The steam in the Reed family laundry on Tanner’s Row was thick, white, and smelled of wood-ash lye, boiled animal fat soap, and the clean, sharp dampness of coarse linen.
Sera Reed stood beside the main boiling vat. A huge copper kettle six feet across, set into a brick fire fueled with birch logs. Her gray hair was tucked securely beneath a clean linen kerchief, her wool sleeves rolled above her red, muscle-corded elbows. In her right hand she held an ash-wood laundry paddle four feet long. It used it to stir fifty pounds of heavy draymen’s smocks through the boiling suds with the rhythmic, steady, unrushed pace of thirty years’ labor.
Across the brick floor, Emmet Reed sat on a low stool beside the cold-water rinse tub, his carved ash crutch resting against his knee. His right hand, thick and scarred from hauling timber ropes in his youth, was working a wooden screw-press to wring the grey wash-water from a bundle of wool blankets.
The street door didn’t knock. It was kicked open.
The cold winter sleet swept across the threshold, instantly condensing the laundry steam into heavy, dripping fog.
Two men stepped into the washhouse. They were large, thick-shouldered men dressed in long dusters of greasy brown cowhide, their boots caked in the gritty black mud of the South Foundry yards. The man in front had a scarred lip. Then he carried an iron-pouring ladle handle tucked through his belt. The second man was taller, carrying a heavy…
