterday’s humiliation, the guard continued to shake the box at me. No privacy seemed forthcoming. I knew that there would be no privacy in prison, but surely making me stand nude in an office in full daylight was taking it too far? Reluctantly, I turned my back on the five men in the room and stood in the corner. My right hand shakily undid the sheet around my groin and delicately dropped it in the box behind me, before coming back to cover my sex and my shame. There was a tear strolling down my left cheek. My body glistened in sweat from the oppressive heat and my all-encompassing anxiety.
“Cuff her,” the official said.
Before I had chance to respond, the guards forcibly grabbed my forearms from in front of me and again cuffed them behind my back. I was horrified as they forced me by my shoulders to turn and face the room, revealing my uncovered body to the room. The men seemed amused by my nakedness.
“No…” I pleaded softly. Despite being a Shacks girl, I could have counted on one hand the number of men who had seen me this naked – up to now. What distressed me more though was my inability to bring my cuffed hands back to shield my privacy. The men seemed unconcerned about my distress.
“Holly Cable,” the official said grandly, standing up, “you have been arrested for failing to be able to pay poll tax, and will be sent to debtor’s jail until such a time as those debts have been paid off through your labour and the sale of your possessions. The state is free to incarcerate you immediately.”
Two guards took a firm grip each on one of my upper arms, so firm that it hurt. I could no longer control my emotions and I let out a sob. The guards pushed me forward and out of a side door in the office.
The door led out into the backyard of the registry office. In it there was a caged wagon waiting. The wagon appeared to be split into about a dozen separate cages, and in about six of them there was a girl. I was led up the stairs, crying uncontrollably by then, and into the central corridor of the giant cage. I could now see that the wagon had six caged cells on each side and a corridor in the middle, with a caged roof covering the whole vehicle. I was pushed into one such cell. It was no more than a three-foot square and about seven feet in height. The guards turned me to face outwards and cut my wrist restraints. Impulsively, I reached to protect my nudity, but my arms were quickly and forcibly pulled upwards and locked into handcuffs that hung from a chain in the ceiling. I cried as my ankle was locked into a shackle on the floor. My body was now totally exposed. I knew this wagon would be pulled to the debtor’s jail, with the public able to see that those who don’t pay the tax are made to make it up and were punished.
I looked at the cell to my left. In it there was another girl, predictably tanned and skinny with luscious brunette hair and a proud and sculpted face. She, like me, was sobbing quietly.
I had been a Shacks girl all my life but up to now I had managed to avoid the dreaded debtor’s jail. But now, thanks to the bad management of the Cauldron making me redundant and the greediness and extortion of Lord Black’s company, I was naked, chained, and a debtor. I had never felt so humiliated, exposed and worthless in my life, and I hadn’t even made it to prison yet. I could blame all the bad things that have gone wrong for me this month, but no-one will listen; when the Emperor, the most divine being in the universe, commands a woman to pay his government five lira, then she has to pay, period.
The wagon filled up, a scraggy blonde girl to my right now who was clearly no stranger to debtor’s jail, as she seemed quite relaxed about the whole ordeal. The horses pulling the wagon began to move, and we began to move out of the yard.
I was going to jail, and all for the want of five lira.
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