Read Online Harvard Yard by William Martin - Free Book Online

and read the words “‘Transcribed by the author.’ The very devil himself. How much have you read?”
    “A . . . a few pages.”
    Eaton whipped his rod across Isaac’s face. “Don’t play sly with me, boy. You’ve been sitting here reading this play. How many murders have you read of? How many women have been ravished? How many bellowing oaths have you heard from besotted clowns like John Falstaff?”
    “Who, sir?”
    Eaton struck again, on the other cheek. “There will be no wooden theaters in New England. Glorified bear pits filthy with cutpurses and fops and courtiers in codpieces. And there will be no plays in this library, as long as I have breath.”
    “But, sir, Master Harvard wanted his books kept together.”
    Eaton raised the rod again. “Do you dare to question me?”
    “No, sir. I merely remind you.”
    Then Eaton seemed to give more thought to all of this. He opened the book and flipped through it. “His own handwriting. The handwriting of the devil. There be some—misguided sinners—who would pay handsomely for such evil.”
    Isaac picked up the other plays, thinking there might be safety for Shakespeare in numbers. “Here are Plautus and Terence, sir, and the English playwright Alabaster.”
    Eaton snatched at the Alabaster. “ Roxana. ’Twas performed at Trinity College. Trinity men were less worried about such sin than the Puritan scholars of Emmanuel.”
    “And what of these?” Isaac offered the other two books.
    “They’re classical plays. Reading them will enhance a man’s spoken Latin. But this”—he weighted the Shakespeare in his hand—“this must be destroyed.”
    “No!” Without thinking, Isaac grabbed Eaton’s arm and tried to get at the book.
    Eaton must have been expecting an assault by some one of his students. For he was ready and responded with a closed fist.
    Isaac heard his own nose crunching, and he thought, for just an instant, that he saw the Big Dipper, all as he flew backward, banged against the wall, then bounced into Eaton’s fist again. He had been in plenty of scuffles and once had been struck by a falling roof slate on a London street, but never had he experienced the kind of ear-ringing senselessness that now staggered him.
    “You do not strike your master! And you do not question him!” Eaton raised his fist to strike again but stopped in midair, as though a better idea had entered his head. Then he turned and hurried out of the room.
    Isaac was too groggy to notice if Eaton had the book with him, but in an instant, Eaton was back with a cudgel, raised for action.
    Fortunately for Isaac, the front door opened at that moment, and Nathaniel Briscoe appeared in the foyer. “What goes on here, master?”
    “A student is chastised for laying hands upon me. See that the others are in their beds, and lock the trapdoor to their chamber.”
    “But that boy is bleedin’.”
    Only now did Isaac realize that the red droplets striking the floor were falling from his broken nose.
    “Do as you’re told,” commanded Eaton.
    “No. You’ve beat your last student.” And Briscoe threw himself into the room.
    But Eaton was as practiced with the cudgel as he was with the rod, and he delivered a single short stroke that sent Briscoe stumbling back into the foyer. Then he drove his boot into Briscoe’s belly and sent him flying out the front door.
    Through the window, Isaac watched Briscoe land in the dirt, then stagger to his feet and pull out his knife. Isaac should have been watching Eaton, who rounded on him with the cudgel swinging. . . .
    Isaac awoke sometime later. He inhaled and breathed his own blood back into his throat. Where was he? On the floor. On the floor where? He saw shadows dancing on the wall. He heard the shuffling of feet, the groaning of a man . . . Master Briscoe.
    Then he heard Eaton’s voice, “Did you not pull a knife on me? Admit it!” This was followed by the hollow thunk of a walnut cudgel against a man’s head.
    “Sir . . .