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lay moaning until the third day, when the buboes erupted on his neck and under his arms. They began as small black blisters, swelled quickly to the size of hazelnuts, and within a few hours were as big as hen’s eggs. Then they split and began to ooze black blood, and this boy with his whole life before him cried out for death.
    Peter, the youngest, went feverish, erupted, and died—all in a single afternoon.
    John and his mother rushed from misery to misery, from the third floor to the master bed to the great room, giving such care as they could—a wet cloth to cool a burning forehead, a clean shirt to cover a suppurating body, a prayer to calm a terrified spirit—and all the while, they watched one another to see which of them would fall next.
    By the third day, Katherine Rogers Harvard had lost three sons and a daughter, all of them now laid out on the table in the great room. She herself had fallen into a pit of grief that left her wordless and motionless on a chair in the midst of her dead children. And neither urging nor prayer nor imprecation from John could induce her to mount the stairs and speak a final time to the man she loved.
    So it was left for John to comfort his father, to pray with him, to read Scripture to him, to give him drafts of ale to cool his fever, and finally to watch the buboes erupt and grow, bringing with them their unconquerable agony.
    By the morning of the fourth day, Robert Harvard was a living corpse, putrefying through the open black sores at his neck and groin. Yet he raised his head from the pillow, looked about the room with eyes suddenly clear, and called for Katherine as calmly as if he were calling for a cup of broth.
    “Father,” said John, who had spent the night at the bedside, “she cannot come.”
    “Is she . . . is she dead, too?”
    “No . . . but—”
    “She must come then. I must tell her that it still be summer.”
    “Yes, Father. ’Tis August. ’Tis still summer.”
    “No . . . summer . . . soft summer . . . temperate summer . . . ’tis a metaphor . . . or simile . . . ’tis . . .” He knitted his brow, as if a new idea had come to him, something to which he must give breath. “Johnny—”
    “Aye.”
    “Me books.” He looked toward the volumes on a shelf by the window.
    “Yes, Father . . . your Bible, your Homer . . . a man will be known by his books. ’Tis what you’ve always said.”
    “ All me books,” said Robert with a sudden vehemence that made him seem to rise from the pillow like a demon in bloody bedclothes. “I want you to keep ’em all.”
    “Yes, Father.”
    “Even . . . even Will Shakespeare’s book.”
    “ Love’s Labours Won ?”
    And Robert Harvard was wracked by a spasm of pain that caused his whole body to shake. When it passed he said, “I . . . I know your heart. That you would go to the college at Emmanuel, that you hold with them who would purify the church. . . .”
    “Yes, Father.”
    “Rector Morton be a good friend, a good man, a learned man . . . I be a simple butcher. But I tell you . . . you must cherish what Will give us.”
    “Yes, Father.”
    “Cherish joy. Know . . . know love’s labors . . . in book and life.” The father grabbed for the son’s collar, pulled him close, and whispered, “Give . . . me . . . your . . . word.”
    The stench of his breath was like rotting meat, but John did not pull away.
    He grasped his father’s hand in both of his and said, “My word.”
    And Robert Harvard sank back onto the pillow, back into himself, back toward some inner peace. Then he lay silent. . . .
    John sat for some time contemplating the body. Then he covered his father with the bloody sheet and spent several minutes more contemplating the shelf of books.
    A man, he knew, would be known by his books.

iii
    Twelve years later, a small ship called the Hector pounded west into the Atlantic.
    John Harvard, master of arts, Emmanuel College, the last of his family line, heir to the Queen’s Head Inn and