The afternoon air along the Ferry Basin smelled of slaked burning lime powder, wet cedar shingles. The sharp, clean tang of boiled vinegar. For three days while the Gray Rush pressed against the upper cofferdams, the lower lanes of Lowbank had stood behind timber barricades, their cellar doors wedged with tarred oakum and weighted with pig-iron ballast. Now the wooden sawhorses at the foot of Cobbler’s Slip had been stacked neatly against the parish water tank wall. A long line of handcarts, bundle-laden wheelbarrows, and soaked wool cloaks waited along the granite curb.
Sister Merrow stood on the bottom step of the boat ramp with a heavy iron cellar key ring looped over her left wrist and her ash walking cane planted firmly on the scraped flat stone slabs. Beside her, Master Weaver Mira Os held a brass-bound carpenter’s folding rule in one hand and a wide horsehair whitewash brush in the other, the cuffs of her indigo-stained work smock rolled to the elbows. Behind them, Pella Rook carried a leather-bound ward ledger tucked beneath her arm, a stick of white mason’s chalk held between her ink-stained fingers. Hal Rook’s brass check measuring tongs clipped to her canvas apron pocket.
