Chapter 54
Back upstairs, Harper sat back down at the desk with Meg’s journal and historian’s log.
The soft silk of the tentacles on her neck and shoulder slowly manifested, a soft clicking in her ears.
Harper closed her eyes, allowing the feeling to engulf her.
Her dream, the image of fire and earth, and the smell of salt and blood lay on the periphery of her existence.
It would wait for her, all terrible things did.
She did not want this horror now, she wanted to escape to a world not her own, where the terror of living had long since come to pass, and all that was left were the words of the survivor.
Harper’s static-lined body disassociating from the material world, she settled into a meditative state.
“Show me,” she whispered, and opened the journal.
Twenty days have passed in this most vile place.
I dinna ken many a thing but have counted the days by the movement of my sisters on the other side of the door.
As they grow quiet in their slumber, I scratch the wall of my jail with my fingertips.
I mark the days in blood so that another in this cursèd place will know that I survived their torments and perhaps that will bring whoever comes after me some courage and peace.
Twenty days have passed in this way and I cannot remember a time when life was not a series of bloody invasions on my body and soul.
Father Taine, who once I regarded as a vessel of our Lord here on Earth, who claims to speak for our Lord and instead acts in the name of the Devil.
In the manner of writing as I was taught and have read in the Holy Book, I was told that the name of the Devil was ne’er to be spelled through, lest the darkest demons of our nature be summoned to the fore.
However, it is my mind that there be no greater Devil than what is in the heart of he who took me from my hearth and stole my youth in so cruel a fashion.
So I write the name in bold letters as I tell my story from the safety of my saviour’s bosom.
I remember back to these dark times and I know that I am to survive this most uncivill tormente, but in this moment, more days than I can count since I have known the comfort of my goodly mother’s arms or the safety of my good father’s house, I am afeard that the Devil has come and I now reside in Hell.
Since I last retold my story, I was made to stand before Father Taine before the sun had rose, when the frost still hung in the air.
I was allowed no shawl, only my dressing gown, which offered me no warmth from the morning chill.
Sister Huldah now claims to hear my voice screaming obscenities in her ear as she slept.
Sister Elizabeth, barely older than I, claims to have woken to my spirit form hanging over her body, my hands outstretched as though to choke the life from her.
It seems in the days since my most unjust imprisonment and judgement, that the ship entire has befallen the curse of the Devil and all of it in my humble hands.
I would laugh at this trickery if it were a bed story whispered among foolish girls.
It is wickednesse to lie, but the truthe is a strange fellow to honour as it stands today.
Only the sailors are unaffected by my witchery it seems, they go on about their work and avert their eyes from my most grievous plight.
On one darkest day I was made to stand before my sisters while the flame from a candle was held to my palms. My flesh blistered and bled, and still I would not confess to Father’s vile madness.
Sister Elizabeth fell to her knees and shrieked as though it were her flesh that burned.
She claimed I made the Devil take my pain from my flesh and burn hers instead.
I fought the tears from my eyes. My sisters who I had thought of and loved as kin are not deserving of those tears now.
Only Sister Constance remains true. As I was returned to my prison, she brought me a blessing of rags soaked in yarrow and heather to heal my burned flesh, and a small wedge of hard cheese.
Constance, again, sprinkled the black salt and mint leaf along the periphery of my cell, as the rats are persistent and not even the Fae magic can keep them at bay for much longer.
Before she left me, Constance leaned in close and touched her forehead to mine, and in that moment I ken that there was some goodness left in this plane.
It was in the midst of this madness, on this twentieth day of my torment, as the moon lay but as a sliver of light in the sky, that a miracle greater than the mercy of cheese was brought to me by my Lord who has not forsaken me in my most dire grief.
Harper sat back and stared at the page. The text was choppy, words half-finished, and the delicate ink worn through in places. Harper replaced the journal and pulled the historical account into the desk light.
Much has been written as to the political nature of the 1692 Salem Trials, but that dynamic was not exclusive to Salem Village.
The madness began across the pond, and while Loch Lomond had nowhere near the witch hysteria that areas such as Fife and North Berwick suffered, nowhere was safe from the contagious paranoia of the time.
The townsfolk in the Loch were split into class divides created by the ownership of land and the productivity of their lots.
It is of note that Meg MacGruer’s sister wife Elizabeth Taine née Orton’s family in the Loch had a long-standing feud with the MacGruers over crop boundaries.
As all matters were decided in the Loch by Ewin Taine, the favor went to the Ortons and not coincidentally, Elizabeth was given in marriage to Taine shortly after the affair.
The same is true for Meg’s other accuser, Huldah Taine neé Bryden.
The Bryden family was embroiled in a dispute over the ownership of horses in the Loch.
The records show that the Brydens were sold a horse from the MacGruers which quickly died.
The scientific cause of the death is unknown, but the trial that ensued claimed witchery.
Ewin Taine dismissed the claims of witchery, and the MacGruers paid twenty-seven pounds in damage, approximately $40 in today’s currency.
Again, like Elizabeth, Huldah was shortly after chosen as bride to Ewin Taine.
It begins to appear that Ewin Taine’s choice of wives was more transactional and less a message from God.
By the twentieth day of Meg’s imprisonment, her physical body was failing and she was close to death.
In a letter dated 20 September 1690, Captain Caseling wrote to Barrister Janeway of Boston Proper concerning the matters that took place aboard The Mary Clarence, a letter that was delivered to the courts upon their arrival in Boston Harbour.
The content of this letter had to do with all of Taine’s actions, but particularly those of 4 September 1690 as he witnessed Ewin Taine burn Meg’s hands.
Meg’s physical form is described as “weakened, sickly, as though she were little more than skin stretched too tightly over bone.” Indeed, the conditions, the unseasonably cold weather, and the constant torture had made it so Meg was close to death.
Captain Caseling’s report was a matter of record, as the events that followed after 7 September 1690 rendered the matter moot.
If it had not been for the events that began on 7 September, Meg most surely would have perished in the hull of The Mary Clarence, her death blamed on illness perhaps. But for the extraordinary events that followed, this would have been the end of Meg’s story.
Harper yawned and glanced at her phone: 5:49 p.m. She shook her head.
The whole day was spent at this desk. She could hear the rain outside the stained-glass windows and the muted crashing of the trees in the wind.
She pulled her phone out of her pocket and checked her messages.
An emoji heart from Carli, nothing from Akiel.
She was about to shut it down when an email flashed on her screen from Shuri.
Harper—
Hope you’re well. My ankle is healing, not fast enough but I’m staying here in Boston until the weather clears.
This is going to sound strange, but I’ve been going back through my mother’s log notes from the New Brunswick team.
I don’t know what I was looking for, maybe something that made sense of what I saw, or maybe I’m just being sentimental.
I found something that I feel like I should share with you.
I’m not sure what it means. But it’s a sort of accounting of her teammates, her last entry was right before she passed.
It might mean nothing, but I wouldn’t feel right if I didn’t share it.
Stay Safe.
Shuri
Harper clicked on the attached file and time fell away.
She felt the numbness that surrounded her body galvanize into a protective shield, an armor meant to keep out the world.
With shaking hands, Harper placed the materials in the drawer and made her way down to the library.
She found Lady Bell sitting in front of the fireplace in her periwinkle armchair sipping a gin and tonic.
She looked up at Harper’s arrival and smiled warmly.
“I had Nigel bring you a drink, but it looks like you could use a coffee,” she said with mild concern.
“I … I probably could, but gin sounds good.” Harper sat and took a sip, letting the liquor burn her throat as she stared into the fire.
“You okay?” Lady Bell said softly. “You look shook.”
Harper nodded, the gin thinning the static, though the veil was thinner now. “I just got an email from Shuri, my teammate.”
“Her mother, Yumi Sato, was on the New Brunswick team,” Lady Bell stated quietly, watching Harper intently.
Harper nodded. “She passed last year.”
“I had heard. I can imagine how hard it was for her daughter to come to Bell, not that different from you, I imagine,” Lady Bell said.
“She just sent me a message. She found a log her mother had been keeping over the years since New Brunswick. …” Harper’s voice trailed off.
“Oh?” Lady Bell prodded.
“Yumi Sato was the last of the New Brunswick team,” Harper stated, taking a long drink of gin.
“The last?” Lady Bell looked confused.
“The last,” Harper repeated, and looked down at her phone, where the report stared back at her.
“May Singh, geologist, killed in a car accident in 2013. Carl Quinn, marine ecologist, from a heart attack in 2014—he was twenty-nine.” Harper looked up at Lady Bell, her expression unreadable.
“Brian Zillman and Silas Davis, both wildlife biologists, were killed together in a freak bridge collapse in Saint John not a month after they arrived home from Bell.” Harper paused, absorbing the last line of the report.
“Florence Manning drowned in her bathtub in 2015.”
“That’s a lot of misfortune to strike one team,” Lady Bell said, her eyes locked on Harper.
“It’s not just that. There was a note written by Yumi Sato—it was addressed to Shuri:
It’s said that if you take a jar of sand, a rock, a piece of sea glass from an island that a curse will come upon you.
What curse follows you in blood? I left Bell Island a coward.
The universe found those who carried guilt, and it exacted its justice.
Now it has finally come around for me. I tried to stop them from hunting Thalassa, I tried to stop them from hurting anyone, and I failed.
Worse yet, I stayed silent. Buruburu, the shiver spirit, has finally come for me and I will join the realm of hungry spirits.
Perhaps with your endless heart and compassion I will be redeemed.
Perhaps not. I love you always and will watch over you from whatever beyond comes next.
I hope you find peace. Be well, be happy.
“Wow,” Lady Bell said simply.
Harper nodded. “And then there’s the title of Yumi’s log.”
“Which is?” Lady Bell’s tension was palpable.
“‘The Mills of God Grind Slowly,’” Harper read slowly. She closed the phone and placed it facedown. She shook her head and took a long sip of her gin. “What does it mean?”
“‘Though the mills of God grind slowly, / Yet they grind exceedingly small; / Though with patience He stands waiting, / With exactness, He grinds all.’” Lady Bell finished her drink and set the glass on the side table. “‘Retribution,’ it’s a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.”
“And you just knew that by heart?” Harper felt a smile playing on her lips despite herself.
“With a library like this, it would be embarrassing if I couldn’t randomly quote poetry,” Lady Bell countered, her words light. “It’s about, well, retribution, getting what’s coming to you.”
“I saw something when I nodded off up there earlier. I saw two men on a boat, I felt my parents’ presence asleep in the cabin below. The men weren’t supposed to be there, and then … fire, the end.” Harper looked at Lady Bell. “I have a headache.”
“Combine that with Yumi’s log, and it implies that Florence Manning’s team was doing far more terrible things than hunting Thalassa.” Lady Bell stood and stretched, reached her hand to Harper. “Join me for dinner, you need sustenance, and a break from your thoughts.”
Harper took her hand and stood. “I would be honored.”
“And then you should try to get some sleep,” Lady Bell said gently. “Come.”
They walked together down the hallway and into the formal dining room. Harper felt the familiarity, the routine of Bell Manor in her bones. The two women ate together quietly. Lady Bell allowed Harper to swim inside her own mind as the rain continued to fall.