Chapter Fourteen
Brettin had been in her old quarters in the Temple for two nights and a day, receiving reports about the flooding of the Lower Town and leading all the Temple acolytes and scores of worshippers in long hours of prayer and numerous litanies. They prayed for succour for those settlers and inhabitants of the Lower Town who had not managed to escape up the paved stairs before the water reached the barrier erected in such haste by the merchants and their servants.
In due course, they would learn how those villeins and helots and elders below the barrier had fared. Brettin reassured many a petitioner that the people down there were most likely safe but hungry, probably sitting comfortably in their upper rooms or at the worst, clinging to their roofs. Quite safe in this fine we
