The Sot-Weed Factor

by John Barth

  “Be’t thy pitiful straits or thy craven neck,” the poet responded, “I’ll do my grasping without thy help. As for the swine-girl—” He hesitated, thought better of announcing his marriage, and demanded instead that the servant begin with his arrival in St. Mary’s City nearly three months previously and account for his subsequent behavior in a fashion as brief and clear as such a concatenation of chicaneries might permit.

  “My one wish is to do that very thing, sir,” Bertrand protested. “ ’Tis that first pose alone I beg forgiveness for, and thought to whiten by this preamble—the rest is deserving more of favor than reproof, and I shall lay it open to ye as readily as I did to your poor sister, and would to Master Andrew himself, that first sent me to ye in Pudding Lane for no other purpose in the wide, wicked world—”

  “Than what?” Ebenezer cried. “Than stealing my name and office to do a Councillor out of his daughter? May the murrain carry me off if I do not flay an honest English sentence from your hide!”

  “—than advising and protecting ye,” Bertrand said, and when his master made as if to spring upon him he retreated to the other side of the bed and hastened to tell his story. The revelation that they were in Maryland instead of Cibola, he explained, and consequently that he was no longer a deity but only a common servant, had so filled him with dejection that when on orders from Timothy Mitchell he had gone with another servant to fetch Ebenezer’s trunk, he could not resist the temptation to pose as poet laureate, only for the term of the errand. He had therefore declared to his companion that he himself was in reality Ebenezer Cooke and the man at Captain Mitchell’s his servant, and that they had exchanged roles temporarily as a precautionary measure. However, he had continued, their reception in the Province had been cordial enough, and the disguise was no longer necessary. They had then fetched the trunk in the name of Ebenezer Cooke, and after securing the night’s lodgings for master and man, Bertrand had struck out on his own to make the most of his short-term office.

  “All went well,” he sighed, “until the hour I left Vansweringen’s place, up the street. The sun was still high, and I was somewhat dagged with rum; whilst I stood a moment to take my bearings a fine young lady comes a-weeping up pretty as ye please, throws her arms about my neck, and cries out ‘Darling Ebenezer!’ ’Twas Lucy Robotham, that same tart that plagued me so on the Poseidon and that had thought me long since murthered by the pirates!”

  For old times’ sake, Bertrand went on, he had bought dinner at Vansweringen’s for Miss Robotham, whose father was in St. Mary’s to sit with the Council, and when she removed her coat to eat he had observed, to his surprise, that she was pregnant. Upon his interrogating her (Ebenezer winced at the thought) she burst into fresh tears and confessed that on reaching Maryland she had been deceived into marrying the Reverend Mr. George Tubman, the same whose speculative talents had impoverished half the Poseidon’s passengers, and had been by him impregnated in the rectory of Port Tobacco parish, only to learn not long after that their marriage was illegal, the Reverend Mr. Tubman having neglected to divorce his first wife in London. Colonel Robotham had arranged at once for annulment of the marriage and had further applied to the Bishop for proceedings of suspension against both Tubman and the Reverend Mr. Peregrine Cony, who he averred had knowingly licensed his colleague’s bigamous union, but the Colonel’s influence in the Province had as yet been unable to provide another husband for Lucy or retard the growing signs of her condition, which along with the reputation she had got for promiscuity had all but removed her from the gentlemen’s list of eligible maidens.

  “I saw then the reason for her joy at finding me alive,” the valet said, “and I made a great show of sympathy, albeit I’d not have married her as Bertrand Burton, much less as Eben Cooke! A house already made, as the saying goes, but a wife to make. Yet I kept my feelings hid, nor showed by word or deed that I had grasped her scurvy trick. On the contrary, I played the gallant Laureate with right good will, the better to learn what else the wench had up her sleeve.”

  “And so resume where you had left off on the Poseidon, I doubt not.”

  Bertrand raised his finger. “I’ll not deny we had some sport ere the day was done,” he said righteously. “I had been the De’il’s own time ’twixt drinks, as’t were and longed to see again that famous emblem Lucy boasts. ’Tis all in freckles, b’m’faith, and—”

  “I know, I know,” Ebenezer said impatiently. “ ’Tis the likeness of Ursa Major, and the rest.”

  Bertrand clucked his tongue before the memory. “Besides, there is an uncommon pleasure in lasses lately got with child—”

  “Nay, i’God, you sicken me!”

  “In any case,” the valet finished with a shrug, “I reasoned ’twas no more than the doxy’s due, that had done ye out o’ your money with her crooked odds and wagers.”

  “I say!” cried Ebenezer. “Speaking of wagers—”

  “Say no more,” Bertrand interrupted with a smile. “The selfsame query was on my mind from the instant I beheld her, and directly the time befitted, I asked her straight who had won that last monster of a ship’s pool, wherein I’d wagered the whole o’ Cooke’s Point to regain the money I had lost before. At first she’d not reply, but when I offer’d her my belt athwart her hams—as I was wont to swat sweet Betsy what times she’d tease—why, then I wrung the truth from her, which was, that she herself, by collusion with Tubman and that whoreson Captain Meech, had won the prize!”

  “I’ Christ!”

  The winnings, Bertrand went on, had then been divided between the three partners, and Tubman had increased his share by the impregnation and marriage (respectively, it now turned out) of Miss Robotham. As soon as the conveyances of property were effected he had disclosed the bigamous nature of the match, hoping thereby to rid himself of the girl; but he had reckoned without the ire of his new father-in-law, who had promptly exposed the business and taken the legal action mentioned earlier.

  “But what of the property?” Ebenezer demanded. “Doth Tubman hold title to it yet?”

  The valet smiled. “To the most he did, at the time I speak of, and to the most he doth yet, for aught I know to the contrary. But aside from my own wager, all his winnings were in cash or chattels, such as horses, pirogues, and hogsheads o’ sot-weed. Cooke’s Point was the only proper estate he won—”

  “God curse you for wagering it!”

  Bertrand raised his eyebrows. “Haply ’twas not such a folly after all, sir. The wretch had ne’er before won such a prize, and more especially as he thought us murthered by the pirates, he was afraid to press his claim, for fear the courts would learn the evil of his ways.”

  “ ’Twould but improve his chances if they did,” Ebenezer said, but there was relief in his tone. “An honest wight fares ill in a Maryland court. Go on.”

  In consequence, Bertrand declared, the Reverend Mr. Tubman had contented himself with what winnings he could collect as gentleman’s debts from the bettors themselves, out of court, and in an effort to appease Colonel Robotham’s wrath on the occasion of the annulment, had reconveyed to Lucy his note of title to Cooke’s Point, not many days prior to her encounter with the note’s original author.

  “She was as doubtful as Tubman how the courts might rule on’t,” said the valet. “ ’Twas her hope I’d make over the deed to her as a gentleman ought, particularly in the light of her condition, but when I gave no signs of such intent, she could no more than weep and threaten.”

  His next move, he explained, had been to send the other servant back to Captain Mitchell as Timothy had directed and make plans to ferry himself and his freight to Malden. However, reckoning that his master would allow for unforeseen delays and complications in securing and transporting the trunk, he had lingered another day in St. Mary’s as the guest of Colonel Robotham, and another and another after that, loath to relinquish the charms of office and Lucy’s desperate favors. During this period his host and mistress had alternately cajoled and threatened hi
m: their primary goal was to unite by marriage the house of Cooke and Robotham, and solve thereby all their problems with one stroke; alternatively they vowed to carry the matter into court, despite the uncertain legality of their claim, in hopes that with Cooke’s Point for dowry even a pregnant tart could find a willing spouse of decent lineage. But since neither party could bargain from a position of clear strength, the argument was confined to subtle hints and equivocal negations, and Bertrand, having dispatched the trunk some days before, had enjoyed a week of such leisurely diversions and delights as most valets taste only in their dreams.

  At week’s end, however, he had heard from an unimpeachable barman in Vansweringen’s that a man called Eben Cooke, on the Eastern Shore, had signed over his whole estate to a common cooper—whether in some saintly spirit of justice, in satisfaction of some dark and sinister obligation or merely in error was much debated—and that, the conveyance being apparently legal, Cooke himself had fallen mortally ill and was being cared for on his lost estate, in return for marrying the cooper’s whore of a daughter.

  “This news near felled me,” the valet said. “No man doubted I was really Eben Cooke—for ye must grant, sir, whate’er thy principles, I’ve a knack for playing poet—but they expected me to fly to Dorset at once and turn both the cooper and the rascally impostor out. What’s more, ’twas terrible to hear what had befallen ye, and more terrible yet to think of ye lying at death’s door, as’t were, and obliged to marry some unwashed coney of a serving maid—”

  Ebenezer held up his hand. “Forego thy wondrous pity,” he said. “I’m sure it soured your dinner at the Colonel’s and made you a zestless lover for Miss Lucy.”

  “It did no less,” Bertrand admitted. “Though of course I durst not give the slightest outward sign of’t.”

  “Of course not.”

  Instead, declared Bertrand, he had confessed to Colonel Robotham that the same traitors to the King who had arranged to have him kidnaped and murdered by pirates were attempting to work his ruin in the Province, lest by the power of his pen he expose their seditious plots to the light of day. It was in anticipation of their schemes that he had sent his man before him to reconnoiter in the guise of Laureate—that same amanuensis who had served him thus, unasked, on earlier occasions—little dreaming that the stratagem would so misfire. The Colonel then, eager to oblige his guest in any way he could, offered to intercede at once with Governor Nicholson, who had a perfect hatred even of debate, to say nothing of insurrection; but Bertrand proposed a quite different plan of attack, so agreeable to the Robothams that as one they laid down their euchre-hands and tearfully embraced him.

  “I wait in mortal fear to hear it,” said the poet.

  “ ’Twas as simple as it was effective,” the valet sighed, “—or so it seemed at the time I hatched it. I proposed to keep the matter entre nous—”

  “Entre nous? Marry, thou’rt learning to scheme in French!”

  Bertrand blushed. “ ’Tis a word Lucy uses whene’er she means to have profit at some other wight’s expense. My plan, I say, was to keep the matter entre nous until I knew more of your plight and how I best might aid ye; I saw no merit in discovering my true name and rank to the Robothams, nor in risking my disguise by taking my troubles to the Governor. I declared I’d given ye the power of attorney, the better to carry out your pose at Laureate, and that this power lent the cooper’s title to Cooke’s Point a certain slender substance, if ’twere contested in a biased court; for albeit the grant was made by a false Laureate (so I told the Colonel), yet the impostor was my legal agent and proxy, empowered to do my business in my name.”

  “I swear, thou’rt as grand a casuist as Richard Sowter!” Ebenezer said. Bertrand beamed.

  “ ’Tis but the giblet-sauce and dressing to what followed, sir: on the heels of’t I proposed to marry Mistress Lucy on the instant and offered as my reason that, though her claim as such had no more law in’t than a bumswipe, yet ’twas prior to any the traitors might shark up; if I was to support it as author of the note, husband of the claimant, and bona fide Laureate o’ Maryland, ’twould cany the day in the Devil’s own assizes!”

  “Marry come up!” the poet exclaimed. “You meant to steal my estate to go with my name and office!”

  “ ’Twas stolen already,” Bertrand reminded him. “I meant to steal it back to its rightful owner, if I could, whereupon I’d declare my actual name, and Lucy Robotham could go hang for all she’d be my legal wife!” The Colonel, he added, had been pleased with this proposal, and Lucy more than pleased; the marriage had been solemnized at once and consummated beyond cavil, and although he had not been able, as he had hoped, to enter on Lucy’s note a clause of relinquishment in favor of her husband, nonetheless he considered Cooke’s Point saved.

  “I am staggered by this duplicity!” Ebenezer said. “Where is this miserable creature you’ve deceived, and her poor father? How is’t thou’rt cowering in this tavern instead of lording it at Malden?”

  “Colonel Robotham hath been on business up the country these two months,” Bertrand sighed, “and his daughter hath been with him at my behest. I declared she was in danger from the traitors and must stay with her father at least till her confinement; but the truth of’t was, I had been living at the Colonel’s whole expense and would be revealed an arrant pauper the day he left. ’Twas my good fortune Lucy had a few pounds saved, that she entrusted to my keeping: ’twas just enough to buy my food and drink, and pay the hire of this verminous chamber.” In vain, he said, had he endeavored to learn more news of Ebenezer’s plight and to set in motion the legal strategy he had devised: his hands were tied for lack of money and influence until the Colonel’s return.

  “And in any case, the game is o’er,” he concluded gloomily. “Colonel Robotham will return next week to Talbot, and if he doth not learn the truth from your father, he must guess it when he sees the state I’m in. Or else Master Andrew himself will search me out here when he learns thou’rt not at Malden—I had ne’er escaped him this last time had your sister not forewarned me he was coming—”

  “Where did you find Anna, and where is she now?”

  “ ’Twas she found me,” said Bertrand, “the very day she stepped ashore in Maryland. She came to find you in this room, where all St. Mary’s knows the Laureate hath been quartered, and at first I scarcely knew her, she hath aged so.”

  Ebenezer winced.

  “She was as taken aback at sight of me as was I at sight of her. I told her what I knew of your straits, without mentioning my own, and for all I begged her not to rush in recklessly, there was naught for’t but she cross the Bay that afternoon, traitors or no, and either nurse ye back to health or be murthered at your graveside.”

  “Dear, darling Anna!” Ebenezer cried, and blushed when he recalled Burlingame’s discourse of the morning. “What happened then?”

  “She found passage in a sloop for the Little Choptank River,” said Bertrand. “I spoke to her captain later below stairs, and he told me she’d gone ashore at a place called Tobacco Stick, his closest anchorage to Cooke’s Point. Neither I nor any soul else, to my knowledge, hath farther news of her than that.”

  “Merciful God! No farther news?” A thought occurred to him, so monstrous that the gorge rose in his throat: William Smith was most certainly angry over his flight from Malden in violation of his indenture-bond, and Joan Toast more wrathful still at having been abandoned; suppose poor Anna had fallen into their clutches, and they had taken revenge on her for her brother’s deeds!

  “Heav’n save her!” he gasped to Bertrand, rising weakly from the chair. “They might have forced her into whoredom! This very minute, for aught we know, some greasy planter or great swart salvage—”

  “Hi, sir! What is’t ye say?” Bertrand ran alarmed to pound his master on the back, who had fallen into a fit of retching.

  “Hire us a boat,” Ebenezer ordered, as soon as he caught his breath. “Well set out for Malden this instant, and hang the c
onsequences!” Without mentioning his desertion of Joan Toast, he explained as briefly as he could to the astonished servant the fallen state of Malden, the circumstances of his departure, his rescue by Henry Burlingame, the enormous conspiracy afoot in the Province, and the particular danger awaiting Anna whether or not Andrew arrived before her at Cooke’s Point. “I’ll tell you more the while we’re crossing,” he promised. “We daren’t lose a minute!”

  “I know a captain we might hire,” Bertrand ventured, “and I’d as well be murthered by your cooper as by Colonel Robotham when he finds me, but in truth I’ve no more than a shilling left of Lucy’s money…”

  His anger at the man fired anew by this reminder, Ebenezer was ready to chide him further for his abuse of Lucy Robotham, but brought himself up short with a shiver of mortification. “I’ve money enough,” he grumbled, and offered no explanation of its source.

  At the waterside they found the captain Bertrand had in mind, and despite the lateness of the afternoon and the unpromising weather, that gentleman agreed, for the outrageous price of three pounds sterling, to carry them to Cooke’s Point in his little fishing boat. As they were about to step aboard Ebenezer remembered his scheduled rendezvous at the Statehouse.

  “I’faith, I well-nigh forgot—I must leave word for Henry Burlingame, that hath gone to ask John Coode for aid.” He smiled at Bertrand’s surprise. “ ’Tis too long a tale to tell now, but I will say this: that Tim Mitchell who sent you hither was not Captain Mitchell’s son at all—’twas Henry Burlingame.”

  “Ye cannot mean it!” The valet’s face was horror-struck.

  “No Christian soul else,” the poet affirmed.

  “Then ye have more need of prayers than messages,” said Bertrand. “God help us all!”

  “What rot is this?”

  “Your friend need look no farther than his glass to find John Coode,” the valet declared. “He is John Coode!”