Inside the cool limestone gallery of the quarry shelter, the sound of the outside world shrank to a thin, hollow echo.
The lower adit entrance was sealed behind six inches of green oak timbers, cross-braced with seasoned ash balks and locked with two four-inch wrought-iron drop-bars that rested in carved limestone sockets. The air in the gallery was twenty degrees colder than the yard outside. It carried the clean, stone smell of damp stone, ancient lime-dust. The sharp vegetable scent of freshly bruised ferns.
Along the southern wall of the cave, the two recovered pottery wagons stood intact on their broad ash wheels.
A dozen village women and apprentices were already at work in the dim horn-lantern light, checking the straw crates. Young Tallo was carefully lifting the lid of a saggar box from the lead wagon, inspecting a stack of celadon-glazed tea bowls with clay-stained fingers.
“Not a chip, Mistress Venn,” Tallo whispered. His voice shook with a mixture of wonder and spent terror. “Every bowl is sitting in its bed of oat straw just as we packed them on the forty-fifth day.”
“Leave the straw alone until the doors are clear,” Maud Venn commanded. She wiped grease from her palm with a dry rag. Her voice was steady. But her knuckles were white where her hand rested on the handle knob of her pruning knife. “A bowl that doesn’t break in the wagon will break on the gallery floor if you crowd the crates. Bram, set two wedges…
