In the heart of the Bitter-Reeds settlement stood the weather-beaten timber belfry of the Chapel of the Reeds, its split-cedar shingles blackened by twenty-five years of marsh damp and soot. Suspended thirty feet above the mud hung the great bell of the fen: eight hundred pounds of cast parish bronze, bearing the stone carving: LET MY VOICE CALL THE LIVING AND REMEMBER THE LOST.
For a quarter of a century, that bronze voice had been dead. Around the waist of the bell was wrapped a heavy forged iron chain, secured by a rusted three-pound padlock. The physical instrument of the Barons’ ‘Pestilence Silence Edict,’ which had banned the ringing of church bells under pain of hanging, falsely claiming that sound shakes stirred the infected vapors.
Tomas Reed climbed the rungs of the open timber tower, his boots gripping the weathered pine. In his leather belt hung a hardened steel cold chisel and an eight-pound sledgehammer. Behind him climbed Elder Maren. Her gnarled hands gripped the ladder rails with fierce determination, and Bram. He carried a coil of new three-strand hemp bell-rope.
Tomas reached the belfry platform. The bronze bell was green with green rust. But the iron chain binding its clapper was crusted with flaky red rust. Tomas set the chisel against the central link of the chain.
