The Sot-Weed Factor

by John Barth

  But once Ebenezer had wrested the Secret Historie from his memory he could not but marvel at the parallel between John Smith’s experience and their own. Moreover, the existence of the Historie itself attested that Smith and at least some of his party had escaped or been freed by their captors. His reflections were interrupted at this point by their arrival at the Indians’ town, an assemblage of mean little huts arranged in a thick circle upon an island of relatively high ground. There seemed to be well over a hundred in all, dome-shaped affairs of small logs and thatched twigs; surrounded as they were by the marsh, they resembled nothing so much as a colony of muskrat houses, the more since their occupants were cloaked and capped with fur. The citizenry appeared to be sleeping: except for a single hidden sentry who challenged their approach with a “Too-hoo!” from his post in a nearby brush clump, and was answered in kind, the town was as still as one deserted.

  “ ’Tis passing queer,” the Captain grumbled. “Never saw an Indian town without a pack o’ curs about.”

  But if the silence of the village was disconcerting, what broke it a few moments later was nothing less than extraordinary: they had passed through the ring of dwellings to a clearing or open court in the center of the town, and during a whispered colloquy between the leader and his black lieutenant there came from a hut not far away a sudden wailing that raised the poet’s hackles. Through his fancy, in half a second, passed the various Indian cruelties he had learned of from Henry Burlingame: how they bit the nails from their victims’ fingers, twisted the fingers themselves from the hands, drove skewers into the remaining stumps, pulled sinews from the arms, tore out the hair and beard, hung hot hatchets around the neck, and poured hot sand on scalped heads.

  “Marry come up!” breathed the Captain, and Bertrand’s teeth began to chatter. The wail changed pitch and tone and changed again a moment afterwards, and again, but not until the wailer drew fresh breath and recommenced did the prisoners grasp the nature of the sound.

  “Dear God in Heav’n!” Ebenezer gasped. “ ’Tis someone singing!”

  And monstrous unlikelihood through it was, the prisoners recognized the sound to be in truth the voice of a singing man—a tenor, to be exact. This in itself was wonder enough; far more incongruous was the fact that his words (viewed retrospectively from this understanding) were not in a savage tongue at all, but in clear King’s English: I… saw… my-y la-a-dy weep was the line he’d sung, and, having drawn his breath, he continued: And Sor-row proudt… to be advanced so…

  “B’m’faith, ’tis another Englishman!”

  “So much the worse for him,” the Captain replied, “but no better for us.”

  “In those fair eyes,” the singer went on, “in those… fair eyes…”

  “I wonder he hath the spirit to sing,” Bertrand marveled, “or his jailer’s leave.”

  This latter, at least, it seemed he did not have after all, for in the course of his next asseveration—“Where all perfections keep…”—he broke into an unmelodious cursing, the substance of which was that if the so-and-so salvages couldn’t let a poor condemned so-and-so sing a so-and-so song without poking their pigstickers into his so-and-so B-flat, they had better cut his so-and-so throat that instant, and be damned to them.

  “I swear,” Ebenezer said, “I have heard that voice before!”

  “Haply ’tis the ghost of your Captain What-ye-may-call-him,” the Captain suggested sourly.

  “Nay, i’God—” If he had intended to say more, he was prevented from doing so by the Indians, who, their parley finished, gave a jerk on the neck-tether and led the prisoners toward the very hut which held the disgruntled tenor. At its entrance they were unstrung and refettered individually as for the canoe-passage; throughout the operation Ebenezer squinted his face and shook his head incredulously, and when upon another armed Indian’s emerging from the hut the tenor at once began his song afresh, the poet moaned again “I’God!” and trembled all over.

  Two men then laid hold of Bertrand, who stood nearest the entrance to the hut, forced him to his knees, and with the assistance of a spearpoint obliged him to crawl through the little doorway, whinnying protests and pleas for clemency. The Captain too, now that imprisonment was at hand, let go a fresh torrent of threats and mariner’s oaths, to no avail: down upon his knees he went, and through the dark hole after Bertrand.

  “I say!” the original tenant complained, breaking off his song at the ruckus. “This is too much! What is’t now? ’Sheart! Did I hear an honest English curse there? Hallo, another!” Ebenezer’s turn had come to scramble after. “D’ye mean we’ve enough for four-man shove-ha’penny? Who might you gentlemen be, to come calling so late in the day?”

  “A pair of travelers and an innocent shipmaster,” the Captain answered, “blown hither by the storm and betrayed by two black devils of a crew!”

  “Ah, there’s your crime,” the other prisoner said. The hut was dark, so that although in its small interior the Englishmen lay like logs in a woodbox, they could not see their companions even faintly. Their jailer, after receiving instructions from the Indian leader, remained on guard outside, and the raiding party dispersed.

  “What crime?” the Captain protested. “I’ve ne’er laid an angry hand on the rascals since the day I bought ’em!”

  “ ’Tis enough ye bought ’em,” replied the tenor. “More than enough. I ne’er bought or sold a black man in my life, nor harmed a red—how could I, i’faith, that’s but a runaway redemptioner myself?—but ’twas enough I matched the color of them that did.”

  “What is this talk of slaves and colors?” Bertrand demanded. “D’ye mean they’ll scalp poor hapless servingmen like myself?”

  “Worse, friend.”

  “What could be worse?” the valet cried.

  “By’r voice I’d judge ye sing a faltering bass,” the other declared. “But if they do the trick they’ve set their minds to, well all be warbling descants within the week.”

  Of the three new prisoners only Ebenezer grasped the meaning of this prediction; yet though horrified by it, he was too disconcerted, even confounded, by his prior astonishment to interpret the figures for his comparisons. Their host, however, the invisible tenor, did so at once in plainest literal English, to the consternation of Bertrand and the Captain.

  “I’ve not been in this wretched province many months,” said he, “but I know well the Governor hath enemies on every side—Jacobites and John Coode Protestants within, Andros to the south, and the Frenchman to the north—so that he lives in daily fear of insurrection or invasion. Yet his greatest peril is one he little dreams of: the complete extermination of every white-skinned human being in Maryland!”

  “Fogh!” cried the Captain. “They’re but one town against a province!”

  “Far from it,” the tenor replied. “Few white men know this town exists, but it hath lain hid here many a year; ’tis the headquarters, as I gather, for a host of mutinous salvage chiefs, and a haven for runaway Negroes. All the disaffected leaders are smuggling in this week for a general council of war, and ourselves, gentlemen, will be eunuched and burnt for their amusement.”

  At this news Bertrand set up such a howling that their guard thrust in his head, jabbed randomly in the dark with the butt end of his spear, and muttered threats. The tenor replied with cheerful curses and remarked, when the guard withdrew, “I say, there were three of ye came in, but I’ve heard only two speak out thus far: is the other wight sick, or fallen a-swoon, or what?”

  “ ’Tis not fright holds my tongue, John McEvoy,” the poet said with difficulty. “ ’Tis shock and shame!”

  The other prisoner gasped. “Nay, i’faith! ’Tis past belief! Ah! Ah! Too good! Ah, marry, too wondrous good! Tell me ’tis not really Eben Cooke I hear!”

  “It is,” Ebenezer admitted, and McEvoy’s wild laughter brought new threats from the guard.

  “Oh! Ah! Too good! The famous virgin poet and reformer o’ London whores! ’Twill be a joy to see you roa
sting by my side. Aha! Oh! Oh!”

  “It ill becomes you to rejoice,” the poet replied. “You set out a-purpose to ruin my life, but whate’er injury or misfortune you’ve suffered at my hands hath been no wish of mine at all.”

  “Marry!” Bertrand exclaimed. “Is’t the pimp from Pudding Lane, sir, that tattled to Master Andrew?”

  “I take it ye gentlemen know each other,” the Captain said, “and have some quarrel betwixt ye?”

  “Why, nay,” McEvoy answered, “no quarrel at all; ’tis only that I made his fortune—albeit by accident—and out of gratitude he hath wrecked my life, hastened my death, and ruined the woman I love!”

  “Yet not a bit of’t by design, and scarce even with knowledge,” Ebenezer countered, “whereas ’twill please you to know your revenge hath surpassed your evillest intentions. I have suffered at the hands of rogues and pirates, been deceived by my closest friend, swindled out of my estate, and obliged to flee forever in disgrace from my father; what’s more, in following me here, my sister hath been led into Heav’n knows what peril, while poor Joan Toast—” Here he was overwhelmed with emotion and lost his voice.

  “What of her?” snapped McEvoy.

  “I will say only what I presume you saw at Malden: that she hath suffered, and suffers yet, inconceivable tribulations and indignities, in consequence of which she is disfigured in form and face and cannot have long to live.”

  McEvoy groaned. “And ye call me to blame for’t, wretch, when ’twas you she followed? I’Christ, if my hands were free to wring your neck!”

  “I have a burthen of guilt, indeed,” Ebenezer admitted. “Yet but for your tattling to my father you’d ne’er have lost her; or, if you had, ’twould’ve been to Pudding Lane and not to Maryland. In any case, she’d not have been raped by a giant Moor and infected with the pox, or ruined by opium, or whored out nightly to a barnful of salvages!”

  At the pronouncement of each of these misfortunes McEvoy moaned afresh; hot tears coursed from the poet’s eyes, ran cold across his temples and into his ears.

  “Whate’er thy differences, gentlemen,” the Captain put in, “ ’tis little to the purpose to air ’em this late in the day. All our sins will soon enough be rendered out, and there’s an end on’t.”

  “Aiee!” Bertrand wailed.

  “True enough,” McEvoy sighed. “The man who won’t forgive his neighbor must needs have struck a wondrous bargain with his own conscience.”

  “The best of us,” Ebenezer agreed, “hath certain memories in the night to make him sweat for shame. Once before, in Locket’s, I forgave you for your letter to my father; yet ’twas a bragging sort of pardon, inasmuch as what you’d done had seemed to make my fortune. Now I have lost title, fortune, love, honor, and life itself, let me forgive you again, McEvoy, and beg your own forgiveness in return.”

  The Irishman concurred, but admitted that since Ebenezer had at no time set about deliberately to injure either him or Joan Toast, there was little or nothing to be forgiven.

  “Not so, friend—i’Christ, not so!” The poet wept, and related as coherently as he could his trials with Captain Pound, the rape of the Cyprian, his bargain with the swine-girl, the loss of his estate, and his obligatory marriage to Joan Toast. In particular he dwelt upon his responsibility in Joan’s downfall, her solicitude during his protracted seasoning, and the magnanimity of her plan for their flight to England, until not only himself and McEvoy, but the whole imprisoned company were sniffling and weeping at her goodness.

  “For reward,” Ebenezer went on, “she asked no more than that I give her my ring for hers, to make her feel less a harlot, and that she be given the honor of providing for me in London—”

  “As she did for me,” McEvoy reverently interposed.

  The Captain sniffled. “She is a Catholic saint of a whore!”

  “And to think I spoke so freely to her at Captain Mitchell’s,” Bertrand marveled, “when we thought her but a scurfy wench of a pig-driver!”

  “Stay, sirs,” Ebenezer demanded sadly; “you have not heard the beginning of my shame. D’you think, when she made this martyr’s proposition, I refused to hear of’t, but ordered her off to England on her own six pounds and promised to rejoin her when I could? Or did I, at the very least, go down on my knees before such charity and kiss the hem of her ragged dress? Imagine the very worst of me, sirs: d’you suppose I merely thanked her with great feeling, let her whore up her boat fare from the Indians in the curing-house, and sailed off with her to be her pimp in London?”

  “God forgive ye if ye did,” the Captain murmured.

  “Should God forgive me thrice o’er,” said Ebenezer, “I would bear still a weight of guilt sufficient to drag ten men to Hell. The fact is, gentlemen, I accepted the six pounds, sent her off to the curing-house—and fled alone to the bark in Cambridge! What say you to that, McEvoy?”

  “Forgiven, forgiven!” cried the Irishman. “And God save us all! Methinks the fire that cooks our flesh will be cool beside the flames that roast our souls!”

  Some minutes passed in silence while the company reflected on the story and their fate. Presently, in a calmer voice, Ebenezer asked McEvoy what ill fortune had led him to Bloodsworth Island. The query elicited a number of great sighing curses, after which, and several false starts, McEvoy offered the following explanation:

  “I am but two-and-twenty, sirs, as near as one can reckon that hath not the faintest notion of his birth date; but i’faith, I’ve been an old man all my life! My earliest memory is of singing for ha’pennies by Barking Church, for a legless wretch named Patcher that called himself my father; I was half dead o’ cold and like to faint away from hunger—for de’il the crust I’d see of a loaf old Patcher bought with my earnings!—and the reason I recall it, I had to sing myself alive, as’t were, or fall down in the snow, yet I durst not unclench my teeth lest they ruin the song with chattering. Old Patcher must needs have been a music-master, for whene’er I strayed a quaver out o’ key he’d cane me into tune with his hickory-crutch. Many’s the lutist that can play with his eyes closed, but I’ll wager ’tis a rare tenor can sing a com-all-ye with his jaws shut fast!

  “Yet sing ’em I did, and true as gospel, nor did I e’er lament my plight or rail at Patcher in my mind; in sooth, ’twas not his cruelty made me vow to be shed of him but his mistakes upon the lute he played to accompany my songs! Some winters later, when I was stronger and he weaker, we were working Newgate Market in a blizzard; Patcher’s fingers were that benumbed, he played as I might with the toes o’ my feet, and the sound so offended my ear, I flew into a passion, snatched up the hickory-crutch, and laid him low with a clout aside the head. So doth the pupil repeat his lesson!”

  “You killed him, then?” asked Ebenezer.

  “I did not tarry to find out,” McEvoy laughed. “I snatched up his lute and fled. But Newgate Market was near deserted, and the weather freezing, and though I begged my way through London for many a year after, singing the songs he taught me and playing on his lute, I ne’er saw old Patcher again. Thus ended my apprenticeship: I joined the ranks of those who get their living from the streets, a journeyman musician and master beggar, and my own man from that day to this.”

  “Unhappy child!”

  McEvoy sniffed. “So speaks the virgin poet.”

  “Nay, John; for all your trials you were still an innocent amongst the wolves.”

  “Say rather a whelp amongst his elders, and no mean hand at wolfing. My virginity I lost to the whores that nursed my boyish ailments, but innocence I never lost, nor fear nor faith in God and man—for the reason one cannot lose what he never hath possessed. I played in taverns for my bed and board, and whene’er I wanted money—but ’tis no news to the Laureate that your true artist need not be handsome to please the ladies; his talent serves for face, place, and grace together, and for all he hath been sired by a legless beggar upon a drunken gutter-tart, if his art hath power to stir he may be wined and dined by dukes and sprea
d the knees of young marquesas! In short, when I grew fond of inventing melodies, I invested in the love of wealthy women—”

  “Invested!” cried Bertrand, who to this point had expressed no interest in the tale. “ ’Tis a rare investment that pays cash dividends on no capital!”

  “Nay, don’t mistake me,” McEvoy said seriously. “Time was my capital, the precious mortal time one wastes a-wooing; and my return was time as well—hours bought from singing for my supper, and from doing the hundred mean chores a poor man doth for himself perforce. ’Twas an investment like any other, and I chose it for a proper tradesman’s reason: it paid a higher return on my capital than did aught else, in mortal time.”

  “Yet you must own ’twas something callous,” ventured the poet.

  “No more than any honest business,” McEvoy insisted. “If hearts were injured, why, the wounds were self-inflicted; I promised naught, and kept my promise, and there’s an end on’t.”

  “But surely Joan Toast—”

  “I have said naught o’ Joan Toast,” the Irishman reproved. “ ’Tis the wives and daughters o’ the rich I did my business with, that call their pandering patronage, and are much given to fornication in the noble cause of Art. Joan Toast was a penceless guttersnipe like myself—and an artist as well, in her way, only her instruments were different from my own.”

  “Ha! Well said!” cried Bertrand. Ebenezer made no comment.

  “I was eighteen when first I met her: she had been hired to service a certain debauched young peer, whose wife, not to be outdone, hired me to play the same game with herself. The four of us sat down to pheasant and Rhenish, for all the world like two pairs o’ newlyweds, which much pleased his lordship’s fancy; in sooth, as the wine got hold of him he made a series of lewd proposals, each more unnatural than the one before. And since perversion, like refinement, is an arc, the which, if ye but extend it far enough, returns upon itself, by the evening’s end naught tickled the wretch so much as the thought of taking his wife to bed! Joan Toast and I were turned out together, and as we’d done no more than eat a meal to earn our hire, we made a night of’t in her little room near Ludgate. E’en then, at seventeen, she was the soul o’ worldliness: fresh and full of spirit as a blooded colt, but her eyes were old as lust, and in her gestures was the history of the race. Small wonder his lordship craved her: she was the elixir of her sex, and who swived her swived no woman, but Womankind!