"I'm more'n concerned, miss, I'm downright scared. They got 'ole lengths o' new sewer built, an' o' course there's still most o' the old bein' used. Get a couple o' slides, mud, cave-ins, an' yer got men cut off down there. If yer don't get drownded, it could be worse-burned."

"Burned?"

"Gas. There's 'ouse'old gas pipes in 'em sewers as well. Get a shift in the clay an' one o' them cracks, an' first spark you'll 'ave not only the gas from the sewage, but back up inter every 'ouse as 'as gaslight. See wot I mean?"

"Yes." Hester saw only too well. It could be a second Great Fire of London if he was right. "Surely they've thought of that, too?" They had to have. No one was irresponsible enough not to foresee such a catastrophe. A few navvies drowned or suffocated, she could believe. There had been a cave-in when the crown of the arch of the Fleet sewer had broken. The scaffolding beams had been flung like matchwood into the air, falling, crashing as the whole structure subsided and the bottom of the excavation moved like a river, rolling and crushing and burying.

Sutton was watching her too. "Yer 'memberin' the Fleet?" he asked.

She was startled. Of course he had told her about the Fleet River running under London in the tales his father had told him. Now she knew why. He had described the whole network of shifting, sliding, seeping, running waters.

"Doesn't everybody know this?" she said incredulously.

It was Lu Collard who answered. "Course they do, Miss. But 'oo's gonna say it, eh? Lose yer job? Then 'oo feeds yer kids?"

Collard shifted uncomfortably in his imprisoning chair. His face was more wasted with pain than Hester had appreciated before. He was probably in his mid-thirties. He had been a good-looking man when he was whole.

"Aw, Andy, she can see it!" his wife said wearily. "In't no use pre-tendin'.' That's wot them bastards count on! Everyone so buttoned up wi' pride, nob'dy's gonna say they're scared o' bein' the next one 'urt."

"Be quiet, woman!" Collard snapped. "Yer don't know nothin'. Their men in't-"

"Course they is!" She turned on him. "They in't stupid! They know it's gonna 'appen one day, an' Gawd knows 'ow many'll get killed. They don't say nothin 'cos they'd sooner get crushed or drownded termorrer than starve terday, an' let their kids starve! Shut yer eyes, an' wot yer don't see don't 'urt yer!"

"Yer gotta live!" he said, looking away from her.

Sutton was watching Hester, his thin face anxious.