Jo Saye walked along the suspended hemlock rails, her bare knees callous and unbending as she unrolled the emerald-green reed-canvas lining into the wooden trough. The composite fabric, woven from cured river reeds and double-twisted flax thread soaked in hot boiled linseed oil, was stiff, heavy, and fully impervious to boiling water.
Beside her, Dima and young Tavi followed with handfuls of copper tacks and leather washers, tacking the edges of the membrane to the hemlock sideboards with sharp, rhythmic taps of their small cobbler’s hammers. The copper tacks bit into the wet timber. They clamped the heavy selvage down with watertight care.
‘Keep the tension even along the bottom!’ Jo called out, her hands smoothing the fabric into the curved corners. ‘No wrinkles in the invert! If the water finds a pocket, the silt will settle and create an eddy that scours the fiber! Make it smooth as an eel’s belly!’
At the head of the alley, behind Master Karst’s cooperage, the broken baked-clay trunk was roaring like an open fire. A solid jet of scalding, yellow-tinted water, four inches in width, was blasting through the fractured limestone stonework with ear-splitting fury, splashing scalding spray against the cooperage wall and filling the narrow courtyard with clouds of dense sulfur vapor.
