The Sot-Weed Factor

by John Barth

  “I’faith,” said one of the kitchen-women, “ye’ll find no London gentlemen in the curing-house, Susie; ye should have let him swive ye!”

  “Nay, God!” Ebenezer cried, so mournfully that the whole company left off their mirth and regarded him with consternation. “ ’Tis I he’ll swive! That man was Andrew Cooke of Middlesex, my father, come to see how fares his son! The pistol!” He jumped to his feet. “There is no help for’t now!”

  “Stay!” Smith commanded. “Stop him, Susan!”

  “ ’Tis the pistol!” the poet cried again, and fled for his chamber before anyone could detain him.

  33

  The Laureate Departs from His Estate

  SUCH WAS HIS agitation that not until he was in his room, still lighted by a candle he had left burning on the writing table, did the Laureate recall that he had no pistol with which to destroy himself, nor even a short-sword—his own having been stolen along with the rest of his costume in the corncrib and never returned to him. He heard the company swarming up the stairs from the parlor, and threw himself in despair upon his bed.

  The first to reach his door was Susan; she took one look at him and bade the others stay back.

  “We’ll wait below,” Smith grumbled. “But mind, see to’t there’s no trouble. I shan’t have his idle brains all over my house.”

  All this the poet heard face down in the quilts. Susan closed the door and sat on the edge of his bed.

  “Do ye mean to blow your head off?” she inquired.

  “ ’Tis the final misfortune.” he answered. “I have no pistol, nor means to purchase one. Ye’ll not be widowed this evening, so it seems.”

  “Will your father’s wrath be so terrible?”

  “I’Christ, ’tis past imagining!” Ebenezer groaned. “Yet e’en were he the very soul of mercy, I am too shamed to face him.”

  Susan sighed. “ ’Twill be passing strange, to be the widow of a man that ne’er hath wifed me.”

  “Nor ever shall!” Ebenezer sat up angrily. “Much you care, with your curing-house salvages and your opium! Marry you my friend Henry Burlingame, that will wife you with your swine—there’s a match!”

  “The world is strange and full o’ wickedness,” Susan murmured.

  “So at least is this verminous province, whose delights I was supposed to sing!” He shook his head. “Ah, marry, I have no call to injure you: forgive my words.”

  “ ’Tis a hard fall ye’ve fallen, but prithee speak no more o’ pistols,” Susan said. “Flee, if ye must, and start again elsewhere.”

  “Where flee?” cried Ebenezer. “Better the pistol than another day in Maryland!”

  “Back to England, I mean: hide yourself till the fleet sails, and thou’rt quit of your father for good and all.”

  “Very good,” the Laureate said bitterly. “And shall I kiss the captain for my freight?”

  “Mr. Cooke!” Susan whispered suddenly. She leaned over him and clutched his shoulders. “Nay: Ebenezer! Husband!”

  “What’s this? What are you doing?”

  “Stay, hear me!” Susan urged. “ ’Tis true I’m but a whore and scurvy night-bag, and ruined by ill-usage. ’Tis true ye’d small choice in the wedding of me, and ye’ve small cause to love me. But I say again ’tis a strange life, and full o’ things ye little dream of: not all is as ye think, my dove!”

  “ ’Sheart!”

  “I love ye!” she hissed. “Let’s fly together from this sink o’ perdition and begin anew in England! There’s many a trick a poor man can play in London, and I know the bagful of ’em!”

  “But marry,” Ebenezer protested, snatching at the gentlest excuse he could think of. “I’ve not one fare, let alone two!”

  Susan was not daunted. “ ’Tis a peddlepot ye’ve wed,” she declared. “I’d as well turn my shame to our advantage, to rid us o’ Maryland forever.”

  “What is’t you intend?”

  “I’ll hie me to the curing-house anon, and whore the sum.”

  Ebenezer shook his head. “ ’Tis a noble plan,” he sighed. “Such a whoredom were more a martyrdom, methinks, and merits awe. But I cannot go.”

  The woman released him. “Not go?”

  “Nay, not though I changed my name and face and escaped my father’s wrath forever. The living are slaves to memory and conscience, and should we flee together, the first would plague me with thoughts of Father and my sister Anna, while the second—” He paused. “I cannot say it less briefly or cruelly than this: nine months ago I pledged my love to the London girl Joan Toast and offered her my innocence, which she spurned. ’Twas after that I vowed to remain as virginal as a priest and worship the god of poetry. This Joan Toast had a lover, that was her pimp as well, and albeit ’twas on his account my father sent me off to Maryland, and I had every cause to think his mistress loathed me, yet she was ever in my thoughts, and in my most parlous straits thereafter, I never broke my pledge. Think, then, how moved I was to learn that she had followed after me, out of love! I had resolved to wed her, and make her mistress of my estate, and indeed I’d have done no less had all gone well, so much I love her! Now Malden’s mine no more, and my Joan is disappeared from sight, and whether ’twas to escape marrying a wretched pauper she flew, or to join her lover McEvoy, still she came hither on my account, as did he. How could I fly with you to London, when I know not how they fare, or whether they live or die?”

  Susan commenced weeping. “Am I so horrid beside your Joan? Nay, don’t trouble to lie: I know by sight the beauty of her face, and the loathesomeness of mine. Little d’ye dream how jealous I am of her!”

  “The world hath used you hardly,” Ebenezer said.

  “Ye know not half! I am its very sign and emblem!”

  “And yet thou’rt generous and valiant, and have saved both Joan Toast and myself from death.”

  Susan grasped his arm. “What would ye say, if ye learned Joan Toast was in this very house?”

  “What!” Ebenezer cried, starting up. “How can that be, and I’ve not seen her? What is’t you say?”

  “She is in this house this very moment, and hath been since she fled from Captain Mitchell! Here is proof.” She drew from her bosom a necklace of dirty string, on which was threaded the fishbone ring presented to Ebenezer by Quassapelagh, the Anacostin King.

  “I’God, the ring I gave you for her fare! Where is she?”

  “Stay, Eben,” Susan cautioned. “Ye’ve not heard all ye must before ye see her.”

  “A fart for’t! Don’t try to keep me from her!”

  “ ’Tis by her own instruction,” Susan said, and blocked the door to the hallway. “Why is’t, d’ye think, she hath not shown herself ere now?”

  “Marry, I know not, nor dare I think! But I die to see her!”

  “ ’Tis only fit, for she hath done no less to see you.”

  Ebenezer stopped as if smitten by a hammer. Tears sprang to his eyes, and he was obliged to take the nearest seat—which happened to be the one at his writing desk—before he fell.

  “Aye, she is dead!” Susan said. “Dead of French pox, opium, and despair! I saw her die, and ’twas not pretty.”

  “Ah God!” Ebenezer moaned, his features in a turmoil. “Ah God!”

  “Ye know already how she was taken with love for ye, and for your innocence, after she had spurned ye in your room; and ye know she turned her back on John McEvoy when he wrote that letter to your father. A dream got hold of her, such as any whore is prone to, to live her life with you in perfect chastity, and it so possessed her that anon she vowed to follow ye to Maryland—the more inasmuch as ’twas on her account ye were sent thither—and she fondly hoped ye’d have her. But she had no money for her freight, and so for all she’d sworn to have no more o’ whoring, it seemed she was obliged to swive her fare.”

  “ ’Sheart, how this news wounds me!” Ebenezer cried.

  “ ’Tis joyous beside the rest,” Susan declared. “ ’Tis common knowledge that a pretty girl can swiv
e most men round her finger, and any man at all if she hath fancy enough and spirit in her sporting—such is the world, and there’s no help for’t. ’Twas Joan Toast’s plan to find a willing sea-captain, as hath many another lass, who’d let her warm his cabin the first week out in payment for her freight; yet she was so loath to play the whore again, she devised another scheme, the which was far more perilous and unpleasant in every way, but had the single merit that if it did not fail, she’d reach the Maryland shore unswived. She had heard it said along the wharves that whores were as scarce in America as Jews in the College o’ Cardinals—so much so, that any lass who wished could cross the ocean free of charge in a certain ship, provided that when she got there she would hire herself to one or other of the whoremasters who met the boat.”

  Ebenezer groaned. “I dare not let my fancy run ahead!”

  “Her new plan was, to sign aboard this vessel, that carried no other passengers but friskers, and so reach America unswived; once ashore, she’d bend her wit to find some means, of escaping her obligation—nor did that prospect much alarm her, for so eager were the provinces for women, and so eager the women for the high fees they could charge, there was no contract or other writ to bind ’em to their pledge.”

  “This ship,” Ebenezer broke in. “I tremble to hear its name, but if she told you, I must know’t.”

  “ ’Twas called the Cyprian—the same that was attacked by pirates off the Maryland coast and all her women, save one, fetched to the rail and raped!”

  “Save one? B’m’faith, then dare I hope—”

  “Ye dare not,” Susan said. “Joan Toast was the one, in sooth, that was not ravished at the rail, but the reason for’t is, she fled aloft to the mizzen-rigging!”

  “I’Christ, i’Christ, ’twas her!” Ebenezer cried. “Know, Susan, that these were the pirates of Captain Thomas Pound, the same that some time earlier had taken my valet and myself from the Poseidon at John Coode’s behest! I know not how much Joan told you, but I must make confession now ere I perish of remorse: I was witness to this very piracy; I saw the Cyprian women bound up along the rail; I saw a hapless maid break free and scramble up the mizzen ratlines, though I little dreamed then who she was; I saw the Moor go after her—”

  “That Moor!” Susan said with a shudder. “I know him well from her relation, and grow sick and cold at the memory! But hear the story—”

  “I am not done with my confession,” Ebenezer protested.

  “Nor have ye aught to confess, that is not known to me already,” Susan said grimly, and resumed her tale. “As soon as the pirates showed their colors, the captain advised the women not to resist but rather to submit with right good will, in hopes that once the pirates had swived their lust away, they’d leave ’em with a whole skin and a floating ship. But two girls hid in the farthest crannies of the bilge: Joan Toast because she’d vowed to stay chaste as a nun, and another girl so ruined with claps and poxes that she had but a few more days to live and wished to go to her grave unraped.”

  “And there the Moor discovered them! I am ill!”

  “There he found ’em,” Susan affirmed. “ ’Twas what every lass shudders at in dreams: they crouched there in the dark, with the sounds o’ lewd attack above their heads, and then the hatchway to the bilge was opened, and the monstrous Moor came in! He had a taper in his hand and in its light they saw his face and his great black body. When he spied the two women he gave a snort and leaped upon the nearest, that happened to be the one not far from death. ’Twas Joan’s bad luck as well as his he could not see the wench’s pox by candlelight, for anon when he was done and went for Joan, she would have two miseries instead of one to fear.”

  Ebenezer could only moan and shake his head.

  “She made to flee whilst he was going at the sick girl, but he caught her by the ankle and knocked her such a swingeing clout she knew no more till he was carrying her and another up the ladderway to the deck. When she managed to break free and climb the rigging, as ye witnessed, ’twas her last fond hope he would give o’er the chase and take his pleasure with the flossies on the deck; but ere she reached the top the roll and pitch o’ the rig so terrified her, she was obliged to stop climbing and thrust her arms and legs through like a fly in a web. ’Twas there the great Moor cracked her till she fainted dead away, and ’twas there she hung till Heaven knows when—ravished, poxed, and seeded with the monster’s seed!”

  “Ah, no!”

  “No less,” Susan confirmed. “Albeit ’twas not made plain till some time after, the Moor had got her with child. Yet all this barbarous usage was as naught beside her next misfortune: she had scarce thrown off her swoon and found herself still hanging in the rigging, when she heard another pirate climbing up and calling lewdly to her as he climbed. She resolved to leap into the ocean if ’twas the Moor, but when she turned to look—”

  “ Twas I,” Ebenezer wept, “and may I fry in Hell for’t! For the first time in my life I was possessed with lust like any rutting goat, and I had no hope of seeing Joan Toast again, that I thought despised me. Great God, ’twas only Pound’s departure saved her from another rape, and at the hands of the man she’d suffered all the rest for! To this day I cannot understand that weakness, nor the other, when I made to force you at Captain Mitchell’s.”

  “For you ’twas simple lust, that mortal men are prone to,” Susan replied, “but to Joan Toast ’twas the end o’ the world, for she loved ye as more than mortal. When the Cyprian put in at Philadelphia she signed herself to the first whoremaster on the dock, that chanced to be Captain Mitchell o’ Calvert County.”

  “Dear Heav’n, d’you mean to say—”

  “I mean to say she was his harlot from the first! The pox she’d got from the Moor soon spread over her in foul eruptions, and no gentleman would hire her; what’s more she learned she was with child. Anon she took to opium for respite from her miseries, and thus fell into Mitchell’s hands by perpetual indenture, and was set to poxing salvages and sundry menial chores. ’Twas then ye appeared a castaway at Mitchell’s, like a figure in a dream, and so ashamed she was of her ruin, and possessed by wrath that ye’d betrayed her, and withal despairing of her future, she vowed to make an end on’t, and took her life. ’Twas not the fair Joan Toast o’ Locket’s that this ring set o’er to Malden, but her awful corse!”

  “And I her murtherer!” cried Ebenezer. He sprang up from the chair. “I shall see her grave and end my life as well! Where is her body?”

  “ ’Tis where it hath been many and many a time since the fall o’ the year,” Susan said, and laid her hand upon her chest. “Here is the corse of your Joan Toast, before your eyes!”

  “Ah, nay, this cannot be!” But the realization that it was had already sent fresh tears down his cheeks. “ ’Tis too impossible! Henry—Henry would have known, i’Christ! And Smith, your father—”

  “Henry Burlingame hath known me from the night ye came to Mitchell’s, and hath preserved the secret at my request.”

  “But the story of Susan Warren and Elizabeth Williams—”

  “ ’Tis true, the whole of’t, save for one detail: it is the story of the poor girl’s plight when I was brought to Mitchell’s. ’Twas my likeness to her, and hers to Elizabeth Williams, that had fetched the high price he paid me: soon after he’d enthralled me with his opium, he murthered Susan in a fit o’ rage, and buried her as Elizabeth Williams!”

  “ ’Sheart!”

  “ ’Twas necessary then,” Joan declared, “to hide his crime, for he wanted no attention brought to bear on his business. Therefore he sought out William Smith at Malden and told him the girl had died o’ pox; then, to be entirely safe, he promised to make Smith a wealthy whoremaster on condition he avow me as his daughter. The cooper’s greed got the better of his sentiment, and of course I had no say in the matter.”

  “But marry!” Ebenezer cried. “This Mitchell’s a greater fiend than his master Coode!”

  “I know not who is Mitchell’s master,
or whether in sooth he hath one, but I know there is some monstrous plot afoot. Mitchell is freighting his opium to every quarter of the Province, and girls like me are set a-purpose to pox the hapless Indians.”

  The image of this latter, together with the memory of his behavior at Mitchell’s and his share of responsibility for her plight in general, were too much for Ebenezer to endure: he was seized with a fit of dry retches that left him lying exhausted across the bed.

  “ ’Twas merely as a test I mentioned Joan Toast’s name, to gauge your feeling for her; and another when I bargained to swive ye for my boat fare: had ye spurned me I’d have marked it to my ugliness, inasmuch as ye’d meant to rape me on the Cyprian when I was comelier. Yet when instead ye had at me in the bedchamber ’twas still no flattery, for ye declared ye’d play the virgin yet at Malden with Joan Toast.”

  “Only let me die for shame!” Ebenezer wailed. “Fetch me a pistol from below and take revenge for all your suffering! Or summon John McEvoy and tell him what you’ve endured on my account—I shall share his pleasure in murthering me!”

  “I have already seen John McEvoy,” Joan replied, “in this very house, not six weeks past. He had heard of your loss of Malden and sought me out through Burlingame whilst ye were ill.”

  “How must he loathe me!”

  “E’en ere he’d seen the state I’d come to,” Joan said glibly, “ ’twas his greatest wish to kill ye.”

  “Then fetch him in to shoot me, and have done with’t!”

  “Hear me out.” Joan moved to stand over him at the edge of the bed. “I told him we were man and wife, albeit ye were still virginal, and I loved ye yet despite my sore afflictions; and I told him that for your misfortunes, and my own, and his as well, no one of us could be blamed alone, but all must share the guilt. At last I said I love him still, but not as I love my husband, and that if he did ye harm, ’twould but be injuring me as well. Then I sent him away and bade him return no more, for A woman may have at once three-score o’ lovers, but only one beloved at a time. I have had no news of him since, nor do I wish any.”