The Ancient Nine

by Ian K. Smith, M. D.

  “Move some of those things over there and have a seat,” he said, pointing to a stool that had a stack of books on it as high as I was tall. “Excuse the mess, but this is what happens when you’ve been around as long I have.”

  I cleared off a spot, careful not to step on any of the piles of paper on the floor, and took a seat next to his invisible desk.

  “Lenny called me last week and told me of your dilemma,” he said, leaning back in his rickety swivel chair.

  I was mesmerized by the hoard of diplomas and honorary degrees lining the walls.

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t get around to it earlier, but I’ve been fighting like hell to get rid of this damn cold,” he said. “Anyway, I finally had a chance to sit down and take a good look at the passage. I was immediately intrigued. Where on earth did you find it?”

  “In someone’s journal,” I said.

  “Really?” He nodded his head slowly and frowned. “Just so I understand, was this someone’s personal journal or was it a document someone had kept inside of the journal?”

  “No, it was actually written in the journal,” I said.

  “And this person just gave you their journal to read?” he said.

  “Not exactly,” I said. “I found it by accident.”

  He leaned toward his desk and with his gnarled hands, wrote something in a notebook. He paused for a moment and thought about what he had just written, then bent down again and scribbled something else. When he was satisfied, he rested the pen on the desk and slumped back in his chair.

  “What do you know about Puritanism?” he asked.

  The question threw me. “Puritans, sir?” I said.

  “Yes, early New England settlers that everyone talks about at Thanksgiving. How much do you know about their history?”

  I shrugged. What the hell did I know about the Puritans? I hadn’t really thought about them since Mrs. Tahan’s fourth-grade history lessons. I finally blurted out, “They were simple people who came over to the New World on the Mayflower, landed on Plymouth Rock, and lived a strict life.”

  “That’s a start.” He smiled. “But do you know anything of their origins, things like why they even came into existence and what their mission had been?”

  “To build a new life away from the bad politics of England?” I shrugged.

  “The Puritans were an extremely religious people, young man,” Davenport said. “They came here to escape religious persecution during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. There was a growing number of people who felt that her ecclesiastical establishment was too political, too compromising, and too Catholic. I don’t want to bore you with a history lesson, but suffice it to say, these dissenters were called Calvinists, early Protestants who believed in the absolute sovereignty of God’s will. They believed that the Scriptures didn’t sanction the state to create and organize bishops and churches, and they felt called to purify the church, thus the name Puritans.”

  “So, you think this passage has something to do with Puritanical beliefs?” I said.

  “I don’t think that, young man, I know it,” Davenport said. “In style and content, the passage is Puritanical. Although they were but few in number, their zeal afforded them influence.”

  “Do you know where the passage comes from?”

  Davenport stood, grabbed his cane, and hobbled toward the door and closed it. When he was back in his chair, he turned to me and in an almost conspiratorial tone said, “That’s why I’ve been excited to meet you.” His face turned suddenly dark and tortured. “These words come from the work of one of the most regarded authors of Puritanical texts. His name was Reverend John Downame, and his writings had enormous influence on early New England life. He was a giant amongst giants in religious thought and doctrine, and for his time, quite famous.”

  “But what makes this passage so important?” I asked.

  “That answer lies in the source in which you found it,” Davenport said.

  I felt like grabbing the old man by his pointed shoulders and shaking him until he stopped talking in riddles. “Why is the source so important?”

  “Because that passage comes from a book written more than three centuries ago. It’s one of the most famous books in Harvard’s history. In fact, many would say it is Harvard, and very few copies exist today.”

  “What’s the name of it?”

  “The Christian Warfare Against the Devil World and Flesh.”

  “Why is it so important to Harvard’s history?”

  “Because of the old fire,” Davenport said.

  He paused and looked at me as if I should know which fire he meant. I didn’t.

  “Well, you do know of the three lies on the John Harvard statue.”

  I nodded. The “Statue of Three Lies” was requisite Harvard lore that all freshmen heard within a week of moving into the Yard. Just behind University Hall and prominently situated in the Yard was Harvard’s most photographed landmark, a bronze statue of a man sitting regally in a chair, dressed in the day’s finery. Daniel Chester French cast the statue in 1884, and then went on to create the Lincoln statue in Washington, D.C. The inscription on the John Harvard statue reads: JOHN HARVARD, FOUNDER, 1638. And not a single one of those words is true. Contrary to popular belief, John Harvard was not the founder of Harvard College. The Massachusetts Bay Colony established the small college, and only later was it named after John Harvard. Harvard was founded in 1636, not 1638, and the seated figure of the statue isn’t a depiction of John Harvard. According to legend, when the statue was cast, no authentic pictures of John Harvard could be found, so Chester French used a student, Sherman Hoar, as a model.

  Davenport continued his story. “Reverend John Harvard came from England to Charlestown, Massachusetts, in 1637. He died a year later. He left half his estate and all his books, about four hundred of them, to the nearby college, which had been founded the previous year and had been simply called the New College. Harvard’s entire collection of books, along with the rest of the library, were stored inside Harvard Hall. In 1764, amidst the heavy winds and snow of a severe nor’easter, Harvard Hall caught fire and burned to the ground. It was devastating for the college, destroying furniture, pictures, wigs, scientific equipment, and clothing. But what really demoralized the school was the loss not only of its library holdings but also John Harvard’s entire collection of books.

  “The president and faculty were spiritually devastated, having lost the collection of its first and most important benefactor. But there was to be a miracle in one Ephraim Briggs, a senior who had checked out a book on October 14, 1763, for a maximum loan period, which at the time was three weeks. After the fire in 1764, Briggs finally got around to returning the severely delinquent book he had checked out almost a year prior. Miraculously, it was the fourth edition of Downame’s book that had been published in 1634—The Christian Warfare Against the Devil World and Flesh.”

  “Where’s that book now?” I asked.

  “Displayed in a glass case in the entry of Houghton Library,” Davenport said. “A security guard sits nearby. It’s the only remaining book from John Harvard’s collection and one of the most important books on religious doctrine in the world.”

  “Can anyone look at that book?” I asked.

  “Sure, with special permission and close supervision,” Davenport said.

  “Then why’s it such a big deal I have this passage when anyone can access the book?”

  Davenport smiled. “Because the passage you have written there didn’t come from the book on display in Houghton, the fourth printing. It could only have been copied by someone who had seen the extremely rare 1604 first printing. Only a few copies of that edition still exist in the world today. Harvard owns one of those copies”

  Maybe I was still feeling the aftereffects of the New York trip, but I still wasn’t seeing his point, nor could I understand how he knew the passage well enough to know it was from the missing pages of the 1604 book. “Can people look at that first edition?” I a
sked.

  “Yes, but access is severely restricted.”

  “Then why is this passage such a big deal if people can still go to the library and look at it?”

  “Because they can’t. That passage comes specifically from pages 545 and 546, the only two missing pages in that book. Scholars and collectors around the world have been searching for those pages specifically from Harvard’s copy for more than a century. And to this day, the whereabouts of those pages remains among Harvard’s greatest unsolved mysteries.”

  * * *

  ON MY WAY HOME from the Divinity School, on a hunch I took a detour and stopped at Robinson Hall in the northeast corner of the Yard. Robinson was the home of the history department, a gigantic brick building originally erected at the turn of the century to house the schools of architecture and city planning. Most undergraduates had little reason to visit the old building unless they were taking a history course or wanted a quiet place to study.

  I climbed a long staircase and made a couple of turns, then found myself standing in front of a simple door with the word LIBRARY stenciled in small letters. I walked in, expecting to find a large, cavernous room full of musty old texts and bound periodicals, but instead I found myself in a converted classroom with long wooden tables, hospital-white walls, and rows of bookshelves extending along the perimeter of the room. A few students, their noses buried in books, sat at the tables, and a young woman with long black hair tied into a ponytail and a lime green turtleneck sweater sat behind the front desk. She was typing something into a computer and smiling at the same time. I figured her for a graduate student.

  “How can I help you?” she said as I approached the desk.

  “I’m trying to find out about disasters that occurred off the coast of Newfoundland,” I said.

  “What dates are you looking for?” she asked.

  “I don’t have any precise dates.”

  She nodded. “What kind of disasters are you talking about?”

  “I’m not sure about that either. I’m trying to research a man who died in the waters off the coast of Newfoundland.”

  “Then maybe we could start a search with his name,” she said, sounding more optimistic. She turned the computer screen around so that I could also see it as she typed.

  “That’s another problem,” I said, starting to feel like an imbecile. “I don’t know his name either. But I know his initials.”

  Her shoulders dropped. “This will be an almost impossible search,” she said. “You don’t have any real parameters to work with.”

  “Could I just do a search on Newfoundland and accidents?”

  “Sure, but that would come back with everything both on land and water. I’m almost afraid to ask this, but do you know if it was a boating accident or plane crash?”

  I lowered my head.

  “In that case,” she said. “The best you can do is to search some of the online catalogs and see what you find. If I think of something else, I’ll let you know.”

  I took a seat behind a terminal in the small computer area and went to work. Entering Newfoundland as the search term brought back almost twenty pages of books and articles, so I restricted the search and added the word disasters. That cut the results to just a couple of pages. Most of the sources were books, but there were a couple of brief articles that caught my attention. The first was from December 2, 1938, in The Fisherman’s Advocate.

  The people of the North side of Trinity Bay were shocked this week to learn of the loss of the schooner Marion Rogers whilst attempting to enter Trinity Harbour in the storm of Sunday night last. Seven men went to watery graves as a result of the loss of the schooner.

  The schooner struck the rocks near the Fort Point Lighthouse, at the entrance to Trinity, where there is also a fog alarm.

  The members of the crew were William Hogarth, Master, and his son Lester of Trinity East, Alfred Pitcher and son Simeon of New Bonaventure, T.B., William J. Butler, also of New Bonaventure, Ellis Butler of Port Rexton and Edward McGarth of Trinity.

  Over the next several hours, I found three more articles, but it was the last one that I decided to print and take with me. It was from The Winnipeg Evening Tribune.

  FOUR FISHERMEN ARE DROWNED ON BANKS

  ST. JOHN’S, Nfld, July 8, 1927—Four Newfoundland fishermen have been drowned on the Banks, according to a report received at the Cape Race wireless station from the Canadian government steamer Arras. Those lost were Charles Williams and George Robert May of Fortune Bay, from the schooner Donald A. Creaser, and Martin Quann of Sagona, and Randolph Macon Strawbridge of Red Cove, from the schooner Marian Belle Wolfe. Quann’s body was the only one recovered.

  The tragedy occurred last Monday during a southeast storm which sprang up shortly after the dorymen left their vessels. Williams and May were lost sight of soon after they pushed off from the schooner in their dories, and were never seen again.

  Quann and Strawbridge succeeded in reaching their trawls before the storm hit them, and were pulling in their catch when their dory upset. Quann’s body was caught in the trawl and recovered, but Strawbridge was not seen again.

  I kept looking at the name Randolph Macon Strawbridge. This had to be my answer. He had drowned in the waters off the coast of Newfoundland, and his initials matched the RMS at the bottom of the poem. But Strawbridge had died in July, and I had my doubts the waters were as icy in the middle of the summer as the poem had indicated. There was an easy way to know. I signed on to one of the Harvard databases and entered Strawbridge’s name in the alumni search. I had my answers within seconds. Randolph Macon Strawbridge had never been a Harvard student, which also meant he had never been a member of the Delphic Club. I was back to zero as I left Robinson Hall that afternoon, but I was certain of two things: Decoding that poem was going to be more than extremely difficult; it was going to be near impossible. Second, the Ancient Nine’s guile should not be underestimated.

  26

  HOUGHTON LIBRARY WAS the kind of stodgy affair that serious academics dream about, and most students avoid at all costs. Sandwiched between the more popular Widener and Lamont Libraries in the New Yard, Houghton was like an old piece of furniture in your living room that you walked by every day but never used. It enjoyed brief fame in the 1940s as the nation’s first academic library specifically constructed to house rare books and manuscripts. It had also been an architectural wonder at the time. To house such a valuable collection, it had to be fire- and earthquake-proof. It was also the first library in the world to have built-in climate control.

  I walked up the narrow steps and opened the doors to a dark, drafty circular lobby. A man in a wrinkled blue uniform and clip-on tie sat behind a small desk in the center of the marble floor. The Boston Globe was opened to the sports section and neatly spread on top of a pile of papers. He looked up when I approached and closed the paper. “How can I help you?” he said.

  “I’d like to take a look at John Downame’s Christian Warfare Against the Devil World and Flesh,” I said.

  He tapped the keys of the computer, then looked at me and said, “Did you make an appointment with any of the librarians?”

  “I didn’t know I had to,” I said.

  “For this book you do,” he said. “We have the fire copy that’s in the display case, and at least twelve others. But these books can be viewed only under supervision.”

  “How do I make an appointment?”

  He reached for a clipboard on the desk. “Write your name and phone number here, and one of the reference assistants will get back to you.”

  “Are any of them available right now?”

  “No, their appointments are full for the rest of the afternoon.”

  “How long will it take for me to get an appointment?”

  “Not sure. Each reference assistant keeps his own schedule. Is this research for a senior thesis? That would give your request some priority.”

  I almost lied, but thought better of it. It wouldn’t take long for them to
figure out that I was only a sophomore. “No, it’s just some independent research I’m working on,” I said.

  “Are you on a deadline?”

  “There is some urgency.”

  “Then you should write down the reason for the deadline. That could also help give your request some priority.”

  “Where are these books kept?” I asked.

  “Depends on the printing. The one saved from the fire is right over there. But the first printing is locked in the vault. Access is highly restricted, and access is typically limited to approved scholarly research.”

  I started to write my name and information on the sign-up sheet, but as I was finishing my phone number, I noticed there was only one other phone number in the column. It started with a 212 area code. The rest of the numbers were only five digits long, either beginning with an 8, which meant a student phone, or a 5, which meant a faculty or administrative office. Then I looked at the name in the entry. M. G. Brathwaite from New York City had signed in less than twenty-four hours ago.

  * * *

  I STOOD OUTSIDE the front door of Houghton, thinking of the possibilities. There was no way in hell it had been a coincidence that Brathwaite had gone to Houghton to conduct some type of scholarly research. What business would a lawyer have with a library that housed rare manuscripts? He was there because he knew Houghton would be the likely next stop in our pursuit. I figured he had come to accomplish one of two things. He wanted to check and see if we had accessed The Christian Warfare, suggesting that we had learned of its connection to the Ancient Nine’s creed, or he had come to confirm for himself that what we were looking for was no longer in the book. Whatever the case, he was turning up the heat, which meant we were getting closer.