The widow watched the bell come down from the chapel tower on a rope, and the whole Hold had its hands on the rope.
She had not expected that. She had thought there would be a few men on the windlass and the Warden standing at the foot of the tower with his hands behind his back, the way the Lessaran lords stood when they were watching a thing that was being done to someone else. Instead there were men on the rope from one end of the lower yard to the other. There were Lowgate lodgers in their patched coats, and garrison boys with their sleeves rolled, and the Kitchen women with flour on their arms, and the old carter from the bottom of the path with his bad back bent over the rope like a man bowing to a queen. There was a line of children in front of them, the smallest ones, all holding onto the rope with both hands and pulling when they were told to pull and stopping when they were told to stop. Nobody had asked them to come. They had come anyway, the way children came to any great thing that was happening in a place they were not supposed to be.
