The Bell of Unreturned Summons

The Bell of Unreturned Summons is a bronze-tongued summons bell hung in the north transept of the Chamber of Unanswered Summons (Floor 72) and struck only in respect of summonses that have been issued, served, and returned without answer. It is distinguished from the Great Bell of Unringing — which sounds continuously and is heard by no one — by the fact that the Bell of Unreturned Summons rings exactly once per unreturned summons, at a volume calibrated to the serving clerk's own hearing, and has never been known to be heard by any other party. Its keepers describe this as a design feature. The Office of Unreturned Readers describes it, in its standing memoranda, as "the single most administratively expensive object on the floor."

The bell was cast in the winter of the third year of the Concordance of Castings, by a founder recorded only as the Second Founder of the North Transept, from an alloy whose recipe is held under seal by the Bureau of Registry.

Striking protocol

Striking is performed by the Keeper of the Unreturned Tongue, an office created for the purpose and never since amalgamated. The keeper strikes once for each summons entered in the Ledger of Unreturned Summonses, using a leather-wrapped mallet rather than a rope, because the bell's yoke was found in 88 to be out of true and has not been corrected. A striking session proceeds from the earliest unreturned summons to the most recent; the keeper may not depart from sequence, and may not strike twice in a single day, however many summonses are owing.

The backlog this creates is considerable and is itself the subject of a standing record. The Register of Unreturned Standards has twice been invoked to explain a gap in the ledger — once by the keeper, who argued that a summons not returned was never properly struck, and once by the Office, which argued the reverse — and the resulting exchange occupies folios 12 through 61 of the Disputed Striking File.

Visitors to the transept are asked not to stand directly beneath the bell during a session. This is a courtesy rather than a prohibition; nothing has ever fallen from the yoke.

The question of the absent party

Whether the bell rings for the absent party or at them is the principal scholarly dispute attached to the object. The weight of commentary follows Librarian Ordinal Vestrius, who held in On Answerable Presence, folio 44r, that an unanswered summons indicates a fault in the summons rather than in the party, and that the bell therefore sounds a correction to the issuing office and not a censure of the recipient. On this reading the bell is a species of erratum chime.

The opposing view, set out in the Commentary on the Transept Bells, folio 9v, holds that the bell sounds at the party by definition, since a summons that has been returned unanswered has been answered in the only sense the Tower recognises, and the bell marks that answer. The Commentary concedes that this makes the bell redundant, and does not regard the concession as damaging.

"A summons returning unreturned is not unanswered. It is answered in the negative, and a negative answer is an answer, and an answer requires no bell."

— Commentary on the Transept Bells, folio 9v

A third position, advanced in the Marginalia of the Fourth Recension and supported by no office, proposes that the bell rings for the clerk. The Marginale observes that only the clerk hears it, and asks whether this is a property of the bell or of the clerk. It is the only passage in the File that has never been answered.

Relation to the Silent Bell

The Bell of Unreturned Summons is frequently confused with the Silent Bell, and the confusion is not merely popular. In 214 the Office of Acoustic Records entered the Bell of Unreturned Summons in a schedule headed "Silent and Near-Silent Instruments," an error traceable to a copying clerk who had transposed two columns of the schedule and died before the error was found. The entry stood for forty-one years. During that period two expeditions were dispatched to Floor 441 to compare the transept bell with the prohibited echo recovered there, and returned with inventories and no conclusion, as expeditions from Floor 441 do.

The Schism of the Silent Bell is sometimes said to have begun with this transposition. The Office of Unreturned Readers rejects the claim in its entirety and points out, reasonably, that the Schism predates the schedule by at least sixty years. The Bureau of Registry has declined to rule on the point, holding that the question of which error began which dispute is not a matter for the Registry.

The bell is not, and has never been, enrolled in the Anechoic Galleries. Correspondence on the subject exists; the bell does not.

Inventory of the transept

The following objects are held at the bell's station and are counted at each session by the keeper, in the order given:

• One mallet, leather-wrapped, yoke-marked
• One stool, three-legged, keeper's
• One copy of the Ledger of Unreturned Summonses, current volume, chained
• One copy of the Ledger, superseded, chained to the same rail
• One brass ring, unused, purpose not recorded

Recent history

In the winter of 348 the keeper at the time, Keeper Ansory Vell, suspended striking for nine days on the ground that the transept was too cold for the mallet to strike cleanly. The suspension was upheld by the Bureau of Registry on a technicality — the Concordance of Castings, clause 7, requires a clean strike — and the nine days were added to the end of the sequence, where they remain. There are now nine summonses in the ledger which were returned before the bell rang for them, and which the bell rang for afterwards, in the correct order, nine days late.

Librarian Ordinal Vestrius is said to have approved this outcome. The attribution rests on a single note in the keeper's hand, undated and unsigned. The Bell of Unreturned Summons itself has no opinion on the matter, and is not asked.