Harvard Yard (23 page)

“But remember that in the 1690s, the Mathers believed the enlightenment had already happened, and they were the ones who’d been enlightened.”

More laughter.

“When Calef published a book depicting the Mathers as Puritan exorcists stroking Margaret Rule’s breasts for fun and spiritual profit, Cotton was furious. He said Calef had made ‘the people believe a smutty thing of me.’ And you didn’t do that to the Mathers. So . . . they would have felt no compunction about burning Calef’s book.

“He fades from the scene, but the Mathers don’t. Increase spends his presidency manipulating the college charter. He tries to expand the Harvard Corporation, packing it with orthodox Congregational ministers and keeping all those Anglicans and Presbyterians out of the loop. He then helps found an institution to the south, named after Elihu Yale, that he hopes will hew more closely to the Puritan line. But the eighteenth century has arrived, and Puritan hegemony is breaking down. Consider that John Leverett, whom Cotton will deride as that ‘Anglican lawyer,’ is named president of the college in 1707, much to Cotton’s chagrin. By then, Cotton has written
Magnalia Christi Americana,
to honor those seventeenth-century Puritans. Of which more next time.”

Tom Benedict hadn’t glanced at his notes or his watch, but he finished exactly at noon. He flipped the cover on his notebook, smiled, and acknowledged a round of applause that was more than perfunctory. He was good. And Peter told him so afterward.

“You do anything for twenty-five years, you get good at it,” said Benedict. “Too bad about Ridley.”

“They say it was an accident.”

“Did he ever tell you about that ‘little something from the Wedges’?”

“Only hints. That’s why I’m here.”

They came out of Emerson and into Harvard Yard, which was as alive with the midday class change as any high school corridor.

“Peter, I don’t have much time,” said Benedict.

“Just a few questions about the Wedges.”

“Did you know that the Mathers and Wedges knew one another? In Cotton’s diary you’ll find all kinds of references. ‘Had dinner with John Wedge’ . . . ‘Enjoyed the company of John Wedge’ . . . and so on.”

“Sibley writes that Isaac Wedge died in Harvard Yard on the night of ‘a great bonfire.’ Could that have been the night they burned the book?”

“Anything is possible . . . but that assumes that Mather burned a book.”

“Why else would they have a bonfire? They didn’t have football rallies.”

“We may never know”—Benedict picked up his pace—“considering that those early Wedges didn’t leave much more than scraps.”

“Like this?” Peter took out a slip of paper. “Supposedly, it’s from John Wedge’s commonplace book.”

Benedict stopped in front of the steps of Widener and took the slip. “Interesting. Where did you get this?”

“Ridley dug it up somewhere.”

“I wonder where he got it. . . . Three lines of iambic pentameter and a parenthetical comment beneath them . . .”

“Any ideas? Plenty of blank verse back then. Marlowe, Jonson, Shakespeare . . .”

Benedict gave Peter a look usually reserved for sophomores who didn’t do the reading. “John Wedge was a staunch Puritan. I don’t think he’d be quoting some banned-in-Boston playwright.”

“But what about the ‘love’s labors’ remark?”

“A pleasant euphemism for the old in-and-out.” Benedict studied the lines. “The passage says we’re specks of dust . . . dust with immortal qualities, but still dust. A common theme. And the parenthetical, ‘No man would say this after a night in which he had known the joy of love’s labors.’ Sounds like he set down the blank verse when he was feeling low and wrote the rest after he’d gotten laid.”

“So . . . this ‘speck of dust’ passage . . . is it something an expert would recognize?”

“I don’t, and I’m an expert.” Benedict’s eye drifted past Peter. “But I see someone who might. As a matter of fact, he’s Dorothy Wedge’s tutor. Assistant Professor O’Hill.”

It was easy to pick out Bob O’Hill from the swirl of students around Sever Hall. Not because he was tall, reedy, and tweedy. There were plenty of guys around who fit that bill. And not because he had a sensitive little goatee, just a shade darker than his blond hair. He was walking out of Sever with Dorothy Wedge and two other female students.

“A pain in the ass,” said Benedict. “But he’s seen us, and he’s coming our way with Miss Wedge, so I’ll introduce you.”

“Don’t tell him anything,” said Peter.

“My lips are sealed.” Except for the introductions.

“Mr. Fallon,” said Dorothy Wedge, polite as ever, “what brings you to Harvard?”

“A little research,” said Fallon.

“Commonplace books?” Dorothy glanced at O’Hill. “My father hired Mr. Fallon to do some research for me . . . to help me with my honors thesis.”

O’Hill, who was about six-four, smiled down at Fallon with everything but his eyes. “I hope Mr. Fallon has told your father that buying you some exotic research won’t buy you a summa.”

“Yes, Professor,” said Dorothy. “I’ll earn the summa myself.”

“Of course,” O’Hill continued, “there aren’t many commonplace books around.”

“But a rather interesting one has come to light recently,” said Peter, and he offered O’Hill the three lines.

O’Hill inclined his head, glanced at it, and said, “That’s the ‘speck of dust’ passage, isn’t it?”

“You know it?” asked Peter. “Where is it from?”

“The commonplace book of John Wedge.” O’Hill looked at Dorothy. “I hope your father isn’t paying Mr. Fallon too much, considering that he doesn’t even know that.”

Fallon looked at Dorothy and smiled, but he didn’t say a word. He had run across plenty of guys like this. They might be in their natural habitat in a place like Harvard Yard, but they could be found everywhere. If you asked them the wrong question, they turned it on you to make you look small. Usually they made themselves look even smaller in the process.

“I think you missed the point of the question,” said Benedict to O’Hill.

“If I stay any longer”—O’Hill looked at his watch—“I’ll miss my job interview.”

“Pretty brusque for a member of the junior faculty,” said Peter after O’Hill had headed off in one direction, Dorothy and her girlfriend in another. “Aren’t they supposed to suck up to guys like you?”

“He thinks he has reason to be brusque,” said Benedict. “Arrived here from a farming town in central California as an undergrad, grew into an award-winning young scholar, a good teacher, did some good work, especially in the field of seventeenth-century American diaries and commonplace books. Even did his dissertation on them. So he really knows more about them than most of us.”

“But?”

“He was turned down for tenure.” Benedict started walking toward the Square.

“That explains the attitude. I can almost sympathize.”

“They call the Senate the most exclusive club in America, but the Harvard faculty isn’t close behind. Our promotion practices are quite complicated. And almost no one who gets his graduate degree here is invited to stay. They have to go out and prove themselves at some place like—”

“Southeast Iowa State?”

“Right. Where you found out that teaching wasn’t for you. It’s part of the vetting process. Every profession has one. Very few spots open up in academia, especially at this level. You have to earn them.”

“So, Assistant Professor O’Hill is angry but still teaching?”

“His contract expires at the end of the academic year. I’ve advised him to do his work enthusiastically, and I’ll write glowing recommendations for him.” Benedict looked at his watch. “I have to run. High table at Kirkland House.”

“One more thing. O’Hill . . . did he ask to be Dorothy’s tutor, or did she ask for him?”

“You know how it works, Peter. Students are generally assigned to tutorial groups as sophomores and juniors. By the time they’re seniors, they find a faculty member they’d like to work with on a thesis . . . then it’s by mutual agreement.”

So, thought Fallon, Assistant Professor O’Hill had read the term paper that started all this. Dorothy had probably asked him the same questions she’d brought to Ridley. How much more did he know?

From his car, Peter made two phone calls.

The first was to Bernice to see if Orson had checked in with anything on the Wedge commonplace book.

“The antique antiquarian called to say he’s going to the Massachusetts Historical Society to see what he can find out.”

“Good. I’m going to Rockport.”

“For a lobster?”

“No. I’m just following a hunch or two.”

“It’s like Orson always says. He does all the dirty work while you run around following hunches.”

Then Peter placed a call to Evangeline Carrington’s cell phone.

She answered from the deck of a Provincetown whale watcher. “We were just talking about you, Peter. I told my grandmother you were going to take her to lunch sometime.”

“Tell her Monday. Wherever she wants.”

There was a pause, then Evangeline said, “What are you after, Peter?”

“Lunch . . . with Katherine and her beautiful granddaughter.”

“That’s what Ridley said.”

“That should answer your question,” answered Peter.

“I feel so much better. I thought for a minute you were using her to get to me. But you’re just using both of us.”

The season had changed in Rockport. October’s blue was leaving the water. The sky was clear, the air mild, but the sea already carried the cold monochrome of winter.

Peter rang the bell, but of course, no one answered. And from what he could tell, no one was following him. So he went around to the back, found that key beneath the steps, and let himself in.

The kitchen had been modern in the first term of Franklin Roosevelt—matchstick paneling painted green, white wooden cabinets painted a dozen times, an old sink with long legs and an oilcloth skirt. Ridley’s mother had died two years before, and it looked as if the glassware on the shelf hadn’t been touched since.

A little digital clock on Ridley’s coffeemaker ticked from 2:15 to 2:16. Ridley’s last pot was still sitting there, growing mold. He should have left something better as his last creation. Peter threw the coffee down the sink.

Then he went up to the attic and found the computer at a little desk in a dormer window overlooking the ocean.

He turned on the computer, clicked “My Documents,” and several folders appeared. He clicked one called “Woody,” a window opened, and a dozen document icons appeared before him with titles like “DWPaper,” for Dorothy Wedge’s paper, or “Shepard” for the Shepard diary. But the one that interested Peter was “Commonplace.”

He clicked the icon and the document opened.
What was this?
Not a text, but the actual document, copied from Masshist.org, the website of the Massachusetts Historical Society. The subhead said “Recent Acquisitions from the Seventeenth Century.”

Peter worked often at the MHS library. But one of the great advantages of the wired age was that you could sit down at a computer, hit a few keys, and summon featured documents such as this: the John Wedge commonplace book, scanned in, so that you could see the handwriting, with each page linked to a printed transcription.

Where the hell had it come from? And why hadn’t Ridley told him about it?
Ridley Riddles.

Forty or fifty pages of tight script, barely legible—Bible quotes, verse, comments by John Wedge, an interesting passage about Cotton Mather’s conquest of his stutter, and
there:
the quote about “specks of dust,” and beneath it, written in different ink and more relaxed hand, that parenthetical about love’s labors.

Peter looked at the surrounding sentences. Tom Benedict’s speculations had been correct. Something traumatic
had
happened just before John Wedge entered that quote.

April 30, 1676: My mother is dead not two weeks. Such things as my father bids me now read cannot soothe me, but I must read. And I will not deny that there is truth here: “Man is but a speck of dust . . .”

What was he reading? What was the source?

Peter sat there an hour, reading every line of John Wedge’s commonplace book. Then there was a break of one page, and this: “To my son, Abraham: I have saved this book for you, that my firstborn may know God’s promise to man through literature.”

So, thought Peter. There were
two
commonplace books here. Another whole generation of brain droppings. And the MHS had only recently acquired it. From whom? For how much? He supposed he should have known, but as Orson had said, these were generally not valuable items.

For a witch-trial judge, John Wedge seemed to be a pretty humanistic guy. Or maybe he got that way when his sons were born. According to Sibley, he did not remarry for years after the death of his first wife. The implication was that he was in the throes of consuming grief that he assuaged on the frontier. He returned to Boston about 1703, resumed his shipping business, though with less success, and married Samantha Seabury, with whom he had two sons, Abraham and Benjamin. Abraham graduated from Harvard in 1723. Benjamin, two years younger, was “rusticated” and disappeared.

Rusticated.
Punished. Sent for a semester to the countryside. What had he done?

It was getting late. The attic was cooling as the sun set. Peter thought about going home to his own computer to access the information from Masshist.org in comfort. But his curiosity kept him reading.

He knew that Abraham Wedge had become a minister, so he wasn’t surprised to scroll through biblical quotes, attempts at religious poetry, passages from sermons by Cotton Mather, and then, surprisingly: “To be or not to be, that is the question . . .”

It was followed by this:

September 9, 1720: I have read through a volume newly arrived in the library, the complete works of William Shakespeare, published in 1709. This is the first theatrical volume that the college has permitted, as the reputation of Shakespeare grows greater with each decade.

So . . . Shakespeare had finally gone to Harvard.

The genius of S. cannot be disputed, but to see such things played out before us, to allow a public display of the immoralities depicted here, would be a sin against a whole society. My brother, however, has no such compunction.