The Sot-Weed Factor

by John Barth

  Both his listeners glanced questioningly at McEvoy, who lowered his eyes to the food and said—in a voice surely too low for the trapper to catch—“I owe Mister Cooke my life; that’s true enough. God knows whether I’m hero enough not to renege on the debt.”

  “The fact is,” Ebenezer concluded, “we’re all of us like to lose our scalps anon, when the war commences, and there’s reason to think ’twill commence when this same month of mine expires. They seemed quite indifferent whether I spread the news of their plot; ’tis as if they feel our militia’s not a match for them.”

  “They’re right enough there,” declared their host. “Copley and Nicholson both refused help to New York, e’en when the Schenectady folk were murthered, and ’tis folly to look for help from Andros in Virginia or the Quaker William Penn: they’d like naught better than to see us butchered by the salvages and Negroes, for all they might be next at the block themselves.” He shook his head. “The worst of’t is, an honest man can’t hate the wretches for’t. When a poor wight’s driven from his rightful place, and pushed, and pushed—to say naught o’ being clapped in hobbles and sold off the block like a dray-horse—i’faith, ’tis only natural he’ll fight the man that’s pushing him, if he hath any spirit left in him. I’ve no great wish to lose my scalp, sirs, but I swear I’m half on the Indians’ side o’ the question.”

  “As am I,” Mary agreed.

  “And I,” said Ebenezer; “not alone because there’s justice in their cause, but because there’s a deal of the salvage in all of us. But as you say, ’twere better to keep one’s scalp than lose it. ’Tis for that reason I must find Chicamec’s sons: Burlingame I know is a very Siren for persuasion, and this Cohunkowprets, if he hath in sooth embraced the English cause… my plan is to apply to his new loyalties, if I can contrive it; send him back to the Ahatchwhoops as a penitent prodigal; let him assume his place as prince of the bloody realm, where he can do his best to influence Quassapelagh and Drepacca, and haply forestall the massacre. ’Tis a chancy gambit, but desperate cases want desperate physic; and until Mary, or the twain of you, tell your tales, I know naught of Cohunkowprets save that he deserted his people to woo some English woman, just as his brother Mattassin before him—”

  He stopped and blushed. “Forgive me, Mary.”

  The woman waved his apology away and sighed a corpulent sigh. “Naught to forgive, Mister Cooke. I feel no shame at loving Charley Mattassin, nor any regret nor anger at his end. If I could believe his brother was like him—Nay no matter! We’ll learn soon enough, and in any case—” She paused, and a little tremor shook her. “I’m minded of some old scoundrels Charley read about in his Homer and his Virgil, and the two of us were wont to chuckle at—their names are gone, but one was the father of Achilles and the other of Aeneas—”

  Ebenezer supplied the names Peleus and Anchises; he was surprised anew at the extent, not only of the Indian’s late forays into Western culture but also of Mary’s pertinent recollections, and McEvoy, who knew nothing of the curious relationship, was flabbergast.

  “Those were the wights,” Mary affirmed. “Each had bumped his bacon with a goddess, and the twain of ’em were ruined for life by’t. No doubt ’twas a bargain at the price, but there are bargains a soul can’t afford but once. D’ye see my point?”

  They did—Ebenezer and the trapper in any case—and Mary went on.

  “Now mind, I’m not saying this Billy Rumbly is Mattassin’s brother: I’ve ne’er laid eyes on him, as Harvey hath, and Charley ne’er spoke overmuch about his family. But what I’ve heard o’ the wretch and his English woman I can fathom to the core. There’s something in’t of what Mister Cooke declared just now—that there’s a piece o’ the salvage in us all. ’Tis that and more: the dark of ’em hath somewhat to do with’t, I know. What drives so many planters’ ladies to raise their skirts for some great buck of a slave, like the Queen in The Thousand and One Nights? Methinks ’tis an itch for all we lose as proper citizens—something in us pines for the black and lawless Pit.”

  She had been looking at the pine logs on the fire; now she straightened her shoulders, rubbed her nose vigorously as if it itched, and sniffed self-consciously. “But that’s no tale, is it, Harvey?”

  “Not a bit of’t,” Harvey replied. “ ’Tis a great mistake for a taleteller to philosophize and tell us what his story means; haply it doth not mean what he thinks at all.” But the trapper was clearly impressed by Mary’s analysis, as were Ebenezer and McEvoy.

  “ ’Tis what I thought of, in any case,” she said good-naturedly, “when Roxie Russecks told me about Billy Rumbly and the Church Creek Virgin.”

  Ebenezer bit his lip, and Mary hurried into the story.

  “Just a fortnight ago or thereabouts this woman came to Church Creek, all alone, with no baggage or chattels save what little she could carry, and went from house to house looking for lodgings. She was a spinster of thirty or so, so I hear’t, and declared she was new out of England; gave her name as Miss Bromly of London.”

  “Dear Heav’n!” Ebenezer cried. “I know that girl! She was our neighbor when we lived on Plumtree Street!” He laughed aloud with sharp relief. “Aye, there’s the answer! She spoke of me, and ye took her for my sister! What business hath Miss Bromly in Maryland?”

  “Hear me out,” Mary answered darkly. “As I say, she gave her name as Miss Meg Bromly, but when folk asked her what her business was in Church Creek, and how long she meant to hire lodgings, she had no ready reply. Some took her for a runaway redemptioner; others thought she was the mistress o’ some planter, that meant to keep her in Church Creek; others yet believed she was got in the family way and either turned out by her father or sent to the country for her confinement—albeit she showed no signs of’t in the waist. ’Tis rare to find a maiden lady of thirty years anywhere, but especially in the Plantations, and rarer yet to find one traveling alone, without servants or proper baggage, and not e’en able to state her business plainly. Add to this, she was nowise ugly or deformed, and spoke as civil as any lady—she could have had her choice o’ husbands for the asking, I daresay—’tis small wonder the ladies she applied to, whate’er their views, all took her for a bad woman, either a whore already or a whore-to-be, and had naught to do with her. As for the men, they slavered and drooled after her like boars to a salt young sow, and if any doubted she was a whore, they doubted no more when she took rooms at Russecks’s inn: ’tis no inn, really, but a common store and tavern that blackguard of a miller owns—Harvey’s brother. There’s an upstairs to’t, no more than a loft walled off into stalls with pallets; ’tis where my girls set up shop when we’re in the neighborhood, ere we go on to Cambridge and Cooke’s Point.

  “Well, she stood them off as haughty as ye please, but they reckoned she was holding out for a higher price. Finally they asked her to name her hire, whereupon she drew a little pistol from her coat and replied, she’d charge a man his life just to lay hands on her, and King William himself couldn’t buy her maidenhead. With that she went up into the loft, and no man in the room durst follow her. Thenceforth they called her the Virgin o’ Church Creek, merely for a tease, inasmuch as they all believed she was the mistress of Governor Nicholson, or John Coode, or some other important man. She came and went whene’er she pleased, and no man touched her. Now and again she’d make enquiries of ’em, whether they knew aught of the state o’ things at Malden, on Cooke’s Point, and o’ course they knew Malden to be the fleshpot o’ Dorset County, so they took her all the more surely for a fashionable whore.

  “ ’Twas only a few days later, so Roxie told me, this half-breed Indian buck came into Church Creek. As a rule, the salvages travel in pairs when they come to town, but this wight was alone; he strode into Russecks’s store as bold as ye please, put a coin on the table, and called for rum!”

  “Ah, that can’t be Cohunkowprets, can it, John?” Ebenezer asked McEvoy. “I doubt he knew English enough to order rum.”

  But McEvoy was not so certa
in. “He might have learned from Dick Parker, ye know; Dick Parker himself learned decent English in two or three months.”

  “And Charley Mattassin in less time yet,” Mary added, and continued her narration. “This salvage was so fierce-looking, Harry Russecks gave him his rum with no argument, and he drank it off like water. ’Twas plain he’d never tasted liquor before, for he gagged and choked on’t, but when ’twas down he called for another to follow the first. (All this is my Charley to the letter, Mister Cooke—bold as brass and bound to learn all in a single gulp.) By this time the men saw a chance for some sport with him. They poured him his rum and asked his name, which he gave as Bill-o’-the-Goose—”

  “That’s it!” Ebenezer and McEvoy cried out at once.

  “The Tayac Chicamec told us Cohunkowprets means Goosebeak” Ebenezer explained. “Why he bears the name I shan’t tell here, only that—” He blushed. “I shall say this, Mary, you declared his manner resembled Mattassin’s; know then, that save for the lighter hue of his skin, Bill-o’-the-Goose is the likeness of his brother in every particular of his person.”

  Mary’s eyes filled with tears. “ ’Sheart, then he is in sooth poor Charley’s brother!” She shook her head. “How clear I see it in his behavior, now I know it to be so! Why, marry come up, ’tis Charley and I all over again, after a fashion!”

  Bill-o’-the-Goose, she went on tearfully to say, had not got into his second glass of rum before Miss Bromly, the Church Creek Virgin, happening to pass through the room on her way outdoors from her quarters, encountered him face to face. Until that moment she had preserved through all their catcalls and lubricities the iciest demeanor; but by the testimony of every man present in Russecks’s tavern, when she beheld the Indian she drew back, shrieked out some unintelligible name, and tottered for some moments on the verge of a swoon; yet when a patron made to assist her she regained her composure as quickly as she had lost it, drove the Samaritan back by reaching under her cape—where the whole town knew she carried her famous pistol—and made her exit with a tight-lipped threat to the company. Bill-o’-the-Goose, like all the others, had stared after her and was the first to speak when she was gone.

  “Bill-o’-the-Goose no longer wishes to be Bill-o’-the-Goose,” he had declared. “You tell Bill-o’-the-Goose what ordeals he must brave to be an English Devil.”

  These, Mary Mungummory swore, were his very words as reported to her. Everyone agreed on the context of his statement; they remembered it so exactly because Bill-o’-the-Goose had had difficulty finding an English word for the initiation rites to which, in many Indian nations, young men were subjected as prerequisites to official manhood. A trapper present had at length supplied the word ordeal, to the great delight of the company when they grasped the Indian’s meaning.

  “Ye say ye want to become an Englishman?” one of them had asked gleefully.

  “Yes.”

  “An English Devil, ye say?” had asked another.

  “Yes.”

  “And ye want to know what tests a salvage has to pass ere we look on him as our brother?” demanded the miller.

  “Yes.”

  The men had exchanged glances then and found unanimous design in one another’s eyes. By tacit agreement the miller had proceeded with the sport.

  “Well now,” he had said thoughtfully, “first off ye must show yourself a man o’ means; we want no ne’er-do-wells about—unless they’re pretty as the Virgin, eh, gentlemen?”

  The Indian had been unable to follow this speech, but when he was made to understand that they wished him to show his money he produced five pounds in assorted English currency—acquired no man knew where—and a quantity of wompompeag, all of which the miller Russecks had promptly pocketed.

  “Now, then, ye must have a proper English name, mustn’t he, lads?”

  It was short work for the men to change Bill-o’-the-Goose into Billy, but the problem of a fitting surname required much debate. Some, impressed by the stench of the bear-grease with which their victim was larded, held out for Billy Goat; others, with his naïveté in mind, preferred William Goose. While they deliberated, Bill-o’-the-Goose drank down his rum—with less difficulty than before—and was commanded to take another on the grounds that a proper subject of Their Majesties should be able to put away half a rundlet of Barbados without ill effect. It was this third drink, and the solemnity with which the Indian, already gripping the table-edge to steady himself, had raised his glass like a ceremonial grail, that had inspired the miller with a third suggestion.

  “He hath the makings of a proper rummy, hath our Bill,” he had remarked, and added when the Indian gave up just then—in the manner of all the Ahatchwhoops—a raucous, unstifled belch: “Hi, there, he’s nimbly with the spirit already!”

  And since no man present cared to defend his own preference in the matter against the miller’s, Bill-o’-the-Goose’s new English name became Billy Rumbly, and was bestowed on him with much blasphemous mumbo-jumbo and a baptism of cider vinegar.

  “Then they shaved off his hair,” Mary said, and Ebenezer guessed that in earlier tellings of the story her voice had been marked by nothing like its present bitterness; “shaved it off to the scalp, poured another glass o’ rum in his guts, and told him no civil English gentleman e’er reeked o’ bear-fat. There was naught for’t, they declared, but he must hie himself down to the creek—in mid-December, mind—strip off his clothes, wade out to his neck, and swab himself sweet with a horse-brush they provided. ’Twas the miller’s idea, o’ course—br-r-r, how I loathe the bully!—and they packed Billy off to crown their pranks, never dreaming they’d see him again; if he didn’t freeze or drown, they reckoned, he’d be shocked fair sober by the creek and skulk away home.”

  In fact, however, she said, they laughed not half an hour at their wit before the butt of it reappeared, returned the horse-brush, and called for more rum: his skin was rubbed raw, but every trace of the bear-grease was gone, and his liquor as well, and he showed no sign of chill or other discomfort. While they marveled, Billy pressed them to set him his next ordeal, and by unhappy coincidence Miss Bromly chose this moment to re-enter the tavern from wherever she had been, cross the room in disdainful silence, and disappear up the stairway to her loft. Even so, nothing further might have come of it, it was Billy who undid himself by demanding to know whose woman she was.

  “Why, Billy Rumbly, that’s the Church Creek Virgin,” the miller had answered. “She’s nobody’s woman but her own, is that piece yonder.”

  “Now she is Billy Rumbly’s woman,” the Indian had declared, and had drawn a knife from his belt. “How doth an English Devil take a wife? What man must I fight? Where is the Tayac to give her to me?”

  Not until then had the men drawn their breath at the vistas of new sport that lay before them. Not surprisingly, it was Harry Russecks who had spoken first.

  “Ye say—ye claim the Church Creek Virgin for your wife?”

  At once Billy had moved on him with the knife. “Is she your woman? Do you speak for her?”

  “Now, now,” the miller had soothed, “put up your knife, Billy Rumbly, and behave like a decent Englishman, or she’ll have naught of ye. So she’s to be Mrs. Billy Rumbly, is she? Well, now!” And after repeating his earlier assertion, that Miss Bromly had none to answer to but her own good conscience, Russecks declared his huge satisfaction with the match, a sentiment echoed by the company to a man.

  “But don’t ye know, Billy Rumbly,” he had continued, “ ’tis not just any Englishman deserves a lass like the Virgin Bromly. Ye know the—what-d’ye-call-’em, Sam? Ordeals: that’s the rascal!—ye know the ordeals of an English bridegroom, don’t ye, lad?”

  As all had hoped, Billy Rumbly confessed his entire ignorance of English nuptial rites and was enlightened at once by Russecks, who spoke in a solemn and supremely confidential tone:

  “In the first place, ye dare not approach an English virgin with marriage in mind till ye have at least a dozen o’ dra
ms to fire your passion. They loathe a sober lover like the pox, do our London lassies! In the second place ye must say nary a word: one word, mind ye, and your betrothal’s at an end! D’ye follow me, Billy Rumbly? ’Tis a custom with us English Devils, don’t ye know, to see to’t no shitten pup-dogs get our women. No talk, then; ye must come upon her privily, like a hunter on a doe—i’Christ, won’t she love ye for’t if ye can catch her in ambuscado and take her maidenhead ere she knows what wight hath climbed her! For there’s the trick, old Billy, old Buck: our laws declare a man must take his bride as a terrier takes his bitch, will-she, nill-she, and the more she fights and hollows, the more she honors ye in the rape! Is’t not the law o’ the land I’m reading him, friends?”

  Now the others had entertained nothing more serious than a prank, so they all claimed afterwards to their wives; their only thought was to have some sport with a drunken Indian at the expense of the high-and-mighty Miss Bromly. But whether because they dared not gainsay Sir Harry or because his plan was altogether too attractive to resist, they affirmed, with little nods and murmurs, that such indeed were the customs of the English. As Billy took to himself the requisite rum, they told themselves and subsequently their wives that a man with twelve drams of Barbados in his bowels was no more dangerous than a eunuch to any woman’s honor; when he had done they made way solemnly for Sir Harry, who with final hushed injunctions led him reeling to the stairway and watched him tiptoe up in drunken stealth.

  “Marry, and to think,” groaned Mary, interrupting her narrative, “ ’twas Mattassin’s golden likeness they made a fool of! ’Tis like—oh, God!—’tis as if ye made a pisspot o’ the Holy Grail!”

  “ ’Twas a heartless prank,” Ebenezer agreed, “but not alone for Bill-o’-the-Goose! ’Tis poor Meg Bromly I fear for.”

  “Let’s get on with’t,” their host suggested. “I’ve heard what I’ve heard, but there’s many a change been rung on the tale of Billy Rumbly these few days. Gets so a wight collects ’em, like tusk-shells on a string.”