Outside, the candidates in their black gowns were marching by, two abreast. President Holyoke puffed along after them, followed by the Corporation and tutors, including the harried Mr. Spurgeon, then the governor and his council. With the constable’s deputies opening a path through the crowd and the clanging of the town bell providing the only rhythm, they marched in stately step to the meetinghouse, where Reverends Appleton and Wedge waited.
Benjamin was struck with a twinge of envy as the procession passed Abraham, for all the students seemed to know him and offer him some sign of respect. Benjamin had yearned all his life for such respect. If he rescued that play from the library, he might gain it, at least in those parts of the world not still mired in ignorance.
Then Constable Hull appeared beside him. “’Tis good you defied my order to leave, Wedge. The Bleens are here for the ceremony. They say you run off with their grandfather’s slave years ago. Would that be the one they call Demetrius?”
“No, sir, it would not.”
“Stay put till the ceremony end, so that we may have a look into this.”
Benjamin knew that if he stayed, even a few moments more, it might be the difference between slavery and freedom for his old friend Demetrius. But if he left, he might never have another chance at that play. He debated no more than that. By the time the ceremony ended and the constable came knocking, he and his troupe were gone.
iii
That summer ended more quickly than the one before, as summers always did, and it ended more quickly for Abraham than for his grandchildren, which was the natural order of things.
By autumn, the furor over Benjamin Wedge had faded. The Bleens withdrew their claim to a human possession they did not wish to own. The constable, however, swore to arrest Benjamin on general principle, should ever he appear in Cambridge again. From time to time, stories were heard of his troupe, driven from yet another New England town, but as winter came on, the stories faded, too.
January brought a celebration at the opening of a new dormitory, called Hollis Hall, funded by the generous Hollis family of England.
January also brought the provincial legislators to Cambridge. The townspeople prayed that the legislators did not bring the smallpox they had left Boston to escape. But none in Boston or Cambridge would escape the storm that blew in on the twenty-fourth.
At noon, the sky was clear, the air calm, the temperature in the thirties. Caleb set these facts down in a meteorological diary that he kept in emulation of Professor Winthrop. At dusk, he noted that the wind had shifted to the northeast, the temperature had dropped, and clouds covered the sky.
But he paid the weather no more mind; he was expected at the home of Professor Winthrop on the corner of Spring and Wood Streets for Tuesday-night supper. The group was smaller than usual, as most students had gone home for winter recess, but there was a warm greeting from Mrs. Winthrop, a fire on the grate, a fine bottle of claret, and a succulent joint of meat. And the educated conversation began the moment the students took off their hats and the professor showed them his new brass and mahogany barometer.
“An amazing instrument,” Winthrop said. “It allows us to quantify something as mysterious as the pressure of air, which enables us to predict the weather.”
“What is it telling you at the moment?” asked Caleb.
“If the mercury was at 29.81 inches at noon and is now at 29.31,” said the professor, “what is it telling you?”
“That bad weather is on the way?” answered Caleb.
“Indeed. But quantify it. What kind? How much? When?”
“Snow, coming in on a northeast wind, tonight,” answered one of the others.
Winthrop nodded. “Based upon the rate at which the mercury has fallen, I would say that by the time dinner is done, it will be snowing.”
And it was. Caleb and the others—overflowing with roast pork, claret, and fresh notions about the practical applications of science—stepped out into the flurries.
“It has begun.” Winthrop looked up into the sky. “We’ll be digging out come morning, mark my words. Good night, gentlemen.”
Caleb turned up the collar of his cape and headed home. By the time he passed the house of Brigadier Brattle, his shoes were filled with snow and his feet were freezing. He hoped that his sister was still up, so the fire would be stoked, even if it meant listening to the poetry she had been writing. He also hoped that his grandfather had taken to bed, so a boy might dip into the port without hearing a lecture on temperance.
The streets were dark, except for small pools of light under the lanterns at the corners. The wind was icy, though the smell of woodsmoke promised warmth. And a lamp burned in the front window of the Wedge house, a handsome place of two full stories, dormered windows, and a white picket fence.
As Caleb opened the gate, a cold gust struck him in the back and sneaked under his cape. But it wasn’t the wind that caused the hairs to stand on his neck. It was the sight of a dark figure emerging from behind a tree trunk, calling his name.
Caleb stepped quickly inside the gate and closed it. “Who’s there?”
The figure lurched toward him: a tricorne dripping wet snow, an ice-crusted beard, a bony hand reaching out. “Caleb, it’s me. It’s Benjamin.”
The house was quiet, except for the windblown rattling of the shutters. Reverend Abraham, Mrs. Beale, and Lydia were all abed. So Caleb threw a log onto the grate, poured two glasses of port, brought out a slab of ham and a wedge of Stilton.
Benjamin sat by the fire, a blanket around his shoulders, his complexion as blue-veined white as the cheese. With shaking hand, he took the port and drank it down, then he tore into a piece of ham, chewed, and swallowed.
“Why have you come back?” asked Caleb. “Constable Hull has a long memory.”
Benjamin did not answer until he had finished another glass of port, sliced off a chunk of cheese, and settled back. “I came back to see you.”
“Uncle,” said Caleb, “what’s happened? Where is your troupe?”
“Two quit.” Benjamin downed another glass. “Two died.”
He said that after he and his players were chased from New England, they determined to go to Quebec, where the English viceroy might enjoy a season of Shakespeare. But they were actors, not woodsmen, and they did not reckon with the northern winter. Two froze to death, Demetrius and the cart of costumes were lost in the St. Lawrence, and one refused to do anything more than take a corner in a Quebec public house and recite soliloquies for pennies.
“So I come seeking shelter for the night,” said Benjamin, “and help from you.”
Caleb poured Benjamin another port. “You can sleep in the loft. Grandfather will speak to the constable in the morning, and—”
“I’ll be gone in the morning, God and Caleb Wedge willing.”
“God, perhaps”—Caleb laughed—“but me?”
Benjamin’s complexion had brightened, and he had stopped shivering as food and port coursed through him. He said, “You are a modern man, are you not?”
“I suppose.”
“A student of John Winthrop?” Benjamin dropped the blanket from his shoulders. “Who preaches that you widen knowledge through research and interpretation?”
“Yes.” Caleb wondered if his uncle had somehow been listening to the conversation in Winthrop’s study that evening.
“Science has instruments to help us widen our knowledge.” Benjamin got up and went over to the globe in the corner and gave it a spin. “But where are the instruments that help us to widen our understanding of humanity? Where are the wisdoms?”
The wind gusted so hard that the whole house shook.
“Here.” Benjamin pulled a book from his coat and pressed it into Caleb’s hand. “A quarto of Love’s Labours Lost, one of the best instruments we have . . . for the study of ourselves.”
Caleb flipped the pages. “I’ve read it, Uncle. It’s very . . . interesting.”
“You must do more than read it,” said Benjamin.
“You must imagine it . . . played by actors in costume, on a stage made brilliant by burning limelight, with music, magical effects of sound and sight, alarums and excursions, entrances and exits. Then will you see what ignorance still prevails in this benighted province.”
“But if we can read the play—”
“If a play be only read and not played,” said Benjamin, “’tis like aiming a telescope at a house across the road, when you might look at the planets instead.”
“I suppose. But—”
“Were I to tell you that there was a telescope in Harvard Hall, a powerful instrument, hidden and forgotten, you’d rush to retrieve it, would you not?”
“I suppose.”
“Well, there be an instrument there, a Shakespeare play, hidden long ago, by your own great-great-grandfather, hidden again by me. Will you help me to save it?”
“Save it? From whom? When?”
“From the minions of ignorance. Tonight. Under cover of a fortuitous blizzard, while most students are elsewhere, and those who remain sleep soundly in their beds.”
“I . . . I don’t know.”
“Help him, Caleb.” Lydia entered in her robe, her hair loose to her waist.
“You’ve been listening?” said Caleb.
“I heard voices. And I heard enough. Help him. If you don’t, I will.”
Benjamin said, “I ask you only to keep lookout and listen for footfalls, should Tutor Spurgeon decide to visit his library in the middle of the night.”
“If he’s in residence,” said Caleb, “he need only get out of bed to visit. He sleeps in the adjacent chamber.”
“And think,” said Lydia, “of what he would do, should he find a play improperly cataloged in his library. He is very staunch in his beliefs.”
From scholar to sneak thief in the space of two hours. A change, thought Caleb, as complete as the change in the town after two hours of blizzard. The wind had blown out every streetlamp between the Watertown Road and Harvard Yard, a foot of snow had fallen, and it was falling so fast that it filled their footprints even as they went. To one peering out into the storm, they must have appeared like spectral beings, like the witches that once haunted their ancestors.
But as he trudged along in his riding boots, his tricorne pulled down to stop the snow from stinging his cheeks, Caleb told himself that he was advancing the cause of wisdom in a world that favored ignorance as surely as it had in the days of the witch-hunts. His grandfather might not approve, but Professor Winthrop would.
No lanterns burned in Harvard Hall or Stoughton, though lights flickered here and there in Massachusetts Hall—tutors nodding over difficult passages in Plato or Deuteronomy while the storm whipped against their windows.
“Keep an eye out,” said Benjamin as they scurried up to the door of Harvard Hall.
“For what?” said Caleb. “You can’t see ten feet.”
“All the more reason. If we’re found by someone less than ten feet away, we’ll have no chance.” Benjamin slipped a penknife from his sleeve, and with a skill that comes only of experience, he probed the lock, picked it, and clicked open the door.
Then they were out of the storm, in the west entry of Harvard Hall, oldest and most venerable building in the college. The stairwell was to the left, the Great Hall to the right. They stood for a moment, letting their eyes accustom to the darkness, listening for footfalls. They heard none, but they both smelled smoke.
“A chimney that doesn’t draw?” whispered Benjamin. “Someone has a fire going? I thought you said this entry was deserted.”
“Tutor Smith is gone home,” said Caleb. “And the legislators aren’t here. They’re boarded all about the town.”
Benjamin shook his head, as if puzzled. Then he led Caleb up the stairs to the second floor, stopped again, and listened. The only sound, beyond the roaring of the wind, was the creaking of the old building itself.
The Apparatus Chamber, which held many of the college’s scientific instruments and a few of its scientific curiosities—stuffed animals and the tanned hide of a Negro—was to the left. The library was to the right. And the smell of smoke was stronger.
They stepped to the library door. Benjamin leaned down, probed the lock, probed again, and put his hand on the doorknob. “Pray ’tisn’t bolted.”
“It shouldn’t be. The legislators use it as their meeting chamber each day.”
Benjamin turned the knob, the door swung open, and Caleb felt smoke sting his eyes. The room was lit by the strange, dim snowlight that came in the windows, and by the orange glow on the grate on the far side of the room.
“That chimney needs cleaning,” said Benjamin. “It draws not at all.”
“Or someone needs lessons in banking a fire ’fore they leave on a windy night.” Caleb coughed. “Perhaps we should open a window to improve the draft.”
“Perhaps you should stay by the door and listen.”
So Caleb pressed his ear to the west door and watched Benjamin go straight to alcove twelve and drop to his knees, as if he had rehearsed it all a thousand times.
What Caleb could not see was the sweat on Benjamin’s forehead and the shaking old hands that quickly removed all the books from the bottom shelf and piled them on the floor. The hands produced the penknife, slipped it into the corner, and levered the bottom shelf out of the bookcase frame. Nails were still expensive.
Caleb stifled a cough, and Benjamin whispered, “What is it?”
“The . . . the smoke.”
“Quiet.” Benjamin reached into the place where he had put the book, and the sweat on his forehead went cold. It was not there. He reached again, then again, cursing old hands. Where was the book? Forty years he had thought about this moment and . . . there, at the other end. Thank the Lord. His memory was not as flawless as he thought. In a few seconds, he had replaced the shelf, replaced the books on the shelf, and moved back to the door.
“Here.” He pressed the book into Caleb’s hands. “’Tis yours now.”
“Mine?” Caleb turned it over in his hands. “What am I to do with it?”
“Whatever you think best. See that it’s published. See that it’s performed. Put it publicly into the collection of John Harvard. Do it tomorrow, if you wish.”
“But you could do all that, Uncle.”
“Fighting ignorance is a job for every generation. Fight it forwardly, as my father told me to, as I tried to when I came back to Cambridge last summer.”
Caleb looked into the old man’s eyes and saw something more than mischief. He saw his own complicity in a burglary rather than in the liberation of an idea. The excitement of it seemed suddenly less real than the sin.
Being a good reader of facial expressions, even in semidarkness, Benjamin sensed the boy’s change of heart, so he grabbed him and pushed him into the hallway.
And Caleb noticed one of the fireplace logs flame back to life. How could that be? The fire had almost burned to ash. “Uncle . . . wait.”
“We got what we came for.” Benjamin closed the door and stepped quickly toward the stairwell.
Caleb stopped. “Uncle, you didn’t lock the door.”
“Ah, yes. We leave no trace behind. The world knows nothing until you decide to tell them.” Benjamin pulled out the penknife.
But Caleb, still curious about that flame, pushed open the door.
All in an instant, he wondered why the flame was in front of the fireplace rather than inside it, he felt a rush of air around him, and he heard a roar as the fire burst from the floorboards, like a beast breaching from the sea.
“Good God!” Benjamin ran back, tearing off his cape as he went.
“Where’s it coming from?” Caleb hurried after him.
“I don’t know. A spark from the fireplace, maybe, smoldering in a floor beam.” Benjamin swung his cape left and right as new tongues of flame burst forth. “Get help!”
Caleb threw open one of the windows and shouted, “Fire!” into the roaring snow. He may have been a stud
ent of science, but he did not consider the impact of fresh oxygen on combustion. Whatever good Benjamin did with his cape, Caleb undid.
Within a few seconds, the east side of the library was a sheet of flame.
“Get out,” shouted Benjamin. “Go and get help.”
“But the books . . . Tutor Spurgeon.”
“Run,” said Benjamin. “Fetch help. I’ll get Spurgeon.”
“No. You run. I’ll fight the fire.”
“You run faster. Go. But show the book to no one. They’ll think we started this.”
And the flames burst from the window frames at both sides of the building.
“It’s inside the walls!” cried Benjamin. “Go, or we’ll never stop it.” He pushed the boy toward the west door. “Go!”
Then Benjamin ran across the library, through the east door, and across the entry. He pounded on Spurgeon’s door, crying, “Fire! Fire!” Then he delivered a kick that slammed the door open. But Spurgeon was not there and his bed was made.
Meanwhile, Caleb was stumbling out the door with the book in his pocket. He screamed, “Fire! Fire!” But he could barely hear his own voice over the wind. He screamed up at Massachusetts Hall, where the lights had been burning earlier, but there was no response. So he ran into the village square and screamed into the blowing snow, “Fire!”
In the library, Benjamin Wedge was running along the shelves, pulling the books out, putting them on the tables, as if he could save them, pile by pile. But the smoke was boiling along the ceiling and filling every space not occupied by fire.
And where was the help?
He ran to the window but could see nothing through the blowing snow. So he grabbed one of the piles of books and rushed for the west door. Then he realized that trying to save five thousand books, pile by pile, was hopeless.
Harvard Yard (Peter Fallon) Page 24