By one o’clock in the afternoon on the twenty-second day, the old Ferry Turning Basin looked like an army encampment preparing for a siege. Sixty men from the Watermen’s Guild and the Carters’ Trade ring stood in four orderly ranks along the levee, their heavy woolen coats buttoned against the rain, their iron drag-shovels resting on their shoulders.
Eren Tal and Master Galt organized the workforce with the crisp, no-nonsense discipline of veteran tradesmen. The basin was divided into four digging sectors: Sector A on the north levee. There, the silt was light and sandy. Sector B in the center. There, the deep clay mud had settled. Sector C around the old stonework spillway. And Sector D along the drainage water chute.
Twenty-four massive Clydesdale draft horses, their heavy leather harnesses greased with neat’s-foot oil, stood waiting in teams of two, hitched to wide timber drag-scoops designed to scrape forty cubic feet of mud with every pass.
Sister Merrow set up an emergency canteen under a canvas marquee on the high bank, with three copper laundry tubs boiling with thick split-pea soup, salt pork, and dried winter cabbages. A barrel of dark ale from the Lowbank brewery sat on timber blocks, with a sign chalked on the head: ‘Free to Every Man with Mud on His Boots.’
