THE SIXTH BELL
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A mystery for visitors · not the novel's

The Sixth Bell

Everything you need is on these pages. Nothing is timed, nothing is tracked, and no page will ever lie to you. Bring patience and, if you have one, a pencil.

In the winter of 1943 the war came up the valley for the bells. The order was stamped and polite: bronze for the foundries, church by church, weighed and carted and gone. The old pieve of Sant’Ansano al Poggio, above the Pesa, kept six. Five had names and papers. The sixth was small and black with age — cast in 1348, the year of the great dying, by a founder who signed himself only Magister Lapus. The village never called her by her christened name. They called her la Nonna — the grandmother — because the other five, next to her, were children.

The cart came on a Tuesday. Five bells went onto it. The sixth was not in the tower, not in the crypt, not anywhere. The sacrestano — the sexton, Nardo Chelli, who had kept the pieve for thirty-seven years — was questioned twice and said, both times, only that a bell is not a thing a man can put in his pocket. Nothing was found. Nothing was charged. In the summer that followed, the front came up the Pesa, and the bombs that fell on the market town killed, among many better-recorded souls, one elderly sexton. Whatever he knew went with him.

In 2019, a restorer in Florence rebinding one of the pieve’s hymnals found a folded page sewn into the spine. It is reproduced below, translated from the Italian. It is a page from the parish ledger — the very week of the requisition — in Nardo’s hand.

The village has read it a hundred times and put it back in its drawer. Perhaps it wants newer eyes. Find her.

LIBRO D’INVENTARIO · PIEVE DI SANT’ANSANO AL POGGIO

the week of the requisition · translated from the Italian

Linens of the high altar, twelve, folded with rosemary — to the widow Bardi’s cedar chest. Ampullae of silver, the pair — beneath the third stair of the canonica. Nails of the great Cross, loose, nine — in the tin with the candle ends. Oil for the lamps, one jar in four — carried up the hill by the Ricci boy. Numbered psalters, forty and one — walled in the grain room, dry side. Nothing of the Misericordia silver to remain — divided among six houses, names not written. Ashes of the old registers — scattered. Some things are safer as smoke. The rest, she keeps. — N.C., sacrestano · the feast of St. Lucy, 1943

The restorer’s note, 2019: “Observe how he begins each line. In forty years of ledgers, Nardo Chelli never once began seven consecutive entries so carelessly alike.”

Ask the sacrestano (hints)
First hint: the restorer’s note at the bottom of the page is not decoration. Read the beginnings.
Second hint: take the first letter of each of the seven entries, in order, and say them aloud as one Italian phrase. Then read the last line of the ledger again — the rest, she keeps — and you will know who is being trusted.

When you know who keeps the rest

Take the word to the bell tower. It will ask.

To the campanile →