“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 down 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.”
“And you’d see the college burned to the ground,” said Caleb.
Then Percy stood in his stirrups and shouted at Harvard Hall, “Is there anyone in this repository of provincial learning who knows the geography of his own town?”
“Say nothing,” whispered Caleb. “Say nothing.”
“We’ll say nothing,” said Sterret.
“Not you,” said Caleb. “I mean the whole college.”
“I ask again!” Percy’s voice echoed off the buildings. “In the name of the king, who will show us the way to Lexington?”
Then Percy sat back in his saddle, folded his hands on the pommel, and waited. A horse snorted. A drummer boy dropped one of his sticks.
And Caleb whispered again, “Say nothing.”
“I’ll point your way.” It was the voice of Isaac Smith, Loyalist tutor.
Caleb cursed him as he walked out of the hall and up to Percy’s horse.
“Take the Menotomy Road, your lordship.” Smith raised his walking stick and pointed northwest. “You’ll cross Alewife Brook in two miles and pass the village of Menotomy a mile beyond. Then you’ll be well on your way.”
“Thank you, my good man,” said Lord Percy.
“God save the king, sir,” answered Smith.
“God save the king, indeed,” growled Caleb Wedge to Isaac Smith.
The tail of Percy’s column had crossed the Common, the sound of their drums was receding, and students and villagers were now pouring out of buildings all around.
“An officer of the king asked for information,” said Smith defiantly. “A subject of the king could not tell a lie.”
The basement door of Harvard Hall banged open and Moses Richardson came out with his musket in his hands. He went up to Smith and said, “Be gone by sundown, or I’ll have you tarred and feathered.”
“
You’ll
have
me
tarred and feathered?” shouted Smith. “How dare you? The college carpenter does not address a tutor in that way.”
“Isaac—” Caleb put a hand on Smith’s arm.
“Tutor Smith!” A student in a window in Massachusetts Hall tore open a pillow, so that the feathers came fluttering down. “All we need now is the tar.”
Caleb pushed Smith toward Stoughton Hall. Then he looked up at the student. “You face a fine, unless you clean up these feathers and write an apology to Tutor Smith. The rest of you get about your business.”
“The business,” said Moses Richardson, “ain’t finin’. ’Tis fightin’.”