Rain was drumming steadily against the narrow lancet windows of St. Jude’s bridge shrine by the time the ninth evening bell tolled over the swollen river.
In the cramped stone sacristy behind the chancel screen, Sister Oda knelt before an ironbound chest of bog-oak that had sat bolted to the bridge pier masonry since the town of Harth was no more than a ferry landing and a mason’s camp. Across the flagstone corridor, old sexton Roric Flann was shuffling up the belfry ladder with a tallow grease-pot and a bundle of hemp rags, muttering to himself about the hairline crack that had split the noon bell’s lip at midday.
“Mind the third rung from the top, Roric!” Oda called out in her brisk, infirmary voice, waiting until the old man’s wooden clogs clumped safely onto the upper bell-deck. “Oil the yoke bearings well so the damp doesn’t stiffen the swing, and do not strike the bronze with your hammer!”
“Aye, Sister, no hammer on a cracked lip—fifty years on the ropes and she tells me how to grease a gudgeon,” Flann grumbled fondly from the dark tower above, his lantern throwing long slatted shadows down the stone stairwell.
Once the sexton was occupied overhead, Oda closed the sacristy door, dropped the wooden bar into its iron staple—carefully avoiding the cold-iron latch plate with her bare fingers—and drew her ring of small brass reliquary keys from her belt.
