The Sot-Weed Factor

by John Barth

  Ebenezer had gone white; his features roiled and boiled about. “Stop!” he gasped.

  “And her most modest countenance—ye must know even more than I what sweet perversions it conceals! That little language that she speaks without her mouth, and her endless tricks to conjure manliness—”

  The company laughed and rolled their eyes at one another. Ebenezer clutched his throat, unable to speak, and buried his face in his arms upon the bar. Though he had stopped drinking, the alcohol still mounted to his head. His palms and forehead sweated, saliva poured into his mouth, and his stomach churned.

  “I scarce need mention that most fetching game of all,” Burlingame went on relentlessly, “the one she plays when other pleasures fail—have ye remarked it? I mean the game she calls Heavenly Twins, or Abel and Jumella, but I call Riding to Gomorrah—”

  “Wretch!” shrieked Ebenezer, and endeavored to fling himself upon his former tutor; but he was held fast by the planters and counseled to keep his wrath in check. His vision swam: his equilibrium left him, and he fell into a fit of retching at the image of what he’d heard. As though from another room he heard Burlingame say, “ ’Tis time to fill the pipes. Take him somewhere to sleep his liquor out, and mind ye treat him well, for he’s a prize.” And then, as two planters bore him from the room: “Sleep ye now, my Laureate; in all thy orifices be my sins remembered!”

  29

  The Unhappy End of Mynheer Wilhelm Tick, As Related to the Laureate by Mary Mungummory, the Traveling Whore o’ Dorset

  BY THE TIME EBENEZER had quite slept off the effects of his rum, the sky over Maryland had begun to lighten. During the night—which happened to be the last in September—the Indian summer had given way to more characteristic autumn weather; indeed, the early morning air was positively cold, and it was the chattering of his teeth, and general shivering, that woke the Laureate.

  “Dear God!” he cried, and sat up at once. He found himself in a sort of corncrib at one end of a stable, presumably behind the ordinary, his legs and trunk buried in the coarsegrained ears. One at a time his woes revealed themselves: he had lost Malden forever and had surely alienated Burlingame as well—whose shocking declarations, the poet now felt certain, had been invented for their retaliatory and sobering effect.

  “I’faith, I had it coming!” he reflected. He was, moreover, in a wretched state of health: his head throbbed from the rum, the light hurt his eyes, and his stomach was still none too strong. The chill air, in addition, had turned his previous indisposition into a real ague: he sneezed and shivered and ran at the nose, and ached in every joint.

  “Lovely treatment for their Laureate!” He resolved to chastise the proprietor of the inn, even sue him if he could find proper grounds, and it was not until he stirred to carry out this resolve that he realized the main cause of his chill: his coat, hat, and breeches were gone, and he lay clothed in hose and drawers only. He could think of nothing to do except appeal for help from the first person to bring a horse out to the stable; in the meantime he was obliged to dig a sort of well into the corncobs, lower himself into it, and pack the rough ears all about him to keep the breeze off.

  “Out on’t!” he swore after an hour had passed. “Where are the man’s customers?”

  He attempted to while away the minutes by composing couplets to flay all innkeepers, from that one who had put Joseph and Mary in the stable at Bethlehem to the one who allowed the Laureate of Maryland to sleep in a corncrib—but his heart was not in his work, and he gave it up when he found himself unable to summon a rhyme for diabolical. He had not eaten since noon of the previous day: as the sun rose, his stomach rumbled. His sneezing grew more severe, and he had nothing more delicate than a corncob on which to wipe his nose. At length, beginning to fear that he would perish of exposure before anyone came to rescue him, he raised a shout for assistance. Again and again he called, to no avail, until at last a large and blowzy woman of middle age, happening to drive her wagon into the yard, heard his cries, reined in her horse, and came over to the stable.

  “Who’s in there?” she demanded. “And what in thunder ails ye?” Her voice was loud and husky, and her proportions—more truly seen now she was standing—prodigious. She wore the ubiquitous Scotch cloth of the working Marylander; her face was red-brown and wrinkled, and her grey hair as tangled as an old brier-thicket. So far from showing alarm at Ebenezer’s outcries, her eyes narrowed with what seemed to be anticipatory mirth, and her half-toothed mouth already smiled.

  “Keep hence!” cried Ebenezer. “Pray come no nearer till I explain! I am Ebenezer Cooke, Poet and Laureate of this province.”

  “Ye do not tell me! Well, I am Mary Mungummory, that once was called the Traveling Whore o’ Dorset, but I don’t boast of’t. Why is’t ye linger in the corncobs, Master Poet? Are ye making verse or making water?”

  “God forfend I’d choose such a sanctuary to piss in,” the poet replied, “and ’twould want a cleverer wight than I to turn a corncob into art.”

  The woman chuckled. “Belike thou’rt playing unnatural games, then?”

  “From what I’ve learnt of Marylanders, I’m not surprised that you should think so. Howbeit, ’tis only your assistance I crave.”

  “Well, now!” Mary laughed immensely and approached the corncrib.

  “Nay, madam!” Ebenezer pleaded. “You’ve misconstrued me: I’ve not a farthing to buy aught of your services.”

  “De’il have your farthings,” the big woman said. “I care naught for farthings till the sun goes down. ’Twill be enough for me to see what a poet looks like.” She climbed up into the corncrib, rumbling with amusement.

  “Stay hence!” Ebenezer raked desperately at additional ears of corn to cover his shame. “ ’Tis but a Christian service I beg of you, madam.” Briefly he explained his plight, and ended by imploring Mary to find him some clothing at once, before the ague carried him off.

  The whole story vastly entertained her, and to the poet’s joy she said, “ ’Tis no chore at all, young man: I’ve a pair or two o’ breeches in my wagon, I’m certain.” She explained that her sobriquet was the pride of her younger years, when she had traveled by wagon from plantation to plantation to practice her trade. Now that she was old, she had turned to procuring for a living; she and her girls made a monthly circuit of every settlement and large plantation in the county, breaking their schedule only for such events as the semi-yearly sessions of the court.

  From her wagon she fetched a pair of buckskin trousers, a shirt of the same material, and Indian moccasins, all of which she flung up to Ebenezer.

  “Here ye be, sir,” she said with a chuckle, and climbed up after. “They belong to a young Abaco gallant name o’ Tom Rockahominy, that lives in Gum Swamp. He had to bid us a quick farewell last night when a troop of Wiwash braves moved in. Put ’em on.”

  “I cannot express my gratitude,” Ebenezer said, waiting for her to leave. “Thou’rt almost the first kind soul I’ve met in Maryland.”

  “Make haste,” the woman urged. “I am dying to see what you brave lads look like, that have love on the brain from one verse to the next.”

  It was only with the greatest difficulty that Ebenezer persuaded her to vacate the corncrib long enough for him to dress. Indeed, his efforts would have been entirely in vain, so determined was she to satisfy her curiosity, had not his extraordinary modesty amused her even more.

  “The plain truth is, madam, I am a virgin, and mean to remain one. No woman in my memory hath ever seen my body.”

  “Dear mother of God!” Miss Mungummory cried. “I will pay ye two hundredweight o’ tobacco to be the first—that is the price of one o’ my girls!”

  But the poet declined her offer, and it was with awe as well as mirth that at last she climbed out of the corncrib.

  “At least ye might tell me somewhat about it, seeing I did ye a service. Haply Nature played the niggard with ye, and thou’rt ashamed?”

  “I am a man like other men,” Ebenezer said
stiffly, “and I quite appreciate my debt to you, Miss Mungummory. ’Tis merely that I am loath to break my personal vows; else out of gratitude I would engage you in your professional capacity.”

  “Ah now, sir, such a boast doth not become ye! A man like others ye may well be, but think not thou’rt a match for my professional capacity!” She laughed so hard that it was necessary for her to sit down on the earthen floor of the stable. “I once knew a salvage down the county, had the fearsomest way with him ye ever could imagine. There was the man for my professional capacity! Belike ye’ve heard what happens to a man when they hang him? Well, sir, the day they hanged poor Charley for the murther of my sister—it makes the tears come yet when I recall the picture of him…”

  “I say now, Miss Mungummory, this is extraordinary!” Ebenezer finished dressing and climbed out of the corncrib. “What was this Indian’s name?”

  But Mary could not reply at once, for the sight of the poet sent her into new flights of hilarity. He was indeed an uncommon spectacle: the Indian garments were too small for his towering frame, and were rendered doubly bizarre by contrast with his English hose.

  “I thought I heard you call him Charley,” Ebenezer said with as much dignity as he could muster, “and I wondered whether I’d not heard something of him before.”

  “Oh, everybody knows of Charley Mattassin,” Mary said when she caught her breath. “One of the folks he murthered was my sister Katy, the Seagoing Whore o’ Dorset.”

  “Marry, this is fantastic! The wretch murthers your sister, and you speak almost endearingly of him! And what is this about a seagoing whore? ’Sdeath!”

  “ ’Tis what they called her, and God rest her jealous soul, I bear no malice toward her, for all she turned my Charley’s head.”

  Nothing would do then but she tell Ebenezer the story of her sister’s murder at the hands of Charley Mattassin—a story which, despite his impatience to find Burlingame, the Laureate consented to hear, both because he owed his rescue to the teller and because he had recognized the murderer as that same incorrigible Indian who had told Father Thomas Smith of Joseph FitzMaurice’s martyrdom. He drew up a wooden box to sit upon and pulled self-consciously at his shirt sleeves as if to stretch them into fit. Mary Mungummory elected to remain seated on the ground, but took the trouble to prop her great back against the wall of the stable before she began her tale.

  “ ’Tis as true a thing of women as of cats,” she asserted, “that whatsoever they are told they may not have, that thing they will move Heav’n and earth to get—particularly where love is concerned. God help the husband that obliges his wife’s least whim: hell be a wittol ere he’s two years wed! As one o’ your poets hath written:

  When old Man takes young Wife to warm his Bower,

  He finds his Cuckold’s Horns among her Dower.”

  “That is well put,” Ebenezer said, “though what connection it might bear to your story I can’t say.”

  “My sister Katy had just such a husband, and schemed his ruin, but was hoist by her own petard.” Mary sighed. “Kate was less a sister than a daughter to me. Our mother walked the streets near Newgate Market, and in thirty years o’ whoring made but two mistakes: the first was to trust a parson, and the second was to trust a physician.”

  Ebenezer expressed surprise at such cynicism in so charitable a soul as that of his benefactress. “Is there no one you trust?”

  Mary shrugged and said, “ ’Tis a question o’ what ye’d trust ’em with, is’t not? In any case I bear ’em no grudge: When a fox hath a hen within his grasp, he will eat her, and when a man hath a woman in his power, he will swive her. My mother was a starving orphan girl that begged about the streets for food. Ere she reached thirteen, so many men had tried to force her that she begged the rector of her parish for sanctuary and was admitted to his kitchen as a scullion. This rector was a proper Puritan, and not an evening passed but he called her to his chambers to harangue her on the Labyrinth of the Heart, and Original Sin, and the Canker in the Rose. To bolster her against the carnal wiles of men he devised a set of spiritual exercises, one of which was to uncover himself in her presence and oblige her to grasp him like a sacred relic, at the same time reciting a prayer against temptations of the flesh. He was much concerned for her virginity, and at the same time doubtful of her strength and honesty; for this reason on Sunday nights she was obliged to confess to him every lustful thought that had crossed her mind through the week, after which he would examine whether she still had her maidenhead as she claimed.”

  “He was a hypocritical wretch!” the poet declared.

  “Haply so,” Mary said indifferently. “He was a wondrous kind and gentle minister, the pride of his parishioners, and raised my mother as a member of his family. Methinks he saw no evil at all in what he did. When Mother was fifteen, and still a virgin, he had so schooled her to resist the fires of lust that they could sit for hours naked on his couch and exchange every manner of caress, talking all the while of the loftiest and most edifying matters. To do this was his pride and his delight, so Mother said, and the virtuous climax of a saintly week.”

  Ebenezer shook his head. “The heart’s a labyrinth indeed!”

  “That it is,” Mary agreed with a laugh, “and anon the wight got lost in’t! The riper grew his charge, the more concerned grew he for her honor. She was such an eager and accomplished pupil, and he had given her such a wondrous education—what a waste if some blackguard forced her against her will, and the joys of swiving turned her head from virtue! This notion so possessed him that he talked of nothing else, and for all my mother’s vows that she loathed no thought like that of fornication, he knew no peace till he devised the most rigorous spiritual exercise of all…”

  “Ah God, don’t tell me—!”

  Mary nodded, shaking with mirth. “ ’Twas but the natural end of all that went before. One Sabbath night whilst they knelt in prayer he went round behind and made a mighty thrust at her; when she cried out he explained ’twas but her final lesson in shackling fleshly passions, and bade her go on with her prayers as if she were in church. Albeit she was much troubled in spirit, and no silly child despite her innocence, she thought it better to oblige him than to seem ungrateful for all his past kindness; therefore she made no farther protest, but only hoped he would take measures to avoid certain consequences, and began the prayer again. Quick as a wink, on the words Which art in Heav’n, he took her maidenhead, and if he’d a mind to commit the sin of Onan for her protection, he had no time, for on the words Thy kingdom come, I was conceived.”

  “I’faith!”

  “The prayer went no farther, for in the cold light that all men look through after swiving, the rector knew the error of his ways and turned my mother out. From there ’twas no great step to harlotry, inasmuch as she was trained already to do the tricks of love as lightly as a deacon trims his candles, with no stirrings o’ the heart. I was born and raised in the alleys o’ Newgate, and ere ever I saw thirteen I had sold my first fruits for two pound sterling to a gentleman of St. Andrew’s Undershaft and was walking the streets with Mother. ’Twas this led her to her second mistake, with the physician—”

  “I doubt not ’tis a tale well worth the hearing,” Ebenezer interrupted, “but I’d liefer you hasten to the matter at hand, else I’ll not have time to hear you out.”

  “As’t please ye,” Mary chuckled. “I’ll say no more than that my sister Katy was the issue of’t, as was I of her first, and my mother died a-bearing. I was but fifteen then myself, and obliged to work the night through to feed the twain of us, but I raised Katy like my own daughter, and when she was old enough to stand the gaff but young enough to whet the jaded lust o’ the wealthy, I made her a fine first match with a Scottish earl that was stopping in London, and prenticed her into the trade. When we learnt what prices were for women in the Plantations, ’twas I that brought us over and set us up in Maryland, where we plied our business with profit for many a year. Yet so far from feeling thankful
for my care, young Kate did e’er abuse and despise me. She was wont to play the lady at every chance, and take my labors as her due, and declare ’twas my fault she was a whore. No man was good enough for Kate, and while ’tis true an air of refinement doth ever raise a harlot’s price, she must never be refractory in the bed; but so capricious was dear Katy, she’d ofttimes lure a man to hire her and then throw his money in his face!

  “Now there lived a wealthy Dutchman on the Little Choptank River, name of Wilhelm Tick. He was a jolly old widower, round as a ball and canny as a Jew, that had got his fortune raising livestock in lieu o’ sot-weed. This Wilhelm had two grown sons named Willi and Peter, the one not worth a farthing and the other not worth a fart, that did naught from day to mortal day but drink Barbados rum and race their horses up and down the roads o’ Dorset. They were great blond hulking wights, the pair of ’em, more crafty than bright, and since they knew they were old Wilhelm’s only heirs, they were content to let him labor to an early grave whilst they spent a part of their inheritance in advance. ’Tis not marvelous to hear that little Kate was a great favorite with these gentlemen, so like were their tempers; devil the bit I warned her they were cruel and shifty louts, that of’t as not drank up her fee before she had a penny of’t, she would none o’ my advice, and gave ’em their will o’ her whene’er they pleased.

  “ ’Twas not till a year of this had passed that I learned her true plan: old Wilhelm, it turned out, knew well his sons were idle spendthrifts, that cared not to fig for all he’d done for them, and after much debate with himself had vowed to change his entire style of life. He resolved to toil no more to increase his wealth but enjoy what he had ere he died, and spend the balance of his years doing the things men do for pleasure.