By nine o’clock in the morning, the subterranean dark beneath the row-houses of South Lane rang with a single, continuous three-beat cadence that could be felt through the soles of every boot from the bakehouse weir to the market square.
Chink. Clink. Boom.
First came the sharp ring of a mason’s point-chisel seating a steel feather-and-wedge assembly into a lime mortar joint; second, the lighter tap of the setter’s hammer checking the bite; third, the deep, chest-shaking thud of a twenty-pound iron sledge driving the wedge home into eighteen inches of dressed river rubble.
Down in the low, vaulted cellar beneath Cellar Fourteen, Jon worked stripped to his linen shirt and leather apron, a wet wool kerchief tied across his mouth and nose against the rolling clouds of gray lime dust. Beside him stood blacksmith Garrick Holt and baker Dunstan Harl, their broad shoulders gleaming with sweat and white stone powder in the yellow glare of four tin reflector-lanterns hung from the ceiling joists.
“Wedge three set on the south jamb!” Alden Bram called out, pulling his horn-rimmed spectacles down his nose as he crouched beside the partition wall with his notched ash measuring rod and a short iron spirit-level. Even with four relay teams cutting simultaneously down the length of the twenty cellars, Bram and Marris Gault moved continuously up and down the line like shuttle-weavers, checking every lintel header before a keystone was knocked loose. “Give the top feather two quarter-strokes, Garrick, then let Jon get the pinch-bar…
