In the back kitchen of the Old Ferry warehouse, at five o’clock in the morning, the large slate blackboard that had once recorded apprentice sweeping chores and academy supply receipts was transformed into a permanent town upkeep schedule, ruled into crisp columns with a flat ruler of white pipe lime and color-coded with Pella Rook’s blue grease pencils.
Mistress Hesta stood before the board with a damp wiping rag in one hand and a flat carpenter’s lead pencil in the other, her iron-gray hair pinned tight beneath her starched linen cap and her brass-rimmed glasses reflecting the warm orange glow of the kitchen fire bowl.
‘Every six hours on the stroke of the ward bell, girls!’ Hesta commanded her twelve senior laundresses, who sat in double ranks along the scrubbed pine bench, warming their chapped fingers around clay pot mugs of hot boiled tea and eating thick slices of dark rye bread with a crisp sourdough crust. ‘Tray One and Tray Two at the bottom of the courtyard cedar chest take the heaviest brunt of the hot acid steam coming off the museum chimney pipe. When the fifth bell rings, those two lower trays come out off the greased locust-wood runners. You don’t dump the spent charcoal into the street gutter, and you don’t shake the bags in the yard. You lay the sealed linen envelopes straight into Eren’s covered hand-barrows and wheel them down the quay to Master Corley’s kilns.’
