Harvard Yard (Peter Fallon)

by William Martin

  “Behind the panel on the third shelf, third case.”

  “Good,” she said. “Keep them there.”

  “What if I go to Philadelphia?”

  “So long as Grandfather lives, we must keep evidence of Burton Bones hidden. Remember that after Burton disappeared, Grandfather was the moving force behind the anti-theater statutes of 1767. If it were found that we kept plays in his house, he’d become a laughingstock. And as I’ve told you so often since Harvard Hall burned, if you admitted how you obtained the plays, people would believe that you started the fire.”

  “What if I returned the manuscript secretly, as Uncle Benjamin did.”

  “He was a fool,” said Lydia. “That book is too valuable to hide under a library case for another forty years. Better in our hands, safe from neglect.”

  Caleb noticed two British soldiers coming down the street, two privates from the Forty-seventh Regiment of Foot. He expected them to walk on, but they stopped, spoke politely to Lydia, and went into the house as though they lived there, which they did.

  “The king considers it his right to quarter troops in our homes,” said Lydia.

  “He sends them where they’re welcome. ’Tis a Loyalist house, after all.”

  “Do you think I am a Loyalist, Caleb?”

  “You’re here, aren’t you?”

  “I’m here because an old man needs me.”

  “Then you are loyal”—Caleb gripped his sister’s shoulder—“in the best sense.”

  “In what sense are you loyal, Brother? And to whom?”

  That question echoed in his mind all the rest of the winter.

  Each week, he traveled to Boston to visit his sister and grandfather, and the conversation changed little, though the supply of tea finally dwindled to nothing.

  After he visited them, he would go down Hanover Street, past the Government House at the head of King Street, along Orange Street, to the handsome Summer Street home of Christine Cowgill.

  Theirs had been a long courtship. Caleb was not the most passionate of men, nor Christine the most insistent of women. He had approached romantic love as an equation to be solved. She had viewed her suitors as her father had viewed potential business partners. To Caleb, her quick smile, quicker wit, fleshy bosom, and rich father were balanced by her demand that he leave the employ of the college before they marry. To Christine, his intelligence and height were the best assets any man had brought to her.

  One or the other might have ended this tepid romance, but Caleb admitted comfort in her presence, and Christine accepted his argument that in the long run, comfort would supersede passion.

  His visits to her home, however, grew less comfortable by the week. Her father was a leading Whig merchant. But the local committeemen knew that Caleb’s grandfather was a Loyalist, and they suspected him of the same tendencies. Whenever he visited, there were men watching. From the shadows, they might see Caleb and Christine steal a kiss as she greeted him at the door or said good-bye later. But they would not hear the conversation, which was as predictable as Caleb’s talk with his own grandfather.

  “Have you determined which side you are on?” asked Christine yet again on a windy March Sunday.

  “I’m on the side that says we can talk our way out of these troubles.”

  “But are you Whig or Tory?” she persisted. “I want to know. My father wants to know. The Sons of Liberty who follow you around the town want to know, too.”

  “Which answer would better suit you?” he asked.

  “I don’t care. Tell me which side you’re on, and I’ll take that side, too,” she said, “so that I may tell my father how I feel about you.”

  “Tell him that you love me and I love you. Tell him we’ll marry when the times allow. But I can’t leave the college now. Why, today, Tory students brought tea into commons, and the tutors had to put down a riot. I simply can’t leave.”

  “I’ll not marry you otherwise, no matter what your beliefs.”

  Nothing, thought Caleb, was simple in such times.

  Lydia thought the same thing. She thought it when she tried to get food in the morning or firewood in the evening. She thought it when she walked down the street and heard the insults of Bostonians who considered her a Loyalist simply because she cared for one. She thought it when she considered the fate of the Wedge house and all its contents, should the Whig rebels succeed.

  So, on a Wednesday night in early April, she went down to the ferry landing, politely answered the questions of the British soldiers as to her destination and reason for going out of the city, and then took the ferry to Charlestown. She walked the rest of the way to Cambridge, timing her arrival to the hour when her brother and certain of his students began their weekly dissection in the barn.

  All was dark behind the Wedge house on Tory Row, except for the slivers of yellow light poking through the cracks in the barn wall. Caleb and the students were inside, with blankets covering the windows.

  So Lydia let herself into the house, listened a moment for footfalls, then tiptoed upstairs, to the back bedroom, to make sure that Mrs. Beale was off on her weekly visit to her family. The bed was empty. But as Lydia turned to go downstairs, she heard a cart roll up behind the house. So she stepped to the window and peered down.

  Though it was a moonless night, there were no lanterns on the cart. And it looked as if the horses’ hooves were wrapped in burlap. Two young men, both wearing black tricornes and cloaks, jumped down.

  “Just our luck to dig up a fat man,” said one, going to the back of the cart.

  The other went to the barn door and delivered two knocks, then one, then two. The door opened a crack and two more figures emerged.

  “How long did it take you?” said the tall shadow of Tutor Wedge.

  “Half an hour to Watertown. Half an hour to dig him up.”

  “That gives us five hours before you must take him back,” said Wedge.

  “You didn’t tell us he’d be so fat, sir.”

  “Fat is good. We’ll focus on the fat. Five hours to study the nature of fat.”

  They struggled to remove a stretcher from the back of the cart; then they disappeared into the barn and closed the door.

  For a few moments, Lydia stood in total shock. They were dissecting humans, not cats. But there was little time to contemplate this.

  She turned and hurried to her grandfather’s study, third case, third shelf. She moved the panel and withdrew two books that she and her brother had hidden. She wrote a note and slipped it into one of the leatherbound brown volumes she had brought, and put both volumes into the empty space.

  Then she slipped out by the front door, feeling strangely elated. She had taken control of the most portable piece of the Wedge legacy, Love’s Labours Lost and Won in quarto and manuscript. And her brother, it seemed, had taken control of something, too, even if it was the midnight art of the resurrectionist.

  iv

  “Human dissection?” said Professor John Winthrop.

  “Sir?” Caleb sat by the fire in Winthrop’s study.

  “Rumors reach me, Caleb. Are you leading students in secret human dissection?”

  “Well . . . students have been doing dissections for some time, sir.”

  “Of cats and dogs.” Winthrop waved his hand. “An open secret. But is there something called the Spunke Club, devoted to more elaborate experimentation?”

  “Da Vinci engaged in such experimentation, sir,” said Caleb defensively, “but he was forced to do it in secret because of the ignorance of his times.”

  “True enough.” Winthrop wheezed a bit. “True enough.”

  “And there are many in our own times who face ignorance as great. Why, Doctor Shippen of Philadelphia had all the windows of his dissection room broken by ignorant people. Ignorance is no friend to any of us, sir. You’ve said that yourself.”

  “True enough. But are you doing it? Are you what they call a . . . resurrectionist?”

  And Caleb could not dissemble
further. “We do not rob the graves of gentlefolk, only suicides or criminals, and now and then, one from some potter’s field.”

  Winthrop took off his wig and ran his hand over the gray bristles beneath it.

  Caleb went on, “If we are to improve the lot of man, sir, we must study him . . . his mind and body both.”

  “True enough.” Winthrop wheezed.

  “Then you approve?”

  “Only if you dissect enough lungs to determine why I feel as if I’m sucking air from a bottle this evening.”

  “’Tis said that anxiety will bring on the asthma in those who are disposed, sir. As a delegate to the Provincial Congress, you must have a fair share of anxiety just now.”

  Winthrop coughed. “We hear Gage plans to arrest us, should we assemble again.”

  “And will you?”

  “Of course. Otherwise, we become like a parcel of slaves on a plantation.”

  “Still,” said Caleb, “’tis a hard choice, between Whig mobs and British troops.”

  Winthrop studied Caleb for a moment, as if weighing his words or the man before him. “You are not someone who readily steps forward, are you?”

  “I’m a scholar, sir. I’ve written papers. I’ve studied.”

  “You also have a woman who would marry, yet you wait. You understand the value of dissection, yet you do it in secret. You must take a side in the coming fight, yet you temporize. You’ve been stepping back, Caleb, rather than forward, since the day old Harvard Hall burned.”

  Caleb felt his cheeks redden.

  “I watched you that day,” said the old professor. “I watched you approach Holyoke, then retreat, as if you feared your fate if you spoke. I’ve often wondered—”

  “That was many years ago, sir.”

  “I have a long memory.”

  And from upstairs came a call. “John, ’tis the latest you’ve sat up in weeks.”

  “Yes, dear.” Winthrop looked at Caleb. “I have a long memory, and so does my wife. She remembers when I was young and strong, and so she waits for me to come to her bed, that we might remember together. So, I’ll bid you good night.”

  Winthrop led Caleb to the door and opened it to the cool April night. The spring peepers had set up a loud symphony on the marsh. The buds on the trees seemed to be swelling, even in the moonlight. And the damp-earth aroma of the air promised spring.

  Winthrop said, “I am not a Scripture-quoting man, Caleb.”

  “No, sir.”

  “But the Lord said, ‘Be ye either hot or cold. If ye be lukewarm, I shall spit you out of my mouth.’ You have much to think about. You have—”

  Just then, they heard the sound of hooves thundering across the planks of the Great Bridge. Then they heard shouting, then galloping, then shouting again.

  Lights burned to life in Stedman’s Tavern, near the river. The rider shouted something, someone answered, the rider shouted something more, and the hooves hit the ground again.

  Then Caleb saw horse and rider, galloping hard. But as they came to the corner of Wood and Spring Streets, the rider pulled at his reins, and the horseshoes sent sparks and a spray of stones scattering toward Caleb and the professor.

  “Are you Winthrop?” The rider was a big man, dressed in good boots and brown coat, on a gelding that showed not a bit of lather, however hard he had been ridden.

  “I am,” said the professor.

  “Be warned then. The Regulars are out.”

  “Who are you?” asked Winthrop.

  “William Dawes. We’re spreading word.”

  “Word of what?” demanded Winthrop. “Why are the Regulars out?”

  “To arrest the leaders of the Provincial Congress in Lexington and seize the arms in Concord. The troops go by way of Medford, so I come this way.”

  “God damn them,” said Winthrop. “Can we . . . can we see to your horse?”

  “See to yourself, sir, for once they’re done arresting the leaders, they may seize the delegates, too.” Dawes spurred the horse.

  Winthrop and Caleb watched him gallop off, then Winthrop said to Caleb, “You’ve not much time now. Step forward or step away, but step.”

  All that night, Caleb lay awake listening to church bells ringing the alarm in distant villages. Twice he rose to see groups of armed men hurrying past the college. He heard doors open in Stoughton Hall, and three students went out with muskets on their shoulders. By four o’clock, some seventy men had collected on the Common, and from his window, Caleb watched them march up the Menotomy Road.

  About five-thirty, he heard a rider gallop south through the village—a British courier, headed for Boston. With what news? Had they done their business in Lexington? Had they reached Concord?

  And Caleb made a decision. He decided to get up. He used the chamberpot, then he wrote down his weather observations: temperature, 46° F; barometer, 29.56 inches; wind light from the west. It promised to be a beautiful day.

  By midmorning, the temperature was sixty degrees. Cambridge should have been a-bustle, but nothing stirred in the street, and little stirred behind pulled shutters, because word had arrived: provincials and soldiers had clashed at Lexington, and they were now fighting around Concord.

  The college was not in session, since students were allowed to go home for spring planting. But not all students were farmers. Many stayed during the recess, so Caleb Wedge spent the morning in commons, talking with the sons of barristers and merchants, trying to calm them and by his own words calm himself, though neither he nor the students believed a calming word he said.

  Then, about eleven o’clock, came the sound of drums. Caleb and two students, Jeremiah Digges and Charles Sterret, hurried up to the cupola to see what was coming. And Caleb’s eye was drawn immediately to movement below—a dozen mounted officers cantering back and forth in front of the college, stopping, conferring, looking about, riding ahead to reconnoiter, riding back, all as seemingly confused as hounds that had lost the scent.

  “Master Wedge!” Digges pointed toward the river. “Look!”

  And what Caleb saw was almost beautiful.

  A long line of red etched itself across the greening marsh, rose onto the Great Bridge, and pointed up Wood Street, as if it were coming straight at them.

  “My God,” said Charles Sterret. “Four regiments.”

  “How many men is that?” asked Caleb.

  “About a thousand. A relief column, I suspect, summoned at daybreak.”

  And now the sound of fifes trilled above the beat of the drums: “Yankee Doodle,” a favorite tune when the British were in the mood to insult the people of Massachusetts.

  They came on four abreast, all but filling the road. They marched with colors grimly cased. And the left-right-left lockstep of each man produced a left-right-left movement of the line itself, so that it seemed a great scarlet serpent was slithering along, its bayonets flashing like polished fangs.

  “That’s the Fourth Regiment of Foot in the van,” said Sterret. “The King’s Own.”

  “How do you know?” asked Caleb.

  “The blue facings on their coats.”

  “No . . . how do you know so much about these things?”

  “My father’s in the Danvers militia, sir. I expect he’s marching, too. That’s the Forty-seventh behind the King’s Own, then the Royal Welsh Fusiliers. And the King’s Artillery. Two six-pounders.” Sterret squinted to see the last unit. “Those lads crossin’ the bridge? Royal Marines. Serious business, sir.”

  Caleb’s stomach had been clenching and releasing all day. Now it closed like a fist.

  “What’s this?” Moses Richardson, the college carpenter, a skinny little piece of rawhide, poked his head through the trapdoor. “Cupola’s closed. Railin’s rotten.”

  “We won’t lean on it,” said Caleb.

  Recognizing a tutor, Richardson changed his attitude, but slightly. “Beggin’ your pardon, sir. You should read the notes I send ’round. . . . Be that music?”

  Caleb reached d
own and drew him up into the cupola.

  “Lord in Heaven,” said Richardson, looking out.

  The first units, led by mounted officers, were coming into the village square. The pounding of their drums and the tramping of their boots were loud enough now that Caleb could feel the vibrations in the floor of the cupola.

  “That’s General Lord Percy.” Sterret pointed to the one in the gold-trimmed hat.

  “A damn big nose on him,” said Richardson.

  “A damn good soldier,” said Sterret. “Aide-de-camp to the king when he was nineteen. They say the king has the same kind of big nose and popped-out eyes, too.”

  “The king’s bastard, then?” asked Digges.

  “They’re all the king’s bastards,” said Richardson.

  Directly in front of Harvard Hall, Percy reined up and raised his hand. The fifing stopped instantly. In the time it took for the sound to travel from the front of the column to the rear, the drumming stopped, the tramping stopped, and all four regiments stopped, like a mighty mill hammer stopping in mid-motion when the brake is thrown.

  After the noise, the sudden silence seemed to have a volume of its own.

  “Have you reconnoitered, Colonel?” asked Percy of a mounted officer.

  The curved ceiling of the cupola acted like a bowl to capture the rising sounds, so Caleb could hear every word perfectly.

  “There are three roads north,” said the colonel, “and forgive me, sir, but I can’t tell which one we should take.”

  “You’re joking,” said Percy, entirely unamused.

  “’Tisn’t a morning for jokes, sir.”

  Percy looked at the deserted courthouse, the shuttered homes, the Harvard buildings, and he said, “Is there no one in this village who knows how to leave it?”

  “Many seem to have left it already, sir,” said the officer, “or hidden.”

  “In that,” answered Percy, “they show more wisdom than their countrymen.”

  Up in the cupola, Moses Richardson whispered, “Damn shame my musket’s in the cellar, or I could pick me off one fine kingbird right now.”