Harvard Yard (29 page)

They were coming down the Menotomy Road in C-spring chaises and crossing the Great Bridge from Brighton on foot. From Boston they were coming out the Charlestown Road in a parade of chariots and riders and shank’s mare walkers. Along the Watertown Road they were coming from farms where every man had a good horse to carry him. On every road they were coming in heavy coaches from every province in New England. And by water they were coming, too, up the river and down, in lighters and cutters, in schooners and sloops.

And there was nothing a good minister could do, because the world was changing.

On the Cambridge Common, tents were rising. Some were grand pavilions supported by long ridgepoles, with rough-planked floors for dancing. Others were smaller, made for smaller pursuits such as pouring rum or gambling at pawpaws, or selling everything from pickled oysters to home-fashioned hats to tree-bark tonics that cured whatever disease a gullible man might think he had.

The tents were licensed by the selectmen, who marked spaces with stakes, took fees “for the betterment of the town,” and left the constable and his deputies to keep order.

And there was nothing a good minister could do . . . except to warn his pewholders to remove their cushions and psalm books and prohibit his grandchildren from going anywhere near the Cambridge Common.

That same afternoon, a man who called himself Burton Bones stepped off the ferry in Charlestown. He took a bit of snuff, sneezed into his handkerchief, and tapped his walking stick impatiently while his slave wrestled with their baggage.

The slave had help, as there were three other men traveling with them, all younger, none so well dressed. Indeed, one of them seemed more concerned about the wardrobe of Burton Bones than his own. He took out a needle and thread and tried to mend a tear in the sleeve of Burton’s coat . . . while Burton was wearing it.

Burton shooed him away, whispering, “Wait till we set up our tent.”

Burton Bones could not deny that he was nervous. Gazing west, along the curl of the river, he could just make out the cupola of Harvard Hall, glittering in the sunlight like the tower of an ancient castle he had returned at last to storm.

Once the others had collected their belongings and piled them onto their wagon, they gathered around him. They had been with him for many years and traveled with him to many places—England, Scotland, Ireland, Jamaica, the southern colonies of America. And finally, he had persuaded them to come to New England.

Two years earlier, a troupe of London players called the American Company had put on a fine season of Shakespeare in Newport, Rhode Island. And if that colony was changing, he had told them, so must Massachusetts be changing. And in a place where there had never been theater, people would pay handsomely to see a company of English actors, even one as small as theirs. What Burton Bones had not admitted was that after Newport, the American Company had been chased out of Providence and ordered never to return. Some things were better left unsaid.

“Are we ready?” said Demetrius, who only played the slave and received pay like the others. “We ain’t gettin’ any younger.”

“You’re right,” said Burton Bones, “we ain’t.” And with a flourish of his walking stick, he stepped into the road. He was a tall man, all arms and legs and angles, aptly named, for he was quite simply bony. But as he raised his chin and said, “Let us go amongst the holy men of Harvard,” he seemed to gather weight and presence. Then he pointed his silver-buckled shoe toward Cambridge.

Any who looked closely would have seen that the shoe had a hole in it.

That evening, Caleb Wedge told his grandfather that he had been invited to a punch bowl in the room of a senior sophister but that there would be no “strong waters” in the punch. Lydia told her grandfather that she would be visiting a friend, Sally Marrett, but that they would not dare go out “with so many strangers about.”

Both were lying, and while they could not be certain of their grandfather’s gullibility, they were not surprised to see each other on the Cambridge Common just after dark.

Caleb and three friends were coming out of a tent where people were selling rum. Lydia and Sally were standing in front of a fruit stand, eating fresh peaches sold from a bushel basket by a Rhode Island farmer. And brother and sister both were giddy.

Fresh peaches could do that to a thirteen-year-old girl. Rum could do it to a sixteen-year-old boy. And the excitement of commencement eve could do it to anyone.

There was fiddle-and-pipe music coming from the dancing tent, loud cheers coming from a gambling tent, war whoops and shouts rising from a tent where local Indians challenged farmers to contests with bow and arrow, laughter rising everywhere, and hundreds of people hurrying from one tent to the next.

“Caleb!” Lydia called to her brother. “Do I smell rum?”

“You do.” He burped. “And I taste it.”

“Would you like to walk with us, girls?” asked one of the other boys.

“Where to?” asked Lydia.

“To the end of the tent row, to see the play. It starts in five minutes.”

“And once the constable hears,” said Caleb, “it won’t
last
five minutes more.”

Lydia looked at Sally and shrugged, as if to say that they had been disobedient enough already. What further harm could they do? And off they went with the boys, down the torchlit “street” that ran through the center of the tent village, a thoroughfare of straw, watermelon rinds, peach pits, and trash.

At the end was a platform in front of a wagon on which a rainbow-hued canvas had been raised as a backdrop. A handsome sign proclaimed
BURTON BONES AND CO., PLAYERS OF THE MASQUE,
and beneath that, more crudely lettered,
TONIGHT, 7:30, THE TAMING OF THE SHREW, BY WILL. SHAKESPEARE.

An old slave was beating a drum in front of the platform while a young man wandered through the crowd, playing a flute. When the crowd had grown large enough, the young man left off playing and cried, “Good gentlefolk, a prologue to our play. Give heed to Burton Bones!” And he swept his arm toward the platform, where there was a loud bang, a flash of light, and a puff of smoke.

People jumped. Others cried out. Still others went hurrying toward the noise.

As if by magic, an actor in the robes of a Venetian gentleman stepped through the smoke, executed a bow, and proclaimed, “Your honor’s players, hearing your amendment, / Are come to play a pleasant comedy; / For so your doctors hold it very meet, / Seeing too much sadness hath congeal’d your blood / And melancholy is the nurse of frenzy: / Therefore they thought it good you hear a play, / And frame your mind to mirth and merriment, / Which bars a thousand harms and lengthens life.”

What a fine sentiment, thought Lydia.

From behind the curtain stepped two actors. One said, “Tranio, since for the great desire I had / To see fair Padua, nursery of arts, / I am arrived in fruitful Lombardy . . .”

Padua. Lombardy. Italy.
Lydia could not imagine the beauty and romance of such places, but standing there in that field of tents, in the midst of that cow pasture, on the edge of the civilized world, she tried.

Then she noticed Selectman William Brattle go bustling away as if he had seen enough. And that, she knew, was a bad sign.

How could his grandchildren be so deceitful? How could they be so depraved? The old reverend hurried through the village, the constable’s messenger at his side. With every step, he jabbed his walking stick like a rapier and asked himself again the hardest question of all: How could they be so stupid?

And how could any group of actors be so stupid as to think they could display their filth on Cambridge Common, whether at commencement or in the dead of winter?

At the edge of the Common, William Brattle was waiting with the constable and three deputies. Though educated at the college, Brattle was known as “a man of universal superficial knowledge.” He had never trained as a doctor and yet had treated the students and people of Cambridge for years. He had served no legal apprenticeship and yet had become a judge. He had never fired a shot in anger and yet had gained the rank of brigadier in the Massachusetts militia. He was prosperous, pompous, and, by virtue of his belly and rank, perfectly fit to bear the nickname “Brigadier Paunch.”

“We would have chased them off,” he announced to Abraham, “but there’s no written law ’gainst the masque, so best we put God’s law on our side.”

“Trust that it is,” said Reverend Abraham.

“And be warned,” said Constable Henry Hull, a hard-eyed little man, “your grandchildren is standin’ ’fore the stage, listenin’ like ’twas one of your own fine services.”

“I thank you,” said the reverend, though he sensed irony in Hull’s words, for no man had fallen asleep more often or snored more loudly during Wedge’s services.

“We’ll chase ’em off,” said Hull as the group made its way onto the Common. “Better, though, if we had a written law, like what they made in Providence last year.”

“Indeed,” said Brattle. “Give them a stiff fine and these dress-wearing actors’ll damn soon take their filth elsewhere.”

“Dresses? What play is it?” asked Abraham.

“Something about a shrew,” said Brattle.

“Shrews?” said the constable. “They can be nasty little beasts.”

“This shrew is a woman,” said Brattle.

“Oh,” said the constable, “
they
can be nasty little beasts, too.”

People made way as this contingent marched toward the end of the tent row and came up to the platform stage, where three actors—one in a dress and woman’s wig—held the audience transfixed.

The old actor said, “Now, Signior Petruchio, how speed you with my daughter?”

“How but well, sir? how but well? / It were impossible I should speed amiss.”

Having grabbed torches of their own, Constable Hull and Selectman Brattle were now pushing their way toward the front of the crowd, while Abraham looked for his grandchildren amid the shadows.

The old actor turned to the one in the dress and said, “Why, how now, daughter Katharine! in your dumps?”

“Call you me daughter?” was the response, in a high, put-on, angry voice.

The audience roared, as much at the voice as the words.

And Abraham Wedge, who believed in the power of God and the truth of John Calvin, could not believe his own eyes. For in looking at the stage, he thought he saw his own father, long dead and gone to his reward. Except that his own father would never have worn the robes of a Venetian gentleman.

Then the harsh voice of Henry Hull cried, “Burton Bones! I command you to stop, under penalty of the law.”

And Burton Bones stepped out of the role of Signior Baptista, father of Kate, and shouted, “We bring joy to New England! He who stops us is an enemy of such.”

Brattle shouted, “Cease and desist!”

By now, Caleb and Lydia had seen their grandfather, and both were moving to the edge of the crowd, putting distance between themselves and the reverend.

“There is no written law against the masque in Massachusetts,” shouted Burton Bones, “and never has there been. So by whose authority do you stop our play?”

“By the authority of the Congregational Church!” shouted Abraham Wedge. “Planted on these shores by the grace of God, anno Domini 1630.”

“And who claims this authority?” answered Burton Bones.

“Your own brother!”

A gasp went through the crowd.

The eyes of Caleb and Lydia met, each face mirroring the other’s shock. Caleb mouthed the word “brother?” Lydia pointed to the stage and said, “Our great-uncle?”

Brattle, who moved with all the grace of a loose-rolling barrel, swung his whole body—shoulders, wig, belly, and torch—toward Abraham and said, “Brother?”

“Brother!” boomed the actor who called himself Burton Bones. Then he pulled off his wig and said, “If your name be Abraham Wedge, then ’tis so. I am Benjamin Wedge, returned to Massachusetts to bring joy.”

“Joy? Joy?” Abraham Wedge seemed staggered by a mingling of emotions—shock, surprise, but, above all, fury. “You do not bring joy. You bring the depravity of a man dressed as a woman, the waste of idle entertainment. The—”

“Fire!” shouted Demetrius the slave. “Fire! It’s the fat one with the torch!”

“Fire? Where?” Brattle looked frantically left and right, then looked above him as the flames from his torch chewed into the canvas overhanging the little stage. “Fire!”

The actor in the dress leapt off the platform and shoved Brattle and his torch away. The other actors tore at the flaming canvas.

Some in the crowd ran for water. Some ran in panic, for nothing could spread as fast as a fire in a tent city. And some stood by, laughing and shouting as though all of it were part of the show.

Brattle cried for the constable to arrest the actor who struck him.

Burton Bones cried for water. So someone hit him in the face with a bucketful, which brought more laughter from the crowd and curses from the actors.

“Let it burn,” shouted Abraham, “as punishment to you and warning to others that true joy is never brought by . . . by men in dresses!”

“Out of the way, Grandfather!” Caleb Wedge nearly knocked Abraham down, bulled through the crowd, and delivered a bucket of water to douse the flames.

“You may stay the night,” said Abraham a few hours later. “I am a Christian. I would not turn out a stranger, or a brother, or one who is both.”

“Thank you.” Benjamin Wedge sat in the wing chair by the fireplace, sweated and sooted, and sipped a glass of port.

“Be thankful I spoke for you,” said Abraham, “or the constable would have had you before the magistrate in the morning.”

“It would not be the first time,” said Benjamin.

Abraham stood over his brother, his shock having worn down to the anger beneath, a lifetime of anger at a brother who had fled a Sudbury farm and left a family that loved him. Abraham jabbed a finger at him and said, “But you are to leave here in the morning, you and all your players.”

Benjamin looked at the children, who sat on the seraph in the middle of the room.

Lydia was taking in every word and nuance of this reunion. Caleb was holding his hand against his mouth as if to hold in all the rum he had drunk.