Chosen Ch. 03

"So many sins. I-"

I suddenly slapped at the bell. It fell off his finger, bounced twice, and rolled to my feet. He gave a wail and fell to his knees, and then began to crawl towards the water.

I pulled him to his feet. He stared sightlessly part me, struggling, whispering "I will be baptized, I will be clean..."

I slapped him across the face, three times, as hard as I could. He shuddered and then, slowly, looked at me.

"What was I saying? Oh mãe de Deus, what have I said?"

"Find a priest," I told him. "Tell him everything. Do it now -- no, wait. Sail for another port. Don't do it at an American base."

"I have never been a churchgoer-"

"Really? I would never have guessed. I would become one now, senhor."

"That bell..."

I picked it up, very carefully, sliding my fingers around the clapper. "You won't ever see it again. Hand me the bottle."

He did, and I emptied it overboard. "Never drink again. Settle money on the people you ruined. What you can do to make penance for running drugs and guns I don't know, but pray the priests have an idea."

He stared at the bell in my hand. "What is that thing? How does it-?"

"I don't know. But it's obvious what happened, isn't it? It killed twelve people and just now nearly a thirteenth. What sort of twisted thing it is I don't know, but you were right, waking it was a bad idea. Get me some packing waste and tape. Now, senhor!"

He moved off, shocked sober. I stared at the bell.

"So," I whispered. "My crazy Spanish grandfather was right after all. There is magic loose in the world."

+++

I crammed the bell full of packing peanuts, and wrapped tape over the bottom.

"So you will just take it?" he said.

"It's not safe here. I have a friend in the Navy who knows a lot about ships and historical artifacts. He'll think I'm crazy, but I will show it to him. I'll send you his address later, you'll need to send copies of the death reports, or he'll never believe me."

"I do not know what to say, amigo."

"Vaya con Dios might be a start. No, sorry, that's Spanish, not Portuguese... I'm doing you a favor because I like your boat. But need to get right with whatever power in the universe is angry at you for the things you've done, and fated you to own this bell."

"And does that same fate make you take the bell now? What have you just signed up for?"

"I have no idea. But it can't be a bad idea to get it to people in my country who can bury it on a shelf in a museum, where it can't do harm and will never see daylight again."

"I hope you are right, senhor. And... sim, vai com Deus."

+++

From: Fermin----------@us.navy.mil To: Mike----------@us.navy.mil

Michael, I know it's been a few years, but you are the only instructor I had who I think can even begin to make sense of this. I swear I'm not pulling your leg. I've come into possession of a bell from a ship, but it's unusual. It's very old for one thing and it's not a proper ship's bell for another. I've cleaned it up and the pictures are attached. You can see the engraving, in Spanish.

The bell comes with a story, of a captain who made new sailors confess their sins before they could sail with him. But where the story gets stranger -- twelve suicides in twenty years, all drownings, on a ship variously named the Lua and the Sino. All of them are thought to have cleaned or rung this bell, and died a day or two later.

So far, crazy folklore. But now I tell you what I saw. The captain (Portuguese) took the bell down and rang it, and was suddenly mesmerized. He confessed all his sins, and tried to throw himself into the water. I can't tell you how frightening it was to see, it was otherworldly. I snapped him out of it and took the bell away. I'm not shitting you.

Do you want it? -F

+++

To: Fermin----------@us.navy.mil From: Mike----------@us.navy.mil

From anyone else I'd take this as a stupid prank. From you, I'll suspend judgment. It's not the strangest tale of heard, but yours has you as an eye witness, so I will do you the courtesy of not laughing.

Having said that, what you experienced was the power of suggestion. An old man with regrets, he'd probably been drinking and reminiscing, and then he gets told to arrepentirse. You're a sympathetic enough fellow so he unburdens on you. His remorse pours out and then he acts irrationally, convinced the bell is making him do things. Some people are very suggestible.

The multiple suicides -- I doubt this. Sailors sometimes have reasons to vanish and twenty years is a long time.

But I did you the courtesy of looking over the pictures. It's not a ship's bell and even from the picture I can see it's not modern or naval brass. What you have, in fact, is an old Spanish church hand bell, cast in calamine brass. They were used to drive away spirits, call to worship, and in excommunications. Yours could easily be over 400 years old. Why it hasn't rotted away on a ship I don't know. It may be worth something -- I will check with a collector I know in Europe, he might have an opinion. Those bells used to be commissioned by the larger churches and a pious catholic captain could easily have inherited one. I will do a little research -- I know someone - but I don't expect to learn anything.

+++

I dialed... to my surprise he answered immediately.

"Alan speaking. Hello, Michael."

"Hello, Alan. It would be odd if someone else had answered your phone."

"You never know. It has been a long time. Still doing time in the Navy? Your timing is curious. I just landed in America. As in I'm collecting my luggage just now."

I chuckled a little. If Alan was in America, the cops were probably combing Europe for him.

"Enjoying our... cooler climate?"

"Immensely. To what do I owe the honor?"

"I have a research request and it's a little odd. Perhaps a lot odd."

"And so I came immediately to mind."

"Well, yes. It's a religious artifact, Spanish, old."

"Really. Can you give me a minute to settle?"

I heard him murmur softly, and then a faint and very feminine giggle. Knowing Alan, I just smiled. There were some thumps and some background airport noise, and then the faint whine of a laptop. I sent him an email.

"These airport wi-fis are rather annoying... there. Tell me what you have."

"I don't have it, one of my old students does. But I have pictures, which I've just forwarded."

"I see it. Yes... It's a church bell, cast... Spanish, but it's a generic casting technique and so it is hard to date. The engraving was done by hand. The hole at the top would have taken a wooden handle. It's not a notable item, except for the fine condition. Very fine actually... Where was it found?"

"On the deck of a ship in the Caribbean for a good number of years. The ship is out of Portugal."

"No, Michael, that cannot be right. It's clearly calamine brass. It's a reasonably corrosion resistant metal, but sea water will always win in the end. Is your friend reliable?"

"I'd have said among the most reliable, but the tale he told about it is wild."

"Ah, now you are truly capturing my interest. But I am not alone at the moment-" I heard another giggle, closer and louder "-and I very much need to settle into my hotel. Can you give me wild but brief details now, and we will talk more later?"

"Brief details are all I have. People who ring the bell commit suicide, by drowning. The original captain of the boat was a pirate hunter and is thought to have made his crew confess their sins before they could sail, and the bell is thought to have been involved."

"Ah, a classic story. The bell weighs purity and punishes the unrepentant. You had better not send it to me, because I have never repented of anything in my life..."

Again, the nearby giggle. I just shook my head, and tried not to feed his immense ego by chuckling.

He murmured something and then said "I will do the digging for you. I- hm. Now this is curious. My notes say a bell engraved like that would have been used for excommunication, but the ringing of a bell for that purpose was only done in the middle ages and not much after. 1600 would be the very latest date I would assign it, and 1400 would make more sense. But a small bell over five hundred years old in that pristine condition, it's just not poss-"

He paused.

"Michael, I feel I need to do real research. This is... a curious find you have made, and I do not want to make wild guesses. I'll be in contact. Please wait for me to call you, I am, ah, keeping a low profile, I'm sure you understand."

"Of course. Thanks."

I hung up and frowned. He'd sounded kind of rattled there by the end; that was not like him.

+++

Alan again.

I settled in the hotel and the sweet woman I met on the plane provided me with amusement for a few hours, and the candle proved itself just as effective in America as it did in Spain. I sent her away without lighting the candle; she found it hard to leave and I found it hard to insist, but I wanted to make sure it was possible. It would be odd if I had to end every date by lighting a candle, after all.

A candle that would not melt, and now a bell that would not rot away. Both from Spain, perhaps. Both from the 1300 or 1400s. Both church items.

And the bell would have been used in excommunications... This was far beyond the realm of coincidence.

I lit the candle and showed it the picture of the bell. "Old friend, perhaps? Amigos, long lost brothers?"

There was no response.

+++

It took a lot of digging. Spanish records from the 1300's are not easy to come by and so much of it is fabricated history; Spanish clerics of the era had not fully grasped that it was Truth, not Inventiveness, that would set them free. And ongoing battles with Arabia complicated recordkeeping. But I was not dealing with the mundane, and somehow, somehow I felt certain that clues had been left. If only I knew where to look.

Two in the morning, three, four. I opened the window for fresh air. The time zone change had already stretched the day, and I was stretching it more. A reference to magic in a private letter; a mention of a confession gone horribly wrong in a cardinal's account to his superiors. A priest defrocked because of improper conduct a year later. Dates began to cluster: 1394, 1402, 1387. A letter of condemnation, unusually harsh, from Córdoba, decrying "the exploration of forbidden mysteries". Deaths, and people not given the rite of burial. A tiny church burned in Andújar, 1391, and not rebuilt.

Spain in the middle ages had been wild, and I knew many tales, but this...

Five in the morning, six. I was cold and shaking and I'd run out of leads. But I knew the scent of legend, and the candle burning behind me made shadows of my hands as I typed and read, and certainty of my thoughts. A library in a small church in Seville had been burned in 1453, in a sketchy tale which bore a perhaps not coincidental resemblance to Eco's The Name of the Rose. The priest on watch had refused to talk, and was not punished...

I thought I knew why.

The sun rose. I stared at my collected notes.

I was going to have to go back to Spain. What I needed now wasn't online. I'd face arrest if I was caught...

"So, senor Candle. You are here, and I know where senor Bell is. So tell me... who has the Book... and why?"

It flickered, disturbed by a breath of wind from the east. I shook my head, closed the window and drapes, and attempted to sleep.