By nine bells on the twenty-seventh night, the rain had ceased altogether. That left a clear, star-pricked autumn sky above the roaring white water of the three water gate gates and a brisk north wind drying the cobblestones of Upper and Middle Fish Street. Around the long frame stand tables in St. Jude’s refectory and Sister Merrow’s communal kitchen, forty-two Lowbank families from the lowest cellar apartments who had been evacuated to higher ground before the morning crest were gathering their wool bundles and children, eager to hurry straight back to their rooms.
Sister Merrow—leaning firmly on her stout ash cane at the refectory door beside Widow Mira Os, whose own riverside cottage had been the first test-case of the neighborhood’s solidarity—planted her cane across the threshold and refused to declare the whole district open at a single stroke.
“Nobody carries a child or a mattress down into a ground-floor room on Fish Street until Mira Os, Foreman Eren. I have walked through your cellar with a Davy safety lamp and a straight-line!” Sister Merrow announced over the murmur of the tired families. “The river crest is passing cleanly through the gates, yes—but wet clay settles when the pressure drops, and choke-damp pools in low corners after a hot seep. We clear the street house by house, by the book. Or you stay here drinking my barley soup for another hour!”
