Caleb poured Benjamin another port. “You can sleep in the loft. Grandfather will speak to the constable in the morning, and—”
“I’ll be gone in the morning, God and Caleb Wedge willing.”
“God, perhaps”—Caleb laughed—“but me?”
Benjamin’s complexion had brightened, and he had stopped shivering as food and port coursed through him. He said, “You are a modern man, are you not?”
“I suppose.”
“A student of John Winthrop?” Benjamin dropped the blanket from his shoulders. “Who preaches that you widen knowledge through research and interpretation?”
“Yes.” Caleb wondered if his uncle had somehow been listening to the conversation in Winthrop’s study that evening.
“Science has instruments to help us widen our knowledge.” Benjamin got up and went over to the globe in the corner and gave it a spin. “But where are the instruments that help us to widen our understanding of humanity? Where are the wisdoms?”
The wind gusted so hard that the whole house shook.
“Here.” Benjamin pulled a book from his coat and pressed it into Caleb’s hand. “A quarto of
Love’s Labours Lost,
one of the best instruments we have . . . for the study of ourselves.”
Caleb flipped the pages. “I’ve read it, Uncle. It’s very . . . interesting.”
“You must do more than read it,” said Benjamin. “You must imagine it . . . played by actors in costume, on a stage made brilliant by burning limelight, with music, magical effects of sound and sight, alarums and excursions, entrances and exits. Then will you see what ignorance still prevails in this benighted province.”
“But if we can read the play—”
“If a play be only read and not played,” said Benjamin, “’tis like aiming a telescope at a house across the road, when you might look at the planets instead.”
“I suppose. But—”
“Were I to tell you that there was a telescope in Harvard Hall, a powerful instrument, hidden and forgotten, you’d rush to retrieve it, would you not?”
“I suppose.”
“Well, there be an instrument there, a Shakespeare play, hidden long ago, by your own great-great-grandfather, hidden again by me. Will you help me to save it?”
“Save it? From whom? When?”
“From the minions of ignorance. Tonight. Under cover of a fortuitous blizzard, while most students are elsewhere, and those who remain sleep soundly in their beds.”
“I . . . I don’t know.”
“Help him, Caleb.” Lydia entered in her robe, her hair loose to her waist.
“You’ve been listening?” said Caleb.
“I heard voices. And I heard enough. Help him. If you don’t, I will.”
Benjamin said, “I ask you only to keep lookout and listen for footfalls, should Tutor Spurgeon decide to visit his library in the middle of the night.”
“If he’s in residence,” said Caleb, “he need only get out of bed to visit. He sleeps in the adjacent chamber.”
“And think,” said Lydia, “of what he would do, should he find a play improperly cataloged in
his
library. He is very staunch in his beliefs.”
From scholar to sneak thief in the space of two hours. A change, thought Caleb, as complete as the change in the town after two hours of blizzard. The wind had blown out every streetlamp between the Watertown Road and Harvard Yard, a foot of snow had fallen, and it was falling so fast that it filled their footprints even as they went. To one peering out into the storm, they must have appeared like spectral beings, like the witches that once haunted their ancestors.
But as he trudged along in his riding boots, his tricorne pulled down to stop the snow from stinging his cheeks, Caleb told himself that he was advancing the cause of wisdom in a world that favored ignorance as surely as it had in the days of the witch-hunts. His grandfather might not approve, but Professor Winthrop would.
No lanterns burned in Harvard Hall or Stoughton, though lights flickered here and there in Massachusetts Hall—tutors nodding over difficult passages in Plato or Deuteronomy while the storm whipped against their windows.
“Keep an eye out,” said Benjamin as they scurried up to the door of Harvard Hall.
“For what?” said Caleb. “You can’t see ten feet.”
“All the more reason. If we’re found by someone less than ten feet away, we’ll have no chance.” Benjamin slipped a penknife from his sleeve, and with a skill that comes only of experience, he probed the lock, picked it, and clicked open the door.
Then they were out of the storm, in the west entry of Harvard Hall, oldest and most venerable building in the college. The stairwell was to the left, the Great Hall to the right. They stood for a moment, letting their eyes accustom to the darkness, listening for footfalls. They heard none, but they both smelled smoke.
“A chimney that doesn’t draw?” whispered Benjamin. “Someone has a fire going? I thought you said this entry was deserted.”
“Tutor Smith is gone home,” said Caleb. “And the legislators aren’t here. They’re boarded all about the town.”
Benjamin shook his head, as if puzzled. Then he led Caleb up the stairs to the second floor, stopped again, and listened. The only sound, beyond the roaring of the wind, was the creaking of the old building itself.
The Apparatus Chamber, which held many of the college’s scientific instruments and a few of its scientific curiosities—stuffed animals and the tanned hide of a Negro—was to the left. The library was to the right. And the smell of smoke was stronger.
They stepped to the library door. Benjamin leaned down, probed the lock, probed again, and put his hand on the doorknob. “Pray ’tisn’t bolted.”
“It shouldn’t be. The legislators use it as their meeting chamber each day.”
Benjamin turned the knob, the door swung open, and Caleb felt smoke sting his eyes. The room was lit by the strange, dim snowlight that came in the windows, and by the orange glow on the grate on the far side of the room.
“That chimney needs cleaning,” said Benjamin. “It draws not at all.”
“Or someone needs lessons in banking a fire ’fore they leave on a windy night.” Caleb coughed. “Perhaps we should open a window to improve the draft.”
“Perhaps you should stay by the door and listen.”
So Caleb pressed his ear to the west door and watched Benjamin go straight to alcove twelve and drop to his knees, as if he had rehearsed it all a thousand times.
What Caleb could not see was the sweat on Benjamin’s forehead and the shaking old hands that quickly removed all the books from the bottom shelf and piled them on the floor. The hands produced the penknife, slipped it into the corner, and levered the bottom shelf out of the bookcase frame. Nails were still expensive.
Caleb stifled a cough, and Benjamin whispered, “What is it?”
“The . . . the smoke.”
“Quiet.” Benjamin reached into the place where he had put the book, and the sweat on his forehead went cold. It was not there. He reached again, then again, cursing old hands. Where was the book? Forty years he had thought about this moment and . . .
there,
at the other end. Thank the Lord. His memory was not as flawless as he thought. In a few seconds, he had replaced the shelf, replaced the books on the shelf, and moved back to the door.
“Here.” He pressed the book into Caleb’s hands. “’Tis yours now.”
“Mine?” Caleb turned it over in his hands. “What am I to do with it?”
“Whatever you think best. See that it’s published. See that it’s performed. Put it publicly into the collection of John Harvard. Do it tomorrow, if you wish.”
“But you could do all that, Uncle.”
“Fighting ignorance is a job for every generation. Fight it forwardly, as my father told me to, as I tried to when I came back to Cambridge last summer.”
Caleb looked into the old man’s eyes and saw something more than mischief. He saw his own complicity in a burglary rather than in the liberation of an idea. The excitement of it seemed suddenly less real than the sin.
Being a good reader of facial expressions, even in semidarkness, Benjamin sensed the boy’s change of heart, so he grabbed him and pushed him into the hallway.
And Caleb noticed one of the fireplace logs flame back to life. How could that be? The fire had almost burned to ash. “Uncle . . . wait.”
“We got what we came for.” Benjamin closed the door and stepped quickly toward the stairwell.
Caleb stopped. “Uncle, you didn’t lock the door.”
“Ah, yes. We leave no trace behind. The world knows nothing until you decide to tell them.” Benjamin pulled out the penknife.
But Caleb, still curious about that flame, pushed open the door.
All in an instant, he wondered why the flame was in front of the fireplace rather than inside it, he felt a rush of air around him, and he heard a roar as the fire burst from the floorboards, like a beast breaching from the sea.
“Good God!” Benjamin ran back, tearing off his cape as he went.
“Where’s it coming from?” Caleb hurried after him.
“I don’t know. A spark from the fireplace, maybe, smoldering in a floor beam.” Benjamin swung his cape left and right as new tongues of flame burst forth. “Get help!”
Caleb threw open one of the windows and shouted, “Fire!” into the roaring snow. He may have been a student of science, but he did not consider the impact of fresh oxygen on combustion. Whatever good Benjamin did with his cape, Caleb undid.
Within a few seconds, the east side of the library was a sheet of flame.
“Get out,” shouted Benjamin. “Go and get help.”
“But the books . . . Tutor Spurgeon.”
“Run,” said Benjamin. “Fetch help. I’ll get Spurgeon.”
“No. You run. I’ll fight the fire.”
“You run faster.
Go.
But show the book to no one. They’ll think we started this.”
And the flames burst from the window frames at both sides of the building.
“It’s inside the walls!” cried Benjamin. “Go, or we’ll never stop it.” He pushed the boy toward the west door. “Go!”
Then Benjamin ran across the library, through the east door, and across the entry. He pounded on Spurgeon’s door, crying, “Fire! Fire!” Then he delivered a kick that slammed the door open. But Spurgeon was not there and his bed was made.
Meanwhile, Caleb was stumbling out the door with the book in his pocket. He screamed, “Fire! Fire!” But he could barely hear his own voice over the wind. He screamed up at Massachusetts Hall, where the lights had been burning earlier, but there was no response. So he ran into the village square and screamed into the blowing snow, “Fire!”
In the library, Benjamin Wedge was running along the shelves, pulling the books out, putting them on the tables, as if he could save them, pile by pile. But the smoke was boiling along the ceiling and filling every space not occupied by fire.
And where was the help?
He ran to the window but could see nothing through the blowing snow. So he grabbed one of the piles of books and rushed for the west door. Then he realized that trying to save five thousand books, pile by pile, was hopeless.
If he could summon help quickly, they might yet save the ancient building. So he dropped the books and ran up the stairs to the long chamber. In the middle of the room, surrounded by the empty beds of the freshmen, a bell rope hung through a hole in the ceiling, and a circular staircase led up to the cupola.
It was from here that a tutor rang the college bell for chapel twice a day, and from here that Benjamin might summon help. He grabbed the rope and pulled, but it was tied somewhere up above him. So he scrambled up the staircase just as the flames broke through the floor of the long chamber and reached upward for the roof beams.
He threw the latch and pushed up the trapdoor. Cold air and snow whipped down at him, cold fresh air and cooling snow. So he climbed up into the cupola and untied the bell rope. He wrapped it in his hands and looked out at the blowing whiteness, then down at the orange flames licking up from under the roof rafters.
Caleb Wedge had run halfway home, screaming out the warning, when the clanging of the bell struck the cold air like a hammer striking glass.
It was said that President Holyoke, lying awake in his Wadsworth House bed, ruminating on the miseries of old age and college presidency, saw an orange glow in the sky and leapt to his feet just as the bell rang out. Others heard a mysterious man running through the streets calling, “Fire!” And still others were awakened by the sight of what looked like burning snowflakes, the embers of Harvard Hall, blowing through the air.
Soon, every man in Cambridge, except for one, was rushing to fight the fire. The tradesmen went, the legislators, the tutors finally awakening in Massachusetts Hall, Reverend Wedge and Reverend Appleton, too. William Brattle came rushing with his slave. Governor Bernard came from Bradish’s Tavern to help work the town fire engine. And President Holyoke lumbered through the snow in greatcoat, boots, and nightshirt.
Caleb Wedge, however, was running away with a book that he believed he had to hide, a book that made him complicit in this disaster. By going through yards, he avoided the men rushing to fight the blaze. He reached the family barn unnoticed and climbed to the hayloft. But before he hid the book, he swung open the loft door and looked up into the sky, boiling pink and orange in the snow.
“Caleb . . . Caleb.” Lydia had come into the backyard and was looking up at him. “What did you do? Why did you start a fire?”
“We didn’t start it.”
“Then go back and help. Go now. Or people will think otherwise.”
When the first firefighters arrived, the bell was still clanging, but the smoke was pouring out of the cupola as though it were a chimney. Then the flames burst up, engulfing the little tower and the shadowed figure ringing the bell.
But there was no time to worry about him, whoever he was. Volunteers dragged the engine through the snowdrifts and called for water, but the nearest pump was frozen, so a bucket brigade was organized and water passed hand over hand from the Common well to the Yard. And one set of hands belonged to Caleb Wedge.
No one slept in Cambridge that night. Those who could fought the fire. Others brought buckets of hot tea and food. Lydia Wedge wrote a poem: