Harvard Yard (16 page)

“Son of Reverend Increase? Nephew of John Cotton?” asked Isaac.

A flicker of a smile crossed the boy’s face. “The very s-s-s-same.”

“And they have fostered a veritable genius.” Samuel Sewall bustled in with an armful of books. “Master Mather is the youngest student ever to attend. All of—what is it, Cotton—twelve years old?”

“Eleven and a half, sir. ’Twas my father who m-m-m-matriculated at age twelve.”

“A most brilliant family.” Sewall put down the books. He was a heavyset young man whose lively eyes and strong nose overlay an especially small mouth, so that his face seemed perpetually at odds with itself. He whispered to Isaac, “Brilliant the boy may be, sir, but too young for college, if you ask me. The older lads have made rough sport of him already. He’d best quit his stammering, or they’ll make even more.”

Sensing that Mather was listening while pretending to read, Isaac said, “Well, Tutor Sewall, the son of Increase Mather may count on the friendship of the Wedges. Isn’t that right, John?”

“Unh . . . yes, Father.” John answered with little enthusiasm, for what sixteen-year-old would welcome a companion so young? But Cotton’s father was pastor of Boston’s Second Church, and while friendship with the Mathers would be of little consequence to a Sudbury farmer, Isaac’s son might someday find benefit in such a relationship.

More immediate benefit would come from a relationship to Samuel Sewall. So Isaac placed the sack of books on the table. “Now that I be done with these, Samuel, ’twould seem best that they be added to New England’s font of knowledge.”

“What have you brought us?” Sewall poked his nose into the sack and drew forth a volume. “
Clavis Homerica
?”

“Published at Rotterdam last year. Selections from the
Iliad
and the
Odyssey
.”

“Excellent,” said Sewall. “We’ve only Chapman’s Homer, from Master Harvard himself. We need more literature. Though I . . . I trust there be no play in that bag.”

Play.
A mere word, and the uttering of it was like the sound of a gun. Cotton Mather’s head snapped up. John Wedge stepped toward his father, as if to protect him or seek protection. And Isaac took a step backward before regaining balance enough to say, “Why, Master Sewall, why would you suggest such a thing?”

“I’ve come into possession of a diary and notebook owned by the late Reverend Shepard,” answered Sewall. “I’ve read them in preparation for writing a sketch on his piety . . . something I shall deliver before his congregation on the fortieth anniversary of his settlement.”

“He was a good man,” said Isaac warily.

“His writings include sermons, daily thoughts, and the confessions of those who accepted church membership in those days, including yourself, sir. It also comments on several of the confessions, including your own, sir.”

By a quick shifting of his eyes from one slack-jawed freshman to another, Isaac tried without words to tell Sewall that he had said enough.

But Sewall went on talking as he picked through the books in Isaac’s bag. “I thought Katharine Nicholson’s confession most amusing. It accused you of seeking a play on a trip you made to England. A ‘modern’ play.”

“I returned with a
classical
play. The
Agamemnon
by Aeschylus.” Isaac went over to the wall and slipped the book from the shelf where it had resided for more than a quarter century. “Here is the very volume.”

“Quite so,” said Sewall. “I’ve read it myself.”

“And does Reverend Shepard’s little book also tell that truth?” asked Isaac.

“Indeed it does, sir.”

“Then there be no need to comment in front of impressionable boys who—”

“I am n-n-not impressionable, sir,” said Mather. “My conscience has been well formed by my f-f-father, who considers m-m-modern theater the work of Satan. As do I.”

“So you say?” answered Isaac.

“So I say.” And for a moment, Isaac was pinned by the gaze of a boy who seemed certain of the rectitude of his opinions, despite his stammer and a voice that had not yet changed. The words of young Mather, brilliant son of the colony’s most brilliant father, were enough to convince Isaac that
Love’s Labours Won
should remain where it was, at least until the attitudes of the next generation could be better discerned and shaped.

ii

No year in the life of the college was ever as difficult as John Wedge’s first. In November, the students left in a revolt against the president, or perhaps the tutors, or was it the overseers? Nothing was certain, except that John Wedge walked the whole way back to Sudbury, appearing at his parents’ door on a gloomy afternoon and staying until March, when the president resigned, the tutors returned, and the college reopened.

Meanwhile, the building of Harvard Hall proceeded fitfully, the pace determined by the speed with which the good people of Massachusetts fulfilled their pledges. But come June, the people of Massachusetts were using their money to defend their colony, and by August, they were fighting for its survival.

The great Indian War, feared for so long by so many, had finally come to pass. The wonder to Isaac was that it had taken over fifty years. The Indians had seen their forests fall. They had watched white men widen their ancient footpaths and cut new roads west. And they had heard too much of a strange new god with three names yet one being, a god said to be more powerful than all the spirits of sky and earth. So they rallied around a Wampanoag chief named Metacom, known to the English as King Philip, and they attacked towns along Narragansett Bay. Then they moved north and west, inciting the Nipmucks and Pocumtucks and igniting the frontier.

To meet the Indian threat, men were mustered in every town. And as he was fluent in the Algonkian language, Isaac was called upon several times to march out. Each time, he put the blunderbuss by the door and told his wife to use it without hesitation.

Her answer was always that the Lord would protect her.

Isaac believed that the Lord was most helpful to those who helped themselves. So he resolved to do his best to bring peace to the frontier. If he failed, he told his wife, the task would someday fall to their son.

That winter a dozen Massachusetts towns were put to the torch. As winter flamed into spring, John Wedge wrote to his parents from the college:

Word arrives of attacks on Lancaster and Medfield. Cotton Mather says that his father—ever in a position to know such things—hears rumors of five hundred warriors gathered near Mount Wachusett. I fear for your safety. Should I come home? Or better yet, should you come here?

This letter reached Sudbury on a warm evening in April. Isaac and Rebecca were sitting together on chairs set out in front of the house, their eyes turned to the sunset, their ears attuned to the rising song of the spring peepers. And Isaac was thinking that once they had satisfied the senses of sight and sound, a husband of fifty-four and a wife of fifty-two might find it within themselves to satisfy other senses, as well.

But into this gentle scene came two riders on heavily lathered mounts.

“We bring a letter, sir,” said one of them.

“And a request from Captain Wadsworth that you join him,” said the other. “He’s on the Great Path, marching to the Marlborough garrison.”

“That’s eight miles west.” Isaac skimmed his son’s letter. “From what this tells, there be five hundred Indians some twenty miles
north
west.”

“From Marlborough, sir, we’ll be in position to move against ’em, however they strike. I’m under orders to request that you join us,” said one rider.

“It seems I should be stayin’ here,” answered Isaac, “to defend wife and home.”

“We’re to bring you with us, sir, forcible if we must,” said the other rider.

Rebecca touched his arm. “Isaac, the Lord is my shepherd, and the garrison is close. I’ll be safe.”

So Isaac went into the house and, in an act that was by now ritual, put the blunderbuss by the door. Then he put his Bible in his breast pocket, draped powder horn and shot pouch over his shoulders, and embraced Rebecca. “If there’s trouble,” he told her, “don’t bother with the gun. Run for the garrison. Run hard.”

“And the book?” she asked. “Do I save it or leave it?”

“You would save the book for me?”

“I be but a poor minister’s daughter and true minister’s wife . . . who believes that the Lord give her husband wisdom. Those riders prove it.”

“How so?” asked Isaac.

“You were the first man to see that Injuns can’t be educated. You saw it at the college. They be a different breed, and there be no hope to live with ’em.”

That was not exactly what Isaac had seen or said, but he made no protest.

“If you be right about that,” she went on, “who’s to say you’re not right about the meanin’ of blasphemy or the innocence of a play?”

“’Tisn’t blasphemy at all, I don’t think.”

“I’ve bet my immortal soul on what you think, Isaac Wedge. Otherwise, I would have cast that book into the fire on the first day you spoke of it. I’ll not let some heathen savage do what I would not.”

“You have a strange way of showin’ your love.” He kissed her and held her close. “But if the Indians attack, leave the book and the gun. Just run.”

Dawn came early in April. The old earth turned again toward the sun, brightening the sky and bringing birdsong before five. For each dawn that he had seen, Isaac had thanked the Lord. And he said his prayer again that morning, crouched by a campfire in front of the Marlborough garrison house. But before the sun had risen far, he was saying prayers of a different sort and Wadsworth’s column was hurrying back to the east, toward a cloud of smoke rising over Sudbury.

Isaac, one of the few on horseback, begged Wadsworth to let him ride ahead.

“The savages have made Sudbury already,” said the captain. “How many there be, I know not. But if you ride alone, you’ll die alone. Stay with the company, and we’ll march straight for the Haynes garrison, Lord willin’.”

But the Lord was not willin’. Wadsworth and his men were no more than half a mile from the garrison, marching through a defile between two forested hills named for farmers Goodman and Green, when the Indians struck.

One moment there was silence, except for the sound of horses breathing hard and men tramping heavy on the spring-soft ground. An instant later, muskets were roaring from both hills and Indians were exploding from the trees, like specters of the air taking human form, truly like minions of Satan.

The English soldiers fought their way to the top of Green’s Hill and made their stand. But there were hundreds of Indians, and once they had surrounded the hilltop, Isaac knew there would be no escape until dark, if at all.

Looking down through the branches, he could see his house, or the smoke where it had been. He could also see the Haynes garrison, also shrouded in smoke, but it was the white smoke of gunpowder, which meant the men were fighting. So Isaac fought, too, in hopes that his wife was inside the garrison, loading muskets for the men. And he prayed that they could hold their position on the hill until the sun had dipped below the trees.

But about four o’clock, the Indians torched the dry brush on the side of the hill. Soon, a semicircle of living orange flame, driven by an easterly wind, was breathing in brush and exhaling heavy smoke that swallowed the top of the hill and forced the English to flee or suffocate.

Wadsworth ordered his men to fall back and fight their way to the Goodenow garrison, across a cornfield to the south. But Isaac had had enough of orders. Besides, most of the Indians were sweeping left and right, behind the flames, cutting off any retreat and filling the air with their furious cries. So he dropped to the ground and pressed his face against the earth.

The flames were coming closer, but he kept his head down and pulled his heavy cloak up over his neck. Most fitting, he thought, that Satan’s minions should send hellfire itself against him. But the fire was moving fast. He felt the flames pass over his cloak. He smelled his own hair singe. He wanted to run. But he held his breath and waited until he could hear nothing—no Indian war whoops, no screams from the whites—nothing except the roar of the flames around him. And then, throwing off his smoldering cloak, he rose and ran.

But he did not retreat. He went east through the flames, out of the fire, straight toward a single Indian who stood on the smoking ground like a sentinel.

Isaac raised his musket, the Indian his war club. And Isaac realized that they saw each other in the same way—as devils limned in fire and shrouded in smoke.

The Indian mouthed the word “chepi.”
Demon.
“Run, white demon. Run on. No chief will strike a demon who runs.”

Could these be the eyes of King Philip himself? Could Isaac end the war with a single blow? No, because other Indians were rushing back to protect their chief. So Isaac Wedge accepted the courtesy of one demon to another, of one frightened man to another, and went stumbling down the east slope toward the greening marsh.

Soon he was hunkered in the strong-smelling mud, counting the columns of smoke, gauging the progress of the fight by the ferocity of the musket fire . . . from south of Goodman’s Hill, where Wadsworth’s men were being slaughtered; from east of the river, where the Sudbury settlement held out; and from the Haynes garrison, which Isaac could not reach for all the Indians around it. So he waited and prayed, and just before dark, a relief column from Boston reached the settlement. At the sound of their first volley, the Indians retreated . . . from the garrison houses and the settlements and all the other places where they had made their attack.

Only then did Isaac emerge from the mud, slip along the edge of the marsh, and take the path toward the garrison. A dozen copper bodies lay about, and the fine barn that Isaac had helped raise was now a pile of smoking coals, but the house stood strong, and Isaac could hear voices within, which filled him with hope. So he hailed them.

“Who is it?”

“Isaac. Isaac Wedge.”

The door swung open, and Deacon Haynes appeared. “Come in, Isaac. Come in to where ’tis safe.”