Caleb's Crossing (21 page)
By great good fortune, I found Caleb in the dooryard, playing at jacks with Joel’s young brothers. After I told Iacoomis’s wife, who went by the English name of Grace, about the wool, I tarried for a few minutes and joined in the game. Under cover of the children’s merry voices, I asked Caleb, in Latin, if his uncle Tequamuck knew we were to sail on the next morning’s tide. Caleb’s head lifted sharply, his dark eyes regarding me gravely. “I know what you fear,” he said, also in Latin. “I, too, fear it. I have said nothing to him. We have not exchanged words together since Worm Moon. But Tequamuck hears and knows much.”
“Will he do to us as he did to father?”
“My heart says no. He loves me, Bethia, even now. He was always more to me than father or mother. I think he feeds a hope that I will yet abandon the English God. That hope is therefore our hope….”
We had to stop then, for Iacoomis himself came out of the cabin to thank me for my gift, and for my attentions to Joel’s welfare in Cambridge, and to wish me Godspeed.
The next day dawned bright and fair and almost windless. We had to sit at anchor until the breezes picked up late in the afternoon. All that time, I scanned the shoreline with a tightness in my throat, trying to make out that feathered cloak upon the bluffs. I saw Caleb’s glance turn that way also. But his uncle did not come, and as the canvas bellied out and the timbers creaked we beat away from the island. I watched from the stern until the last low nob of land flattened to a dark line, then a hazy disturbance on the horizon. Finally it merged into the edge of the world and vanished from my sight. At that moment, fear gave way to a grief for home that has not left me since.
To be sure, the journey hence is hard enough even without devilment, and since others have written of its rigors I will not trouble to set them down, except to say I was able to get no sleep aboard the sloop, which pitched and yawed to an alarming degree for almost every hour of our voyage. In Boston’s harbor the next morning all was delay and frustration in finding a barge, and then an easterly blew that kept us from setting out till sunset. The wide river wound through fens and marshes, all bronzed in the failing light. It was full dark when the bargeman sighted the rushlight that marked the turn into a canal dredged from the Cambridge town creek. He disembarked us at the landing and hallowed for the carter who lived in a rude hut nearby. I could see nothing beyond the narrow circle of the carter’s lamp. I could, however, smell my new home. There was a reek of beasts from the Ox-Pasture and the Cow Common, a rich tidal stink of rot and decay, and a stench such as comes from people pressed in close habitation. When finally we arrived, exhausted, at Master Corlett’s door, the hour was late. Although the paths around the college were lit by cressets full of burning rushlights, I couldn’t tell much about the town. The lamplighter himself showed us the way to Master Corlett’s school. The master greeted us civilly, roused a pair of bleary-eyed boys to help fetch our boxes off the cart, and after a few words to Makepeace, sent him with Caleb and Joel to find their places in the attic dormitory among the other pupils. As their boots clumped up the narrow stair, he ushered me into his own chamber.
“You brought the document, I suppose?”
I handed his copy of the indenture across his desk.
He barely glanced at grandfather’s signature, and then pushed the paper away as if it were as distasteful to him as it was to me. He gazed at me with a pair of watery blue eyes. “Uncommonly obliging of you to join us here. I trust you will not find the duties too onerous, and if you do, you must come to me at once and we will see what can be done to adjust them. I told your grandfather that I was in want of a gentlewoman, and you shall be treated as one, within the limits of our means here. I will not ask of you anything that my own dear wife Barbara did not do, full willingly, to keep these boys in health and heart. But here I am, speaking of my fine intentions and I do not even offer you a chair—do sit.” I looked about the sparsely furnished little chamber, which contained a hand-hewn desk, a bookshelf, a single ladder-backed chair, a bedstead, and little else. Then I spied a rush-seated stool tucked under the bedstead and pulled it out. I was glad to sit, even on so low and rickety a perch.
“I had the pleasure of meeting your father, did you know, when he was a stripling in Watertown. Never did meet your grandfather, though saw him at meeting. Interesting venture of his, the island. We all of us thought it a bold and reckless plan, at the time. But they say the settlement prospers. And your poor late father. Such miracles they say he wrought, bringing the gospel. Cut down untimely there, to be sure. Always an excellent scholar, and godly, so his master said, when he was but a youth. Privilege for me to teach his son, your brother, as I said to him just now. Uncommonly fortunate that you are easy in company with the young Indian pupils—we have two others enrolled, younger than the brace of islanders come hither with you, and the prospect of at least one other, perhaps, from the Nipmuc people…. Most interesting case, though not without challenges…. I will tell you of it, perhaps, another time. I expect your grandfather shared with you the catalogue of my difficulties here. The Cambridge women, most reluctant to bide with the Red Man. Even, it seems, with the Red
Boy
….” He gave a little wheezy laugh at that. “Any rate, one went about with a switch in her hand, and used it, any time the poor mites came near her, whether they erred or no. The next had such a case of the vapors if she was obliged to be in the same room with them that she could barely get her work done.”
I was swaying on the stool, my fatigue so great. I longed for my pallet. I began to wonder if he would ever think to show me to it. I envied Makepeace and the others, able to put their heads down. But Master Corlett seemed oblivious to the hour, and my state. He was speaking now of Master Eliot, and his great hopes for education in the colony, so as to ensure the ministry and professions endured beyond the talents that immigrant generation had brought with them from their English colleges. “He was ardent for it, yes. Fervent. I heard him once pray: ‘Lord, for schools everywhere amongst us! Before we die, may we be so happy as to see a good school encouraged in every plantation of this country.’ And so we have, now, in all places with one hundred families or more. His own town, Roxbury, boasts an illustrious school, having fitted more scholars for the college than any town of its bigness, or even twice its bigness…. But we are hard upon its heels, here. Indeed we are. We may be poor in material goods—you will see that we get on hand to mouth here—but we are rich in the things of the mind….”
I felt my eyelids droop and strove to prop them open, as good manners demanded. But my body defied my will. I must have dropped to sleep for an instant, for my head lolled onto my breast and I came awake with a start, lifting my chin with a sudden spasm.
“… and I am sure you will find the boys conscious of the good fortune that brings them here.” Master Corlett rambled along, undaunted by, or oblivious to, my stifled yawns. The boys might very well be conscious of their good fortune, but I was near to
un
conscious, and I realized I would have to speak up or fall down. So I stood.
“I am sorry, Master Corlett. I would be very glad to hear more of the school tomorrow. But I have had a trying journey and a very long day, and I would be most grateful…”
“Of course, of course. Must forgive me.” He rose and came around the desk, offering me his arm. “Too much on my own of an evening, that is the trouble. Used to sit up till all hours, talking with my son Samuel, when he… Thoughtless of me. My son still, sometimes … but generally his evenings are bespoke by his duties—at the college—you know…. I fear you will find your accommodations rather Spartan. I have no chamber to offer you. There is only this one, then the schoolroom, which doubles as refectory, and the dormitory, which is in the attic … eight boys up there now. Your brother the only one won’t have a bedfellow, the rest all go two-a-pallet. There are another six boys come as day pupils, families live here in town, you know. You’ll need to give them bever, but they don’t take commons with us—home to their families for dinner. Any case, as I was saying, no chamber for yourself, but I thought, a pallet in the kitchen … private from the boys, and the cook fire, warmest place when the weather hardens. We haven’t the luxury, generally, of a fire in any other room, unless a boy’s people gift us extra wood.” He directed me along a short hall, and then we stepped down into the dark kitchen. There was a scent of old fat, damp rags and mouse piss. A pallet with a thin shakedown was wedged against the wall. Half of it extended underneath a worn deal table, very stained, greasy and unwholesome-looking. Scrubbing it white and clean would be my first chore. He set the candle down and took a taper to light his own way. “We follow the college schedule here, get the boys used it, do you know. Prayers at six, first class at seven. You will please serve them their morning bever at nine. That will be a pint pot of small beer and a slice of bread for each boy. I will instruct you on the rest of your duties at that time. Good night to you now. God keep you till morning.”
I murmured a good night. As soon as he closed the kitchen door, I snuffed the candle and fell upon the pallet. I barely had the strength to unlace my boots. For the rest, I fell asleep fully clad.
I
woke to a clatter of feet above my head, followed thereafter by a bustle of young bodies jostling each other down the narrow stairs. When the last pupil had crammed himself into Master Corlett’s chamber, I heard the door close and the master’s quavering voice rise to lead the prayer.
I got up, stiff and weary still, to take the measure of my new surroundings. Throwing a shawl over my shoulders, I stepped out into the garth. It was true, what grandfather had reported; the college was not a stone’s throw away. The older building was a large clapboard structure, which must have seemed very fine when they first built it on these wild coasts, almost twenty years earlier. It was a full three floors, with three wings set off at right angles to the main structure. In the center was a tall turret with a bell tower. It seemed a remarkable thing, to have raised such a place as this, at the very dawn of settlement, when material cares and the very business of survival pressed so hard upon the colony. I had heard that some had deemed the college building too gorgeous for a wilderness. But the grace of its design cannot have been matched by skill in its construction, for its shingle roof sagged woefully in several places and the sills showed signs of well-advanced rot. The neat new brick building beside it—which I guessed must be the Indian College—only emphasized the decayed condition of the larger and more venerable structure.
I turned back into the kitchen, to assess the place that was my more immediate concern. A single large kettle and small selection of pans hung above the pot well. There were eating utensils on the dresser—pots of chipped slipware and three good pewter tankards which, upon examination, proved to have pupils’ initials scratched crudely on the base. Likewise the trenchers were of worn wood, except for three pewter plates, also etched with initials. So there were some better off pupils, who had brought their own things—Makepeace would be mortified when he learned of this, as I knew he had not thought to pack anything of that nature.
I soon enough learned the names of the “pewter platers,” as that trio tended to give the most trouble and make most demands upon my time. One set of initials, JD, belonged to Joseph Dudley, the former governor’s son and the most difficult. He was one of the elder scholars, who would also attempt the matriculation examination. He was a well-favored youth with an unlovely manner, haughty and cocksure. During my first days at the school he treated me in a most peremptory way. While the other boys folded their soiled linens and set them on their pallets for me to collect on washday, he dropped his upon the floor. At board, when the other boys carried their dishes to the trough after meals, he rose from the table and left his as they lay.
The second week, when he once again left his linens scattered, I did not trouble to pick them up. It was a fine day, and I was able to get all dry and the collars pressed by sunset. Most of the boys returned to the attic to find their clothes folded neatly on their beds. Dudley found his as he had left them, and commenced to curse the “slattern” that Master Corlett had employed. I would like to say that it was Makepeace who leapt to my defense, but I learned later, from Joel, that it was Caleb. Makepeace, ardent to curry favor with the highest born of his fellows, had been ashamed to speak for me. But Caleb stepped up to the young man and enlightened him, in strong terms, as to my family’s position, and said that he would take personally any further insults upon me or my work. Dudley was a well-built young man, and I am sure he knew how to use his fists. But he was also an intelligent boy and no hothead, and could readily calculate that in a bout with Caleb he might not show to advantage.
I knew nothing of this exchange the next day, when young Dudley came to me in the kitchen and begged my pardon, saying he had been uninformed as to my connections and had taken me for a common servant, and now he repented his incivility to me.
“I thank you for that, young master,” I said, rather coolly. “You study here in hope of taking orders, I understand?”
He nodded his fair head. “I do, if I am equal to that high calling.”
“Then I hope you will not take it amiss if I, as you now know, the daughter of a minister, recommend to you some verses: Matthew, 21:26–28. You will note that Jesus does not enquire as to connections before he extends civility to those of a servile condition.”
I turned then and went back to my scrubbing. The next thing I knew, he was beside me, clout in hand, rubbing at the deal with great energy, his fine skin tinted a mottled pink.
“I think you have not done this work before?” The pink of his cheeks became a little bit more intense.
