chamber pot? Not to mention that we owe him once again for Daniel not being caught up in that mess some time back.”
“No argument there. What could have possessed him to associate with such a pack of wastrels?”
“The fallibility of all mortals, I suppose, though anyone with the least experience in business matters should have known better. But it’s well Richard found out before anyone else did, and him not even a member of the same college, and made Daniel’s ears burn. And so Daniel was where he belonged, attending to his studies, when the inevitable happened. For which reason he was neither sent away nor gated. I don’t imagine he enjoyed it much at the time, though.”
Jeremiah chuckled. “I don’t imagine so, either. But what can we do for Richard here?”
“We can take care of him for what little time he has left, and allow him to die in peace, without anyone battering at him with useless unpleasantness. There’s no more that anyone can do.”
“That has merit, as a Christian act. Still, before bringing in a house guest, especially an invalid, your mother must have her say.”
“True enough. I’ll ask her, then.”
“No, I’ll ask her.”
A step sounded by the office door. “Ask me what, Jeremiah?”
Supper was long past, yet in high summer there was still plenty of light coming through the windows of the bindery. Rant and Thorndike were doing what they could to speed things along, putting the last few signatures of the body of the book into proper order, and passing them to Master Higgs and his two journeymen to sew. Daniel Brantley came through the open door.
Rant looked up from his work. “What word, Daniel?”
“The last sheets of the index are on the press now. They tell me three hours until they’re dry enough to carry here. They advise slip sheets, if they’re to be bound tonight.”
“Good. You’d best wait there for them, lest they wander away in that time and forget to let you back in. I would very much regret Richard passing from us without holding the completed work in his hands and seeing the words he has wrought. I didn’t like the account you gave of his breathing this morning. We leave for your house the moment the work is finished; the moon will be up by then. You have something to study meanwhile, don’t you?”
“Yes, Latin grammar seems to be inexhaustible for that purpose.”
John grinned at the memory. “Good enough. Until your return.”
Daniel left again for the print shop.
It was one thing after another. Inexplicably, two entries in the index had their page numbers transposed. Fortunately, Daniel proofread the thing while the ink was still wet, and the pressman made the correction. Still, it wasted time. The pressman ran off the corrected sheets, several sets for good measure. Daniel was off to the bindery, and the pressman closed up. The first attempt to collate the last signature was done too soon, and it smeared. It was good that there were extra sets, but they had to wait longer for one to dry sufficiently. With everyone tired, Thorndike got the signature collated wrong. The journeyman sewed it, but Master Higgs had seen everything that could possibly go wrong in bookbinding at one time or another in his long life. He caught it before it went into the binding. They took it apart and put it right. Finally it was done, but the sun was already up when Daniel and John Rant reached the Brantley house.
As Daniel led John in, the family was at the breakfast table, except for Daniel’s mother, who was coming down the stairs. Father looked up and asked, “How does he fare, Abigail?”
“Poorly. His breathing hesitates, I can hardly hear it. He was able to take some small beer, but none of the porridge. I take it you’ve brought the book, Daniel?”
John laid down his bag by the door. “I have it.” He reached in and produced it.
“Best you take it to him quickly.” She turned and went back up, the others following.
Richard was propped up, several pillows supporting his back. The morning sun through the window fell where his hands rested on the coverlet. He turned his face toward the door and saw the book in John’s hand. “ ’s that…?”
“Yes, your work, finished and in print. Here it is.” He held it out as Richard raised his hand to take it. Richard got it propped up in his lap, then opened it about three quarters of the way in and flipped pages. The sun fell full on the book.
“Ch’ter eight. Ne’er saw’t in print b’fore.” He began reading. After five or ten minutes his hand began to tremble heavily.
Nathan looked over to John and Daniel, and said, “You go down and have something to eat. I’ll stay and hold the book for him.”
As they left the room, a horn sounded from the river. Father glanced out the window, then turned as well. “I must go down and receive a shipment, it seems.”
Once again the sun was above the horizon. The morning light and the stirrings below awoke James Bright in his chair by the bedside. Everyone who could read Latin had assisted Leamington at one time or another the previous day. It mattered not that Bright had none; he’d taken his turn keeping company with the sick man while he slept.
It came to him as his head cleared that he heard nothing but the birds outside and the family below. He looked, and could see no movement, not even an irregular rise and fall in the man’s chest. He hesitated but a moment, then called out, “Master Brantley! I think he’s gone.”
Nathan was the first up the stairs, but everyone else down to Cook and old Edmund was close behind. He’d seen death enough in the wars. He looked at the gray of Richard’s face, and the unmoving partly open eyelids. It was hardly necessary to feel for a pulse in his neck or listen at his chest, but he did anyway. He straightened up and sighed. “You’re right. He’s dead, Jim. An hour, perhaps.”
“What now, then?”
“He really has no family but the college itself. They’ll see to him. You have a delivery in Cambridge today, if I remember correctly?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
Daniel said, “We can take him in the wagon, then. I’ll go with you and give the news to the dean of the chapel. He has the arrangements in hand, and awaits only the word and Richard himself.”
Nathan asked, “And the book?”
John answered that. “This first copy will go to the university library. All of us who worked on it have autographed the flyleaf, Richard included. I think it will remain in print for a great long while. And now, after I offer a prayer for Richard’s soul, I must gather my things and be on my way to Lynn.”
“You’ll breakfast with us first, certainly. But won’t you stay for the funeral?”
“No, I’m overdue in Grantville. I’ve put them off as long as I decently could, finishing this work. I must meet the faculty as soon as may be, and set to work preparing my lectures.”
Daniel looked at him. “What are you to teach at the high school, then?”
“Not the high school, the college. You haven’t seen John Pell’s latest letter to Dr. Comber, posted in the hall?”
Daniel shook his head. “No.”
“He tells us that the combined faculties have fulfilled the conditions Congress imposed for the founding of the college. They were required to prepare a complete set of examinations in the subjects required for at least one technical degree. They accomplished this for the Bachelor of Science in physics. One Eve Zibarth, a student of the late Charnock Fielder, has passed. Accordingly, the state vocational school was renamed the Thuringia-Franconia State Technical College with a greatly increased curriculum and added faculty. It conferred its first diploma at the founding ceremony.
“As for me, I’m to teach advanced calculus, in Latin. Possibly in English as well, but that’s still to be decided. And I intend to carry my own studies as far as possible. I expect there will be examinations offered by the time I’m ready to sit for them. I hope to return in a few years with a Bachelor of Science in mathematics.”
