Chapter 41
Most humble apologies to my God and my saviours for what is to be a most meager writing of my account of the journeys that I have undertaken to be in this most blessèd place.
I am tasked with the writing of my simple life to this point and will do so by the grace of God, our dread sovereign Lord, King William, and the blessèd miracle that is our Lady Bell, who hath saved me from a most terrible fate, and is most good and kind among all ladies and lords.
It is my plain and humble hope that my words will outlive my soul and take flight among the glory of the manor in which I have found myself for the rest of my days on this earthly plane.
Harper stopped and stared at the careful lettering, each stroke of ink had taken excruciating effort, each word focus and force of will. Harper did not know how she knew these things, but she did.
My mother was a goodly woman and served our Lord as healer to our village.
It was in this way that it was my good fortune to have been learned from a young age to read the Holy Book and to write the word of God in hopes that I might serve as healing grace.
I was blessèd to be learned, and it is that blessing that serves the writing of this account.
At a tender age of fourteen years I was married in Holy Communion to Father Taine as was the Lord’s decree.
I then became the seventh of those who suffered under his most grievous brutality as wife and servant.
My goodly mother screamed her objections and was locked in the shed for a fortnight for her pain.
The goodly father of my birth was held in sway under the command of He who called himself our leader and Father, and thus my fate was most dreadfully sealed.
It was in this way that I lived those years in Loch Lomond in the study of the Holy Book and under that captive eye of Father Taine and my sister wives.
At day we sat in prayer and toiled the fields working for the betterment of our community.
The others in the Loch who were not of Father’s teaching looked upon us in disdain.
I understood those that saw us with such ill-toned eyes and wished to be among them, but my Lord did not see fit to free me from my bonds.
I dinna ken to put into written word the terror that was our daily life for without that curse, the most blessèd happening was to take root.
As dusk fell Father Taine would choose among us for she who held his company that evening.
I saw my sisters hold their breath, hoping to be overlooked, as I did, forgive me Blessèd Lord.
But I was made to suffer the indignity of lying beneath the beast while he carried on his duties and in this way I birthed my dear Rory in the winter of my fifteenth year.
I found myself blessèd with another the following Spring, but the bairn was a footling and lost comeing into this world strangled in the birth.
The infinitt providence of God in mercy delivered my innocente bairn from this place and into the Kingdom of Heaven before he had drawn breath.
Father led us in prayer for the comeing days and nights following the passing of the wee bairn, and my dear one, Rory, just over a year old, watched me with his great dark eyes.
We held no tears together. Rory ken as I ken that his brother was watching over us from Beyond and awaiting our arrival from the living hell we found ourselves entrapped in.
My sisters regarded us with deep suspicion and Father beat us for our callousness.
We might have carried on in this way for the rest of our days, but there was to be a reprieve in the coming year as the trouble began in the Loch.
Those who were not of Father’s teachings began quarrel with our people over the ownership of the sheep and cows in our pastures.
In truthe it was not to do with any matter other than that they saw us as godless, which we were in truthe, and wished us to be gone from their blessèd land.
In this way I was put upon a ship for the Americas in that Summer of 1690.
Rory at my side, he watched with his great dark eyes as the shore of his birth grew small and distant.
These were the dark times when my soul strayed from our Lord God and begged to be forgiven of the Devil’s trick of this constancy.
For surely our Holy God would not allow such a terrible calamity to befall myself so that the curse of the Devil would befall my innocente and wide-eyed boy.
I will in my best knowledge tell the story of these dark days and my thoughts of Wickednesse.
For these thoughts and this alone I am guilty.
It is a fool to rely on our Lord God’s will alone in such dark times.