The oilcloth on Sister Merrow’s kitchen table was wiped clean of tea rings and bacon grease, replaced by the yellowed, brittle spread of four stone-built folios on raw, unwhitened linen parchment. Outside, the rain had slowed to a greasy, coal-scented drizzle that coated the high alley casement in a film of dark soot, while inside, the small washroom fireplace threw off a dry, aromatic warmth of burning cedar blocks.
Senior Town Auditor Varo Nenn sat on an upturned wash-tub, his ink-blackened fingernails pinning the four corners of the largest sheet to the beechwood boards using two iron axle-nuts, a cast-iron line weight, and an ancient brass inkwell. His narrow clerical glasses were tied behind his ears with waxed black thread. Their small round lenses reflected the yellow flame of a single animal fat candle.
“Eighty years ago,” Nenn said, his dry voice rustling like dry hornbeam leaves in an autumn gale. “During the second mayoralty of Alderman Callow. The city was expanding its deep-water wharves along the mud flats of the Gray Rush. The spring thaws from the High Tor were drowning the wool cellars every April. The city didn’t summon spirits. The city hired four hundred stonecutters, chartered six lime kilns in the northern hills, and spent eleven thousand silver crowns from the harbor endowment.”
