“The daughter of Master Nicholson has not yet confessed herself,” said Shepard, “but as her father has been admitted to membership, we shall exempt her.”
Isaac sat on his hands so that no one would see them shaking. He could not know what she was about to say, for she had not spoken to him in a week. But the look that she shot at him made plain her intention to skewer him like a leg of lamb.
She began softly, her eyes cast downward in deference to those before her. “I am a servant of the Lord Jesus Christ. He is my strength and my protection. That I would be subject, without Him, to the most wicked of impulses is a truth I freely admit. Indeed, I might have submitted already to the temptations offered by a certain young man.”
Isaac felt a change in the room, sidelong glances, eyes shifting in his direction.
“And worst of all,” said Katharine, her voice rising, “I might have been inspired to read what this young man promises to bring back from England. A play!”
“A play!” came the cry from the back of the room.
“Blasphemy!” cried someone else. “The work of the devil.”
And suddenly, all eyes were boring holes into Isaac, and the sharpest bit of all was in the gaze of Master Nicholson himself.
“Aye,” said Katharine, “’tis a play he says belonged to John Harvard.”
And Master Nicholson growled, “A modern play, or so my daughter fears.”
Samuel Day whispered to Isaac, “Blasphemy be the word for this, lad. Plays be blasphemy for certain. Best explain yourself.”
So Isaac leapt to his feet, and if he had not committed blasphemy yet, he committed it now, for he lied to the congregation as he had to Katharine, telling them that he sought to bring back books to enrich the college library, and among them would be a play by the Greek Aeschylus, to help students learn one of the classical languages.
That night, Shepard transcribed Isaac’s confession, as he did all of them, because he believed that each person’s journey to the Lord might provide instruction for those who came after. He also set down notes on the words of Katharine Nicholson, which Isaac had answered to the reverend’s satisfaction but which had led the congregation to defer his acceptance until his return from England.
Shepard then recorded his observations on the parting of Isaac and Katharine outside the meetinghouse: “She spake harshly to him, that he had thrown over her love, and that should he return with all the books ever printed in London, he should not get her back. He pleaded that this journey would firm his future and hers, too, if only she would wait. Her answer was to turn and walk off into the rain. Then did Isaac spy me and say, ‘Reverend, should I bring back any book offensive to you, it shall be yours to destroy.’”
iii
Civil war had erupted in England by the time Isaac arrived. Suffice it to say that the Puritans stood on one side, the High Churchmen on the other, and the clash of politics was as significant as the clash of theologies, for Parliament was mostly Puritan and Anglicans supported the king.
London was a Puritan city and Parliamentarian stronghold, and in late October of 1642, a defense force was forming to resist the royal army. The beginning of a war may be a time of great excitement for a young man in search of adventure, but Isaac Wedge was not tempted to join his Puritan brethren. As Thomas Weld, college emissary, reminded him, “You’ve come here for one purpose—to serve your college by impressing an old woman.”
The next day, Weld presented Isaac at the home of Anne Radcliffe, Lady Mowlson, in the parish of St. Christopher’s. It was a large house, as befitted the lady’s late husband, once lord mayor of London. A large house for a small woman, thought Isaac, a small and slumped woman of sixty-two, toothless and wizened, her face squeezed into a wimple, gray hairs growing at the corners of her mouth, yet a woman who seemed in command of all around her, even the sunlight that fell obediently across the table where she sat.
“So this be one of the poor scholars,” she said, looking hard at Isaac Wedge.
“Yes, my lady,” said Weld.
“Has the boy a tongue?” she snapped.
“Yes, my lady,” said Weld, and he glanced at Isaac.
“A poor scholar,” said Isaac, “come across an ocean to meet you, and to bring you this.” Isaac handed her a copy of the Quaestiones, wrapped in a red silk ribbon. “To show you that our first class has been properly raised up and sent out into the world.”
She read a few of the Quaestiones and said, “So . . . is the soul part of the body, Isaacus Wedgius?”
“I believed that it is, my lady, whilst we live. But the afterlife does not await in the grave. ’Tis in a place that the Lord predestines. Whilst our corporeal being corrupts, our essential soul must seek that other place.”
She gave a grunt, as if he had given the right answer and it did not matter a great deal to her. Then she took the Quaestiones over to the window. “I did not know there was a printing press in New England. Or any printer who could set type so well.”
“You appreciate good printing, my lady?” asked Isaac.
“I am an old woman with failing eyes. When I see a well-printed sheet, one I that may read with ease, I know that God still loves me.”
“Then you will be pleased to know,” said Weld, “that it was Isaac himself who printed the sheet.”
And the rheumy eyes of Lady Mowlson brightened. “Did he? Did he indeed? A printer, then, as well as a scholar. Now I be impressed.”
After that, Lady Mowlson received Isaac every day for a week. She questioned him about his world, about his college, about his hopes and his love, which he found growing dimmer the farther he traveled.
And after their talks, which always concluded with a leg of mutton or a piece of beef, Isaac would take to the streets and follow the list of printers given him by Stephen Day. The streets were not unfamiliar, as he had lived in London until the age of fourteen. And while he had tried to forget the crowds, the rats, and the filth, he had not forgotten his way or the swagger he needed when visiting the city’s less savory parts. It was in one such, at the shop of G. Snitterfield and Son, that he found his answers.
“Nathaniel Eaton?” said the skinny Mr. Snitterfield. “He come by some six months past. Remembered him, for I knew his father. A fine honest preacher, his father. Begat himself somethin’ less of a son, though.”
“Did Master Eaton come to you with anything to print?” Isaac spoke over the familiar sounds of creaking presses and shuffling papers.
“Aye. A play,” said Snitterfield. “I did say to him, ‘What manner of Puritan son are you that you’d wish to print a play? ’Twould please no one but the bishops, who ban decent works and let such filth as plays be spread about.’”
“Do you recollect the title of the play, sir?”
“Aye. Love’s Labours Won. Nothin’ for decent folk, which be what I told him.”
Isaac swallowed his excitement. “What did Master Eaton do, sir, after you chided him?”
“He said he’d find another printer.” Snitterfield shook his head. “’Twas a true disappointment to see how deep the son of Richard Eaton had sunk.”
“Did he take the play to another printer, then?”
“Aye,” said Snitterfield. “John Barney, who told me he offered ten pounds for it, a fair price. Eaton said he had as lief throw it in the Thames as give it over for so little.”
“Why look you so miserable?” asked Lady Mowlson the next morning. “You cloud my goodwill on the day I give your college one hundred pounds.”
“Many thanks,” said Isaac. “Reverend Weld will be most pleased.”
“So”—she sat back and studied him—“a cheery demeanor should be upon you. Yet you look as if you’ve heard news of another plague.”
“I’m sorry, ma’am.”
“One of my servants saw you enter Snitterfield’s yesterday. I think that you have come to London with more than one purpose, boy.”
“Yes, ma’am.” And he decided to tell her the truth, for he now f
elt that he was in the presence of a loving aunt. “I have spake to you about John Harvard and Nathaniel Eaton.”
“So you have.”
“Well . . . Eaton absconded with one of the books in Harvard’s bequest.”
“And you come all this way to retrieve it?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She studied him a moment and asked, “And how will you do such a thing?”
“I know not. London be so big.” He put his head in his hands. “’Tis a fool who thinks he can find a needle of flesh and blood in such a haystack. But I made a promise to John Harvard on his deathbed, and—”
She patted his arm. “Worry not, lad. I be widow of a man who was lord mayor of London, daughter of one who was sheriff. I still have my friends and my ways. I shall find the whereabouts of Master Eaton for you.” And she did.
iv
A month later, Isaac Wedge arrived in the Italian city of Padua, where the November sun still burnished the red tile roofs and warmed the wide piazzas and sent bright slanting rays under the arches of the majestic palazzos.
Isaac was properly awestruck.
How feeble seemed the efforts of New England’s Puritans at their fledgling Harvard College when he saw the grandeur of the University of Padua, which had stood for four centuries. And if the church of Rome was as corrupt as Isaac had been told, how had God allowed it to produce such beauty as could be seen here, in the Duomo, in the Basilica di Sant’Antonio, in the beautiful statues and frescoes? This was a question to lay alongside another that vexed him: If plays were evil, why had God given Shakespeare such talent? But better Protestant minds than Isaac’s had found the answers, so he turned to the business of finding Eaton and fulfilling his promise.
Even if his Ars Bacheloris came from a tiny school on the edge of the wilderness, it gave Isaac confidence in his resourcefulness. He took a bed in a small inn, purchased a peddler’s apron and a hat with a floppy brim, and placed himself outside the gate of the university medical school, one of the most famous in all Christendom.
He did not have to wait long, though at first he did not recognize Eaton, who had shaved his beard and put on the robe of a medical student. Isaac’s old tormentor was studying to be a doctor, as if he had not yet inflicted enough pain. But nothing could hide the arrogance of Eaton’s barrel-chested swagger, and when Isaac saw it rolling through the gate, he knew that Lady Mowlson’s information had been accurate.
So Isaac hunched himself up, let several people and two donkey carts move between himself and Eaton, and followed his old schoolmaster.
After a dozen twists and turns among the narrow streets, Eaton went into a doorway. A moment later, second-story windows swung open and Eaton reappeared, rubbing his belly and surveying the little square below. A beautiful Italian woman appeared in the window and handed him a glass of wine. He said something that caused her to giggle and give him a playful slap, which he answered with a louder slap on her bottom. If he grieved for his lost family, thought Isaac, he hid his pain well.
Isaac found a spot in an entryway across the square, from which he could see more directly into Eaton’s front room—the chairs, the tables, the tapestries on the wall, and, yes, the bookcase. For a week or more, he studied the movements of Eaton and his Italian paramour, and he made his plan.
Though he had grown heavier and stronger since last he had been struck by Nathaniel Eaton, Isaac planned to avoid confrontation. Indeed, he planned to avoid exposing himself to Eaton at all. The revenge he sought would be quieter and, in its way, sweeter. If the Lord looked upon revenge as a sin, Isaac would repent of it later.
On a bright Friday morning, after Eaton had bustled off, Isaac presented himself at the door of Eaton’s lodging, wearing his brown doublet, his plain collar, and his own simple hat.
The young woman who answered wore no more than a shift, which barely covered the outline of her breasts and other parts, and she conveyed a beauty so sensuous and earthy that he nearly forgot his plan. But he managed to stammer, “Buongiorno.”
She pulled a robe around herself and studied him suspiciously.
He said, “Scusi. No parlo italiano. Parla inglese?”
“Si . . . yes . . . little bit.”
“My name is Stephen Day”—Isaac used a name that Eaton might have mentioned in a good light—“I am a friend of Master Eaton’s, from America.”
“He no here. He back soon.” She started to close the door.
“Scusi . . . I have nowhere to stay, signora, and Master Eaton is a fine friend. I come with a business proposition. May I wait for him?”
She looked him up and down and, with some reluctance, admitted him into the front room. In the morning light, the white walls were glaring bright, though softened by the tapestries, one depicting Madonna and child, the other Christ’s bloody crucifixion.
“You wait.” She left him standing alone and went downstairs.
From the window, Isaac watched her give a coin to a boy, who went running off. Then Isaac turned to the bookcase and his eyes fell upon the red morocco binding, which stood out between two anatomy books like a silk scarf in the folds of a brown cape.
Her footfalls were rising again, so Isaac pulled the book from the case and flipped quickly through it. A glance at the handwriting was all that he needed. Love’s Labours Won. In an instant, he exchanged the Shakespeare for another book in a similar binding that he carried in his satchel, and it was done.
“He back soon,” she said, stepping into the room. “You wait here.”
As soon as she went to put on more decent clothing, he would slip out, leaving a small surprise for Nathaniel Eaton. Of course, in that she had just gone into the street dressed as she was, she might consider herself to be as decent as need be.
Indeed, she now grew warmer, showed him to the seat by the window, and offered him a glass of wine, which he had no choice but to accept. As he brought the glass to his lips, there came a knock on the door, a knock preceded by not a single footfall.
Isaac almost gagged on the wine. Before the door had opened, he was gauging the distance to the street below. Could he leap without breaking a leg?
But it was not Eaton who entered. It was his English friend from across the hall, Robert Danby, whose movements Isaac had also tracked, though not as well.
“Good morning, Francesca, and”—Danby’s eyes fell upon Isaac—“to you, sir.”
Isaac gauged that he was a head taller than the slender gentleman with the fine-razored beard. But Mr. Danby carried a rapier at his belt and looked to be the kind who could use it. Isaac had only a dagger, never drawn in anger.
Francesca, in her broken English, introduced Stephen Day, from America.
“Master Eaton speaks no good of anyone in America,” said Danby suspiciously.
“Ah . . . but a man as well liked as Nathaniel—”
“Well liked?” Danby laughed. “Do we speak of the same man?”
Then came the sound of heavy footfalls in the stairway. Someone was taking the steps two at a time, and a familiar voice was bellowing, “Stephen Day! In Italy? Stephen Day, the printer . . .”—and the door was swinging open—“Stephen . . . you . . . You!”
“This no Stephen Day?” asked Francesca.
“What are you doing here?” demanded Eaton.
“Fulfilling a promise,” answered Isaac.
All at once, Danby went for his rapier, Eaton went for Isaac, and Isaac went for a tapestry suspended from a molding. With a snap of his hand, Isaac tore the tapestry loose and brought it down onto Eaton and the others. Then he threw himself into the jumble of bodies, sending Eaton’s bulk into the other two, so that all three landed on the floor, tangled in the fabric of tapestry and academic gown.
Then Isaac was out the door, slamming it behind him and jamming a wooden chair under the latch. He flew down the stairs and into the square. He turned down an alley and ran. He came to a street and ran. When he reached the broad Piazza dei Signori, he stopped running. Here, he knew, it wo
uld be best to flow through the little rivulets and eddies of humanity that filled the square each day.
Soon enough, he rode a stream of people into the Piazza delle Erbe. He retrieved his peasant hat and apron from behind an archway pediment where he had hidden them. He put on the hat, tied on the apron, and gave a glance over his shoulder as Eaton appeared beneath an archway on the far side and scanned the square. So Isaac turned down another alley and ran. But he knew exactly where he was going . . . to church.
The first time that he entered the Basilica di Sant’Antonio, he had expected his Protestant God to strike him dead. Now, he was bold enough that he dipped his finger in the font of holy water and blessed himself, so as not to attract attention. He moved through the nave, genuflected before the main altar and Donatello’s mighty statues of the Crucifixion and the Virgin, then moved into the north transept, and knelt before the tomb of Saint Anthony.
Gifts of food and offerings of money were scattered around the altar in a small demonstration of Romanist superstition. On either side of the transept, priests sat in small wooden boxes, and penitents slipped into the boxes to confess their sins, in what Puritans considered a much larger demonstration of Romanist weakness.
Of all the places that one Puritan might find another, a Catholic church seemed the least likely. But it should not have surprised Isaac that a Puritan as profane as Nathaniel Eaton would have no fear of the Holy Host or graven images. Isaac almost felt the wind as Eaton swept through the great nave and stopped at the place where he could look into both transepts. But fate favored Isaac, for Eaton looked first into the south transept. When he looked to the north, Isaac was gone.
From within one of the wooden boxes, Isaac watched Eaton, safe for the moment, until . . . in nomine patri, et filii, et spiritu sancti . . . a little wooden shutter slid open.
Isaac swallowed hard and looked into the eyes of a priest, a benighted servant to the Papist Whore of Rome, or so good Puritans were taught.
Harvard Yard (Peter Fallon) Page 9
