They boarded up the windows and painted a red cross on the door of the Harvard house, now one of hundreds of plague houses in Southwark.

The first to die was Kate, whose fever rose so high that she all but burned to death, which was merciful, for it saved her from far worse.

Robbie lay moaning until the third day, when the buboes erupted on his neck and under his arms. They began as small black blisters, swelled quickly to the size of hazelnuts, and within a few hours were as big as hen’s eggs. Then they split and began to ooze black blood, and this boy with his whole life before him cried out for death.

Peter, the youngest, went feverish, erupted, and died—all in a single afternoon.

John and his mother rushed from misery to misery, from the third floor to the master bed to the great room, giving such care as they could—a wet cloth to cool a burning forehead, a clean shirt to cover a suppurating body, a prayer to calm a terrified spirit—and all the while, they watched one another to see which of them would fall next.

By the third day, Katherine Rogers Harvard had lost three sons and a daughter, all of them now laid out on the table in the great room. She herself had fallen into a pit of grief that left her wordless and motionless on a chair in the midst of her dead children. And neither urging nor prayer nor imprecation from John could induce her to mount the stairs and speak a final time to the man she loved.

So it was left for John to comfort his father, to pray with him, to read Scripture to him, to give him drafts of ale to cool his fever, and finally to watch the buboes erupt and grow, bringing with them their unconquerable agony.

By the morning of the fourth day, Robert Harvard was a living corpse, putrefying through the open black sores at his neck and groin. Yet he raised his head from the pillow, looked about the room with eyes suddenly clear, and called for Katherine as calmly as if he were calling for a cup of broth.

“Father,” said John, who had spent the night at the bedside, “she cannot come.”

“Is she … is she dead, too?”

“No … but-“

“She must come then. I must tell her that it still be summer.”

“Yes, Father. ‘Tis August. Tis still summer.”

“No … summer … soft summer … temperate summer… ‘tis a metaphor … or simile … ‘tis …” He knitted his brow, as if a new idea had come to him, something to which he must give breath.

“Johnny—”

“Aye.”

“Me books.” He looked toward the volumes on a shelf by the window.

“Yes, Father … your Bible, your Homer … a man will be known by his books. Tis what you’ve always said.”

“All me books,” said Robert with a sudden vehemence that made him seem to rise from the pillow like a demon in bloody bedclothes. “I want you to keep ‘em all.”

“Yes, Father.”

“Even … even Will Shakespeare’s book.”

“Love’s Labours Won?”

And Robert Harvard was wracked by a spasm of pain that caused his whole body to shake. When it passed he said, “I… I know your heart. That you would go to the college at Emmanuel, that you hold with them who would purify the church… .”

“Yes, Father.”

“Rector Morton be a good friend, a good man, a learned man…

I be a simple butcher. But I tell you … you must cherish what Will give us.”

“Yes, Father.”

“Cherish joy. Know … know love’s labors … in book and life.”

The father grabbed for the son’s collar, pulled him close, and whispered, “Give … me … your … word.”

The stench of his breath was like rotting meat, but John did not pull away.

He grasped his father’s hand in both of his and said, “My word.”

And Robert Harvard sank back onto the pillow, back into himself, back toward some inner peace. Then he lay silent… .

John sat for some time contemplating the body. Then he covered his father with the bloody sheet and spent several minutes more contemplating the shelf of books.

A man, he knew, would be known by his books.

 

 

iii

 

Twelve years later, a small ship called the Hector pounded west into the Atlantic.

John Harvard, master of arts, Emmanuel College, the last of his family line, heir to the Queen’s Head Inn and other London properties, clerk, cattle breeder, putative minister, and husband to Ann Sadler, was going to America. The Harvards were part of the great Puritan migration. Men and women of conscience, who did not hold with the rituals of the church and despaired of the corruption in the state, had obtained a charter to build a new England some three thousand miles from the old, well beyond the reach of robed bishops and royal authority.

They were a week into the journey, and Ann Sadler Harvard was seasick. With skies darkening and seas rising, it was likely that she would be seasick some time more.

So John put his body between his wife and the sea-foam spraying over the bow, in hope that she could vomit in peace.

“Good Lord, but what a stream,” cried Nathaniel Eaton, a young man of such surpassing strong stomach and lack of compassion that he went about the seasick deck chewing on a piece of smoked herring. Black-bearded and burly, he might have been taken for a sailor, though he was the son of a leading churchman, brother to a member of the Massachusetts Bay Company, which backed the voyage, and author of a respected treatise on the meaning of the Sabbath. All of this had put him in line to be first master of the colony’s new college. None of this, however, meant that he had received the gift of tact.

“John,” he said, “she pukes like a grass-fed dog, but no man on the ship show better devotion to his wife.”

Ann Harvard looked up, her delicate features sharpened by sickness and fear, her skin the color of the sea. ” ‘Tis the same devotion my husband will show to a flock, once we reach America, sir.”

“A fine place for man to become a preacher,” answered Eaton, “though the company shows true foresight in bringin’ aboard a dozen Warwickshire breeders. Such beasts will give birth to a mighty herd, should they survive. Though they do stink, do they not, ma’am?” Eaton grinned, as if he enjoyed turning a lady’s stomach by mere suggestion. “Ship smells like a floatin’ barnyard.”

And the face of Ann Harvard grew a little grayer.

” ‘Tis as if we travel on the ark,” said John Harvard, who himself looked more gray than pink, “on our way to make a new world of righteousness.”

“My husband will nourish men’s minds,” said Ann Harvard, “with books.”

“Books shall nourish, especially in the college, where we shall raise up new Puritan ministers and magistrates.” Eaton popped the last of the herring into his mouth. “But if your belly be empty, food matter more than books.”

“I carry four hundred books.” John Harvard shivered off the cold, then sought to cough it away, then spat a phlegmy splatter over the side. “Books to enrich our souls and lighten our lives. A man will be known by his books, Nathaniel.”

“Had I such a cough as that, I’d see to my health, John, before my books.”

“I’ve survived worse, Nathaniel.