The numbers beneath the glasses represented Revere’s calculations based on the readings from the ripples in the wine. Those numbers, in that particular sequence, gave you the mathematical signature of a specific “tone”—the sound emanating from the bell. According to Charles’s paper, Revere had been experimenting his way to a particular tone: a tone with, as insane as it sounded, world-changing ramifications. According to the paper, it had taken Revere three hundred bells to get it right, but with his last bell, he had succeeded. Achieved the impossible, made a bell whose tone could— It was so insane, impossible, Adrian couldn’t even put the thought into words.

Gregor had been able to calibrate the device that Adrian was now holding with the data Revere recorded. Which meant that, over two hundred years after Revere had hung his sweetest bell, Adrian was about to conduct the very same experiment pictured in the engraving.

“Ring it,” Adrian said. Bevil looked at him.

“You’re kidding, right? That bell gets rung three times a week. Sundays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays. And you don’t ring it from here, you ring it from downstairs. That’s what the rope is for.”

“But you could. Ring it from here. Right now.”

Adrian cradled the spectrum analyzer in one hand, pulled a second fifty-dollar bill out of his cycling pants, and held it out along with the first. Bevil stared at the two bills for a moment, then shrugged.

“I do get my days mixed up sometimes. All the allergy medicine I take. Like they say, don’t operate heavy machinery when you take antihistamines.”

He grinned, snatched the two bills, then made his way to the heavy rope leading down below. He took the rope in both hands and looked at Adrian.

“Might want to cover your ears.”

Adrian ignored him, instead hitting a switch on the spectrum analyzer, powering it up. The screen turned green, with a bright line running across the middle. Beneath the line was a row of numbers.

“Ring the damn bell, Bevil.”

Bevil put his weight into the string, pulling down. The giant bell stirred, slowly at first, then rocked forward in its frame. Adrian could feel the wind from the great beast against his face, and then the bell reached the highest point of the arc, swung downward, and from it emerged a clang so loud and powerful it nearly knocked Adrian off his feet. The stone wall behind him shook; hell, the entire church seemed to vibrate with the noise. Adrian could imagine the tourists in the pews below and out on the street—and across the city—looking up. Then his focus was entirely on the device in his hands.