Harvard Yard (Peter Fallon)

by William Martin

  But the morning peace was shattered by the cry of a woman. “Damn your eyes!”

  “No, ma’am!” came a male voice.

  “You’ll not dig a finger in me stew again!”

  “No, ma’am!” A blackamoor came tumbling out. “Put up the knife, ma’am.”

  “I’ll put up the knife . . . up your poxy nose, you little black squint!” And out of the house burst a great barrel of a woman whose voice proclaimed her a fishwife but whose bonnet, fine dress, and starched ruff suggested she was better born.

  “What’s all this, then?” A burly man with a black beard emerged after her, and the faces of several young men appeared in the windows of the upper chambers.

  “Stealin’ food he is, Nathaniel,” said the woman.

  “Well, we’ll put a stop to that.” The man slipped a bulrush rod from his belt.

  And John Harvard said softly, “Good day, Master Eaton.”

  It was plain that in their anger, the Eatons had not noticed the arrival of visitors. Mrs. Eaton slipped the knife back into her skirt. And a grin opened in the hairy nest of Nathaniel Eaton’s beard. “John Harvard. How fare thee?”

  “Well, but for a small cough.”

  Eaton turned his eyes to Isaac. “And who be this fine lad?”

  Isaac was still staring at the rod in Eaton’s hand.

  Eaton lowered it and said, “My rod and my staff, they’ll comfort thee, son. There be need for both in this life. But how often you see one or the other be up to you.”

  “Isaac Wedge will need no rod,” said John Harvard. “He’s a fine lad. I’ve come to vouchsafe him to you and pay for his schooling.” Harvard swung his leg carefully from the stirrup, as though he feared breaking were he to move too quickly.

  “John, you’ve lost weight,” said Eaton. “How bad is your cough?”

  “You’ll see before our business be done.” Harvard looked at the woman. “Now, then, Mary Eaton, might a thirsty traveler find a draft of beer in your home?”

  Eaton’s chamber was in the back of the house—a desk, two hard chairs, three bookshelves, and a bucket in which three more bulrush rods soaked and seasoned.

  “We only just moved in,” said Eaton. “’Tisn’t a great house, and the stink of the cattle be somethin’ fierce, but it must do till we build us a true college.” Eaton pointed out the window. “Do you see those lads swingin’ shovels in the middle of the cow yard?”

  The land behind Peyntree House and its neighbors, the Goffe and Shepard Houses, was divided into eight enclosures by long runs of split-rail fencing that reached a hundred yards north to the common pales, which in turn ran east a mile or more, from the Cambridge Common to the Charlestown line. Each night the cattle were driven into the yards to protect them from wolves; each morning they were let out to graze.

  “The ground is being cleared,” Eaton went on. “The governor and the General Court have approved four hundred pounds for the building of the hall.”

  “A great sum,” said Harvard.

  “Great, indeed. A quarter of the colony’s tax levy from last year, fully half from the year before.” Eaton looked at the boy. “You see how serious they do take to the task of educating you, young Isaac Wedge?”

  “Yes, master.”

  “’Tis only half as serious as I take the task they have laid upon me. None shall ever say this colony wants for learned ministers or educated freemen whilst I be master here.” Eaton leaned his hands on his desk. “Now, should I determine that you be worthy to study here, what calling would you answer?”

  Isaac looked at Harvard, who nodded, as if encouraging the boy to speak. “I . . . my late father, Reverend John Wedge—”

  “A man of goodness,” said Eaton.

  “A man called too soon by God,” said Harvard. “Drowned on the crossing.”

  “He wished the ministry for me, sir,” said Isaac.

  “Done, then”—Eaton cocked his brow toward Harvard—“so long as he can read Latin ex tempore and decline his Greek paradigms.”

  “So he can. And his exegesis will make for lively conversation.”

  “Good. Lively is welcome.” Then Eaton snapped a rod from the bucket and pointed it at Isaac. “But remember you, boy, lively must not mean heretical. There’ll be no Arminian controversy, no Hutchinsonian heresy, and no devil-worshiping Romanism at my school. Our covenant with the Lord is firm and our calling is clear. Do you understand?”

  John Harvard cleared his throat, as if to suggest disapproval of such display, but a cough erupted instead and went on for so long that it seemed his lungs might be shredding inside him. When finally it passed, he looked as gray as his doublet.

  And Eaton said, without a bit of tact, “John, were I you, I’d see to my affairs.”

  “My affair”—Harvard composed himself with a bit of beer and a bloody expectoration into the fireplace—“is to see Isaac Wedge matriculate at the new college. I bring sixteen pounds to cover his tuition and board, and a letter of permission, written by his mother at Charlestown.”

  Eaton barely glanced at the letter but took great care with the coins that Harvard dropped on the table, counted them, and placed them in his purse.

  And thus did Isaac Wedge become one of the first students at the first college in English America, founded on the edge of a wilderness, just six years after the settlement of the colony itself. Such business might have waited. But those who had made this beginning, those who had hired Nathaniel Eaton, did not believe that they could wait, for they knew how fleeting was man’s time on earth, and as one of them wrote, they “dreaded to leave an illiterate ministry to the churches when the present ministers shall lay in the dust.” They dreaded also to leave magistrates who lacked the wisdom that flowed from Christian knowledge, or a populace too unlettered to appreciate God’s word. Their ideals were high and well placed, but their judgment in choosing a master was not.

  ii

  “Take down your breeches,” said Nathaniel Eaton.

  “But, sir . . .” Isaac was trembling. Of the ten students at Peyntree House, only he had avoided a caning, until now. “I studied the wrong lesson, sir. But I did study.”

  “I say you studied not at all. I say you are lying.”

  “Please, sir, allow me to read to you from Cicero. Allow me to prove—”

  “Take ’em down and stretch across the desk, or ten stripes become fifteen.”

  Isaac did as he was told, and an instant later, he heard the rod whistle, felt the sting, and twisted away.

  “Stay still!” cried Eaton. “The sentence is fifteen. Squirm and take twenty!”

  Isaac ground his teeth and endured. By the tenth whistling whip, he was no longer trembling in fear but anger, for each time Eaton struck, he demanded that Isaac admit he had not studied.

  “But I did, master.” A whistle, a whip, and a demand for confession. “But I studied, master.” Whistle and whip, and “You did not.” “But I did.” Whistle and whip, and “You lie. Say you lied, or this shall go on all night!” And finally, furiously, Isaac said that he had been lying, that he had not studied; and that in itself was a lie.

  Only then did Eaton put up his rod. “Now, then, you may give me your thanks.”

  “My thanks?” Isaac lowered his shirttail over the bloody flesh and straightened himself.

  Eaton’s voice was soft, as if the beating had drained him of rage and filled him with satisfaction. “You may thank me for showing you the error of your ways.”

  Being a young man of intelligence, Isaac did as he was told. Being a young man of spirit, he resolved that he would never let Nathaniel Eaton cane him again.

  Such resolutions were hard to keep, however, in the college that students soon came to call the School of Tyrannus. Lessons were taught in fear, learned in terror.

  Ten young men, “the sons of gentlemen and others of the best note in the country,” began each day at the meetinghouse, where they prayed with Reverend Shepard. Then they would return to Peyntree House for morning
bever—a cup of beer, a bit of sour bread, some watery gruel to break their fast. After that they would repair to the front room, where Eaton and his impatient rod awaited their recitations from Cicero and Aristotle, from Greek grammar, from mathematics and reasoning.

  Eaton proclaimed that he had taken this course of study from that which freshmen at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, pursued. No student was so bold as to point out that while Eaton may have gone to Cambridge, he held no degree. And no student, no matter how assiduous in study or prayer, was able to avoid punishment for more than a fortnight.

  When Isaac was summoned to the master’s chambers one September evening, he thought to bid his fellows farewell, as he expected a beating for some unknown infraction, a beating that this time he would resist.

  He found Eaton before a guttering candle, a letter on the desk, a mug of beer beside it, and the blackamoor servant hunkered in the shadows.

  Eaton gestured to the letter. The seal had been broken, the letter read. “You may wish to answer it. The slave stands ready.”

  Isaac made certain that this was no trick, that Eaton had no rod hidden under the desk, then he slid the letter toward himself as carefully as he would slide a bone from under the nose of a drowsing dog.

  It was written in the hand of Ann Harvard, and it urged Isaac to come to Charlestown as soon as possible. “My husband has taken to a bed from which I fear he may not rise. His strength ebbs. He asks for his friends. ’Tis my hope that Master Eaton will release you, that you may visit him before he goes to his reward.”

  Isaac read with sadness but little surprise. He did not look up, however, until he had gathered his resolve, for if Eaton would deny a man’s dying request, Isaac would defy him. And if Eaton raised his rod, Isaac would fight back, even though he was a skinny lad, sapped of strength after two months of beatings and Mary Eaton’s bad food. He set his chin and said, “I must go, sir. Don’t try to stop me.”

  And Eaton shocked Isaac by offering to accompany him. “For no one—boy or man—should look upon the face of the consumption alone.”

  Perhaps, thought Isaac, there was charity in Nathaniel Eaton after all.

  The following day, after recitations, they set out. They went by the Charlestown Path through the green world of late summer. To the south, green meadows of marsh grass rimmed the river and the wide estuary called the Back Bay. Deeper green pasturelands and cornfields expanded around them. And stands of hardwood, their dark green leaves dancing in the breeze, retreated to the north.

  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.<
br />
  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?”