Down in the Roman vault beneath the Ferry Museum, the sound of Eren Tal’s timber work had fully drowned out the underground hum of the river water chute.
Eren stood stripped to his gray woolen undershirt, his massive forearms glistening with sweat in the lantern light. He swung a twelve-pound hickory framing mallet with rhythmic, terrifying care. Every blow struck the butt of a six-inch-square strut of seasoned white oak with a solid, bone-shaking thwack that drove the timber deeper into the stone wood slot he had cut into the floor flags.
“Hold the ash thin wedge, Tavi!” Eren roared, without breaking his swing. “Hold it straight by the edge! If you let it twist on the grain, the rake will kick out and drop eighty tons of Roman limestone straight onto our heads!”
Young Tavi knelt in the wet gravel at the base of the eastern vault arch. His small hands gripped a six-inch wedge of split mountain ash with white-knuckled desperation. The boy’s face was smeared with gray limestone dust, his teeth chattering from a mixture of cold draft and sheer, pure terror.
Thwack!
The mallet struck. The ash wedge slid forward an eighth of an inch, biting into the dry oak strut with an agonized, stringy creak that sounded like a ship’s mast straining in a gale.
