How Ilse Corrin Washes the River Out of Linen

Third day the water has been going down on Mulov Street, and up on Ulev the baskets have not stopped coming.

Ilse Corrin takes flood linen the way she takes any linen, in order, no exceptions for whose house is grander. First she shakes it out at the door — grit, straw, whatever the river left in the weave, so it does not go into the tub and ruin the next basket. Then it soaks two hours in the tub by the well, longer if the mud has dried in overnight. She throws in a handful of ash from her own hearth if the river-smell has gotten into the cloth, which it usually has. Ash cuts the smell. Soap alone does not.

She wrings each piece twice — once at the tub, once after the second rinse, twisting from opposite ends with her sister’s girl holding the other end. Two hands is not enough for a wet sheet. She learned that the first week, from a torn seam.

A man she did not know passed twice this morning, both times walking up toward the hill, his boots dry. He did not stop.

What dries first goes back first. She does not wait for a full line before returning anything — a shirt today, the rest tomorrow, whatever the fire and the weather will take.

She charges by the basket, not the piece, and has not turned away a household yet. Three families on the low end of Guild Row are hers this week, all of them carrying what they own up their own stairs.

The rooms on the hill cost more this week, the water having made them scarce. The washing on Ulev Street costs what it cost last month.