Harvard Yard (6 page)

Charlestown occupied a peninsula a short ferry ride from Boston, and already there were 150 dwellings clustered near the water or, like Harvard’s house, perched on the side of Windmill Hill. Isaac had hoped to work in the windmill as an apprentice. Then Master Harvard had urged him to the college. Many times since, Isaac had wished he were grinding corn in Charlestown rather than studying Cicero under the rod of Master Eaton.

The two visitors were admitted to Harvard’s house by Elder Nowell of the Charlestown church.

Against doctor’s advice, the windows of John Harvard’s bedchamber were thrown open to the September breeze, giving his room of sickness a strange air of hope. He lay propped on several pillows so that he could gaze out on the harbor and town and hills beyond, but his eyes were closed, his face as white as the pillows.

Upon a whisper from his wife, his eyes opened, focused, sought about the room until they found Isaac. Then a hand rose from the bed.

Isaac took it. “Master Harvard.”

“How fares your study?” Harvard’s voice was all but inaudible.

And Eaton’s face appeared over Isaac’s shoulder. “He’ll make a fine minister, John. You know quality.”

“’Twas a simple matter,” said Harvard, stifling a cough. “My father always said a man could be known by his books, and Isaac’s Bible be well thumbed.”

Isaac felt sudden and powerful emotions rise in his throat. He stepped back and brought a hand to his mouth, as if to keep them from escaping.

“Don’t cry for me,” said John Harvard. “I look to a better world. But my books—”

“Yes, John,” said Eaton, taking Harvard’s hand in both of his. “What of them?”

“My books remain in this world.” Harvard looked past Eaton to Isaac. “Can the students be trusted to respect them?”

Eaton said, “They’re students, John. They live for books.”

Harvard did not even look at Eaton. “Isaac?”

“I would trust them, sir,” said Isaac.

“Good.” Only then did Harvard turn to Eaton. “May I trust that at the college, my library will be respected? Not scattered about?”

“Of course,” said Eaton.

“Good. If a man is known by his books, I would keep mine together.”

“Your books will have their place in our library,” said Eaton, “when it’s built.”

“Good.” Harvard shifted his eyes to his wife and then to Elder Nowell, as if it was too great an effort to move his head. “I bequeath all my books to our new college, in the knowledge that students like Isaac will respect them . . . protect them . . . and benefit from them, and that they will be kept together as the seedbed for a greater library.”

“So shall it be attested,” said Elder Nowell.

“And, Isaac”—Harvard coughed and a foam of blood appeared at the corners of his mouth—“you will find in my library books on many topics. Some may surprise you. But you must respect every volume.”

“I will,” said Isaac. “I promise.”

“Of course he will, John,” said Eaton. “We all will, for there can be nothing in your library to make a man anything but enriched . . . in spirit, at least.”

Harvard kept his eyes on Isaac. “There may come times in your life when the words you read and the ideas you meet do not glorify God but man, his vanities . . . his passions . . . his appetites . . . all things that lead us toward sin.”

“Not at my college,” said Eaton.

“Quiet, Nathaniel,” said Harvard. “You have many years yet to speak your mind. Let me say my piece now.”

But another fit of coughing took Harvard, cracking in his chest and bringing up bloody shards of lung, which he left in his spittoon. Then he sank deeper into his pillow, gasped for breath, and said, “So . . . Isaac, when your reading challenges your beliefs, remember the words of Rector Morton, who saw St. Saviour’s through the plague: Turn your mind to higher things. In them will you find the answers. . . . Now, friends, a prayer.”

The prayer by Elder Nowell was a good one, thought Isaac. It did not request John Harvard’s return to health, for that was plainly not in God’s plan. It did not request the repose of his soul, for that time had not yet come. It simply expressed a faith in God’s goodwill, and that was something in which all, even a dying man, could take comfort.

Then John Harvard closed his eyes and seemed to settle into sleep.

Elder Nowell gestured for Isaac and Eaton to leave, but Ann Harvard said to her husband, “John, is there not one thing more?”

Harvard’s eyes opened. “Oh, yes. Nathaniel—”

Eaton again took Harvard’s hand. “Yes, John.”

“Half of all my earthly possessions go to Ann, to see to her future.”

“Yes, John.”

Harvard coughed again. “But I have no children.”

“No, John. No, you don’t.”

It seemed to Isaac that Nathaniel Eaton was all but salivating as the direction of Harvard’s words came clear.

“So the other half,” said Harvard, “some eight hundred pounds’ worth, I give to the college.”

“Eight hundred,” whispered Eaton with awe. “Why . . . that’s twice what the Great and General Court give to start the school. You’ll never be forgot for this, John.”

“Let Isaac and all his brethren and all their descendants remember me. Let them be my heirs.” John Harvard shifted his eyes to Elder Nowell.

“I shall be the witness,” said Nowell.

Eaton and Isaac restrained themselves, though for different reasons, until they had left Harvard’s home and gone halfway down Windmill Hill.

Isaac fought the impulse to run off and seek comfort at his mother’s house. But he could not fight the sob that burst from his chest or the tears that finally came.

Eaton, on the other hand, seemed unable to stop a pleased expression from becoming a smile, which grew into a grin. “Come, lad. You’ve known for months that he was dyin’. ’Tis a mercy.”

“’Tis hard, still, sir.”

“You lose a friend, Isaac, but our lives as scholars are assured. I planted this seed in Harvard’s mind when I saw how sick he was.” Eaton mounted his horse. “Books be a rare flower in this land, but money be the blossom that bears fruit we can eat.”

Isaac realized that Eaton had not hurried to Harvard’s bedside out of anything but self-interest. And he had gotten there in good time, for two days later, on September 14, John Harvard died of the consumption. He was thirty years old.

iii

All through that glorious autumn and bitterly cold winter, Nathaniel Eaton continued to teach his students, and to beat them, and to beat his servants and his children, and perhaps his wife, too, all in the name of Christian knowledge and obedience.

Isaac Wedge grew inured to the beatings and learned to remove the pain from his mind. Whether receiving a rap on his knuckles for an incorrect response, or a caning across his back for some greater transgression, he would think on higher things, on the Passion of Christ, on the gifts of Master Harvard, and on the beauty of a girl named Katharine Nicholson, who appeared to him as out of a vision one brilliant January day.

Isaac was returning from Reverend Shepard’s when the Nicholson sleigh stopped in front of Peyntree House, and Isaac was smitten straightaway by a bright smile, milk-white skin, delft-blue eyes, and strong black brow. The whiteness of the day served only to complement her coloring, and if winter could enhance her so, he wondered, what would summer do?

“Good afternoon,” said her father. “Be this the home of the new college?”

“Yes, sir. I’m a student. My name is Isaac Wedge.”

“And we be the Nicholsons,” said the father.

“The family of James?” asked Isaac. “James Nicholson of Boston?”

“Do you know him?” she asked.

And Isaac found that months of recitation under the threat of Eaton’s rod made it easy to find words before a beautiful girl. “Miss, there be only ten of us. We are all acquaintances, and I’m pleased to say we are all friends.”

He wished for more talk, but Eaton appeared now in the doorway, and Isaac, knowing his place, excused himself with a polite bow.

The Nicholsons bore gifts of food—ten packages for ten young men who had eaten too little beef and too much spoiled fish at the School of Tyrannus. Each package contained molasses cakes, hardtack, a small round of cheese, and a jar of pickled oysters.

Eaton did not object to their distribution, since the Nicholsons brought a larger basket of food for the master and his wife. He did, however, object to the attention that several of the boys paid to Master Nicholson’s daughter.

“This be a godly school,” he shouted after the Nicholsons had left. “I will not have any of you slobbering over a young lady of such quality as Jamie Nicholson’s sister. Any further slobbering will be met with punishment.”

But for the next month, Isaac Wedge could not erase her image from his mind. To his disappointment, when she and her father returned in February, Isaac was cutting firewood at Reverend Shepard’s, so he missed seeing her. When they came in March, he managed to speak with her briefly before Eaton appeared and scowled at him.

That night in commons, James Nicholson told Isaac that Katharine wished to be remembered to him and that she would look forward to meeting him on their visit in April. Nothing in his life had ever made Isaac Wedge happier.

There was an assistant at the college named Nathaniel Briscoe, who slept in the upper chamber with the students. Most nights, after the candles were snuffed, he would call out, “Remember Onan, boys. Remember that his sin be a hangin’ offense, so banish temptation from your mind.” But most nights, there would be furtive movements and sounds that suggested someone was ignoring Briscoe’s words. And most nights, Briscoe would ignore the sounds.

But one March night, Briscoe was in Boston. So Master Eaton paid a visit to the upper chamber. He came on stockinged feet and masked his lamp, so it gave off no telltale shadows. He silently climbed the ladder from below and stopped when only his eyes and ears had risen through the attic hatchway.

Isaac did not see him, for Isaac was busy. The only person Isaac saw at that moment was a certain young lady. And she was only in his mind’s eye. And it was her image that made him busy, and he rose toward a release that—

“Isaac Wedge! Stand up! Now!”

At the explosion of sound, Isaac leapt to his feet, even as his body leapt in a series of spasms that were suddenly no more than wet embarrassment beneath his nightshirt.

“We are here to root out sin,” cried Eaton to all the boys, “no matter where it be found. Strangle the eel in my house and feel the sting of my rod!”

Why was Eaton the man that he was? And why had they made such a man the head of the college? Those were questions that Isaac asked himself as he was led, barefoot, to the master’s chamber to receive twenty snaps of the rod. But there was no answer, except that some men were cruel and some men were kind.

And some cruel men considered cruelty a strange kindness, usually voiced as Eaton put it to Isaac: “I do this for your own good,” the words followed by whistle and whip. “I have the authority, and I will exercise it!” Whistle and whip. “It is my right and it is my duty.” Whistle and whip. “What you’ve been up to is a hanging offense.” And whistle and whip once again, all the way to the count of twenty.

Then Eaton stepped back, breathed deep, and spoke in a voice as soft and gentle as always after a beating. “Now, then, Isaac Wedge . . . ’tis said that an idle mind is the devil’s playground. Be your mind idle?”

“No, sir. I have my studies.”

“Then it must be your hands that are idle. We’ll give them something to do and save you from hanging.” Eaton pointed to the two trunks in a corner. “Master Harvard’s books. They be yours to catalog . . . in your idle time. Do a good job.”

“I’d do nothing less, sir. I promised Master Harvard on his deathbed.”

“They be the physical legacy of our first benefaction, which has inspired the Great and General Court to give our little school a name: Harvard College.”

All the more reason, thought Isaac, to do the job well.

But Eaton was a fickle man. What seemed a fine idea at night, after the pleasure of a good beating, might look less palatable in the morning, especially as March brought earlier dawns and warmer days, during which he hatched grander plans.

The fence directly behind Peyntree House had been taken down, the cows squeezed into adjacent yards, and the posts and beams of the new college hall had risen. So Eaton proclaimed that he would plant an apple orchard to frame the grand structure.

His account books would show that he paid local workers to do the planting, when in fact he pocketed the money and put students to work digging wild apple trees and going to Boston to fetch trees brought from England. When the ground thawed, the few hours of free time he had given the students each day he gave over to planting. By May, thirty trees were in the ground. Some died before they took up water. Some leafed out. And a few made pink blossoms that promised fruit and fresh cider by fall.

And one evening, Isaac Wedge walked boldly beneath the blossoms with Katharine Nicholson.

“What if the master see us?” she asked.

“You say that your father has come to discuss a contribution?”

“Aye. He offers to build a lean-to on the side of Peyntree House, as a library for Master Harvard’s books . . . at least till the college hall is completed.”

“Then Master Eaton will pay no mind to anything else.”

“But what if he glance out and see us?”

“The beating will be worth it.”

“You’re a brave one, Isaac Wedge,” she said. Then, with a conspiratorial little smile and a furtive glance toward the house, she brought her lips to his.

It was the gentlest of touches, but Isaac’s legs went weak. He thought he might fall over. And later he thought it might have been a good idea . . . to fall over and feign sickness, for at that moment, Mrs. Eaton emerged from the outhouse, straightening her skirt. At the sight of a student kissing a girl in the orchard, she gave out with a shriek, almost as if the student had tried to kiss her.

The beating was painful, but the greater pain came with the threat of expulsion that Eaton now laid upon Isaac, should he be so bold as to see Katharine again.