Carry On, Mr. Bowditch

After his conversation with Mr. Ward, Nat closes the chandlery and returns to his room in Mr. Hodges’ home. Suddenly, he realizes that he’s about to lose this, too; an apprentice lives with his master. He will have to move in with Mr. Ward. But while he struggles to accept this fact, Mr. Hodges knocks on the door. He knows Mr. Ward already spoke to Nat, but he has one other piece of business with the young man: he invites Nat to continue living in his home. Nat readily accepts, grateful to keep his view of the harbor.

One day in late July, Lizza stops by the chandlery to visit Nat. He tells her that she’s gotten twice as pretty each year since she was eight and they moved back to Salem. She laughs over his arithmetical compliment, calculating that she’s 22 times as pretty. But Nat corrects her figuring, explaining that it doubles exponentially, so now she’s 2,048 times as beautiful. But despite her beauty, Nat notes, she looks concerned. She explains that she’s worried about Mary, who loves David Martin but refuses to marry him because he’s a sailor. Nat concedes that a life at sea is hard and dangerous; the newspaper recently reported that in nearby Marblehead, 1,234 of 6,000 residents are widows and orphans thanks to the sea. Lizza wants Nat to talk sense into Mary; despite the dangers, she loves David and Lizza wants them to marry.

Nat goes to see Mary that night. She insists she won’t marry a sailor, and Nat agrees with her, then promises to get David Martin to leave her alone by interesting him in another girl. When Mary reacts with jealousy, Nat points out how deeply she cares for David and pointedly suggests that she knows what she really wants to do. Soon after, Mary and David get married. Afterwards, as their friends and family celebrate with them in their new home, Lizza introduces Nat to Elizabeth Boardman, a bright, mop-headed girl of 11. Elizabeth tells Nat he seems older than his years because of his brains. When she runs off to talk to other guests, Lizza tells Nat that Elizabeth has “eyes in the back of her heart” that make her wiser than her years.

Nat’s room seems especially empty that night after he leaves his family and although he tries to study, he can’t make sense of the words on the page. He goes to the window and looks up at the stars, remembering his mother’s long-ago words. He considers the heavens until he feels that he can get back to his work.

The months pass and summer turns to fall and winter. Reverend Dr. Prince stops by the chandlery regularly to check in on Nat’s progress through Newton. During one of his visits, Elizabeth brings Nat an invitation from Lizza for a surprise party. Dr. Prince asks Elizabeth why Nat reads Latin, and she seriously considers the question before answering that he works so hard at his studies to keep his active brain quiet. Her answer so surprises the clergyman that he nearly forgets the reason he came. As he leaves, he distractedly asks Nat to visit him the next day after the chandlery closes.  

When Nat visits Reverend Dr. Prince, the clergyman explains that he and the other members of the private Salem Philosophical Library have agreed to extend him a free membership. They started the collection with a bounty of books seized many years ago from a British ship by the Pilgrim and rescued from Dr. Stearns by the library’s members. Nat selects a book to check out, then hurries home to write a note to Lizza. He’s collecting on his expectation after all, he tells her. He plans to pass it to her secretly at the party.

But suddenly, Nat hears a commotion below. David has come to fetch him to tend to Lizza, who fell on some stairs and gravely injured herself. She dies several days later with Nat holding her hand. The night after her funeral, Nat walks to the wharf and tears his note into tiny pieces which he scatters on the water. Tears blur his vision as he turns his eyes towards the sky. Nat cries out that he sees no help in the stars. Then he hears David calling out his name—Mary sent her husband to check on her brother. Nat bitterly tells David to report that he’s gone home to study Latin, and he does, although it costs him a lot of time and much effort to concentrate on it.

Early the next morning after a long and sleepless night, Elizabeth Boardman bursts through the chandlery door while Nat tries to coax its fire back to life. He worries that she wants to talk about Lizza, a topic he’s not yet ready to touch. Instead, she hands him a slightly dusty package that she smuggled out of her home. She leaves before Nat collects his wits enough to open it. It’s a book—in Latin.