When Len, Bram, and Ivara climbed the final iron rungs out of the service trench, the air in the tram kitchen hit them like a wave of moist, living heat.
The choking smell of scorched copper and banked ash had vanished, displaced by the sweet, stone-clean fragrance of boiling spring water and hot field peas. High above the hearths, the large tin steam hoods were rumbling with draft. It drew clouds of pure white vapor up into the central exhaust chimney pipes.
The transformation in the cavernous undercroft was total.
All three fifty-gallon copper cooking pots were full to the brim, their polished rims glistening with beads of water drops. The hard coal fires roared beneath their curved bellies. From the heavy brass delivery bibs mounted to the stonework wall, two solid streams of crystal-clear water—drawn from the deep gravel underground water beds beneath the ancient riverbed—poured continuously into wooden soaking tubs with a steady, joyous splashing that echoed off the vaulted ceiling.
A dozen women in coarse linen aprons moved between the tables with urgent, purposeful energy. Some were scrubbing iron porridge bowls with sand and hot water. Others were plunging bundles of gray linen bandages into a simmering vat of antiseptic wash, using ash paddles to stir the cloth. Near the eastern nook, where forty children lay on straw cots, two young mothers were filling glazed clay pot jugs from the main tap. They carried clean water to the bedsides to sponge fevered foreheads and mix dried willow…
