The Sot-Weed Factor

by John Barth

  Ebenezer watched her for some time with feelings various and strong: his professions to Burlingame to the contrary notwithstanding, he was piqued as well as grateful that she’d jilted him in Captain Mitchell’s barn: he yearned to know what had changed her mind, whether she had rejoined her father (and if so, why she was persisting in this harlotry), and—perhaps most urgently—whether she had news of Joan Toast, and why her story had not corresponded quite with Burlingame’s. Moreover, despite his disgust at her brazen appearance and his concern for Joan Toast, he felt unmistakable pangs of jealousy at the sight of Susan’s escort—who, however, ignored her coquetries. Ebenezer debated with himself whether to catch her eye and attempt to converse with her—among other things, he did not wholly trust Burlingame’s pledge not to apprehend her—but at length he decided not to.

  “I am well quit of her,” he declared to himself. “As my advances to her plague my conscience, may her desertion of me plague hers. The just thing’s to meddle farther neither in her flight nor in her capture, and there’s an end on’t.”

  So engrossing were these reflections, the Laureate scarcely remarked that the court was now in session and the dispute waxing hot, until the spectators’ shouts drew his attention to the bar. In progress was a change-of-venue case from Kent County, and the testimony, evidently, was going hard against the plaintiff, on whose victory a substantial amount of Dorchester’s money must have been riding; the audience was shouting down the attorney for the defendants, a married couple of middle age.

  “Be’t said again,” the lawyer was declaiming, “that the accused, my client Mr. Bradnox—himself a bona fide justice o’ the peace, was on the eve in question sitting justly and peaceably at home with Mistress Mary Bradnox his wife, when the plaintiff, Mr. Salter, did appear at his door with rum and playing-cards and did invite the two defendants to make merry. ’Twas then near midnight, and Mrs. Bradnox soon after bade the men good night and retired to her chamber—”

  “ ’Twas the chamber-pot she run to!” bawled the plaintiff from across the yard, and the audience cried assent. The defense counsel held a whispered colloquy with his client.

  “I hereby amend my statement on advisement from Mrs. Bradnox that she did in sooth heed nature’s call, but went straight from pot to cot, as’t were.”

  “A lie!” the plaintiff cried again. He was a dark, lean fellow in his forties, uncommonly tall and leathery, and had a small jug at his side from which he drank. “When I went upstairs anon to try her, I found her cross-legged in the window seat with a song upon her lips and my good liquor in her bowels, a-firing farts at the waning moon.”

  “As the plaintiff Mr. Salter hath confessed,” the defense lawyer went on slyly, “he did later leave the festivities, having got my client fuddled, and did climb the stairs to Mrs. Bradnox’s chamber, whereto he did force entry and assault my client in dastard fashion—the truth of’t is, he swived Mistress Mary from arse to Michaelmas and did thereby cuckold her spouse the Justice!”

  “Hear!” cried the spectators.

  “Having finished which evil work,” the defense continued, “this Salter did return to the parlor, where he ill employed his host’s beliquorment to cheat him at a game o’ lanterloo, to the tune of several hundred pounds of tobacco, plying him the while with yet more rum to hide the fraud. Whenas my pitiful client grew so light with his load o’ drams that he tumbled to the floor, by which fall his nose did bleed much, this same John Salter did spit upon him, make water on him, and otherwise offend the laws of hospitality, telling him finally that he was not two hours a horned cuckold. Hearing which, my client did on the instant go wondrous sober and, calling this same Salter blasphemer and turdy scoundrel, did ascend unto his wife’s chamber in a fearful choler. Entering therein, he did commence to chastise her for a whore and scurvy peddletwat, with divers other epithets of castigation and admonition, and anon did grab her by the birth and drag her thus from bed to floor in an inhumane manner.”

  “Shame!” bawled the crowd, and, “To the post with him!” Ebenezer too was shocked, but not nearly so much by this revelation as by the entire preceding narrative of the plaintiff’s behavior, the like of which, for brazenness, he had never heard. He wondered, in fact, how it was that Salter was the plaintiff and not the accused in the litigation.

  “In the course of which domestic altercation,” the defense proceeded, “the plaintiff Mr. Salter entered, and intruding himself betwixt the man and wife my clients, did take the part of Mistress Mary against her wedded spouse, clutching same about the neck and choking him till the Justice’s eyes did lose their spark and stared all emptily like pissholes in the snow…”

  “Hear!”

  “Whereupon said Justice Bradnox did leave off his grip upon Mistress Mary’s privates and confronted Salter with the latter’s peccadilloes, contending that, by virtue of his having swived Mary from pot to pallet, said Sailer did forfeit any and all claim to the Justice’s esteem and was in fact no proper guest but a gigolo and shitabed hypocrite. To which description the plaintiff did reply by blacking both the Justice’s eyes and raising a duck-egg knot upon his pate, declaring the while that Justice Bradnox was deficient in manly virtue—”

  “I told him he was manly as a steer,” Salter specified, wiping the mouth of the wine-jug with his sleeve, “and useful as a whore in church.”

  “That was well said,” remarked a man sitting next to Ebenezer.

  “And he did farther declare,” the defense went on, “that Mistress Mary was not worth the trouble to hoist her coats…”

  “ ’Twas like humping Aldersgate,” Salter complained.

  “Whereto the Justice did reply that, should Salter not close his leprous trap, he the Justice my client would close it for him, and shoot him, knock him upon the head, and break his two legs into the bargain. To which the plaintiff rejoined—”

  “Enough!” cried the judge. But then he added, “Thy drivel will have us snoring in a minute. What’s the charge, for heaven’s sake?”

  Salter leaped to his feet at once. “The charge,” he said, “is that this blackguard Bradnox never paid me for that liquor—a rundlet in all, give or take a dram—and farther, that whilst I was a-swiving Mary Bradnox from sprit to spanker, certain coins did fall from out my breeches, that were upon a chair, and these same coins the rascals ne’er returned to me.”

  “Mother of God!” the Laureate whispered.

  “What say ye, jurymen?” charged the judge. “Is the defendant guilty, or will ye let the scoundrel go?”

  The most Ebenezer could hope for during the minute or so of the jury’s deliberation was that the notes being exchanged among them were messages and not tobacco-notes; he was too appalled by the conduct of the court to expect an honest judgment. It came, in fact, as something of a shock to him when the foreman of the jury said, “Your Honor, we find the defendant not guilty.”

  “Not guilty!” roared the judge, and his protest was echoed by the audience. “Sheriff, arrest those twelve rascals and charge ’em all with contempt o’ court! Not guilty! Marry, the man’s soul is black as the Ace o’ Spades, and that of his short-heeled wife little whiter! Good God, men, will ye bring fair Dorset to wrack and ruin? Nay, I say: the defendant is guilty as charged!”

  Ebenezer rose indignantly to his feet, but his objections were swallowed up by the crowd’s applause.

  “The Court here orders that Tom Bradnox pay o’er to Salter the full price of his rundlet and deliver a like amount to the Court come sunrise next, or stand pilloried till this Court adjourns. Farther, that Mary Bradnox return to the plaintiff double the value of the coins he lost while swiving her from bosom to birthright, or else suffer herself the letter T to be burnt in her hand, for thievery. Next case!”

  The spectators whistled, slapped one another’s shoulders, pinched one another’s wives, and collected or settled their wagers. Ebenezer remained on his feet, astonished by the conduct of the court, and searched for the most scathing terms in his vocabulary,
for he meant to deliver a public rebuke not only to the plaintiff and the judge, who had been clearly in collusion, but to the audience as well, for their undignified behavior. But before he could compose his reprimand the next litigants had taken the stand, and his attention was distracted by the fact that one of them—apparently the defendant—was Susan Warren’s escort, with whom the judge appeared to be on familiar terms.

  “What is’t ye want here, Ben Spurdance?” asked the judge, and Ebenezer gave a start—the name he seemed to have heard before, doubtless from Susan, but he could not recall in what connection.

  “Ye’d better ask him,” Spurdance grumbled, pointing to a hale old man in the plaintiff’s seat.

  “Who might you be?” the judge demanded of him.

  The old man answered, “William Smith, your Honor.” Ebenezer started once again.

  “What is your lying complaint against old Ben Spurdance?” asked the judge, and at this second mention of the name Ebenezer remembered where he’d heard it before: Captain Mitchell, as they left, had instructed his “son” to search for Susan Warren at the home of one Ben Spurdance, which he had called “a den of thieves and whores.”

  But he was due for yet a further surprise, for in answer to the Court’s question Smith replied that upon his arrival in the Province some four years ago he had of necessity indentured himself to the defendant, having spent all his money en route for medicines to aid his ailing daughter, and that the term of his indenture had just recently expired.

  “ ’Dslife!” the Laureate marveled. “ ’Tis not our man at all, but Susan Warren’s poor sainted father that she told me of!” And he wondered angrily why Susan had been consorting with the defendant. William Smith, in the meantime, proceeded to articulate his grievance: he had, he declared, served Spurdance faithfully for the four years of his indenture in the position of cooper and smith, but upon the expiration of his service Spurdance had reneged on the terms of their agreement. Specifically, Spurdance had given over to him only an acre and a half of land—and poor land at that, full of stones and gullies—instead of the twenty called for by the indenture, and had told him he could go hang for all the more he’d get.

  “Poor wretch!” Ebenezer commiserated to himself. He was all the more ready now to deliver his harangue, but thought it best to wait until he had the whole tale of Smith’s misfortunes.

  The defendant then testified that while the plaintiff’s speech was substantially correct, he Spurdance had not told Smith to go hang for all the rest he’d get.

  “I told the old goat to thrust his acres up his arse and leave me in peace,” he declared.

  “I’God, he e’en admits his guilt!” thought Ebenezer.

  The judge frowned uncordially at the plaintiff. “Are ye trying to lie to the Court, sir?”

  “Haply ’twas as he says,” admitted Smith, “albeit my memory is he said ‘Go hang, for all the more ye’ll get!’ ”

  “Well, which was’t?” the judge demanded.

  “ ’Twas Thrust it,” Spurdance insisted.

  “ ‘’Twas Go hang,” Smith maintained.

  “Thrust it!” shouted Spurdance.

  “Go hang!” cried Smith.

  “Thrust it,” the judge ordered, rapping for silence. “Your friend here hath a slippery lawyer, Ben,” he said to the defendant. “Where’s yours?”

  Spurdance sniffed in the direction of the prosecuting attorney, a plump little man in a black suit such as Quakers often wore. “I need no liars like Richard Sowter to defend me.”

  “Call your first witness, then, and let’s get on with’t.”

  No one except Ebenezer seemed to see anything unorthodox about hearing the defense before the prosecution, and when he saw Susan Warren take the stand in Spurdance’s behalf, his wonder was replaced by sheer astonishment.

  Susan’s testimony, however, surpassed for incredibility anything else he had heard said that afternoon. She had fled to Maryland, she declared, under the protection of one kindly Captain Mitchell of Calvert County, in order to escape the incestuous demands of a father who lusted after her like a billy-goat! “He did then privily pursue me aboard the ship itself,” she went on, “and squandered all his money to bribe Captain Mitchell. ’Twas his object to make the Captain play the pander and deliver me into his evil hands, that he might ravish me from fo’c’sle to poop deck!”

  The spectators, though they had greeted Susan’s accession to the stand with lewd remarks, were now in obvious sympathy with her plight; they murmured their approval of the testimony that her father’s efforts to corrupt her guardian had been in vain, and that as a consequence he had been obliged to indenture himself to Spurdance.

  “Good Ben here took him only as a favor to me,” she declared, “and ’twas an ill bargain I bade him strike, for my father scorned his end of’t. He proved an idler and a rabble rouser, e’en as I’d feared: Mr. Spurdance gave him the acre and a half out of pure Christian charity, for he owed him not a ship fitter’s fart. He is my father, worse luck for me, but ’twould give me joy to see the rascal put to the post, I swear, and have the nastiness flogged from his wretched bones!”

  The judge commended Susan warmly and with no further ado dismissed the untrustworthy jury and declared himself ready to find the plaintiff guilty of lying and idleness; but before he could render an official verdict, Ebenezer, who had sprung to his feet and trembled with rage through the latter part of Susan’s testimony, now raised himself to his full height on the grassy bank and cried, “Stop! I demand that this outrageous proceeding be stopped!”

  Susan gasped and turned away; the crowd hooted and threw twigs, but the judge brayed louder and banged his gavel.

  “Order! Order, damn ye! Now who in the name of Antichrist are you, and why are ye obstructing the justice of this court?”

  As he turned to dodge a twig, Ebenezer saw Henry Burlingame hurrying toward him around the top edge of the amphitheater and signaling urgently for him to hold his peace. But the Laureate’s indignation was not so lightly held in check: in fact, the pertinence of the present situation to what he and Burlingame had been arguing not long before made him even more eager to speak out when he saw his former tutor among the audience.

  “I am Ebenezer Cooke, Your Honor, Poet and Laureate of this entire province by grace of Charles, Lord Baltimore, and I strenuously object to the verdict just proposed, as being a travesty of Justice and a smirch on the fair escutcheon of Maryland law!”

  “Hear!” cried some of the audience, but others shouted “Turn the Papist out!” As soon as the declaration was made, Ebenezer saw Burlingame halt in full career, clap a hand to his brow, and then with a shrug sit down where he happened to have stopped.

  “Oh la,” scoffed the judge, “ ’tweren’t that bad.” He winked broadly at the assemblage. “ ’Twas the best verdict old Ben Spurdance could afford.”

  Burlingame’s alarm had taken its toll on the Laureate’s self-confidence, but it was too late now for him to retreat; uncertainty put new wrath into his voice.

  “You know not whom you twit, sir! Poltroons greater and blacker than you have felt the sting of Hudibrastic and been brought low! Now will you render Justice to yon poor wretch the plaintiff, whose inequitable case cries out to Heav’n for remedy, and cause the defendant and that perfidious slattern of a witness to suffer for their calumnies? Or will you bring upon yourself the Laureate’s wrath, and with it the wrath of an outraged populace?”

  Spurdance, meanwhile, had turned pale, and as the crowd murmured to one another, he went to the bench to whisper in the judge’s ear during this last challenge.

  “I care not a tinker’s turd who he is!” the judge swore to Spurdance. “This is my court, and I mean to run it honestly: nobody gets a verdict he hath not paid for!”

  “So be’t!” the poet shouted over the laughter of the crowd. “If Justice in this province belongs for the nonce to the man that buys her, then in this instance I shall pay the harlot’s fee.” He glared meaningfully at Su
san. “Whate’er this evil Spurdance bribed you I shall raise by half, for the privilege of rendering both verdict and sentence.”

  “Two hundred pounds o’ sot-weed,” said the judge.

  “Three hundred, then,” the Laureate replied.

  “I object!” cried Spurdance, greatly alarmed.

  “And I!” chimed Susan, whose look of terror brought a proud smile to the poet’s lips. William Smith stood up as if to add a third objection, but his little black-suited counsel quickly stopped him and whispered in his ear.

  “Objections overruled,” snapped the judge. “The case is in your hands, Master Poet. But bear in mind ’tis not allowed to take life or member.”

  The defendant and Susan showed surprise and consternation over the progress of events, as did Burlingame, who sprang up at the judge’s ruling and once again hurried towards Ebenezer. But he was still several hundred feet away, and the Laureate proceeded undisturbed.

  “I wish neither,” he declared, “only Justice. Spurdance, it appears, did no bodily injury to the plaintiff; therefore none shall be done to him. ’Twas a matter of land-payment, and I shall administer Justice of the nature of the crime. My verdict is that the defendant stands guilty as charged, and my sentence is that the plaintiff be awarded in damages not alone the twenty acres originally due him, but all the property from which the grant was made, saving only the acre and a half now held by the plaintiff. In other words, the defendant shall own the pittance he so grudged to give up, and the plaintiff shall own the hoard from which it came! As for Miss Susan Warren, since it seems by no means uncommon in this court to sentence persons not on trial, I find her guilty of fraud, calumny, defamation, lewdness, whoredom, and filial disaffection, and here decree that she must remain in the custody of her father the plaintiff whilst an enquiry be made into the legality of her indenture to Captain Mitchell. Farther, that at the soonest opportunity her father is to arrange a fit match for her, that under the connubial yoke she might instruct herself in the ways of virtue and piety. These strictures, penalties, and decrees to be executed within the fortnight on pain of increased sentence and imprisonment!”