The Sot-Weed Factor

by John Barth

  “That’s why I’m loath to strike out on the floor”—Ebenezer laughed—“though I came very near to’t this night.”

  Henry laid his hand on the poet’s shoulder, “I know the story, friend, and the whore hath fleeced you for the nonce. But I’ll get your two pounds from her by and by.”

  “No matter,” the poet smiled ruefully. “ ’Twas but a worthless ring I gave her, and I bless the hour she foiled my lecherous plan.” The mention of it recalled his friend’s recent discourse in the dark, and he blushed and laughed again. “ ’Twas for a tease you feigned that passion for a pig, and the rest!”

  “Not a bit of’t,” Henry declared. “That is to say, I have no special love for her, but she is in sooth a tasty flitch, despite her age, and many’s the time—”

  “Stay, you tease me yet!”

  “Think what you will,” said Burlingame. “The fact is, Eben, I share your views on innocence.”

  So surprised and pleased was Ebenezer to hear this confession that he embraced his friend with both arms; but Burlingame’s response was a movement so meaningful that the poet cried out in alarm and retreated at once, shocked and hurt.

  “What I mean to say,” Henry continued pleasantly, “is that I too once clung to my virginity, and for the selfsame cause you speak of in your poem. Yet anon I lost it, and so committed me to the world; ’twas then I vowed, since I was fallen from grace, I would worship the Serpent that betrayed me, and ere I died would know the taste of every fruit the garden grows! How is’t, d’you think, I made a conquest of a saint like Henry More? And splendid Newton, that I drove near mad with love? How did I get my post with Baltimore, and wrap good Francis Nicholson around my finger?”

  “ ’Sheart, you cannot mean they all are—”

  “Nay,” said Henry, anticipating the objection. “That is, they scarcely think so. But ere I was twenty I knew more of the world’s passions than did Newton of its path in space. No end of experimenta lay behind me; I could have writ my own Principia of the flesh! When Newton set his weights and wires a-swing, did they know what forces moved them as he chose? No more than Newton knew, and Portia here—to name no others—what wires of nerve and amorous springs I triggered, to cause whate’er reaction I pleased.”

  The Laureate was sufficiently astonished by these revelations so that before he could assimilate them Henry changed the subject to one more apparently relevant: their separate crossings from Plymouth and their present positions. He had, he declared, successfully deceived Captains Slye and Scurry into believing that he was John Coode, and in that role had accompanied them to Maryland, confirming in the process Coode’s leadership of a sizable two-way smuggling operation: under the rebel’s direction, numerous shipmasters ran Maryland tobacco duty-free to New York, for example, whence Dutch confederates marketed it illegally in Curaçao, Surinam, or Newfoundland; or they would export it to the Barbados, where it was transferred from hogsheads to innocent-looking boxes and smuggled into England; or they would run it directly to Scotland. On return trips they imported cargoes from foreign ports directly into Maryland by the simpler device of bribing the local collectors with barrels of rum and crates of scarce manufactured goods.

  “ ’Tis in this wise,” he said, “Coode earns a large part of the money for his grand seditious plots, though he doubtless hath other revenues as well.” He went on to assert that from all indications the conspirator planned a coup d’état, perhaps within a year, various of Slye’s and Scurry’s remarks left little doubt of that, though they gave no hint of the agency through which the overthrow was to be effected.

  “Then how is it thou’rt here and not on Nicholson’s doorstep?” asked the Laureate. “We must inform him!”

  Burlingame shook his head. “We are not that certain of his own fidelity, Eben, for all his apparent honesty. In any case ’twould scarcely make him more alert for trouble than he is already. But let me finish.” He told how he had surreptitiously disembarked from Slye and Scurry’s ship at Kecoughtan, in Virginia, lest the real Coode be present at their landing in St. Mary’s, and had crossed to Maryland in his present disguise—or guise, if Ebenezer preferred—only a few weeks ago. Inquiring after the Poseidon in St. Mary’s, he had learned, to his horror, of the Laureate’s abduction by pirates.

  “ ’Sbody, how I did curse myself for not having sailed with you!” he exclaimed. “I could only presume the wretches had done you in, for one cause or another—”

  “Prithee, Henry,” Ebenezer interrupted, “was’t you that posed as Laureate, somewhile after?”

  Burlingame nodded. “You must forgive me. ’Twas but your name I used, on a petition: I thought me how you’d died ere you had the chance to serve your cause, and how old Coode would rejoice to hear’t. Then Nicholson declared he meant to move the government from St. Mary’s to Anne Arundel Town, to take the Papish taint off it, and some men in St. Mary’s sent round a petition of protest. I saw Coode’s name on’t and so affixed yours as well, to confound him.”

  “Dear friend!” Tears came to Ebenezer’s eyes. “That simple act was near the death of me!”

  Astonished, Burlingame asked how, but Ebenezer bade him conclude his narration, after which he would tell the story of his own eventful passage from Plymouth to where they now sat in the straw.

  “There’s little more to tell,” Henry said. “They had put your trunk away against the time when ’twill go up for lawful sale, but I contrived to gain possession of your notebook—”

  “Thank Heav’n!”

  “How many tears I shed upon your poems! I have’t in the house this minute, but I little dreamed I’d ever see its owner again.”

  While still in St. Mary’s, he said, he heard that Coode had learned of the grand deception and was so enraged that he had barred Slye and Scurry from the lucrative smuggling run to punish them. In fact, fearful of traps set by the unknown spy, Coode had been obliged to suspend virtually all smuggling operations in the province for a while: His Majesty’s tobacco revenues had seldom been so high.

  “I knew the blackguard must needs find some new income,” Henry went on, “and so I followed him as close as e’er I could. In this wise I discovered Captain Mitchell: he is one of the chiefest agents of sedition, and his house is oft the rebels’ meeting place.”

  “I’m not a whit surprised, from what I’ve heard,” said Ebenezer, and then suddenly blanched. “But i’God, I gave him my name, and told him the entire story of my capture!”

  Burlingame shook his head in awe. “So he told me when I came in, and thou’rt the luckiest wight in all of Maryland, I swear. He thought the twain of you mad and took you in for his dinner guests’ amusement. Tomorrow he’d have turned you out, and if he dreamed for a minute you were really Eben Cooke, ’twould be the death of you both, I’m certain.”

  Returning to his story, he told of his investigation of Mitchell, which had produced two useful pieces of information: the man was instrumental in some sinister new scheme of Coode’s, and he had one son, Timothy, whom he’d left behind in England four years previously to complete his education, and who was therefore unknown in Maryland.

  “I resolved at once to pose as Mitchell’s son: I had seen his portrait hanging in the house, and ’twas not so far unlike me that four years of studious drinking couldn’t account for the difference. E’en so, for prudence’s sake, I forged Coode’s name on a letter to Mitchell, which said Son Tim was now in Coode’s employ and was coming home to do a job of work for’s father. ’Tis e’er Coode’s wont to send a cryptic order, and de’il the bit you question what it means! I followed close on the letter and declared myself Tim Mitchell, come from London. It mattered not a fart then whether the Captain believed me to be his son or Coode’s agent: when he questioned me I smiled and turned away, and he questioned me no more. Yet what the plot is, I’ve yet to learn.”

  “Mayhap it hath to do with opium,” Ebenezer suggested, and to Burlingame’s sharp look said in defense, “ ’Twas what he ruined the swine-gir
l with, and murthered his wife as well.” Briefly he recounted Susan Warren’s tale, including the wondrous coincidence of Joan Toast’s presence and Susan’s noble sacrifice to save her. All through the little relation, however, Burlingame frowned and shook his head.

  “Is’t aught short of miraculous?” the poet demanded.

  “ ’Tis too much so,” said Henry. “I’ve no wish to be o’er-skeptical, Eben, or to disappoint your hopes; the wench herself is ruined with opium, I grant, and it may be all she says is true as Scripture. But yonder by the river stands a pair of gravestones, side by side; the one’s marked Pauline Mitchell and the other Elizabeth Williams. And I swear the name of Joan Toast hath not been mentioned in this house—at least in my hearing. The only wench I’ve known him to woo is Susie Warren herself, that we all have had our sport with now and again. Nor have I seen a phial of opium hereabouts, albeit he may well feed her privily. Methinks she heard of Joan Toast from your valet—his tongue is loose enough. As for the rest, ’twas but a tale to wring some silver from you; when it failed she feigned that sacrifice you spoke of, in hopes of doing better the second time. Didn’t you say she was in the kitchen with your valet all through supper?”

  “So she was,” Ebenezer admitted. “But it seems to me she…”

  “Ah well,” laughed Henry, “thou’rt no more gulled than Susan, in the last account, and if Joan Toast’s here we’ll find her. But tell me now of your own adventures: i’faith, you’ve aged five years since last I saw you!”

  “With cause enough,” sighed Ebenezer, and though he was still preoccupied with thoughts of Joan Toast, he related as briefly as he could the tale of his encounter with Bertrand aboard the Poseidon, the loss of his money through the valet’s gambling, his ill-treatment at the hands of the crew, and their capture by Thomas Pound. At every new disclosure Burlingame shook his head or murmured sympathy; at the mention of Pound he cried out in amazement—not only at the coincidence, but also at the implication that Coode had enlisted the support of Governor Andros of Virginia, by whom Pound was employed to guard the coast.

  “And yet ’tis not so strange, at that,” he said on second thought. “There’s no love lost ’twixt Andros and Nicholson any more. But fancy you in Pound’s clutches! Was that great black knave Boabdil still in his crew?”

  “First mate,” the poet replied with a shudder. “Dear Heav’n, what horrors he wrought aboard the Cyprian! The very wench I spoke of, that I climbed to in the mizzen-rigging, he had near split like an oyster. How it pleased me that she gave the fiend a pox!”

  “You had near got one yourself,” Burlingame reminded him soberly. “And not just once, but twice. Did ye see the rash on Susan Warren’s skin?”

  “But you yourself—”

  “Have had some sport with her,” Henry finished. “But I know more sports than one to play with women.” Awed, he rubbed his chin. “I have heard before of whore-ships, and thought ’twas a sailors’ legend.”

  Ebenezer went on to tell of the collusion between Pound and Captain Meech of the Poseidon, postponing mention of John Smith’s secret diary until later, and concluded with the story of their execution, survival, and discovery of Drakepecker and Quassapelagh, the Anacostin King.

  “This is astounding!” Henry cried. “Your Drakepecker is an African slave, I doubt not, but this Quassapelagh—D’you know who he is, Eben?”

  “A king of the Piscataways, he said.”

  “Indeed so, and a disaffected one! Last June he murthered an English wight named Lysle and was placed in the charge of Colonel Warren, in Charles County, that was still a loyal friend of Coode’s. This Warren set the salvage free one night, for some queer cause or other, and was demoted for’t, but they never saw Quassapelagh after that. The story was that he’s trying to inflame the Piscataways against Nicholson.”

  “ ’Twere a dreadful thing, if true,” the Laureate said, “but I must vouch for the man himself, Henry; I would our Maryland planters had half his nobility. Yet stay, tell me this ere I say another word: what have you learned of Sir Henry Burlingame, your ancestor?”

  Burlingame sighed. “No more than I knew in Plymouth. Do you recall I said the Journal was parceled out to sundry Papist Smiths? Well, the first of these was Richard Smith, right here in Calvert County, that is Lord Baltimore’s surveyor general. As soon as I was established here and had revealed myself to Nicholson, I set out to collect the various portions, so that Coode and all his cohorts could be prosecuted. But when I reached Dick Smith and gave him the Governor’s password—”

  “He told you Coode had long since got his portion by some ruse,” Ebenezer laughed.

  “ ’Tis a thin joke, ’sheart! Dick Smith had tried to help some Papist friends of his by making ’em deputy surveyors, and after Governor Copley died, Coode saw his chance to raise a cry of Popery and turn Smith’s property inside out. How did you hear of it?”

  Ebenezer withdrew from his pocket the few folded pages of the diary that remained to him. “How should I not learn something of intrigue myself, with such a marvelous tutor? You’ll see naught here to read, but these are pages from the document you speak of.”

  Burlingame snatched them eagerly and held them to the lamplight. “Ah, Christ!” he cried. “There’s scarce a word preserved!”

  “Not of the Assembly Journal,” Ebenezer agreed. He told how he had stolen the papers from Pound and carried them with him off the shallop’s plank. “ ’Tis Maryland’s ill luck we’ve lost the evidence,” he concluded, and laughed again at Burlingame’s chagrin. “Cheer yourself, Henry! Do you think I’d keep such a prize two minutes ere I read the recto through?”

  “Praise God! You’ve learned to tease as well!”

  Without more ado, though the night was nearly done, Ebenezer described the secret history of Captain John Smith’s voyage up the Chesapeake and narrated, with some embarrassment, the entire tale of Hicktopeake’s voracious queen.

  “This is too excellent!” cried Henry at the end of it. “We know Sir Henry came alive with Smith from the town of Powhatan and went with him up the Bay. What’s more, from all we’ve heard, each loathed the other and wished him ill, and there’s no word of Burlingame in Smith’s Generall Historie—d’you suppose Smith did him in?”

  “Let’s hope not, till Sir Henry sired a son,” Ebenezer said. “At best he could be no closer than a grandsire to yourself.” He then recalled what Meech had proposed to Pound—that if he were Baltimore he’d divide the Journal among several colleagues named Smith. “I’d have thought of it sooner were I not near dead for want to sleep; belike Pound made no mention of’t, Coode was so wroth with him.”

  “Or belike he did, to help redeem himself.” Burlingame stood up and stretched. “In any case, we’d best go fetch the rest without delay. Let’s sleep now for a while, and come morning we’ll make our plans.”

  The Laureate’s desire for sleep overcame his trepidations regarding Captain Mitchell, and they returned through the slumbering house to the bed-chamber where he had so nearly lost his chastity some hours earlier. Bertrand was not there.

  “ ’Twas your Bertrand I saw first,” Henry said, “and scarce believed my eyes! When he told me you were here I sent him off to sleep with our servants, so that you and I could talk in peace. In the morning he can go to St. Mary’s in a wagon with one of our men and claim your trunk.”

  “Aye, very good,” Ebenezer said, but he had only half heard Henry’s words. Not long before, in the barn, he had been oddly disturbed by his friend’s mention of Bertrand, without quite knowing why; now he remembered what the valet had told him at their first encounter aboard the Poseidon, nearly half a year past: of the several meetings between valet and tutor not reported by Burlingame, and of Burlingame’s liaison with Anna—which latter memory, understandably, was most unpleasant in the light of what he had just learned about his friend’s amorous practices.

  Burlingame set down the shaded lantern and began undressing for bed. “The wisest thing then would be to h
ave him ferry the trunk right across the Bay to Malden. ’Tis but a matter of—”

  “Henry!” the Laureate broke in.

  “What is’t? Why are you so alarmed?” He laughed. “Get on, now, ’tis not long till dawn.”

  “Where is my commission from Lord Baltimore?”

  For a moment Burlingame looked startled; then he smiled. “So, your servant told you I have it?”

  “Nay,” Ebenezer said sadly. “Only that I had it not.”

  “Then doubtless he forgot to tell you ’twas from him I had to buy it,” Henry said testily, “with a five-pound bribe, and merely to safeguard it till Maryland? How I wish old Slye and Scurry had caught the wretch while ’twas still in his possession! Don’t you understand, Eben? That paper was the warrant for its bearer’s death! E’en so, your loyal valet made him a fair copy, telling me ’twas but to boast of in London—I little dreamed he’d steal your place on the Poseidon!”

  He laid his hand on the poet’s arm. “Dear boy, ’tis late in the day for quarrels.”

  But Ebenezer drew away. “Where is the paper hidden?”

  Burlingame sighed and climbed into the bed. “In the ocean off Bermuda, forty fathoms deep.”

  “What?”

  “ ’Twas the one time Slye and Scurry played me false. I heard them plotting to search my cabin for jewels, that they thought the king of France had given Coode; I had one hour to draw up papers with Coode’s name and throw away all others. Nay, don’t look so forlorn! I’ve long since writ you out another, in hopes you were alive.”

  “But how can you—”

  “As his Lordship’s agent in such matters,” said Burlingame. He got out of bed and with a key from his trousers’ pocket unlocked a small chest in one corner of the room. With the aid of the lantern he selected one from a number of papers in the chest and presented it for Ebenezer’s inspection. “Doth it please you?”