The Ferryman - Book 1

Chapter 10:

Wash House

Moth woke up, staring at the cracked plaster of the ceiling.

Disoriented, she sat up in bed and looked out the small square window at rolling hills of rooftops, and it jolted her awake.

She was in Magden.

Jumping out of bed, she hurried to the window and opened it so she could see the rooftops washed in early morning light. It was quiet and clean, in that moment, and Moth lingered at the window to watch the morning seep in, to breathe in all the colors and sounds.

Moth got dressed, making sure her clothes was crisp but not too nice, and her apron clean and tied securely around her waist. She tugged her shoes on and knotted them with triple knots. She was ready for work; today she started as a washerwoman, today Tully would show her how to earn a wage.

She hurried out of her room to the rest of the cold house. Slowing down so as not to wake Aunt Violet, Moth tiptoed around the thin-walled and echoing house, eased down the two flights of stairs, wincing with every groan of the wood.

When she finally got to the first floor, she heard someone in the kitchen, and entered it to find Salvia making simple meals and putting them in lunch pails.

“When did you get up?” asked Moth, surprised

“An hour ago.” Salvia rubbed her eyes and yawned, tendrils of her hair already worming out of her bun. “It’s yesterday’s meal, so don’t get excited.”

“Thank you,” said Moth.

Salvia poured a pot of coffee into several old, dented metal thermos’. Without looking up, she said, “You have Aunt Rena’s old lunch pail.”

I appreciate you letting me use it. I wouldn’t want to buy one.”

Assembling four lunchboxes, Salvia stepped back and nodded at her handiwork.

“I can start getting up earlier and helping with the lunches,” said Moth.

Salvia shook her head. “I work a half day so I can do all the cooking and cleaning here. You and Tully will be working full days, you need all the sleep you can get – or, you soon will.”

“Where is Tully?”

“She sleeps like a dead pig, so I have to wake her up.”

“I can do that.”

Salvia shrugged, and Moth headed to the second floor, where she knew Tully’s room was. She knocked on the door, but there was no response and she opened it.

Aunt Violet was sitting at her washstand, dressed in her chemise.

Her hair was in an unkempt mess around her face, and her eyes were open to their fullest as she gazed into the water-filled basin, her hands clenched at her side.

“I-I’m sorry, Aunt Violet,” said Moth, looking away. “I thought this was Tully’s room.

Breaking from her revery, Aunt Violet said, “Oh, it’s alright, dear. She’s the door after mine.”

Moth quickly closed the door and stood in the hallway, leaning on the wall for support. She felt a chill burn though the length of her body at the expression in Aunt Violet’s homeless eyes.

Rubbing her mouth and calming herself down, Moth knocked on the second door. There was a faint snore, and Moth opened the door and entered Tully’s room.

Despite not having much, Tully’s room was a mess of clothes, books, knick-knacks and pens, and incomplete repair projects of side tables and toys.

Tully was spread eagle on her bed, face down. She had forgotten to take off her shoes last night, and they dangled off the foot of her bed.

Moth shook Tully awake. She gave a suffocated groan and peeled herself off her mattress. “Time?” she rasped out.

“Six in the morning, about.”

Stumbling to her washstand, she splashed water on her face and shook her head. “I’ll be ready in five minutes.”

Moth went back down to the first floor, and by the time she grabbed her and Tully’s lunch and stood in the foyer, Tully stomped down the stairs fully dressed, and her hair braided.

“Alright, girly, let’s go.”

Moth followed in Tully’s lanky shadow – made longer by the low morning sun – and looked around to see the bustle of people heading to the factories, the river’s dockyard, the railway yard, or attending to their chores and thousand duties they had that morning.

Moth felt she had never seen so many strangers. No one looked familiar – half the families in Hiren were distantly related to her, or married in, or a third cousin twice removed. Here, the features looked so unknown.

“Who’re they?” Moth asked, pointing to their neighbors from three doors down, an older woman with a gaggle of children swarming around her.

“Noisy,” said Tully. “So we go down the length of Mercy Avenue until we find Tumbing Street.”

It was a long street; Moth felt there must be more houses on that one street than in all of Hiren. Everything was close together; all the houses breathed down each other’s neck, sharing each other’s chimney swifts like children sharing their headlice.

Mercy ended abruptly, abutting a giant warehouse that had a dock attached to the river. They turned right, onto Tumbing Street, followed it a block until they turned left on Colloncrog Circle, followed its curving bend until they turned right onto Ampelle Avenue, which ran parallel to the Wylle River.

“And that’s how you get to the Wash House,” said Tully. “Don’t worry, your feet will memorize it soon enough. You’ll have favorite cobblestones to walk on within a month.”

Moth only half heard Tully. Her eyes were fixated on the wide, one story building of whitewashed brick. Its small square windows had bright blue trim, and over the door it read:

Sacherd & Swelle Wash House

“Tully it’s amazing.”

She smirked, showing half of her teeth. “In our old house we just used our kitchen for the washing, but as the demand got bigger, we upgraded to a whole building. You’ll like Swelle, she’s backwater too.”

A strong smell of lyre and lime wafted from the building. They had to go down a few short steps to get through the door and inside.

Though it was one story, it had a high roof with exposed rafters, rows of which were fitted with hooks and rope to dry laundry on. Against the walls were a dozen large metal machines – wringers – for cranking the water out of the laundry. Three fireplaces were against the other wall, with several charcoal irons waiting to be filled. Out the back door, facing the river, was a large hand pump surrounded by buckets and barrels.

Tully went to the fireplaces and began loading in wood to start the fires, saying, “We need it to be hot to boil as much of the river as we can.”

Moth went around crates of lye, and a barrel of chloride of lime, and bundles of dried lavender hung in dense garlands overhead, like a suspended purple hedgerow. She handed Tully logs from a rack that took up most of the wall.

“It looks like a lot, but we go through a cord of wood quickly,” said Tully. “This place is always hot, you won’t mind getting soaked.” Tully grabbed some buckets and headed outside to the pump.

She rolled up her sleeves and began to pump the lever. It was several minutes of work before water began to bubble out and trickle into the buckets, and then a steady gush of water as Tully heaved on the lever.

When it was full, Moth swapped it out for another bucket, and brought the water inside to boil on the enormous pots on the stove, before hurrying out the grab the next bucket of water.

It took multiple trips back and forth to fill the pots – each one the size of a toddler – and even with the hot fire burning beneath, it would be awhile before the water boiled.

The door of the wash house creaked open. Moth turned to watch an older woman step inside.

The woman had graying hair in a braid down to her knees, she was thin as a chicken bone, and even with her thick work boots clanking around her bony ankles she did not come up higher than Moth’s nose.

“You Mere Hevwed?” the woman demanded, looking her up and down.

“Yes.”

“I’m Margot Swelle, Co-Owner of this Wash House.” She brushed by Mere and began setting up the enormous metal wash tubs. “I know Tully swears by you,

but I don’t take risks with girls working here; do you agree to abide by the rules of this Wash House?”

Moth nodded, feeling a flush of nervousness. “Yes ma’am, if you’ll tell me them.”

Swelle held up her matchstick fingers. “Five rules; no stealing from anyone here or the house. No fighting anyone here, or bringing anyone here to fight – take your disagreements across property lines, ey? Number three: No proselytizing of any sort, whether you worship a ferryman or worship the dead, I don’t want any talk or evangelism of any sort over the laundry. Number four: be on time and don’t waste mine. And finally, if I know you’re breaking the law on the side I won’t say spit about it, but the moment your troubles get to my house you no longer work here and I will drag you out. All that clear?”

“Yes ma’am.”

Swelle looked down at Moth’s shoes. “Hiren, hm?”

“Yes ma’am.”

“You don’t look like trouble – or rather you look so bottle-fed you could get into a mess without knowing how. Don’t wander Magden by yourself and we should all stay in peace.”

“Yes ma’am.”

Swelle tugged on a linen apron that hung by the door and said, “Let’s get to work, then, girlie.”

Soon after Swelle, a gaggle of nine other women – from ages sixteen to late fourties – filed into the wash house. They glanced Moth over but didn’t bother with introductions, instead they went to their stations and began setting up the tubs for washing.

Tully came in from outside, and taking a key from around her neck, she unlocked a door into a heavily locked room that was full of laundry. She called the women over and assigned them their bags of laundry.

“Mothball, here you go.” Tully handed her a bag. “Some sheets, something easy to start you off with the equipment. You ready?”

Moth nodded, and Tully brought her over to a young woman her own age. Her hair was beautifully braided and wrapped in a bun on her head, and she was tapping her foot as she waited for them to come over.

“This is Amanda Scride. Amanda, this is Mere. You both are new, so I’ll be overseeing your work to make sure it’s up to standard; ask me questions anytime, and all that,” said Tully, fighting back a yawn.

“I’m not new, I’ve been here two weeks,” said Amanda.

“Forgive me, yes, you’re a veteran. You manage the posser, Amanda, and Moth, you get the soda ash and soap flakes from the shelf. When Amanda’s finished with the posser, you’ll get the tougher stains out with the washboard; your hands will be all underwater.”

“Why don’t you want me to do the stain work?” asked Amanda, tilting her chin up.

“Do you want to dry your hands out with the soda ash until its nothing but scales?”

Amanda Scride shut her mouth and went to get the large wooden posser.

*

Moth spent the rest of the day bent over a sink, scrubbing out the stains. When Amanda moved on to other steps of the laundry, Tully put her on the stain-cleaning duty of other washerwoman laundry.

Though they were confused why Moth was given only that task, they were all relieved not to have to do the monotonous scrub work of battling with stubborn stains that even lye and boiling water could not clean out.

Moth felt the day would never end, and felt ready to cry with relief when at last the sun sunk down the sky, and the wash house lit up with peach tones.

“Clear out,” shouted Swelle. “Dump the coppers and tubs, all unfinished laundry back in their bags. Hang the rest.”

Everyone left their stations and happily dumped out the filthy gray water down the drains and into the gutters outside.

Moth unplugged the sink and watched the water spiral down the drain. She felt sore all over, especially in her elbows and shoulders from the repetition.

Heaving herself from her sink, she walked around to stretch her back, hanging her unfinished work nearby. She waited for Tully to round up the laundry bags and lock them away, looking over the finished work of the woman and calculating their wages, giving Swelle the total.

“It was a good day, you got a lot done,” said Swelle, humming to herself. She handed out the coins to all the woman, who slipped it into pockets and bags as they trailed out of the door.

“Here you are, Miss Hevwed,” said Swelle, dropping three halrungs in her hand.

Moth stared at the glinting coins. “I did three bags of laundry stains?”

“Three and a quarter, but I’ll pay you for that bag when you finish it tomorrow.”

Moth couldn’t believe how much money she held. She quickly hid it in her pocket, but it tapped against her thigh when she walked, and made her conscious of its weight.

Tully finished locking up, handing over her lunchbox. “Ready to go?”

“Yes.”

They left the wash house and headed home. Moth felt the clink in her pocket, and she wanted to reach in and feel the coldness of the coins, but didn’t want Tully to laugh at her.

“Tired, Moth?” asked Tully, whose hair had come mostly undone from her braid.

“No. Well, yes I am, I’m so sore all over I feel like someone starched my bones.” Moth stretched out her arm, and they could hear her joints click. “But I got my wages and now I’m excited to start tomorrow.”

“I wish I could give you more.”

“Tully this is so much. Well, maybe not in Magden, but for my parents? If I earn three a day, six days a week, four weeks a month, I–” Moth stopped because the amount didn’t seem right. “Seventy-two!”

“Everything must be dirt cheep in Hiren for you to be so excited. Oh,” Tully pulled on Moth’s sleeve, “How’s your hand doing?”

“Well it aches, of course but…” Moth trailed off, looking down at her white-marked hand. She felt a tug in her throat and she stopped walking.

“Mothball?”

Moth glanced up, eyes bright. “I didn’t notice it all day, Tully.”

Grinning, Tully hugged her shoulders. “Well that’s just grand, girlie. Let’s get you some dinner.”

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