The following afternoon, Crown-Reach was transformed by a joyous, spontaneous festival: The Feast of the Clean Water. Across all forty-eight parishes, from the high avenues of Saint Jude’s down to the muddy alleys of Weaver’s Square, long frame stand tables of split pine were set out beneath garlands of scarlet oak leaves and yellow river willow. The bakery ovens had been roaring since midnight. The tables groaned under piles of crusty sourdough loaves, roasted chestnuts, crisp autumn apples, and wooden barrels of sweet, cloudy pear cider.
At every public fountain in the city, the heavy brass town spigots had been thrown wide open. For thirty years, the Duke’s water court guards had kept these fountains padlocked with iron chains, charging two copper silver coins for every bucket drawn from the town water tanks. Today, clear, sweet mountain water from the North Gorge aqueduct poured in foaming, nonstop torrents into the stone basins, overflowing into the street gutters and washing away the summer filth and stale mud of the alleys. Children in patched wool tunics splashed barefoot in the flowing troughs, laughing as they filled clay pitchers and passed cold drinks to draymen and wagon drivers who had laid aside their work.
