He entered the house via the back steps into the scullery. The kitchen was deserted, no fire in the grate. The house was silent. Then he saw the front door stood ajar. ‘Charlotte?’ His wife was out on the street, wringing her hands as she paced up and down. Her eyes widened at the sight of him and she ran into his arms, all propriety forgotten. He hugged her fiercely in return, burying his head in her lavender-scented hair. The stream of passers-by parted around them like water around a rock. He closed his eyes and wished he could close his ears to the sounds of the street.

Finally, Charlotte pushed him away to search his face. ‘I thought you dead!’ She patted his arms and his chest as if to confirm he really was standing before her. ‘Look at you, you’re absolutely filthy.’

He rubbed his face and flakes of dried dirt fell from his beard to the ground. She lifted his hands to examine them, tutting at the black muck under his fingernails.

‘Tell me what happened up there. I’ve been listening to gossip and speculation all morning. No. It will wait. Come, come inside.’ She kept talking as she led him through the house and into the kitchen. ‘Millicent has gone to the town hall. She’s worried about her daughter.’

He pulled out a chair and sat. ‘Where does her daughter live?’

‘She’s in lodgings at Malin Bridge.’ Charlotte was twisting a towel around in her hands and he wanted to console her, but could not lift his arms he was so suddenly wearied.

‘That bridge is gone. All the bridges.’

‘It hit Lady’s Bridge and that still stands.’

‘Yes, I crossed it. It is deep in muck.’

‘I hear they’re finding wreckage downriver as far Doncaster but that’s twenty miles away!’

‘Doncaster?’ He was bewildered. ‘It got so far? Well, perhaps. Such a tremendous force…’

Charlotte dropped the towel and took his face in her hands. ‘Oh, John, I can’t tell you how terrifying it was to wake in the night to hear all the alarms sounding and then to discover you were gone.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Is it very bad outside the town?’

He didn’t know how to answer. His reservoir had turned into a ravenous monster gobbling up and spewing out the mills and forges that lined both sides of the riverbank, swallowing who knew how many of the poor souls who lived at the water’s edge, who could ever have believed their river would betray them so fatally? He had not been able to do anything except watch from the hillside. If he had known then that the wave would go on to devastate the heavy industries in the east end of town, drown the inhabitants of Hillsborough, Owlerton and Neepsend… Well, he might never have come home.

Gunson pulled away from her gentle touch.

‘I would have to say that it is very bad, my dear. Very bad indeed.’

Chapter 16

Silas needn’t have worried about which direction to take to get back to his lodgings. As the dawn brightened into full morning, he found himself among the growing number of people streaming upriver on a macabre pilgrimage.