Harvard Yard (7 page)

“And what would John Harvard say, were such a thing to happen?” asked Eaton.

Isaac could not imagine. But how terrible would it be to avoid Katharine until he graduated? And why? Because Master Eaton would control nature as he controlled everything else at that school? He seemed a man well disposed to satisfying his own natural appetites—for food, for drink, for lust, too, considering his four children and the nightly sounds that rose from the chamber below Isaac’s bed. But Eaton’s greatest appetite was for money, and therein lay the answer to Isaac’s predicament: Eaton feared to anger Master Nicholson before the latter had opened his purse for the college.

To inspire Nicholson’s charity, Eaton set Isaac at last to an accounting of the books that would be housed in the library. This would show Nicholson the profundity of Harvard’s collection, and it would keep Isaac away from Nicholson’s daughter.

One June evening, while the other students spent a few hours out of doors, Isaac and the blackamoor dragged the two trunks of books to the recitation room. When Isaac opened the first trunk, he felt as if he were looking into the mind of John Harvard himself. For the rest of his life, whenever he smelled leather—a new boot, an old saddle—Isaac would think of the bindings of Harvard’s books. And he would remember the words that Harvard had said so often: “A man will be known by his books.”

As Latin was the language of learned discourse, there were books with titles such as
Anglorum Praelia
and
De Habitu et Constitutione Corporis
. Also in Latin was a seventeen-volume edition of
Summa Theologica
by the Roman Catholic Thomas Aquinas. Isaac read a few pages and found no “devil-worshiping Romanism,” as Eaton had phrased it, but a mind that was serious and supple and filled with the love of God. Aquinas, however, was flanked in the trunk by those plain thinkers of Protestantism, Martin Luther and John Calvin.

There was a Latin grammar and dictionary, likewise for Hebrew and Greek, the other languages an educated man should know. However, Plutarch, Pliny, and Homer had arrived in English translations, and what wondrous worlds they must have shown John Harvard in any language.

The next evening, Isaac worked on the second trunk, and before he had dug far, he came across several items that surprised him even more than the Aquinas had. They were plays. Two were in Latin, comedies by the Roman playwrights Plautus and Terence. Another was
Roxana
, by the English author William Alabaster.

But none of these was as shocking to find as the play in the red leather binding, about six inches by nine, ink-written on heavy paper about a hundred pages in length. The first page was blank but for the words “‘Love’s Labours Won’ by Will. Shakespeare.”

Isaac almost threw down the book. His father had oft railed against theater, and against no one more loudly than this Shakespeare, who had written of regicides bedding their brothers’ wives, of blackamoors wedding flaxen-haired women, of fairies running naked through summer nights, of men dressed as women and women as men, of blind love and magic potions and murder, of man’s—here were John Harvard’s words on his deathbed—man’s vanities, his passions, his appetites, all the things that lead us toward sin.

It was plain to Isaac that Master Harvard had been warning him that one day he would find this book and that he must respect it as he did the works of Martin Luther or John Calvin.

But why? Had they not planted this colony as a place where such sins as would be found in London could not survive? What greater public sin was there than the theater?

Still, Isaac could not deny his curiosity. How could reading a few pages damage his mind or his soul or his personal connection with God? And how much more would it teach him about John Harvard?

A friend in London had once shown him a handmade book—drawings of men with erect members penetrating women in every angle of copulation. And though he knew it was wrong, he had not been able to take his eyes from the images or control his physical response as he turned the pages. Opening this book, he felt a similar excitement, a tingling in the mind and, strangely, in the loins, at entering a forbidden world.

The second page contained the words
dramatis personae
and a list of characters. Then the play began: “Enter Ferdinand, King of Navarre, Berowne, and Costard, a clown.” And then came the words. Flowing, flying, all but leaping from the page. Furtively, Isaac read, and quickly, as quickly as ever he had. At times, he found himself laughing out loud. At other times, he gasped in surprise at the scenes playing, not on the page, but in his mind’s eye. And he was absorbed so completely, he did not notice the gathering darkness until he heard doors opening, students returning. . . .

But there was one act of the play yet to read. And he had to see how it all ended, so he lit a candle. He should have known that while all lit candles attracted insects, lit candles in Peyntree House also attracted Eatons.

First came Mary, who could skulk like a cat despite her girth. Drawn by the light, she peered into the recitation room, then went slipping away.

Moments later, the master appeared. “Who is wasting money on—”

Isaac came to his senses. He closed the book and stood, as embarrassed and frightened as he had been on the night that Eaton had found him strangling the eel.

“What is that?” Eaton stepped close to Isaac, as if to intimidate him with his bulk.

“A . . . a book, sir.” And for the first time, Isaac realized how much he had grown in a year, despite the bad diet, because he was now on eye level with the master.

“Most boys don’t light candles to keep reading. They quit at the comin’ of dark.”

“I do my job, sir. Sometimes I must read a bit to know the—”

“You need only to read the title and author.” Eaton snatched the book and glanced at it, and his eyes bulged. “A play? Shakespeare! This be filth.”

“’Twas one of Master Harvard’s books, sir. It can’t be filth.”

“Most certainly it can.” Eaton flipped to the back and read the words “‘Transcribed by the author.’ The very devil himself. How much have you read?”

“A . . . a few pages.”

Eaton whipped his rod across Isaac’s face. “Don’t play sly with me, boy. You’ve been sitting here reading this play. How many murders have you read of? How many women have been ravished? How many bellowing oaths have you heard from besotted clowns like John Falstaff?”

“Who, sir?”

Eaton struck again, on the other cheek. “There will be no wooden theaters in New England. Glorified bear pits filthy with cutpurses and fops and courtiers in codpieces. And there will be no plays in this library, as long as I have breath.”

“But, sir, Master Harvard wanted his books kept together.”

Eaton raised the rod again. “Do you dare to question me?”

“No, sir. I merely remind you.”

Then Eaton seemed to give more thought to all of this. He opened the book and flipped through it. “His own handwriting. The handwriting of the devil. There be some—misguided sinners—who would pay handsomely for such evil.”

Isaac picked up the other plays, thinking there might be safety for Shakespeare in numbers. “Here are Plautus and Terence, sir, and the English playwright Alabaster.”

Eaton snatched at the Alabaster. “
Roxana.
’Twas performed at Trinity College. Trinity men were less worried about such sin than the Puritan scholars of Emmanuel.”

“And what of these?” Isaac offered the other two books.

“They’re classical plays. Reading them will enhance a man’s spoken Latin. But this”—he weighted the Shakespeare in his hand—“this must be destroyed.”

“No!” Without thinking, Isaac grabbed Eaton’s arm and tried to get at the book.

Eaton must have been expecting an assault by some one of his students. For he was ready and responded with a closed fist.

Isaac heard his own nose crunching, and he thought, for just an instant, that he saw the Big Dipper, all as he flew backward, banged against the wall, then bounced into Eaton’s fist again. He had been in plenty of scuffles and once had been struck by a falling roof slate on a London street, but never had he experienced the kind of ear-ringing senselessness that now staggered him.

“You do not strike your master! And you do not question him!” Eaton raised his fist to strike again but stopped in midair, as though a better idea had entered his head. Then he turned and hurried out of the room.

Isaac was too groggy to notice if Eaton had the book with him, but in an instant, Eaton was back with a cudgel, raised for action.

Fortunately for Isaac, the front door opened at that moment, and Nathaniel Briscoe appeared in the foyer. “What goes on here, master?”

“A student is chastised for laying hands upon me. See that the others are in their beds, and lock the trapdoor to their chamber.”

“But that boy is bleedin’.”

Only now did Isaac realize that the red droplets striking the floor were falling from his broken nose.

“Do as you’re told,” commanded Eaton.

“No. You’ve beat your last student.” And Briscoe threw himself into the room.

But Eaton was as practiced with the cudgel as he was with the rod, and he delivered a single short stroke that sent Briscoe stumbling back into the foyer. Then he drove his boot into Briscoe’s belly and sent him flying out the front door.

Through the window, Isaac watched Briscoe land in the dirt, then stagger to his feet and pull out his knife. Isaac should have been watching Eaton, who rounded on him with the cudgel swinging. . . .

Isaac awoke sometime later. He inhaled and breathed his own blood back into his throat.
Where was he?
On the floor.
On the floor where?
He saw shadows dancing on the wall. He heard the shuffling of feet, the groaning of a man . . . Master Briscoe.

Then he heard Eaton’s voice, “Did you not pull a knife on me? Admit it!” This was followed by the hollow thunk of a walnut cudgel against a man’s head.

“Sir . . . sir . . .” It was the voice of the blackamoor. “He can’t take no more.”

“Be quiet and hold him up, or I’ll beat you, too,” said Eaton.

Isaac scuttled from the room on all fours. As soon as he was outside in the starlight, he ran, half stumbling, to the house next door.

There lived Thomas Shepard, minister to Cambridge, overseer of the college. He was considered a man of great probity in private counsel and great power in the pulpit, despite a body that was slender to the point of weakness and a complexion as pale and diaphanous as a cloud. He gasped at the bloody sight that greeted him when he opened his door, and gasped again when it said, “You must come, sir. You must stop a murder.”

iv

The General Court convened at the Boston Meeting House to hear testimony in charges brought, amazingly, by Nathaniel Eaton, who claimed that Briscoe had pulled a knife on him and had also—even more grievous—uttered an oath to God.

Briscoe himself stood first at the bar, before the magistrates, learned men elected by the freemen of the colony to govern and to render judgments in criminal matters and disputes.

“For what reason did you pull a knife?” asked one of them.

“I feared that Master Eaton would kill a student that he was chastising,” said Briscoe. “The oath I uttered was a prayer. I cried out to God to save me from death when Eaton turned his cudgel onto me.”

“Cudgel?” Governor Winthrop leaned forward. “He beat students with a cudgel?”

“Usually ’twas a rush rod. But that night, sir, a walnut tree cudgel, big enough to kill a horse, a yard in length.”

John Winthrop turned his gaze to Eaton, who sat with an expression of complete disdain upon his face.

After Briscoe, the students were called in alphabetical order. And thus began the chronicle of beatings and bad food meted out by a brutal master and his miserly wife. And with each testimony, the magistrates shot ever more glaring looks in the direction of the Eatons.

In an attitude of supreme disdain, Nathaniel Eaton folded his arms and turned his attention to the rafter beams above him. But his wife began to fidget when a student charged her with serving ungutted mackerel, and by the time Jamie Nicholson testified to goat’s dung in the hasty pudding, Mrs. Eaton had twisted her apron into a single giant knot.

Their appetites apparently whetted by talk of food, the magistrates recessed for dinner. They had heard the testimony of eight students. The ninth would be Isaac Wedge.

But he had no fear. So confident was he of his testimony, and of the fate awaiting Eaton, that he sat boldly under a tree with Katharine Nicholson, shared a wedge of cheese and a loaf of bread, and talked of the morning’s proceedings.

As he returned to the meetinghouse, however, his way was blocked by Eaton’s bulk, and though men were flowing past them and filing back to their seats, Isaac felt suddenly alone, fixed by Eaton’s false smile and frozen glare.

“Be as bold as you want with the girl today,” said Eaton in a low voice, “and be as honest as you must in your testimony. But if you speak about a Shakespeare play, these magistrates will root it out and burn it themselves. Then will your mentor’s library be broken forever . . . his reputation, too. Be more circumspect, however, and I’ll be your ally in protecting the Harvard legacy.” Then he turned on his heel and went inside.

Though he saw little wrong in the play, Isaac knew that Eaton was right about the magistrates, good Puritans every one. So all the while that he waited, that he walked to the bar, that he swore his oath, he was wondering how he could phrase himself truthfully and yet reveal nothing of that play.

“Why were you under the lash . . . er . . . cudgel that night?” asked Winthrop.

“Master Eaton objected,” answered Isaac, “because, when I should have been cataloging Master Harvard’s books, I was reading one instead.”

“You were shirking your duties, then?” asked another magistrate.

“I fear that I was, sir. And when Master Eaton snatched the book, I struck at him and tried to snatch it back.”

“You dared lay hands on your master?” said Winthrop solemnly.