by John Barth
“I’faith!” Ebenezer laughed tensely. “What a palace this hut seems now!”
On the common, where the mists had been brightened but not dispelled by the rising sun, there was considerable commotion. Peering between the legs of the guards outside their hut, Ebenezer saw the three leaders move off again towards the building from which they had appeared; the old one, clearly by no means pacified, was now supported by two Indians with headgear similar to his own.
“ ’Tis a Holy Writ miracle!” cried McEvoy, his eyes and mouth still wincing with astonishment. “Nay, a miracle atop a miracle! How is’t Dick Parker is alive, and knows ye? Marry, he fell on his belly as if your man here was a god!”
“I was no less, thank ye,” Bertrand said proudly, “and a better parishioner no god could wish for! Hath he not risen to the top of the heap, though! Did ye see him stand up for me to the old tyrant, as bold as ye please?”
For McEvoy’s benefit Ebenezer recounted the story of their freeing Drakepecker from his bonds, discovering the fugitive Quassapelagh ill of a festered wound, and leaving the black man to minister to his needs.
“ ’Twas for that he gave us the fishbone rings, albeit he said naught of their meaning. What doth it signify, and how came a poor slave like Drakepecker to be a king?”
McEvoy could throw no light on the meaning of the ring. “As for the wight ye call Drakepecker, though, he is the same I spoke of before, that I called Dick Parker. The boat that spirited me off from London took him aboard in Carolina along with Bandy Lou and two score other slaves, to sell in Maryland. They had all been snatched from some African town not long before, and this Dick Parker was their king. The first mate chained him and Bandy Lou in the hold for the same reason I was there.” The Irishman grinned. “Dick Parker was after raising a mutiny; the mate was for murthering him, but the captain thought if they could flog his spirit out, they could use him to keep the others from making trouble. Twice a day they laid the lash on him, and he’d spit on the sailor that tied him to the foremast and spit on the sailor that untied him after. O’er and again I advised him, through Bandy Lou, to put by his pride till he was sold and settled, and then escape and help the others; he’d reply my counsel was the best for Bandy Lou and the other lieutenants, but a king that was bought and sold was no king at all. If I declared no dead king ever won a battle, he’d reply ’twas not in the lion to play the jackal’s part, and a dead king could still be a living example to his subjects. He gave orders to Bandy Lou to do as I advised, and the next time they fetched Dick Parker up for flogging he spat on the mate himself. ’Twas then they heaved him o’er the side, bound hand and foot. Half the slaves were sold in Anne Arundel Town next day, and the other half, along with us redemptioners, in Oxford the day after that. How the wight managed to stay afloat I’ll never know.”
Ebenezer shook his head, remembering the stripes on the Negro’s back when they had discovered him on the beach. “So now he’s king of the runaway slaves, and Quassapelagh king of the disaffected salvage Indians! Heav’n help the English if they carry out their plan!”
“Devil take ’em, I say,” McEvoy replied, “they have it coming.” Both he and Bertrand declared their intention to beg or steal passage back to London as soon as possible, so that they might wish the rebels success without wishing their own ill fortune. Ebenezer had not lost sight of his late reflections at the stake; yet though he could sympathize with the plight of the slaves and Indians and affirm the guilt even of white men who, like himself, had condoned that plight merely in effect, by not protesting it, he could by no means relish the idea of a wholesale massacre. On the contrary, with his two near-executions to dulcify it, life tasted uncommonly sweet to the poet just then, and he shuddered at the thought of anyone’s being deprived of it.
“We must find a way to save the Captain,” he declared. “He hath less reason to be here than any of us, since ’twas neither search nor flight that brought him.” And he added, though he quite understood the limitations of the statement, “If he dies, ’tis I must answer for’t, inasmuch as I hired him to ferry me to Malden and paid him extra to leave at once despite the weather and the time of day.”
Both McEvoy and the valet protested this assumption of responsibility and McEvoy asserted further that though he had every wish for the old man’s safety, he was not prepared to sacrifice or even jeopardize his own for it.
“In any case,” Bertrand offered, “ ’tis too early for tears and cheers alike. If Drakepecker hath his way we may all go free; if not, we may burn yet.”
His companions agreed, and they fell to speculating on the office and influence of the ancient Indian who had been so loath to see them freed. McEvoy called in the African named—as best their English speech could approximate—Bandy Lou, who replied to their several questions with a huge, invincible smile whether his information was cheering, distressing, or indifferent.
Who was the old Indian king?
“He is the Tayac Chicamec, King of the Ahatchwhoops, and for four-and-eighty summers an enemy to Englishmen. This is his island.”
Upon Ebenezer’s inquiring about the division of power between the three kings and the jurisdiction of each, Bandy Lou replied that Quassapelagh was a sort of commander-in-chief of all the disaffected Indians on the western side of the Chesapeake, Chicamec held the same post on the Eastern Shore, and Drepacca was the king of the runaway Negroes. He went on to assert very candidly that, while in theory the three were invested with equal authority, it was Quassapelagh, the Anacostin King, who wielded the greatest actual power, not only because the chieftains under him—Ochotomaquath of the Piscataways, Tom Calvert of the Chopticoes, and Maquantah of the Mattawomans, for example—were more numerous, influential, and belligerent than were Chicamec’s lieutenants, but also because some of the latter—such as the son of the Emperor Umacokasimmon, Asquas, whom Governor Copley had deposed as leader of the Nanticokes in favor of the complaisant Panquas and Annoughtough—were more disposed to follow the younger, more vigorous Quassapelagh than their aged commander-in-chief. Moreover, the lion’s share of potential power, according to Bandy Lou, was held by Drepacca, for although there were many more belligerent Indians than runaway Negroes, Quassapelagh’s authority was limited necessarily to the Province, and the allegiance of his subjects, except for a small group of Piscataways, was directed primarily to the several tribal chieftains and only indirectly to the Anacostin King himself. Drepacca, on the other hand, had in a very short time become the direct and undisputed leader of every fugitive African in the area and the inspiration of thousands still enslaved; furthermore, he had not the obstacles of tribal geography and rival leadership to contend with: Negroes from various African tribes were distributed indiscriminately among the provinces by the slave market, and Drepacca, so far as anyone knew, was the only royalty among them. In consequence of these facts, together with his quick intelligence (he had learned the Piscataway dialect in three weeks from Quassapelagh), his formidable personal appearance, and the advantage his being neither white nor Indian gave him in negotiations with the French and the northern nations, the sphere of Drepacca’s influence grew daily more extensive and might well encompass soon the entire Negro population of America, whose number increased with every ship from the western coast of Africa. One guessed, from the unbounded pride in his voice, that Bandy Lou had already crowned his master Emperor of America. Ebenezer shivered.
“More power to him,” McEvoy said grimly. “If Dick Parker’s as strong as all that, we’ve naught to fear from this Tayac Chuckaluck, or Chicken-neck, or whatever. Wouldn’t ye say so, Bandy Lou? ’Tis a brace of big men against one little one.”
Ah, now, the smiling Negro cautioned, things were not so simple as that, for while Chicamec held in truth a great deal less power, actual or potential, than did either of his confederates, he was known to Indians all up and down the provinces as an ancient foe of the white man: he was virtually a legend among them; his name for three decades had been synonymous with u
ncompromising resistance; and in addition his little town of Ahatchwhoops was the hardest core of armed and organized English-haters in the Province, and his island the safest and most nearly central location anyone knew of for a general headquarters. In short, though but a figurehead, he was an extremely valuable one, and his colleagues deferred to him in all but the most important matters of policy—the more readily since nine tenths of the rebels’ power was in their hands.
“I’faith!” cried Bertrand. “D’ye mean they might let him burn us after all?”
“I do hope not,” said Bandy Lou agreeably. One of the other guards called to him in dialect from outside, and he added, his smile unchanged in magnitude or character: “Come now, and we shall learn.”
7
How the Ahatchwhoops Doe Choose a King Over Them
FOR THE SECOND TIME that morning, then, Ebenezer, Bertrand, and McEvoy were escorted onto the misty common. Though there was light aplenty now, the sky remained overcast, and the foggy salt marsh scarcely less gloomy than before. The cooking fires were out, the women occupied with various housekeeping chores, and most of the men, presumably, out on the marshes and waterways replenishing the supply of seafood and wildfowl. A few dozen, whom Ebenezer took to be minor chieftains and their lieutenants, still sat with their pipes about the larger council-fires, engaged in debate; it was not difficult to guess, from the stony countenances that followed the prisoners’ march across the common, what had been the subject of their discussion.
Less apprehensive than before, the poet was able to look about him with greater interest and detachment. He remarked, for example, that the village was considerably larger than he had estimated: the muskrat-house dwellings numbered more nearly three hundred than one hundred, and work-parties of Negroes were constructing new ones around the whole periphery of the town. Indeed, the supply of high ground was exhausted, and the builders were obliged to resort to various expedients; at one edge of the village was a flat-topped mountain of oystershells—piled up, one gathered, by generations of Ahatchwhoops in the days before building lots were at such a premium—which the Negroes were busily shoveling into the adjacent marsh, both to create new ground and to clear the old; in other places the huts were being erected on low pilings in the marsh itself, a curious combining of African and Indian architectures. Again, the poet observed for the first time the disproportion of sexes in the population: even allowing for the exaggeration of fear, he judged that nearly a thousand men had thronged the common that morning—seven hundred at the very least, of whom surely no more than two hundred had arrived with Quassapelagh and Drepacca—whereas the women, unless great numbers of them had been granted the unlikely privilege of sleeping late into the morning, could be counted more easily in dozens than in hundreds. Yet there seemed to be no shortage of children; indeed, the spaces between the huts fairly swarmed with little savages, whose great number and various pigmentation suggested to Ebenezer not only polyandry but a cultural alliance in spheres more intimate than either politics or architecture.
This time the party did not stop at the stakes, but proceeded directly to the royal hut on the opposite side from the jail. To the old Captain, who regarded them as sullenly from his stake as did the chieftains from their councils, Ebenezer called, “Never fear, old man, we shan’t betray you. ’Tis all of us or none.”
“In a pig’s arse,” muttered Bertrand beside him, and McEvoy added flatly, “Ye may stake your own fortunes where ye please, but not McEvoy’s. If he dies on my account I’ll mourn him sorely, but if I die on his I’ll hate his guts.” As for the Captain himself, either he did not hear the poet’s encouragement, or was too unhinged by fear to comprehend it, or simply discounted it, for his expression remained unchanged.
At the entrance to the royal hut Bandy Lou said with his great smile, “We stop here. You go there,” and pointed to the hide-flap doorway. The prisoners hesitated, each reluctant to take the initiative, and then Ebenezer, his jaw clenched tight, pushed the flap aside and led them in.
Except for its size and the more numerous hides which served as rugs and wall-hangings alike, Chicamec’s palace was little different from his jail. Along the rear wall stood a line of guards, spears in hand. A small fire burned in a circle of rocks in the center of the floor; behind it, tight-lipped and evil-eyed, sat the wrinkled king himself, flanked by his two unsmiling confederates. The Englishmen faced them uneasily, uncertain whether to sit or remain standing, bow or stand still, speak or be silent. In the absence of Bandy Lou, Ebenezer looked to Quassapelagh for instructions, but it was Drepacca who addressed them, apparently having added a fluency in English to the catalogue of his assets.
“It is the wish of Drepacca,” he declared sternly, “that the four white men go free; or that, if one must die, it be the old man; or that, if only one may live, it be one of the two who saved Drepacca’s life.”
McEvoy scowled; Ebenezer and Bertrand avoided each other’s eyes.
“It is the wish of Quassapelagh,” Drepacca resumed, “that the old man and the red-haired singer die, and you twain be spared; or that, if only one may live, it be the tall one who still wears the Ring of Brotherhood.”
“I say!” McEvoy protested; Bertrand’s face fell. A guard lowered his spear to the ready, and the Irishman said no more.
“It is the wish of Chicamec,” continued the African king, “that every man of white skin on the face of the earth be deprived of his privy member and put to spear. But he allows the tall one is a brother of Quassapelagh and must be spared.” He looked at Bertrand, and though neither his tone nor his expression lost its sternness, he said, “I regret that you have lost Quassapelagh’s ring, and that I once knelt to you as a god instead of making you my brother in the manner of my people. But I have told Chicamec that you and the tall one saved my life, and that who kills you must kill Drepacca first. Chicamec has made no answer to this, and so you will go free—mind you do not smile, or he will guess my words and strike you dead at any cost.”
To McEvoy he said, “You are my friend and the friend of Bandalu, and I would not see you die. But the anger of Chicamec is great, and he grants brotherhood only to those who have saved the life of one of us. You must bid your friends farewell.”
“Nay, ’sheart!” McEvoy cried; the guard moved closer, and Chicamec’s eyes grew dark. “What I mean,” McEvoy continued in a calmer voice, “if thou’rt such a friend as ye claim, and have such a gang as Bandy Lou says ye have behind ye, why is’t ye let this bloody old flitch be judge and jury? Turn us all loose, and be damned to him!”
Quassapelagh, whose frown had deepened at the Irishman’s choice of words, spoke up in reply. “Quassapelagh and Drepacca are strong, but our strength is not on the island of Chicamec. If the Ahatchwhoops fight the people of Drepacca, our cause will lose a mighty ally and a mighty king. Chicamec will not make war to kill brothers of Drepacca and Quassapelagh, but to kill any other white man, Chicamec will make war. You must die.”
“Then so must I!” Ebenezer said suddenly. His brow furrowed and unfurrowed at a great rate, his hands twitched about, and his nose was a thing alive. Quassapelagh and Drepacca turned to him with surprise; Bertrand and McEvoy with incredulity. “Either the four of us will go free, or the four of us will die!” declared the poet. “It is my fault these men are here, and I shan’t permit myself to be saved without all three of them.” He looked accusingly at Drepacca. “Perhaps Drepacca doth not defend his own, but Eben Cooke doth, friends or no.”
“I beg my brother to think again,” Quassapelagh said, maintaining his stern composure for Chicamec’s benefit. “If I must, I shall strike you senseless to spare your life.”
But Ebenezer had apparently foreseen this possibility. “Not a bit of’t,” he replied at once, his voice exhilarated by the rashness of his move. “Not a bit of’t, dear Quassapelagh; the moment you say even one of us must die I’ll leap and throttle Chicamec yonder, and his bullies will spear me like a pincushion. Nay, don’t warn ’em off, or I’ll
spring this instant.”
“I’faith, Eben!” cried McEvoy. “Save yourself; there’s naught else for’t!”
“Our friend speaks wisely as well as generously,” Drepacca added. “Do not throw four lives away instead of two.”
“Say no more on’t!” Ebenezer ordered briskly. His face was flushed and his voice uneven, and his heart pounded hot blood through his limbs. “Will ye spare your brother’s people or put him to the spear? Yea me or nay me, and have done with’t!” He swayed on his feet, arms swinging free, as if ready to make good his threat. Chicamec’s glance sent two guards closer with upraised spears. Drepacca and Quassapelagh exchanged flickers of their eyes.
“No answer, brothers?” The poet’s voice grew shrill. “Adieu, then, Brother Quassapelagh! Good luck to you, and bad luck to your murtherous schemes! Adieu, Brother Drepacca, adieu, adieu! ’Tis a pity you ne’er met my friend Henry Burlingame: you twain would get on famously!”
He went so far as actually to cock his muscles for the leap across the fire, and paused only because Chicamec caught up the name Henry Burlingame and unleashed a torrent of interrogation at Quassapelagh, in which the name was repeated several times.
“Wait, brother!” Quassapelagh called sharply, and attended the rest of his elder colleague’s excited query while Ebenezer, the moment of his courage past, reeled and sweated in his stance.
“The Tayac Chicamec believes you spoke a certain name just then, and would have you speak it another time.”
