Sect Year 5 · eleventh month · night of day 30 · the fifty-fourth life: Halse Ford, his sixth year
“Ring the bell for the child who was not counted.”
“Plain Ear.”
Halse Ford lay where the river spread itself thin over gravel. The village had forty reed houses strung along its bank and a mill whose wheel stopped every summer when the river dropped too low to turn it. The dawn bell hung in a wooden frame at the top of the bank, beside the reed-dyke chapel. Lorne knew the bell by its voice before he knew its shape. It gave one flat brass note for every name on the village roll. The note went out across the shallows and came back off the far reeds a breath late, so that each name was called twice.
He sat on the chapel step with his knees under his chin and counted. The sexton, Oakes, was a long grey man with a cough that rattled in his chest like a stone in a pail. He stood at the rope with his feet apart and his eyes on the water, and he rang each name with a pause after it, long enough for the person to answer from wherever they were. Some answered. A fisherwife called Yes from the far landing. A boy from the mill shouted Here and ran off before anyone could tell him he was done. An old man on the ferry said nothing at all and was rung…
