“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.