Caleb's Crossing

by Geraldine Brooks

  Someone had sent a milk cow, so I tagged her ear with the college mark and set her out to pasture on the common. There were hogsheads of molasses and sack, the former welcome, the latter sealed with wax and set aside. “That’ll not be wanted before the next commencement, and then ’twill be drunk dry in an hour’s revels.” There were cords of wood, but too few: “Whittlings, merely. Scarce enough to warm a workhouse.” A barrel of saltcod, which garnered a rare nod of approval: “Saturday dinners there, for a month or more.” A cobbler had paid his sophister son’s tuition in shoes—a score pair. Whitby fingered the well-stitched leather but scratched his head. “We can get a good coin for these, upon the town, but who accounts for the time it will take me to sell them?”

  I was curious to know how many scholars I would be serving, and Whitby was pleased to enumerate the classes. I knew already of the senior sophisters, for they were Samuel’s charges, and he spoke of them with the tender interest of one who had lived with them and tutored them the past three years. There were twelve of that class who had advanced through the rigors of the college program. The class was unusually enlarged by three sons of the president who had all matriculated together: the twins, Elnathan and Nathaniel Chauncy, and their brother Israel. There were only half as many junior sophisters and just seven sophomores. So with the eight freshmen, I calculated that college body came to thirty-three, plus the four fellows who resided with their charges. “But that doesn’t reckon on thy commoner fellows,” Whitby remarked. These, he said, were generally older students who paid double tuition to attend lectures. Their higher fees earned them the right to be addressed as “mister” while the younger scholars were called by their unadorned surnames. The commoner fellows dined at the high table. But few if any of them were serious candidates for a degree, and it was rare for one to attend at college the full four years.

  Whitby was most interested in the incoming freshmen, hoping for one or two scions of wealth whose families might be liberal provisioners. He had been given a list of names of the youths who had matriculated and who would need to be accommodated. He scanned it carefully, jabbing a fat finger against each name as he read down the list. “Atherton. Had several of that brood here before. Big family, the Athertons. Father some kind of military man. Not a chouser, but not as thee’d call liberal either. Samuel Bishop—I don’t know his people. Dudley. That one would have been rich pickings, had the father, our late governor, not gone to his rest. I’ll not expect much from the stepfather, being as how he’s a minister. Ministers are the last to be paid, in hard times such as these uns. Always in arrears, they be, waiting on flock to pay thine coin. Though I expect this one”—he jabbed the name Eliot—“will do what he can by his only son. Apostle Eliot’s funds come to him from England, not from the poor planters hereabouts. Jabez Fox—that’s another preacher’s boy. So’s young Samuel Man. Edward Mitchelson—that’d be the marshal-general’s boy. Might be good for summat. I tell thee, it’s these two outlandish Indian names I’m most chuffed to see upon the list. Thank God’s providence for ’em. The class’ll be feeding off of ’em. The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel—all them godly English—they’ll pay coin for the tuition, and a good coin too—Chauncy will see to that. Not that we’ll get more than tuppence here or there of it, I’ll be bound. The president’ll like as not feather his own bed with that money. He takes a goodly salary off the college—a hundred pounds a year is the whisper. Most of it, he’s obliged to take in kind, so he’s glad to have the coin if he can get it.”

  It had been decided that I was to board with the Whitbys, sharing their quarters at the college just as the former maid had done. The family lived all together in one long, narrow room that ran behind the buttery. Half the space was crowded out with extra stores of one kind or another that Whitby wanted to keep a close eye upon, such as the sack and the mulled cider and a barrel of rum.

  “The devil gets into ye boys, he does, ministers’ sons or nay. We’ve had our share of drunken revels end in riot, oh aye, and don’t let any prune-faced tutor tell thee different, lass. Boys who prate Latin are nay better than any other boys, with a bellyful of hot waters in ’em. I wager there will be more than one flogging, thy time here, to be sure. If such mayhem breaks out, get thyself back here and use ye door bar. My goodwife would wash my mouth for saying it, but the older lads are not above whore hunting for hackney wenches upon the town, and betimes, if they get soused, they’ll touse honest girls. Have a care, lass, is all I’m saying. Ye’ll be safe enough in our quarters, me lad and meself will see to it.”

  I was to have a slim featherbed, set into the inglenook beside the fireplace, with a curtain around it for privacy, which was a vast improvement upon my last accommodations, and I drifted to sleep there the first night easily, for all that Goodman Whitby and his boy both snored like a bellows.

  Since I was the underling, it fell to me to rise earliest, draw water, kindle the cook fire, and prepare the morning bever. It made no mind to me; I had always risen before the sun. I was to start my morning chores on the first day that the new freshman class took up their residence in the college. The kitchen and the buttery were very fair rooms, of good size, scrubbed soundly, every nook and cranny, and the wood waxed gleaming. The girl I replaced had clearly been diligent. She had hung branches of herbs from the rafters, so the scent of the cook fire mingled with the clean tang of beeswax, sage and rosemary. It was peaceful there, in the predawn hour. Then, at four-thirty, the college began to stir. Soon, the first of the scholars came rapping upon the buttery hatch. I opened it with a creak and saw young Joseph Dudley. I was glad to see him, familiar as he was to me, but he did not return my smile. His sleepy face wore a disgruntled expression.

  “Good morning, Dudley,” I said. I handed him his portion.

  “Nought good about it.” He snatched the tankard and hunk of bread and was backing away at double time towards the stairs. “I surely didn’t come to this place for this purpose.”

  “What purpose is that?”

  “To serf for the sophisters.” He was upon the stairs, taking them two at a time. “Pynchon’s my man, and he has threatened to pickle me if I don’t bring his bever at a run.”

  A half dozen more freshmen already crowded the hatch, grabbing for bread and beer as quickly as I could lay it up.

  “That will do!” I said sternly. “This isn’t a pig’s trough. Line up like gentlemen!” There was jostling and grumbling, but the boys fell into some kind of rough order. When it was Joel Iacoomis’s turn, he gave me a civil good morning.

  “Thank you, Jo—I mean, Iacoomis,” I said, passing him a bever. “And who are you serving?”

  “Brackenbery.”

  As soon as Joel moved aside the others continued to push and shove, so I stood back with my hands upon my hips, refusing to put up any more tankards. “I said, behave like gentlemen. I will serve no one of you until all act more civily.”

  “Hard to feel the gentleman when the first thing they do is make a serf of you.” The speaker was a thin, frowning boy, with very dark hair and pallid skin.

  A taller boy punched him playfully upon the shoulder. “There now, Eliot, surely your elder brothers told you how it would be. Did they not?” I supposed that the pallid boy must be Benjamin Eliot, son of the famed apostle. Eliot frowned. The taller boy just laughed at him.

  “Well, I have five brothers—Rest, Thankful, Watching, Patience, Consider—and each one of them the very opposite of their name. But they all went through this, and they all survived it. And you will too, if you follow Atherton family advice: Have Patience, keep Watching, and soon you can Rest, Consider and be Thankful. Or so I Hope.”

  I smiled at Hope Atherton as he grabbed his sophister’s bever. He was the only one to offer a thank you before he turned and hurried across the hall, slopping beer on the boards as he ran.

  Only as the last of the freshmen darted up the stairs did I see Caleb, sauntering towards the hatch in no apparent hurry.

  “Good
morning,” I said. “And who do you serve, that you dare to keep him waiting so long?”

  He smiled, and took the bread and beer I held out with a civil thank you. “Who do I serve? Who should I serve? I serve myself, of course.” He wandered out into the yard then, and from the buttery window I saw him standing pensively in the garth as the sky slowly grayed and brightened. When he came in, to return his tankard, I cast an eye to see that we were unobserved, and then I placed a restraining hand on his sleeve before he could turn away.

  “Have a care,” I whispered. “It is one thing to go your own way in the woods, among your own people—another thing in this place, where there are those aching to see you falter….” Gently, he put his hand atop mine. He gave a slight smile. “Thank you for your concern for me,” he said. “There is no need for it.”

  I watched his retreating back, and called out softly after him: “I hope that you may be right.”

  I closed the buttery hatch after I had taken back the last of the tankards, and set to sanding and scrubbing them. Even above my own clatter, I could hear the racket as the college assembled for morning prayers. Maude Whitby had come in and commenced to cook, but now she wiped her hands upon her pinafore, for we were expected to set aside our tasks and join the reverence. Chauncy led us all in a psalm, which he did not line out as was our custom, but expected all to sing with him in unison. Then he read and expounded some verses from Leviticus, and closed with a blessing. At seven, from the cupola above our heads, the bell tolled, and I turned back to my work as the students dispersed to their tutors’ chambers for a study hour. I knew Joel and Caleb would be meeting their tutor for the first time; I wondered how they would get on together. I had not seen the man, and had not learned his name or had opportunity to ask Samuel what he might know of Chauncy’s choice for the role.

  Goody Whitby was of a mind to chatter through her work, and while I did not wish to seem cold or uncivil, neither did I wish to encourage her in this overmuch, as I hoped fervently to listen to the lessons, which I could not do very well if Latin in one ear had to compete with gossipy Yorkshire dialect in the other. When the bell tolled again, at eight, I could hear, through the closed buttery hatch, forms scraping across boards as the scholars assembled for the morning lecture. I felt a great rise of excitement at this: here was I, at college, as I had always longed to be. That I had my hands up to my wrists in a doughtrough made no matter: my mind was free to drink in wisdom as much as I could imbibe. I wondered if Caleb shared my high heart at this moment, and could only think that he must.

  The buttery hatch was not three yards from where President Chauncy’s lectern was set up. I could keep faith with Master Corlett, and leave it closed, as he bade me, and yet still hear the lectures quite plain. Goody Whitby fell mum as soon as the president commenced to speak. I guessed it was a rule of the kitchen to make as little stir as possible, and I was glad of it. I had thought I might find the Latin difficult, but that first morning Chauncy addressed himself mainly to the freshmen, and expressed himself with simplicity. I could follow along with but little effort. His lecture that morning was a justification for an education in the liberal arts, and its relevance to the life of a minister, which, he said, “I expect, with the grace of God, will be the destiny of more than half of you now in this hall. The founders of this college sacrificed to build this place because they dreaded to depart this new world and leave but an illiterate clergy in the pulpits of its churches. So what need has such a minister for the poetry of Ovid, the rhetoric of Cicero and the philosophy of Aristotle? Were not these men pagans, living in the stews of anti-Christ and the devil’s house of lies? Perhaps so. One may say it, in the knowledge of their time and place.

  “Yet all knowledge comes from God, who creates and governs all things. You will find many excellent divine moral truths in the works we will study together in this place—in Plato, in Plutarch and in Seneca. These pagans treated of the works of God most excellently. So does God use them to prepare the ground for the perfect teachings of Jesus Christ.

  “The liberal arts that you will study here all inform us of the divine mind. They derive from it. They reflect it. We study no art for its own sake but to help us restore our connection with the divine mind. God’s reason is perfect, human reason no more than pale shadows.

  “The Greeks had a goddess whom they named Eupraxia. For them, she was the spirit”—here he switched out of Latin and gave the Greek word, diamona—of right conduct. “I want you to develop a great fondness for that name, Eupraxia. We will invoke her here in this place many times. The whole object of your studies is summed in it—right action, right conduct, doing the right thing at the right time. All your works here are aimed to help you learn to discern the right—to winnow the chaff, to smelt off the dross….”

  I had formed a rather unfavorable impression of Chauncy based on very slight observations of him. But now, as I listened, I perceived that the unkempt exterior and peremptory manners were only the unfortunate gown thrown atop a great intellect. Further, he had a wonderful way of taking high matters and bringing them down to the capacities of the scholars. I found as I listened an ear that I had not the least difficulty in following the line of his thought, even as I bustled about, helping Maude to prepare a hasty pudding of cornmeal, molasses and milk.

  Chauncy was outlining how he proposed to divide the hours of study throughout the week. The Lord’s Day would be spent at meeting and at rest, but the scholars would be examined by their tutors upon the content of the sermons during the following week, to make sure they had attended to and profited from them. On the second and third days—Mondays and Tuesdays—freshmen would gather at eight and hear him lecture on logic and metaphysics. Sophomores, at nine, would hear ethics and natural science. Sophisters, at ten, would hear arithmetic, geometry and astronomy. I smiled. Listening from the buttery, I would have the profit of all of these lectures. In the afternoons, students would practice disputations upon the topics covered in the lectures, which the president would moderate. The fourth day of each week would be given over completely to the study of Greek. On Friday, scholars would toil upon Hebrew, until they had a grounding in that language, at which point they might add the study of Aramaic and Syriac. In the afternoon they would study the Bible. The sixth day, Saturday, was to be devoted to the practice of rhetoric and declamations.

  When Chauncy concluded, Goodman Whitby herded the scholars out into the yard to stretch their legs while we all of us bustled to convert lecture hall into dining hall, setting up trestles and rearranging forms and stools. Promptly at eleven, the scholars filed in and took seats at their assigned tables. Then Chauncy, the fellows and the fellow commoners entered, in procession, and mounted the dais to the high table. As soon as they were seated, Whitby took up the Great Salt, and carried it with stiff formality through the hall, placing it before Chauncy.

  The undergraduates ate off wooden trenchers and drank from pewter tankards or slipware mugs. Each carried his own knife and spoon. The high table dined off the college silverware. For all the stir and fiddle-faddle, the fare was plain and, I must say, insufficient. The service might have been plate, but the small dollop of pudding set down upon it was less ample than any but the poorest board might boast.

  Perhaps it was the excitement of finally being in this place, but by afternoon I was tired and addled. As I cleaned the dinner things, I could not take much profit from the doings on the other side of the buttery hatch. The senior sophisters were disputing, and since their Latin was of a much higher level than mine, I could not follow the wit in their arguments. From time to time, I heard Samuel’s voice, as he joined with the president in moderating the debate. That was an added trial upon my powers of concentration.

  At half past the hour of four, the Whitbys’ boy George tolled the bell for afternoon bever. I scanned the faces as they came to the hatch, waiting to see Joel and Caleb and get some sense of how they liked their new tutor. When they presented themselves, I could not read their expres
sions. I had thought to see them lit up with the delights of their first day in this place, but instead the spirits of both seemed sadly quenched, sober and withdrawn. I did not read too much into this, as we could hardly speak in the press of bodies all reaching hungrily for their bread and beer, which had to be consumed before evening prayers commenced at five.

  At half past seven, we served a frugal supper—if the dinner fare was sparse, this could only be termed paltry—after which the scholars had a recreation hour to use as they would. I could tell that many of them gathered about the hall fire. I could hear them, talking and laughing together, as I cleaned and set the kitchen to rights for the next day. As much as I would have liked to stay and listen to their chatter, I was spent, and went away to my pallet long before the nine o’clock bell sounded to send the lingerers to their chambers.

  I am writing these final words by the light of a tallow dip, both the Whitbys having made plain to me that they like it not. They fear the flame, in my curtained nook, lest I fall into a drowse and set the college all afire. I see that to keep the peace, I shall have to end this account here. It matters not. Now that I am got here, and my fate, for the nonce, is a settled matter, I do not feel so pressed to scrive my daily thoughts. The Whitbys are abed, and the son has commenced his bellows snore. The father, I suppose, stays for me, waiting wakeful to see my tallow safely snuffed. I will do so now, and let him have his hard-earned rest.