Little Beryn

#On the Bell and Its Station

Little Beryn is a bell of the Cathedral of Saint-Victor. It is one of the nine principal bells hung in the western mass above the old harbour of Marseille, and it is the only one whose voice the city can copy through its nose. It sounds at terce. That is its attested office. Whatever else it once did, was meant to do, or was promised by some canon to some donor over a cup of bad wine has not reached any register I have been permitted to read.

It hangs in the reinforced cage where the Bureau of Bells keeps its southernmost major relay. From that tower the cathedral's peals go across the harbour, out to the pilgrim vessels, along the coastal chain and inland toward the Rhône road. That is the tower's work. Beryn's share of it is smaller, and louder than it ought to be.

Its company is distinguished. Victor is the largest and knows it. Lazare tolls for relic arrivals and disputed deaths. Oraison marks Bureau business at the quay. Marthe calls the pilgrims to muster. Salt-John cries harbour danger. Three lesser bells divide parish business, funerals, debt remissions and municipal duty among themselves. Beryn keeps the third hour of the morning, and keeps it badly.

#On the Crack and the Voice

Little Beryn cracked in A.S. 167. It was never properly repaired. Those two sentences are the whole record, and I have read them the way a confessor hears a very short confession, suspecting that the penitent has left out the interesting part.

The register does not say what cracked it. Nor does it say who examined the fracture, what they proposed, which committee received the proposal, or in which drawer it died. "Never properly repaired" is a phrase of exquisite clerical economy. It allows that something may have been done and refuses to call it a repair. I leave it exactly as written. Doctrine does not upholster an absence because the room looks bare.

What remains is the voice. A sound bell speaks from its bronze. Beryn seems to speak from somewhere behind the bronze, as though the clapper had struck a canon with a head cold. Its note is a nasal complaint, thin at the front and sour at the tail, and it comes over the harbour every morning with a creditor's punctuality. A pilgrim fresh off the boat might reasonably wonder whether a bell can catch cold. The Marseillais do not wonder. They settled the question in childhood.

This bell belongs to the relay, the southern maritime station of the Bureau that regulates sacred sound across the Dominion. For thirty-four years it has opened the working morning in a cracked voice, and the morning has opened regardless.

#On Terce in Marseille

Prime brings the pilgrims. In its traffic note for A.S. 200, the Marseille Watch called the congestion between prime and terce "manageable". In Watch language this means nobody was trampled who had not paid for the privilege. The pilgrims climb toward the west door with their bundles and ship-tickets. They read the Bureau of Pilgrimage board by the southern porch and loiter in the shade where licensed guides have bought the right to begin their tours.

Then Beryn.

The same Watch note records severe relic-market overflow between terce and sext. I do not claim that the bell opens the market. No ordinance I have found gives it that power, and the dealers of the Cathedral Quarter have never in their lives waited for permission. I record only that the hour of the crack and the hour of the crush are the same hour. The wax sellers are already out. The scribal booths unroll their oilcloth. The fish begins to fry. Licensed dealers set out certificates in gilt frames along the lower steps. Dealers whose certificates are still pending set theirs in cheaper frames, slightly to the left. Below them the lanes run down toward Quai Saint-Lazare, and the whole slope fills with the noise of devotion being priced.

Above all of it, Beryn whines.

Every Marseille child can imitate it. The cathedral's own published account says so, and the docks confirm it daily. Children do it to one another, to pilgrims, and to clerks climbing up from the quay with their satchels. The imitation is good. It catches the drag in the tone where the crack seems to snag, and it sours on schedule. Done on bronze, it would earn a Bellwarden a commendation in his calibration log.

#On the Standard and the Exceptions Not Recorded

The Bell Codex, ratified in A.S. 115, governs what bronze may say, when it may say it, and whose hand may hold the rope. The Office of Bells was constituted earlier, in A.S. 52, and bell practice is older than both. None of these dates is Beryn's, and I will not lend it one. The Bureau of Bells sets the peal schedule. The Bureau of Doctrine, which is to say my office, explains why the schedule is holy. The chapter, Tithes, Relics and every other office with a seal in Marseille quarrel over the building in between.

The Bell Inspectors carry two instruments, and the difference between them matters here. The chronometer settles time: whether a bell spoke within its seven seconds of tolerance. The fork settles pitch: whether the bronze is the bell its licence describes. Seven seconds measures the hour and says nothing whatever about a crack. A bell may strike terce at the very instant Strasbourg requires and still sound exactly like Beryn.

I hold no inspection finding against Little Beryn. I hold no dispensation for it either. No ruling has crossed my desk that tolerates its voice, excuses it, protects it or condemns it, and I searched with the diligence of a man hoping to be amused. The bell rings. The register says it cracked. Between those two facts the record says nothing, and Doctrine is not in the habit of writing exemptions the Bureau of Bells never troubled to write for itself.

Clause 14-F of the Codex forbids any school or private household to ring, strike or imitate a bell without schedule authority. The children of Marseille hold no schedule authority. I know of no prosecution. I draw no conclusion from either fact in print, because the Bureau of Bells reads print.

#On the Present Application

As of A.S. 201, the Cathedral of Saint-Victor and its relay remain in service. Little Beryn remains one of the nine principal bells: cracked, never properly repaired, and on duty at terce. Victor still makes the deep sound. Salt-John still waits for the harbour to misbehave. Marthe still musters. Beryn still complains.

I have heard prelates argue that a defective instrument diminishes the office it serves. On this view the hour deserves a clean voice, and the Church deserves a bell that does not invite mimicry from children with fish-scale on their sleeves. The argument is elegant. No one has filed it against Beryn, and Marseille has not waited for anyone to try. The dock-hand hears the whine and knows the morning has turned. The relic dealer hears it and straightens his frames. The clerk hears it and walks faster. The pilgrim hears it and asks what is wrong with the bell, and a child answers him in perfect pitch.