The needle point of the heavy brass line-weight bob was no longer tracing circles. It was wildly gouging long, ragged furrows across the lime-dusted slate. It scattered fine white pipe lime across the wet hemlock planks. It mixed with the cold wet stonework and the bitter tang of copper green rust on the bronze valve studs. The smell of boiled tea from Sister Merrow’s basket below cut through the thick silt stench of the boiling water chute. Every shudder of the ancient bypass valve sent a heard groan through the hemlock timbers beneath their boots. A deep, wooden complaining that spoke of fibers being crushed and ash tenons being twisted beyond their elastic limit.
Pella Rook knelt with her brass measuring tongs resting on her knee. Her fingers black with was dark oak-ink as she checked the distance between the hemlock upright and the granite face of the bridge pillar. ‘Two and a quarter inches of drift,’ Pella said, her voice flat and clear. ‘The entire upper deck has moved toward the water chute. The top wood slot has opened three-eighths of an inch.’
Beside her, Ada Morland was shining her electric pocket torch into the dark gap behind the valve casing. The narrow beam of clean white light cut through the swirling clouds of gray sulfur steam, lighting up the four heavy bronze studs that anchored the valve to the stone wall. Under the racking strain of the tilting platform, the upper studs were bowing downward, the metal weeping…
