Chapter 58 #2
She looked at the records on the table in front of her.
Something in these words was tapping into her own locked files, freeing one memory at a time to rise to the surface.
They were all connected: Meg, her life from the before, all of it layered on top of each other, reliant on each other.
She knew the rage that Meg felt in that locked closet.
The crack in the door was born of the same rage that Meg saw in her own mind’s eye as she faced death in that hell.
Meg was lost in her grief for her lost father and mother, her sisters, who apart from Constance, had turned their hearts on her.
She raged at the complicity of the ship’s crew, Taine’s irrational hatred and violence.
But Meg’s rage wasn’t that of a spoiled child, it was real, and justified.
The crack in the door was deeper, more jagged, the edges stained with blood.
Meg’s world had been ripped away, and on the night of September 7, she felt like there was no more she could do to save her own life; the moonless night had arrived with no reprieve.
Harper carefully took her crumbling journal from its box and continued.
If one were not a student of the moon such as I have become, they would cry this night for there is not even the most faint outline of light in the sky, and still my torment continues.
The clouds roll past and the frozen air blows through my cell.
My flesh has become food for the rats, who carry no regard for the fairy guards and revel in opportunity.
I am in such a pitiful and weakened state that I find myself grateful for even the black beetles who run across my blackened toes but cause no harm.
Even the song of the sea creatures is faint.
I can hardly but hear my Rory’s voice in my ear even as it was clear as bells not two moons ago.
Soon this rot will spread to my body entire and I will be with our Lord.
That is if Father Taine does not beat me dead first.
Sister Constance whispered to me when the sun was high that Father Taine was in bonds on the ship’s deck and like to stay in that manner until we docked in Boston, only one night’s voyage away.
She whispered that she would free me as my sisters slept.
My heart was gladdened for her kind words.
I thought in those moments that salvation was upon me as even the sea creatures whispered in their faint voices from below that the moonless night was upon us and I was to stay strong and fast in my resolve.
I knew not what the intent or meaning of these words was, only that my Rory was among them and given a choice, I would follow my sweet bairn before I ever set foot on Boston’s shore.
As dusk fell I heard a great screaming cry from Constance and the door to my cell was ripped open.
Father Taine, his eyes alight as though the Devil himself had taken the man entire, stood in the frame.
He pulled me up by my hair, the pain of which was dulled by the constancy of suffering on my person for the last three and twenty days.
I was taken to the fore of the ship and made to kneel as this abhorrent demon who claimed to speak for Christ Our Father prayed over me with his demon’s breath.
My knees and legs felt next to breaking, but I endured the pain for it had brought me to the clean night air and away from the dank rot in which I have been imprisoned.
It makes no matter that I passed his fool tests, I spoke his prayers in divine nature, my desperate and broken soul speaking for me as my body failed.
I dinna ken if the men of The Mary Clarence witnessed this horror, or if they, again, stood silent as I suffered.
I heard the voices of my sisters muttering their false prayers, and my heart filled with a rage and hatred that I am ashamed to have held in my soul as a Christian woman.
As I felt my legs close to breaking, Father Taine looked me in the eyes and said in a voice too low for any others to hear.
He spoke ‘the Devil hast you in a most horrid snare, and I fear you will slice your own neck before we have it done for you’.
It took all my spirit and godly nature not to spit in his face, instead I met his gaze, and I remembered our Lord’s words, which I whispered back to him in most low tones so as to match his own—‘the Lord is coming with thousands upon thousands of his holy ones to judge everyone, and to convict all of them of all the ungodly acts they have committed’.
With my words, Father Taine’s face grew pale and he shuddered in his anger.
I spoke the Lord’s words and believe in this hour that even though I am like to die in this forgotten place, those that torment me in body and spirit will be judged for their ungodly acts.
It was in this most dark moment as I knelt on the deck of the ship, on the eve of the moonless night, that the voices of the sea creatures below became as a roar so loud I thought they would shake the ship entire.
I marveled that Father Taine and my sisters did not hear the din of their song as I looked up on the moonless night.
I could feel the silk soft touch of their most iontach form.
Harper realized her hands were shaking. She carefully set the journal back in its case and pulled the historical account forward.
Meg’s words rang in her head. Her thin voice, full of pain and exhaustion, spoke clearly and with an invisible strength that had shaken Taine to his core.
It was a curse, but not one heralded from darkness.
It was the curse of truth. She opened the historian’s account and continued.
It is a matter of note in official court testimony that shortly after nightfall on 7 September 1690, Ewin Taine was released from his bonds by one Huldah Taine.
The crew was negligent in their duties and unaware of this until after Meg MacGruer had been pulled from her prison and taken on deck.
When discovered, deckhands and Caseling alike testified to seeing Taine and his wives huddled around a kneeling Meg, praying and demanding that she repeat prayers.
Upon approaching Taine, he brandished a weapon, a dagger by all accounts, and threatened to kill Meg and anyone who drew too near.
The crew retreated on Captain Caseling’s command, and as the ship was set to dock in Boston on 9 September, it was decided that the crew would monitor the actions of Taine and his wives, and intervene only if he attempted to cause harm to Meg or any others.
One can easily and freely see this as an act of cowardice.
Captain Cedric Caseling was, in fact, made to answer for this complicity by the Boston courts, and his defense of his actions is well documented.
Whatever justification, the “prayer test” was allowed to continue.
Meg writes of a “roar so loud I thought it would shake the ship entire.” Not coincidentally, Captain Caseling also notes of a particular tone that filled the air as midnight approached.
Caseling did not hear a roar, as Meg reports, but rather a high ringing tone.
He also reports hearing a child’s laugh.
There was an infant on board belonging to a Fawn Taine, but the child was well asleep belowdeck alongside four-year old Addie Taine.
It was understood that neither child was responsible for the sound heard by Caseling.