The iron delivery gate of the laundry opened outward with a low, shivering groan of rusted pintles that Bram Ash muffled with the heel of his leather glove.
The cold hit them the moment the threshold was crossed. It wasn’t the clean, biting chill of the northern pine ridges that Len knew from Tern Road. It was the stale, rotten-egg draft of the lower wards. Air that tasted of wet melted rock waste, charred bituminous coal. The greasy lime dust that drifted continuously from the kiln chimney pipes. The wind whipped along the narrow alleyway behind the hospital, driving fine needles of frozen bitter salt grit into their faces, stinging the raw puncture margins beneath the linen bandages on Len’s left forearm.
Len and Bram eased the laundry handcart down the inclined brick ramp into the alley. The two iron-rimmed wheels turned with a muffled, gravelly crunch in the black frozen sludge that filled the drainage gutters. But the six-inch straw mattress and the three layers of woolen blankets absorbed the shock. Inside the wicker basket, Heth Ash barely shifted, her small head resting deep within the contour of the flannel pillow, her breath coming in slow, measured, rattling exhalations under the chemical crushing weight of the digitalis.
