The Sot-Weed Factor

by John Barth

  “I thank you,” Ebenezer sighed, but declined on the grounds that his last night’s liquor was still taking its toll on his head. “Forgive my rudeness, sir: I am most distraught and desperate.”

  “As well ye might be, by St. Agatha’s butchered bosoms! ’Tis a wicked world, and rare ye find some good in’t.”

  “ ’Tis a wicked province; that I’ll grant.”

  “Why,” Sowter went on, “ ’twas just last month, or the one before, a young sprat came to see me, young fellow from down-county, he was, came into the smithy where my office is—I run a smithy on the side, ye know—came in and says to me, ‘Mr. Sowter,’ he says, ‘I need a lawyer.’ ‘St. Huldrick’s crab lice!’ says I: ‘What have ye done to need a lawyer?’ ‘Mr. Sowter,’ he says, ‘I am a young fool, that I am,’ he says, ‘I have lived the spendthrift life, have I, and got myself in debt.’ ‘Ah well,’ says I, ‘by Giles’s hollow purse, I am no money-lender, son.’ ‘Nay, sir,’ says he, ‘the fact of’t is, my creditors were pressing hard, and I feared ’twas the pillory for me, so what did I do? I hied me to Morris Boon, the usuring son o’ Sodom.’ ‘Peter’s fingers, boy,’ says I, ‘Ye did not!’ ‘I did,’ says he: ‘I went to Morris Boon and I says, Morris, I need money, I says. So Morris lent me on his usual terms: that directly my debts are paid I must surrender me to his beasty pleasures.’ ‘Thou’rt a Mathurin’s fool!’ cries I. ‘That I am,’ says the lad. ‘Now I’ve settled all my debts, and Morris is waiting his pleasure.’ ‘Son,’ I says then, ‘pray to St. Gildas, for I cannot aid ye.’ ‘Ye must,’ says he. ‘I have faith in ye.’ ‘It wants more than faith,’ says I. ‘I have more than faith,’ says he. ‘I’ve wagered money on ye.’ And so I asked him, how was that? And he replied, ‘I wagered old Morris ye’d get me out o’ my pickle.’ ‘St. Dymphna protects ye,’ says I. ‘What did ye wager?’ ‘If ye get me fairly out,’ says he, ‘Morris pays me again what he loaned me before, and ’tis yours for saving me. If not, why then Morris vows he’ll ravish the twain of us from stump to stopgap.’ ‘Wretch!’ says I. ‘Had ye to fetch me thus into thy unclean bargain?’

  “But there was no help for’t,” Sowter sighed. “On the morrow the lad comes back, with Morris the usurer hard upon his heels. ‘Preserve me!’ says the boy. ‘Preserve thyself,’ says Morris, and eyes me up and down. ‘I want the payment we agreed upon.’ But I’d not been idle since the day before, and so I said, ‘Hold on, sir, by Appolonia’s eye-teeth! Rein your horse! What sum was’t ye lent this idler here?’ ‘Twelve hundredweight o’ sot-weed,’ says Morris. ‘And for what purpose?’ ‘To pay his debts,’ says Morris. ‘And under what conditions?’ ‘That his debts once clear, he’s mine whene’er I fancy him this month.’ ‘Well, then,’ says I to the lad, that was like to beshit himself for fear, ‘the case is closed, by Lucy’s wick dipper: see to’t ye never return him his twelve hundredweight. ‘Why is that?’ asks the boy, and Morris as well. ‘Why, Fridoline’s eyeglasses.’ says I, ‘don’t ye see’t? If ye do not repay him, your debts aren’t clear, and so long as thou’rt encumbered, ye need not go to Morris. The truth is, while thou’rt in debt thou’rt free!’

  “St. Wulfgang’s gout, sirs, I can tell ye old Morris set up a hollowing at that, for I had swived him fair, and he’s a man of his word. He paid the young scamp another twelve hundredweight and sent him off with a curse; but the more he thought of’t, the more my trick amused him, till at the end we laughed until we wept. Now then, by Kentigern’s salmon, what was I after proving?”

  “That naught’s in men save perfidy,” said Ebenezer. “Yet the lad was not wicked, nor were you in saving him.”

  “Ha! Little ye know,” laughed Sowter. “My actual end was not to save the lad but to fox old Morris, who many a time hath had the better of me. As for the lad, by Wulstan’s crozier, he never paid me, but took the tobacco-note himself and doubtless went a-whoring. There is a small good in men.” He sighed. “Why, there’s a redemptioner this minute in my boat—”

  “No more!” cried Ebenezer, clutching his head in his hands. “What use have I for farther tales? The pistol now is all I crave, to end my pain.”

  “Oh la, St. Roque’s hound-bitch!” Sowter scoffed. “ ’Tis but the vagrant track o’ life, that beds ye now in clover, now in thistles. Make shift to bear’t a day at a time, and ten years hence ye’ll still be sleeping somewhere, and filling thy bowels with dinner, and rogering some wench from Adrian to St. Yves.”

  “ ’Tis light to advise,” said the poet, “but this day itself shall see me starve, for I’ve naught to buy food with and nowhere to go.”

  “Cooke’s Point is but a few hours’ sail downriver. If I came half around the world to find a place, by St. Ethelbert I’d not blow out my brains till I laid eyes on’t!”

  This suggestion greatly surprised Ebenezer. “My valet awaits me there,” he said thoughtfully, “and my—my betrothed as well, I hope. Poor Joan, and loyal Bertrand! What must they think of me!” He gripped Sowter’s arm. “D’you think that scoundrel Smith hath turned them out?”

  “There, now, by Pieran’s millstone!” Sowter said. “Thou’rt angry, and anger’s e’er a physic for despair. I know naught o’ these folk ye speak of, but I’m sure they’ll meet no ill reception at Malden. Bill Smith hath his shortcomings, yet he’d ne’er turn out your guests to starve, much less the Laureate himself. Why, haply your friend Tim Mitchell’s there as well, and they’re all at a game o’ ducks and drakes, or dancing a morris dance!”

  Ebenezer shook his head. “Yet e’en this last small joy shall be denied me, for I’ve not the hire of a boat.”

  “Why then, by Gudule’s lantern, ye must come with me,” the lawyer said, and explained that he meant to sail out to Malden that very morning, and the Laureate was welcome to come along as ballast. “I have some business there with Mr. Smith,” he said, “and must deliver him a servant that I bought this morning for a song.”

  Ebenezer murmured some words of gratitude; he was, in fact, scarcely able to attend Sowter’s speech, for his fever seemed to mount with every passing minute. When they left the inn and walked toward the wharf nearby, he viewed the scene before him as with a drunkard’s eyes.

  “—most cantankerous wight ye ever did see,” he heard Sowter saying as they reached the wharf. “Swears by Gertrude’s mousetrap he’s no redemptioner at all, but a servant seller out o’ Talbot, that is victim of a monstrous prank.”

  “I am not a well man,” the Laureate remarked. “Really, I feel not well at all.”

  “I’ve heard my share o’ clever stories fro’m redemptioners,” Sowter went on, “but St. Tom’s packthread, if this one doth not take the prize! Why, would ye believe it—”

  “ ’Tis the seasoning, belike,” Ebenezer interrupted, though it could not be said with certainty whether he was addressing Sowter or himself.

  “Ye’ll be all right, with a day in bed,” the lawyer said. “What I was about to say—nay, not there: my boat’s that small sloop yonder by the post—what I was about to say, this great lout claims his name is—”

  “Tom Tayloe!” roared a voice from the sloop. “Tom Tayloe o’ Talbot County, damn your eyes, and ye know’t as well as I, Dick Sowter!”

  “St. Sebastian’s pincushion, hear him rave!” chuckled Sowter. “Yet his name is writ on the indenture for all to see: ’tis John McEvoy, plain as day, from Puddledock in London.”

  Ebenezer clutched a piling for support. “ ’Tis my delirium!”

  “Aye, St. Pernel’s ague, thou’rt not thyself,” the lawyer admitted.

  “Ye know full well I’m not McEvoy!” shouted the man in the boat. “McEvoy was the wretch that duped me!”

  Focusing his eyes on the sloop, Ebenezer saw the complainant shackled by one wrist to the gunwale. His hair was red, as was his beard, but even through the swimming eyes of fever Ebenezer saw that he was not the John McEvoy he had feared. He was too old, for one thing—in his forties, at the least—and too fat: a mountain of flesh, twice the size
of fat Ben Oliver, he was quite the most corpulent human the poet had beheld.

  “That is not John McEvoy,” he declared, as Sowter helped him into the sloop.

  “There, now, ye blackguard!” the prisoner cried. “E’en this skinny wretch admits it, that ye doubtless bribed to swear me false!” He turned imploringly to Ebenezer. “ ’Tis a double injury I’ve been done, sir: this Sowter knows I’m not McEvoy, but he got the papers cheap and means to carry out the fraud!”

  “Tush,” Sowter answered, and bade his crewmen, of whom there were two, get the sloop under way. “I’m going below to draw up certain papers,” he said to Ebenezer. “Ye may take your ease in the cabin till we raise Cooke’s Point.”

  “I beg ye hear me out,” the servant pleaded. “Ye said already ye know I’m not McEvoy: haply ye’ll believe this is unjust.”

  “ ’Tis no rare name,” Ebenezer murmured, moving toward the cabin. “I’ll own the John McEvoy I once knew had your red hair, but he was slight and all befreckled, and a younger man than I.”

  “That is the one! I’Christ, Sowter, can ye go on now with your monstrous trick? This wight hath drawn the very likeness of the man that sold me!”

  “By David’s leek, man,” Sowter said testily. “Ye may file complaint at court the day thou’rt settled on Cooke’s Point, for all o’ me. Till then thou’rt John McEvoy, and I’ve bought your papers honestly. Tell Mr. Cooke your troubles, if he cares to hear ’em.”

  With that he went below, followed by the prisoner’s curses, but Ebenezer, at the first heel of the vessel, felt more ill than at any other time in his life except aboard the Poseidon, in the storm off the Canary Islands, and was obliged to remain in misery at the leeward rail.

  “This McEvoy,” he managed to say. “ ’Tis quite impossible he’s the one I know, for mine’s in London.”

  “E’en so was mine, till six weeks past,” the fat man said.

  “But mine’s no servant seller!”

  “No more was mine, till late last night: ’tis I that sells redemptioners for my living, but this accursed young Irishman did me in, with Sowter’s aid!”

  Ebenezer shook his head. “ ’Tis unthinkable!” Yet he knew, or believed, that Joan Toast had come to Maryland—for reasons he could only vaguely guess at—and also that at the time of his own departure from London, John McEvoy had had no word of his mistress for some days. “Would God my head were clear, so I might think on’t, what it means!”

  The prisoner interpreted this as an invitation to tell his tale, and so commenced:

  “My name is not McEvoy, but Thomas Tayloe, out of Oxford in Talbot County. Every planter in Talbot knows me—”

  “Why do you not complain in court, then,” the poet interrupted thickly, “and call them in as witnesses?” He was seated on the deck, too ill to stand.

  “Not with Sowter as defendant,” Tayloe said. “For all his sainting he is crooked as the courts, and besides, the wretches would lie to spite me.” He explained that his trade was selling redemptioners: poor folk in England desirous of traveling to the colonies would, in lieu of boat fare, indenture themselves to an enterprising sea captain, who in turn “redeemed” their indentures to the highest bidders in port—a lucrative speculation, since standard passenger fare for servants was only five pounds sterling, more or less, and the indenture-bonds of artisans, unmarried women, and healthy laborers could be sold for three to five times that amount. Those whom it was inconvenient or insufficiently profitable for the captain to sell directly he “wholesaled” to factors like Tayloe, who would then attempt to resell the hands to planters more removed from the port of call. Tayloe’s own specialty, it seemed, was purchasing at an unusually low price servants who were old, infirm, unskilled, troublesome, or otherwise especially difficult for the captain to dispose of, and endeavoring to “retail” them before the expense of feeding them much raised his small investment.

  “ ’Tis a thankless job,” he admitted. “Were’t not for me those pinch-penny planters with their fifty-acre patches would have no hands at all, yet they’ll pay six pounds for a palsied old scarecrow and hold me to account for’t he is no Samson. And the wretched redemptioners claim I starve ’em, when they know very well I’ve saved their worthless lives: they’re the scum o’ the London docks, the half of ’em, and were spirited away drunk by the captain: if I didn’t take them off his hands in Oxford, he’d sign ’em on as crewmen for the voyage home, and see to’t they fell to the fishes ere the ship was three days out.”

  “ ’Tis a charitable trade you practice, I’m persuaded,” Ebenezer said in a dolorous voice.

  “Well, sir,” he declared, “just yesterday the Morpheides moored off Oxford with a troop o’ redemptioners—”

  “The Morpheides! Not Slye and Scurry’s ship?”

  “No other,” Tayloe said. “Gerrard Slye’s the grandest speculator in the trade, and Scurry is his equal. They are the only order-captains in the Province. Suppose thou’rt a planter, now, and need you a stonemason for four years’ work: ye put your order in with Slye and Scurry, and on the next voyage there’s your mason.”

  “No more: I grasp the principle.”

  “Well then, ’twas yesterday the Morpheides moored, and out we all went to bid for redemptioners. They were fetching ’em up as I boarded, and the crew was passing pots o’ rum for us buyers. When they brought this redhaired wight on deck he took one look at the shore, broke away from the deckhands, and sprang o’er the side ere any man could stop him. ’Twas his ill luck to light beside the Morpheides’s own boat; the mate and three others hauled him back aboard and clapped him into leg irons with promise of a flogging, and I knew then I’d have him ere the day was out.”

  “Poor McEvoy!” mumbled the Laureate.

  “ ’Twas his own doing,” Tayloe said. “Would God they’d let the whoreson drown, so I’d not be shackled here in his place!” He sniffed and spat over the gunwale. “In any case, the captains filled their orders for bricklayers, cobblers, boat-wrights, and the like, and put up for bids a clutch o’ cabinetmakers and carpenters, and a sailmaker that fetched ’em twenty-three pounds sterling. As a rule they’d have peddled off the lassies after that, but in this lot the only ladies were a brace o’ forty-year spinsters out to catch husbands, so instead they brought their field hands out, and bid ’em off for twelve to sixteen pound. After the field hands came the ladies, and went for cooks at fourteen pounds apiece. When they were sold, only four souls remained, besides the red-head: three were too feeble for field work and too stupid for anything else, and the fourth was so ravaged with the smallpox, the look of him would retch a goat. ’Twas a lean day, for ’tis my wont to buy a dozen or more, but I dickered with Slye and Scurry till at last I got the five for twenty pounds—that’s a pound a head less than ’twould’ve cost to bring ’em over if they’d eaten twice a day, but Slye and Scurry had so starved ’em they were fit for naught but scarecrows, and had some profit e’en at twenty pound.

  “They took the red-head’s leg irons off and bade him go peaceably with me or take his cat-o’-nine-tails on the spot. By the time I got the five of them ashore, roped round the ankles, and loaded into the wagon, ’twas late in the afternoon, and I knew ’twould be great good fortune to sell even one by nightfall. ’Twas my plan to stop at the Oxford tavern first, to try if I could sell to a drunkard what he’d ne’er buy sober, and thence move on with the worst o’ the lot to Dorset, inasmuch as servant-ships rarely land there, and the planters oft are short o’ help. The Irishman set up a hollowing for food, whereat I smote him one across the chops, but for fear they’d band together and turn on me, I said ’twas to fetch ’em a meal I stopped at the tavern, and they’d eat directly I’d done seeking masters for ’em. Inside I found two gentlemen in their cups, each boasting to the company of his wealth, and seized the chance to argue my merchandise. So well did I feed their vanity, each was eager to show how lightly he bought servants; and I was careful to bring their audience out as well. The upshot of it w
as, when Mr. Preen bought the pox-ridden lout, Mr. Puff needs buy two of the ancient dotards to save face. What’s more, they durst not bat an eye at the price I charged, though I’ll wager it sobered the twain of ’em on the instant!

  “I hurried off then with the other two, ere my gentlemen had breath to regret their folly, and steered my course for Cambridge. McEvoy hollowed louder than before, that I’d not fed him: even Slye and Scurry, he declared, had given him bread and water on occasion. Another smite I smote him, this time with the horsewhip, and told him if I’d not saved him he had been eaten instead of eating. I despaired o’ selling either that same night, inasmuch as McEvoy, albeit he was young and passing sturdy, was so plain a troublemaker that no planter in his senses would give a shilling for him, and his companion was a crook-backed little Yorkshireman with a sort of quinsy and no teeth in his head, who looked as if he’d die ere the spring crop was up; but at the Choptank ferry landing I had another stroke o’ luck. ’Twas after dark, and the ferry was out, so I took my prizes from the wagon and led ’em a small ways down the beach, towards Bolingbroke Creek, where we could do whate’er we needed ere we crossed. We’d gone no more than forty yards ere I heard a small commotion just ahead, behind a fallen tree, and when I looked to see the cause oft, I found Judge Hammaker o’ the Cambridge court, playing the two-backed beast with a wench upon the sand! He feigned a mighty rage at being discovered, and ordered us away, but once I saw who he was and called him by name, and asked after his wife’s health, he grew more reasonable. In sooth, ’twas not long ere he confessed he was in great need of a servant, and though his leanings were toward McEvoy, I persuaded him to take the Yorkshireman instead. Nay, more, when he agreed that one old servant is worth two young, I charged him twenty-four pounds for Mr. Crook back—near twice the price of an average sturdy field hand. E’en so he got off lightly: the wench he’d been a-swiving had seemed no stranger to me, albeit the darkness and her circumstances had kept me from placing her; but once I’d crossed to Cambridge with McEvoy and heard o’ the day’s court cases from the drinkers at the inn, it struck me where I’d seen the tart before. She was Ellie Salter, whose husband hath a tavern in Talbot County—the same John Salter who’d got a change of venue to the Cambridge court in his suit with Justice Bradnox, and had won a judgment from old Hammaker that very afternoon! I scarce need tell ye, had I learnt that tale in time ’tis two new servants he’d have bought, and paid a swingeing sixty pounds sterling for the pair!