And she was only in his mind’s eye. And it was her image that made him busy, and he rose toward a release that— “Isaac Wedge! Stand up! Now!”

At the explosion of sound, Isaac leapt to his feet, even as his body leapt in a series of spasms that were suddenly no more than wet embarrassment beneath his nightshirt.

“We are here to root out sin,” cried Eaton to all the boys, “no matter where it be found. Strangle the eel in my house and feel the sting of my rod!”

Why was Eaton the man that he was? And why had they made such a man the head of the college? Those were questions that Isaac asked himself as he was led, barefoot, to the master’s chamber to receive twenty snaps of the rod. But there was no answer, except that some men were cruel and some men were kind.

And some cruel men considered cruelty a strange kindness, usually voiced as Eaton put it to Isaac: “I do this for your own good,” the words followed by whistle and whip. “I have the authority, and I will exercise it!” Whistle and whip. “It is my right and it is my duty.” Whistle and whip. “What you’ve been up to is a hanging offense.” And whistle and whip once again, all the way to the count of twenty.

Then Eaton stepped back, breathed deep, and spoke in a voice as soft and gentle as always after a beating. “Now, then, Isaac Wedge … ‘tis said that an idle mind is the devil’s playground. Be your mind idle?”

“No, sir. I have my studies.”

“Then it must be your hands that are idle. We’ll give them something to do and save you from hanging.” Eaton pointed to the two trunks in a corner. “Master Harvard’s books. They be yours to catalog … in your idle time. Do a good job.”

“I’d do nothing less, sir. I promised Master Harvard on his deathbed.”

“They be the physical legacy of our first benefaction, which has inspired the Great and General Court to give our little school a name: Harvard College.”

All the more reason, thought Isaac, to do the job well.

But Eaton was a fickle man. What seemed a fine idea at night, after the pleasure of a good beating, might look less palatable in the morning, especially as March brought earlier dawns and warmer days, during which he hatched grander plans.

The fence directly behind Peyntree House had been taken down, the cows squeezed into adjacent yards, and the posts and beams of the new college hall had risen. So Eaton proclaimed that he would plant an apple orchard to frame the grand structure.

His account books would show that he paid local workers to do the planting, when in fact he pocketed the money and put students to work digging wild apple trees and going to Boston to fetch trees brought from England. When the ground thawed, the few hours of free time he had given the students each day he gave over to planting. By May, thirty trees were in the ground. Some died before they took up water. Some leafed out. And a few made pink blossoms that promised fruit and fresh cider by fall.

And one evening, Isaac Wedge walked boldly beneath the blossoms with Katharine Nicholson.

“What if the master see us?” she asked.

“You say that your father has come to discuss a contribution?”

“Aye. He offers to build a lean-to on the side of Peyntree House, as a library for Master Harvard’s books … at least till the college hall is completed.”

“Then Master Eaton will pay no mind to anything else.”

“But what if he glance out and see us?”

“The beating will be worth it.”

“You’re a brave one, Isaac Wedge,” she said. Then, with a conspiratorial little smile and a furtive glance toward the house, she brought her lips to his.

It was the gentlest of touches, but Isaac’s legs went weak. He thought he might fall over. And later he thought it might have been a good idea … to fall over and feign sickness, for at that moment, Mrs. Eaton emerged from the outhouse, straightening her skirt. At the sight of a student kissing a girl in the orchard, she gave out with a shriek, almost as if the student had tried to kiss her.

 

The beating was painful, but the greater pain came with the threat of expulsion that Eaton now laid upon Isaac, should he be so bold as to see Katharine again.

“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.