The Sot-Weed Factor

by John Barth

  “Rather will they put to the torch every white man who stumbles into their midst, and lead the great war-party that shall drive the English Devils into the sea, or else die fighting here upon their island, under the white man’s guns!”

  Here Ebenezer interrupted. “You must ask the Tayac Chicamec the reason for his wrath, Quassapelagh: I judge from yonder journal-book that his people have suffered small harm from the English these four-score years. He hath not one tenth the grievance of Quassapelagh or Drepacca, yet he shews ten times their spleen.”

  “My brother asks a barbed question,” said Quassapelagh with a smile. “I shall put it to the Tayac Chicamec without the barbs.”

  He did so, and with the typical indirection of the savage, Chicamec ordered the chest brought out again in lieu of immediate reply. This time he took out the journal himself—the guards knelt down at once and lowered their eyes—and held it grimly at arm’s length.

  “This is The Book of English Devils,” he said through Quassapelagh. “Its tale you know: how my godlike father, the Tayac Henry Burlingame One, did best the great Attonceaumoughhough as champion for Wepenter, and drove off the English Devils from our land.”

  “Nay, one moment—” the poet protested, but thought better of it at once. “I mean to say, he was in sooth a mighty man.”

  “He drove out the English Devils upon their ship,” Chicamec resumed, “and then pursued them himself along the shore, for it was his vow that he would follow them to their next encampment and there destroy the lot. He crossed to the northern mainland by canoe and ran all day along the shore of the marshy Honga, up whose reaches the unwary Devils sailed. And when these Devils put ashore to make their camp, then did the Tayac Burlingame spring to kill them, with no weapon save his hands. But Wepenter had mistrusted the courage and godlike prowess of the white-skinned Werowance and had followed after with a war-party, and for this sin the gods bound fast my father’s limbs with invisible thongs, so that the Devils slew Wepenter and divers others, and made good their escape before my father could destroy them. But in their haste they left behind this book, in which was writ the Tayac Burlingame’s mighty deeds, and he preserved it to remind all future ages of Ahatchwhoops that the English are the seed of those same Devils, and must be slain on sight.

  “Now you must know that my heavenly father was a man of no common parts in carnal matters; but as the storm-god stores his strength for many moons and then in a night lays waste the countryside, so the Tayac Henry Burlingame One had a––”

  “A member,” Drepacca offered, for the second time that day.

  “It was no greater than a puppy’s, nor more useful, nor did he go into the Queen Pokatawertussan for three full nights after the Feast. But on the fourth, so say our legends, he summoned her to the bed, and performed the Rites of the Holy Eggplant, after which he got a child in her so mightily, she ne’er left her bed again, and died in bringing me forth!

  “For twenty-six summers thereafter,” Chicamec’s tale continued, “the Ahatchwhoops lived in peace under my father’s rule. Our fishermen brought us stories of English Devils far to the south, and divers times we saw their great white ships go up the Bay, yet never did they put ashore on our island or the nearby mainland. And great was my father’s wrath against them: when my mother the Queen Pokatawertussan was in travail, he vowed to her he’d slay their child ere its cord was cut, if it was born white. And he named me Henry Burlingame Two, but called me by an Ahatchwhoop name, Chicamec. Every day he would read The Book of English Devils, and farther inflame the Ahatchwhoops to murther any white man who fell into their hands. In my twenty-sixth year he died, and with his last breath told our people that the Tayac Chicamec would guard their town against the English Devils, and he swore me to a mighty oath, that I would slay any white-skinned man who came among us, even from the wombs of my wife and concubines.

  “Loud were the wails of the Ahatchwhoops upon his passing, and when I became Werowance in his stead, I prayed for a sign of favor from the gods. At once a terrible storm crashed all about us and blew hither a medicine-man from amongst the English Devils, all senseless and half drowned—by which sign we knew the gods favored my reign and my cause. Lest any of our number doubt he was a Devil and take him for a human like ourselves, I held forth our totem for him to reverence, and being a Devil, he spat upon it. Thereupon we offered him the privileges of the damned and burnt him next day in yonder court, as you all—save the brother of Quassapelagh—shall burn.”

  “Stay, prithee!” cried Ebenezer, whose mind had been wrestling with dates and recollections. “Captain Smith made his voyage in 1608, and you murthered this English Devil in your twenty-sixth year: I say, Quassapelagh, ask him whether that chest yonder did not belong to this medicine-man he speaks of…”

  The question was translated and answered affirmatively.

  “I’faith, then—one more question: hath the Tayac Chicamec any other sons besides my friend Henry Burlingame?” He strove to recall the tales he’d heard from the Jesuit Thomas Smith and from Mary Mungummory. “Hath he a son now dead called Charley… Moccassin? Mackinack? Nay, not that… ’twas Mattassin, I believe.”

  At mention of this name Chicamec’s face went hard, and his reply, according to Quassapelagh, was, “The Tayac Chicamec hath no sons.”

  Ebenezer was sorely disappointed. “Ah well, no matter, then; ’tis only a curious coincidence of events.”

  “Quassapelagh’s brother doth mistake us,” Drepacca put in pleasantly. “The Anacostin King hath Englished Chicamec’s words, but not his meaning.” He turned to Ebenezer. “In truth the Tayac Chicamec hath sons, but they both deserted him to live among the English, and he hath disowned them. One was the man you mentioned, whose name I shan’t repeat: he slew a family of English and was hanged.”

  “Then I’m right!” the poet exulted. “This medicine-man was a Jesuit missionary, and yonder are his soutanes and holy-water! And ’sbody—” His imagination leaped to new connections. “Doth it not follow that Burlingame is half-brother to this murthering Mattassin?”

  No one else in the hut, of course, was in a position to appreciate these revelations. The second mention of Charley Mattassin’s name elicited strong rebuke from Chicamec.

  “Methinks you should be proud of him,” Ebenezer ventured. “ ’Tis true his victims were Dutch and not English, but they were white-skinned in any case.”

  “Take care, Brother,” warned Quassapelagh. “I shall tell the Tayac Chicamec that you apologize for calling Mattassin his son.”

  This done, the old chief went on with his story, and for the first time an emotion other than wrath and malevolence could be noticed in his tone:

  “For many summers the Tayac Chicamec had denied himself the joys of a wife and sons,” Quassapelagh translated. “His heavenly father Henry Burlingame One had given him to know that his seed was mixed, and had farther sworn him to destroy any white-skinned issue; therefore, to spare himself the pain of putting a child of his own to the spear, he chose to live and die without the solace of a family.

  “Now it happened that the medicine-man English Devil had lain with divers women of the Ahatchwhoops on the night before he died—as is the privilege of a man condemned, except he be a prisoner of war like yourself—and had got three of them with child. The issue of the third was a daughter, more red than her father and more white than her mother, and the Ahatchwhoops took the child and made to drown her in the Chesapeake; but the Tayac Chicamec stayed their hands, observing to them that the skin of the girl-child was of the same hue as his own. He took her to his empty hut and raised her as his daughter, and this was a mighty sin against the gods, but the Tayac Chicamec knew it not.

  “Thus it was that the child of the Devil was reared as a princess amongst the Ahatchwhoops, and grew more beautiful to behold with every circuit of the seasons, so that all the young men of the town became her suitors and applied to the Tayac Chicamec for her hand. But evil spirits put a torch to the Tayac’s heart, and alb
eit he was then in his forty-fourth summer, and she in her fifteenth, he was possessed with love for her and desired her for his own. The fire mounted to his head, and caused him to believe that inasmuch as the blood of the Princess was mixed in the same manner as his own, he could father sons upon her whose skins would have the color of their parents’. To this end he sent away the suitors and revealed to the Princess that albeit he had raised her as his own, she was not in fact the daughter of his loins, and he meant to have her for his Queen. Greatly did the girl protest, whether because she had some favorite amongst the young men of the town or because she was wont to think of the Tayac Chicamec as her father; but such is the power of the vengeful gods, her tears were merely fuel for the Tayac’s passion, and he who had lived long years without a wife grew…”

  Drepacca too had to reflect for a moment before he could supply an English approximation. “Enthralled? Nay, not as a slave… to be helpless, but not as one in shackles…”

  “Driven?” Ebenezer suggested quickly. “Exalted? O’ermastered?” Chicamec’s nostrils flared with impatience at the delay.

  “He was driven with lust,” Quassapelagh declared. “So much so, that he shook in every limb like a beast in season. Now the Secret of the Sacred Eggplant, whereby Queen Pokatawertussan was destroyed, had perished with her heavenly spouse, but the Tayac Chicamec had no need of it, being a man in all his parts. When the maid sought to move his pity by kneeling at his feet, he could no longer wait to make her his Queen. Nay, he climbed her then and there, and in the night that followed filled her with his seed!”

  Although Quassapelagh had remained impassive as he translated, Chicamec’s voice had grown excited; his breath was coming faster, and his old eyes shone. Now he paused, and his face and tone grew stern again.

  “In the morning, unknown to all, she was with child, and the Tayac made her his Queen. The evil spirit that had possessed him now left his head at last, and all the while her belly grew he did not touch her again, for shame, and trembled lest she bear a white-skinned boy for him to slay. But strange and far-reaching is the vengeance of the gods! She bore him a fine dark son, a very prince among Ahatchwhoops, a man-child perfect in every wise save one, which the Tayac observed at once the boy had…”

  “Inherited.”

  “… had inherited from his grandsire Henry Burlingame One—the single defect of that lordly man; and it was clear, his grandsire’s Secret of the Holy Eggplant being lost, this boy would ne’er be able to carry on the royal line. For that reason he was not called Henry Burlingame Three, but Mattassinemarough, which is to say, Man of Copper; and for this reason as well, albeit the lust was gone out of him, the Tayac Chicamec durst force his Queen a second time, and plied her with seed the night through to get another son on her. And again he trembled lest she bring forth a white child for him to slay, and did not go into her the while her belly rose beneath her coats. As before, the Queen was brought to bed of a son, this one neither dark as the dark Ahatchwhoops nor white as the English Devils, but the flawless golden image of his father, save for one thing: like his brother Mattassin he had not the veriest shadow of that which makes men men, and since none but God imparts to men the Mysteries of the Eggplant, this boy could never in a hundred summers get grandsons for the Tayac Chicamec. Thus he was not called Henry Burlingame Three, but Cohunkowprets, which is to say, Bill-o’-the-Goose, forasmuch as his mother the Queen, on first beholding his want of manliness, declared A goose hath pecked him; and farther, She would that goose had spared the son and dined upon the father.

  “But the Tayac Chicamec waited for the Queen to gather her strength, and a third time drove her with the seed that brings forth men; and until the harvest he trembled like an aspen in the storm. But the third son of his loins was neither dark like Mattassinemarough, nor yet golden like Cohunkowprets, but white as an English sail from head to foot, and his eyes not black but blue as the Chesapeake! He was his grand-sire born again, e’en to that defect shared by his brothers, and albeit the gods might have seen fit to impart to the boy the Eggplant Secret, as they had imparted it to his divine grandsire, there was naught for it but the Tayac Chicamec must fulfill his awful vow and slay the boy for an English Devil.

  “Mark how the sinner pays thrice o’er! When the Tayac Chicamec declared to the town that the white-skinned child must die, the Queen snatched up a spear, flung herself upon it, and perished rather than witness the new babe’s slaying or bear another child to take its place. But the Tayac Chicamec fetched the white-skinned prince alone to the waterside to drown him, and his heart was heavy. The Queen was dead, that he thrice had ravished in vain, nor durst he get children on the concubines who would share his bed thenceforth, but sow his murtherous seed in the empty air. And at last he was not able to drown the child: instead he painted with red ochre on its chest the signs he had learnt from his father and The Book of English Devils: HENRY BURLINGAME III; then he laid the boy in the bottom of a canoe and sent him down the mighty Chesapeake on the tide. And he prayed to the spirit of the Tayac Henry Burlingame One to spare the child from drowning and impart to him the Magic of the Eggplant, that he might further the royal bloodline—even if amongst the English Devils.”

  “I’God!” Ebenezer marveled. Yet though he remembered Mary Mungummory’s tale of her singular love affair with Charley Mattassin—a tale which not till now could he fully appreciate—and also certain startling assertions of Henry’s—for example, that he had never made actual “love” to Anna—nonetheless he found this “certain defect” of Chicamec’s offspring most difficult to reconcile with the staggering sexuality of his friend.

  “The Tayac Chicamec enquires of Quassapelagh’s brother,” Drepacca said, “whether the man you call Henry Burlingame Three hath many sons in his house?”

  Ebenezer was on the verge of a negative reply, but he suddenly changed his mind and said instead, “Henry Burlingame Three was still a young man when he tutored me, but albeit I know where he dwells, I’ve not seen him these several years. Yet I know him for a famous lover of women, and ’tis quite likely he hath a tribe of sons and daughters.” In fact there had occurred to him the dim suggestion of a plan to save his companions as well as himself; not so rash as before, he pondered and revised it as Chicamec, evidently disappointed by the reply, concluded his narration through the medium of Quassapelagh.

  “In the years that followed, the Tayac Chicamec raised his other sons to manhood, dark-skinned Mattassin and golden Cohunkowprets; and for all their sore defect they grew strong and straight as two pine trees of their country, bold as the bears who raid the hunter’s camp, cunning as the raccoons, tireless as the hawks of the air, and steadfast—steadfast as the snapping-turtle, foe to waterfowl, that will lose his life ere he loose his jaws, and e’en when his head is severed, bite on in death!”

  The old chiefs voice had rung with pride until this final attribution, which evidently gave him pain. Now the furrows of his face winced deeper, and he spoke more broodingly.

  “Who knows what deeds the gods regard as crimes,” Quassapelagh translated, “until they take revenge? Was’t so grave a sin to raise the daughter of the English Devil in the Tayac’s house and get sons upon her when she came of age? Or was’t a fresh sin that he vowed to slay his white-skinned child, and drove the Queen to fall upon a spear? If either be sin, is not the other its atonement? Or was his new crime that he spared the boy at last, and he hath lived? One thing alone is given man to know: whate’er his sins, they must perforce be grievous, for terrible is the punishment he suffers, and unending! ’Twas not enough the Tayac flung his third son to the waves, and lost his Queen, and saw his line doomed to perish from the land; nay, he must lose all—lose e’en his stalwart, seedless sons that did so please him with their strength, and that he hoped would lead the Ahatchwhoops in their war against the Devils! Mattassin and Cohunkowprets! Did he not school them day by day to hate the English? Did he not rehearse them in The Book of English Devils and recount the warlike passions of their g
randsire? And they were not hot-blooded boys, or dogs in season, that blind with lust will mount a bitch or a bulrush basket, whiche’er falls into their path; nay, they were grown men of two-score summers, canny fellows, sound in judgment, and sore they loathed the English as did their father! None were more ready than they to league our cause with the cause of the Piscataways and Nanticokes; when the first black slave escaped to this island ’twas Mattassin himself bade him welcome and made this town a haven for all who fled the English; and ’twas not the Tayac Chicamec that first hit on the plan of joining forces with the man Casteene and the naked warriors of the north to drive the English to the sea—’twas golden Cohunkowprets: wifeless, childless, and athirst for battle! Piscataways, Nanticokes, Chopticoes, Mattawomans—all men envied the Ahatchwhoops, that boasted such a pair of mighty chieftains; and Chicamec, too old to leave the island for the first great meeting of our leaders—was he not proud to send Mattassin in his stead?”

  The Tayac Chicamec paused, overcome with bitter memory, and Ebenezer tactfully observed that he was familiar with the subsequent course of Mattassin’s life. At the same time, since the information might have some bearing on his nebulous plan, he professed great curiosity about the other son, Cohunkowprets: surely he too had not been hanged for murdering English Devils?

  “They have not hanged him,” Chicamec said through Quassapelagh, and at no time thitherto had his malice so contorted every feature. “Their crime against Cohunkowprets is more heinous ten times o’er than their crime against Mattassin. Beautiful, golden son! Him too the Tayac Chicamec dispatched, but one full moon ago, upon an errand of great importance: to go north with Drepacca and make treaties with the man Casteene; him too the gods saw fit to lure from his goal, and in the same wise, despite the sternest counsels of Drepacca…”

  He had previously spoken of the Negro element in the town as one would speak of a blessing by no means unalloyed, and had mentioned his allies’ envy of his sons. It now became clear to Ebenezer that Chicamec’s partiality to Quassapelagh was not only, as it were, skin deep: it masked a deep distrust of the Africans, and especially of Drepacca, and dated, apparently, from his embassy to Monsieur Casteene. Indeed, the poet went so far as to speculate that Chicamec held Drepacca in some way responsible for Cohunkowprets’ defection.