The silt on the south bank was worse than the river wash. It was not sand, which gave way cleanly and drained when the water dropped, nor was it river clay, which could be packed into hard bricks under a tamper. It was the sour, rotting dredge of forty years of autumn floods—leaf mould, coal grit from the upstream smithies, and black bog muck that smelled of sulfur and dead alder roots.
The two-wheeled handcart had gone down to its hubs ten paces from the dry gravel of the orchard path.
It was a narrow vehicle, built from barrel staves and salvaged iron hoops, loaded with three sacks of bruised parsnips, a copper wash boiler filled with baby blankets, and two small children wrapped together in an oilskin smock. A boy with hollow cheeks and ragged wool stockings sat on the front bench, clutching a wooden bowl to his ribs as if it were a shield, while his mother pushed from behind with both hands buried in the mud above her elbows.
The wooden wheels were entirely submerged in the black muck. Every time the woman threw her shoulder into the tailboard, the spokes made a wet, sucking sound, and the cart settled another half-inch deeper into the mire.
