Caleb's Crossing (33 page)
The old man’s mottled hand trembled as he held out a parchment. “I give you here a signed copy of my
admitatur
, and a copy, in Latin, of course, of the laws of the college. Your first work of scholarship in this place is to transcribe these. Keep your copy by you always, and refer to it often. The steward will help you fetch your things across to the Indian College, and will fit you up with a gown and bonnet. Take care that you wear the bonnet to your first commons.” He turned to the clerk. “The junior sophisters will have their sport with the freshmen, and send them in uncovered.” He glanced back at Caleb. “Do not let them persuade you. Only those sit bareheaded at board who are in disgrace and under punishment. I hope never to see you so, if indeed you can raise yourself up to the opportunities and responsibilities that you now assume.”
Caleb stood, gave a slight bow, and turned. Chauncy raised a hand. “A moment, if you please. I should say, lest you be in any doubt, that we are glad to have you here. I am sure there will be difficulties, small and large, as you go forward. But you must not think you are unwelcome. Truly, you are more than welcome. You are necessary. I had begun to think this day would never come. I rejoice in it—it will give satisfaction to our honored benefactors in London. Now send in the other salv—the other lad, and we will know if he is as well fitted as you are.”
As Caleb turned, he saw me, standing against the wall. He glanced down at the
admitatur
in his hand, and we exchanged a smile of triumph. Chauncy caught the looks passing between us. His brow creased with displeasure. “You. You are dismissed.” I nodded obediently and withdrew, regretting that I would not be able to witness Joel’s examination and see how he did. I passed by him, waiting in the hall. Caleb and I murmured words of encouragement. He was dressed as fine and plain as Caleb—I had seen to it—but he lacked his older friend’s composure. His usual dreamy gaze was gone, replaced with the desperate look of a beast at bay, and his skin was misted all over with sweat. As he rose to enter the hall, I could see that his hands trembled. Suddenly, he looked very young. Caleb placed a hand on his shoulder, and whispered to him. I could not hear the words, but I know they were Wampanaontoaonk.
Perhaps Joel was one of those who require an agitation of spirit to elevate his abilities. I heard later that he acquitted himself even more nobly than Caleb.
I
f I had thought to find a more ample providence at the college than we had enjoyed at Master Corlett’s school, the steward’s complaining, as he tallied up the tuition payments, soon set me to rights on that score. The college was kept all year, without closure or recess, but the main part of the fees was paid in early fall, when the freshman class entered.
“Short commons again, this leaf fall, by the looks of what’s acoming in.” Roger Whitby was a masty Yorkshireman, florid of face, with an easy temper, quick to laughter. I soon learned that his chief amusement was to prick the self-important manners of the tutors and their charges. “If these lads be the sons of the prophets, then they sires ought to seek out another line of work, one that yields up better wages.”
I had been tasked to help him sort and store the various goods in which families paid their college bills. When he learned I could count, he set me to tally sacks of Indian corn and rye that had just come off a dray. He looked over my reckoning—“Brussen lass, who can cipher, and knows her letters; the last lass could do none of that, willing worker though she was; I’ll speak no ill of her. I see here it’s two to one, corn to rye, coming in this term. That’s as well. Wife says thee can make a good brown bread so. Some years, it’s all corn we get, and then the pones might as well be made on sawdust, since we’ve nary enough eggs to bind ’em.” I took note of that: perhaps establishing a henhouse would be a project I could undertake to better the lot of the scholars.
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.