The pedestrian light in front of Holyoke Center flashed
WALK
. Peter and Tom Benedict started across Mass. Ave. But right in the middle, Peter stopped.
“Come on.” Benedict pointed to the digital clock beside the little animated pedestrian on the traffic light.
Fifteen seconds to cross . . . fourteen . . . thirteen . . .
Peter was looking at a pair of brass plates embedded in the street and worn smooth by decades of traffic. “Do you know what those are, Tom?”
“What?”
Ten . . . nine . . . eight . . .
“Corner bounds. They mark the foundation of Peyntree House, the first building at Harvard. It was discovered when they excavated the subway about 1910.”
Peter looked around . . . at the ten-story glass cube of Holyoke Center, glowing in the night . . . at Wadsworth House and the other old buildings . . . at the cars on Mass. Ave., all ready to run him over in just
six . . . five . . . four . . .
“Imagine what all this looked like, Tom. Imagine it on a summer’s day in 1638. That’s when the first of the Wedges would have seen it.”
1638-1639
I
SAAC
W
EDGE
first saw Cambridge on a glorious June morning from the back of a borrowed horse. He had said little on the journey, because the man with whom he rode had said even less.
That man was John Harvard, and he was dying. One needed only to look upon his consumed body to know his fate. But such knowledge was unspoken between the teaching elder of the Charlestown church and his best student, between a man with no children and a fatherless boy of sixteen.
It was not until they came to the gate at the end of the Charlestown Path that Harvard peered from under the brim of his hat and said, “You’ll not regret this, Isaac.”
“Thank you, master.” Isaac jumped down and opened the gate that led into the Cambridge Cow Commons. “I fear, however, that my Latin and Greek are—”
“More than adequate.” Harvard stifled a cough, but to those who spent time in his company, his coughing had become as common as his breathing, and the familiarity of it made it all but unnoticed. The bloody flecks that splattered his neckcloth, however, could not be ignored.
“I fear the opinion of Master Eaton,” said Isaac.
“Fear not,” answered Harvard. “His writings, his family background, his work with Reverend Ames at Leyden—these have given the Great and General Court good cause to name him master of this new college. But for all his learning, you’ll find him a simple man in many ways, direct, blunt, and the better for it.”
They rode south across the Common, followed by the curious cows. They went through another gate and passed the watchhouse, which overlooked the place where the roads of the village converged. There were fifty solid dwellings between there and the river, all roofed in slate or shake, not a bit of thatch to be seen. Only recently had the name of the settlement been changed from Newtowne, to honor the place where most of the learned men in the colony had studied, and to bestow upon this new Cambridge an air of importance commensurate with that of the old.
As for Isaac Wedge, he would have been happier to keep riding . . . right down to the river . . . and spend the day fishing. He could see the brown curl of water on the marshland to the south, and he was sorely tempted.
But Harvard was leading him up to the gate of a spacious two-story dwelling, one of a trio of houses on the south edge of the cow yards. This was the former home of a man named Peyntree and the new home of the college.
The morning sun raised wisps of steam on the wet roof. Diamond-shaped panes of glass shimmered in the window casements. And a small cloud of dust puffed out the front door as a servant swept the foyer.
A clean house, thought Isaac, which meant it would be a godly house, which gave him hope for his prospects there.
But the morning peace was shattered by the cry of a woman. “Damn your eyes!”
“No, ma’am!” came a male voice.
“You’ll not dig a finger in me stew again!”
“No, ma’am!” A blackamoor came tumbling out. “Put up the knife, ma’am.”
“I’ll put up the knife . . . up your poxy nose, you little black squint!” And out of the house burst a great barrel of a woman whose voice proclaimed her a fishwife but whose bonnet, fine dress, and starched ruff suggested she was better born.
“What’s all this, then?” A burly man with a black beard emerged after her, and the faces of several young men appeared in the windows of the upper chambers.
“Stealin’ food he is, Nathaniel,” said the woman.
“Well, we’ll put a stop to that.” The man slipped a bulrush rod from his belt.
And John Harvard said softly, “Good day, Master Eaton.”
It was plain that in their anger, the Eatons had not noticed the arrival of visitors. Mrs. Eaton slipped the knife back into her skirt. And a grin opened in the hairy nest of Nathaniel Eaton’s beard. “John Harvard. How fare thee?”
“Well, but for a small cough.”
Eaton turned his eyes to Isaac. “And who be this fine lad?”
Isaac was still staring at the rod in Eaton’s hand.
Eaton lowered it and said, “My rod and my staff, they’ll comfort thee, son. There be need for both in this life. But how often you see one or the other be up to you.”
“Isaac Wedge will need no rod,” said John Harvard. “He’s a fine lad. I’ve come to vouchsafe him to you and pay for his schooling.” Harvard swung his leg carefully from the stirrup, as though he feared breaking were he to move too quickly.
“John, you’ve lost weight,” said Eaton. “How bad is your cough?”
“You’ll see before our business be done.” Harvard looked at the woman. “Now, then, Mary Eaton, might a thirsty traveler find a draft of beer in your home?”
Eaton’s chamber was in the back of the house—a desk, two hard chairs, three bookshelves, and a bucket in which three more bulrush rods soaked and seasoned.
“We only just moved in,” said Eaton. “’Tisn’t a great house, and the stink of the cattle be somethin’ fierce, but it must do till we build us a true college.” Eaton pointed out the window. “Do you see those lads swingin’ shovels in the middle of the cow yard?”
The land behind Peyntree House and its neighbors, the Goffe and Shepard Houses, was divided into eight enclosures by long runs of split-rail fencing that reached a hundred yards north to the common pales, which in turn ran east a mile or more, from the Cambridge Common to the Charlestown line. Each night the cattle were driven into the yards to protect them from wolves; each morning they were let out to graze.
“The ground is being cleared,” Eaton went on. “The governor and the General Court have approved four hundred pounds for the building of the hall.”
“A great sum,” said Harvard.
“Great, indeed. A quarter of the colony’s tax levy from last year, fully half from the year before.” Eaton looked at the boy. “You see how serious they do take to the task of educating you, young Isaac Wedge?”
“Yes, master.”
“’Tis only half as serious as I take the task they have laid upon me. None shall ever say this colony wants for learned ministers or educated freemen whilst I be master here.” Eaton leaned his hands on his desk. “Now, should I determine that you be worthy to study here, what calling would you answer?”
Isaac looked at Harvard, who nodded, as if encouraging the boy to speak. “I . . . my late father, Reverend John Wedge—”
“A man of goodness,” said Eaton.
“A man called too soon by God,” said Harvard. “Drowned on the crossing.”
“He wished the ministry for me, sir,” said Isaac.
“Done, then”—Eaton cocked his brow toward Harvard—“so long as he can read Latin
ex tempore
and decline his Greek paradigms.”
“So he can. And his exegesis will make for lively conversation.”
“Good.
Lively
is welcome.” Then Eaton snapped a rod from the bucket and pointed it at Isaac. “But remember you, boy,
lively
must not mean
heretical
. There’ll be no Arminian controversy, no Hutchinsonian heresy, and no devil-worshiping Romanism at my school. Our covenant with the Lord is firm and our calling is clear. Do you understand?”
John Harvard cleared his throat, as if to suggest disapproval of such display, but a cough erupted instead and went on for so long that it seemed his lungs might be shredding inside him. When finally it passed, he looked as gray as his doublet.
And Eaton said, without a bit of tact, “John, were I you, I’d see to my affairs.”
“My affair”—Harvard composed himself with a bit of beer and a bloody expectoration into the fireplace—“is to see Isaac Wedge matriculate at the new college. I bring sixteen pounds to cover his tuition and board, and a letter of permission, written by his mother at Charlestown.”
Eaton barely glanced at the letter but took great care with the coins that Harvard dropped on the table, counted them, and placed them in his purse.
And thus did Isaac Wedge become one of the first students at the first college in English America, founded on the edge of a wilderness, just six years after the settlement of the colony itself. Such business might have waited. But those who had made this beginning, those who had hired Nathaniel Eaton, did not believe that they could wait, for they knew how fleeting was man’s time on earth, and as one of them wrote, they “dreaded to leave an illiterate ministry to the churches when the present ministers shall lay in the dust.” They dreaded also to leave magistrates who lacked the wisdom that flowed from Christian knowledge, or a populace too unlettered to appreciate God’s word. Their ideals were high and well placed, but their judgment in choosing a master was not.
ii
“Take down your breeches,” said Nathaniel Eaton.
“But, sir . . .” Isaac was trembling. Of the ten students at Peyntree House, only he had avoided a caning, until now. “I studied the wrong lesson, sir. But I
did
study.”
“I say you studied not at all. I say you are lying.”
“Please, sir, allow me to read to you from Cicero. Allow me to prove—”
“Take ’em down and stretch across the desk, or ten stripes become fifteen.”
Isaac did as he was told, and an instant later, he heard the rod whistle, felt the sting, and twisted away.
“Stay still!” cried Eaton. “The sentence is fifteen. Squirm and take twenty!”
Isaac ground his teeth and endured. By the tenth whistling whip, he was no longer trembling in fear but anger, for each time Eaton struck, he demanded that Isaac admit he had not studied.
“But I did, master.” A whistle, a whip, and a demand for confession. “But I studied, master.” Whistle and whip, and “You did not.” “But I did.” Whistle and whip, and “You lie. Say you lied, or this shall go on all night!” And finally, furiously, Isaac said that he had been lying, that he had not studied; and that in itself was a lie.
Only then did Eaton put up his rod. “Now, then, you may give me your thanks.”
“My thanks?” Isaac lowered his shirttail over the bloody flesh and straightened himself.
Eaton’s voice was soft, as if the beating had drained him of rage and filled him with satisfaction. “You may thank me for showing you the error of your ways.”
Being a young man of intelligence, Isaac did as he was told. Being a young man of spirit, he resolved that he would never let Nathaniel Eaton cane him again.
Such resolutions were hard to keep, however, in the college that students soon came to call the School of Tyrannus. Lessons were taught in fear, learned in terror.
Ten young men, “the sons of gentlemen and others of the best note in the country,” began each day at the meetinghouse, where they prayed with Reverend Shepard. Then they would return to Peyntree House for morning bever—a cup of beer, a bit of sour bread, some watery gruel to break their fast. After that they would repair to the front room, where Eaton and his impatient rod awaited their recitations from Cicero and Aristotle, from Greek grammar, from mathematics and reasoning.
Eaton proclaimed that he had taken this course of study from that which freshmen at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, pursued. No student was so bold as to point out that while Eaton may have gone to Cambridge, he held no degree. And no student, no matter how assiduous in study or prayer, was able to avoid punishment for more than a fortnight.
When Isaac was summoned to the master’s chambers one September evening, he thought to bid his fellows farewell, as he expected a beating for some unknown infraction, a beating that this time he would resist.
He found Eaton before a guttering candle, a letter on the desk, a mug of beer beside it, and the blackamoor servant hunkered in the shadows.
Eaton gestured to the letter. The seal had been broken, the letter read. “You may wish to answer it. The slave stands ready.”
Isaac made certain that this was no trick, that Eaton had no rod hidden under the desk, then he slid the letter toward himself as carefully as he would slide a bone from under the nose of a drowsing dog.
It was written in the hand of Ann Harvard, and it urged Isaac to come to Charlestown as soon as possible. “My husband has taken to a bed from which I fear he may not rise. His strength ebbs. He asks for his friends. ’Tis my hope that Master Eaton will release you, that you may visit him before he goes to his reward.”
Isaac read with sadness but little surprise. He did not look up, however, until he had gathered his resolve, for if Eaton would deny a man’s dying request, Isaac would defy him. And if Eaton raised his rod, Isaac would fight back, even though he was a skinny lad, sapped of strength after two months of beatings and Mary Eaton’s bad food. He set his chin and said, “I must go, sir. Don’t try to stop me.”
And Eaton shocked Isaac by offering to accompany him. “For no one—boy or man—should look upon the face of the consumption alone.”
Perhaps, thought Isaac, there was charity in Nathaniel Eaton after all.
The following day, after recitations, they set out. They went by the Charlestown Path through the green world of late summer. To the south, green meadows of marsh grass rimmed the river and the wide estuary called the Back Bay. Deeper green pasturelands and cornfields expanded around them. And stands of hardwood, their dark green leaves dancing in the breeze, retreated to the north.