The sky, for once clear of the murk spewed by foundries and manufactories, the rich blue of the very best four-florins-to-the-ounce ultramarine. Men ambling to work along the Street of Dyers, leather-aproned, long gloves slung around their necks, hair brushed back and tucked under leather caps. Clogs clattering on flagstones, cheerful shouts, the rattle of shutters raised as the little workshops opened up and down the street. Apprentices hanging skeins of coloured wool on hooks over workshop doors: reds, blues, yellows, vibrant in the crisp slanting light against flaking sienna walls. Then a hollow rapid panting as someone started up the Hero’s engine which by an intricate system of pulleys and belts turned the paddles of the dyers’ vats and drove the Archimedes’ screw that raised water from the river. A puff, a breath, a little cloud of vapour rising above the buckled terracotta roofs, the panting settling to a slow steady throb. Pasquale, who had drunk too much the night before, groaned awake as the engine’s steady pounding shuddered through the floor, the truckle bed, his own spine.
