The Sot-Weed Factor

by John Barth

  Russecks picked himself up and shook his sword at the loft. “Well done, dammee; what keeps me down will keep ye up, and we shall see how soon ye choke on your damned love! There’s many a keep taken by siege that hath withstood the worst assaults!”

  Ebenezer had observed all this from the far end of the same platform on which the miller now stood. That his own position was far from safe did not occur to him; his whole attention was directed to the lovers, and when he recalled that McEvoy knew nothing of Mrs. Russecks’s abduction-story, his sudden vision of a stratagem bunded him to more prudent considerations.

  “Prithee, sir!” he cried to the miller, in a voice loud enough for them to hear and be advised by. “Don’t tempt his anger, I beg you, while he hath your daughter in his clutches! Howe’er he hath wronged you, ’tis better he go free than that he murther Henrietta before your eyes, or work lewd tortures on her as desperate men are wont—”

  He got no farther; whether Russecks had heard his earlier suggestions to McEvoy or now noticed his presence for the first time, he was clearly of the same mind no longer about the poet’s innocence. He turned on him, brandishing the cutlass, and said, “Who gives a man horns must beware of a goring!”

  Ebenezer lost no time fleeing down the nearby ladder to the ground and racing for the front doorway, where he saw Mary and the miller’s wife anxiously looking on. But however distraught, Mrs. Russecks still had her wits about her; before Ebenezer reached the door she ran in towards the fallen ladder.

  “Now, Henrietta! Climb down while he chases Sir Benjamin!”

  Her order was so public and premature, its object must have been merely to divert her husband. If so, it succeeded at once: the miller stopped half across the platform and glared from her to the loft.

  “I’ll quarter the lot o’ ye!”

  Ebenezer spied against the wall a hooked iron rod, like a fireplace poker, and snatching it up, hastened to Mrs. Russecks’s defense.

  “Go to the inn,” he ordered Mary, “fetch all the folk this wretch hath bullied!”

  “Bravo!” McEvoy shouted from the loft. “Let him run ye round the millstones, Eben, till I scramble down; ’tis one against all the rest of us, and I’ve a sickle here to match his bloody meat-axe!”

  So saying he hurled his piece of studding at the miller, tucked the newfound sickle into his belt, and swung his legs around one of two wooden pillars supporting the loft, ready to climb down at the first opportunity. Mary disappeared on her errand, and Mrs. Russecks, with a wary eye on her husband, struggled to raise the fallen ladder. Russecks himself, though untouched by McEvoy’s missile, seemed driven to the verge of apoplexy by his own wrath. After some moments of indecision he fixed his attention upon Ebenezer, who trembled at the hatred in his face.

  “ ’Twill not be two against one for long!” He advanced two steps towards the end of the platform and then, seeing Ebenezer prepare to flee, turned back to the middle and commenced to climb the railing. It was evidently his intention either to jump or to climb down upon the millstones themselves in order to prevent Ebenezer from playing the part of Hector around the walls of Troy.

  “Ah, nay!” Mrs. Russecks cried at once, and before her husband could let go the railing she sprang to pull the lever that engaged the millstone shaft with that of the waterwheel outside. The great top stone rumbled and turned, and Russecks jerked himself up, his footing removed from under him.

  “God dammee!” he bellowed almost tearfully. “God dammee one and all!”

  Holding on with his free hand, he threw his leg back over the rail to regain the platform and was undone: as he swung himself over, the great scabbard at his inside hip caught momentarily between the rails; to free it he drew back his abdomen and endeavored to hold on with the finger ends of his cutlass-hand. They slipped at once, and being either unwilling or unable to let go his sword and snatch for a new grip, he tumbled backwards. Both women screamed, and Ebenezer’s nerves tingled. The fall was short, the attitude deadly: Russecks’s bootheels were still at the level of the platform when his head struck the millstone below.

  “Smite him!” McEvoy called to Ebenezer. But there was no need to, for the miller’s head and shoulders rolled off the stone and he lay senseless on the ground. Henrietta waxed hysterical; her mother, on the other hand, screamed no more after the first time, but calmly pushed the clutch-lever to disengage the stone and only then inquired of Ebenezer, “Is he dead?”

  The poet made a gingerly examination. The back of the miller’s head was bloody where it had struck, but he was respiring still.

  “He seems alive, but knocked quite senseless.”

  Mary Mungummory peered cautiously through the doorway. “Heav’n be praised, the blackguard’s dead! Not a coward would come to help, for all he hath abused ’em, and Master Poet hath turned the trick himself!”

  “Nay,” said McEvoy, on the ground at last, “he tricked himself, did Sir Harry, and he’s not dead yet.” He took up the cutlass and held it to the miller’s throat. “With your permission, Mrs. Russecks…”

  But though the miller’s wife showed no emotion whatever regarding his accident, she would not permit a coup de grâce. “Fetch down my daughter, sir, an it please you, and we’ll put my husband to bed.”

  All the company showed surprise, and all but Ebenezer indignation as well.

  “The scoundrel might come to his senses any minute and have at us again!” McEvoy protested.

  “I trust you and Sir Benjamin will be well out of Church Creek ere he comes to.”

  “What of thyself, lady?” Ebenezer asked.

  “And Henrietta!” McEvoy protested.

  Mrs. Russecks replied that for all his threats, her husband would do no worse than beat the two of them, and they had lived through many such beatings before.

  “ ’Tis all very fine if ye’ve a taste for birch,” McEvoy said shortly, “but the devil shan’t lay a finger on Henrietta! I’ll fetch her out o’ the county if need be!”

  “Henrietta may stay or leave as she pleases,” Mrs. Russecks declared.

  Mary Mungummory regarded the witless miller and shook her head. “I cannot fathom ye, Roxanne! I’d have swore ye’d rejoice to see the beast dead, as every soul else in Church Creek would! Sure, thou’rt not o’ that queer sort that lust after floggings, are ye? Or haply thou’rt of such soft stuff e’en a wounded viper moves ye to pity?”

  Mrs. Russecks waved an irritated hand at her friend. “I loathe him, Mary. He is the grossest of men and the cruellest; he hath made a torture of my life, and poor Henrietta’s. I wed him knowing full well ’twould be so, and God hath fitly punished me for that sin; ’tis not for me to terminate the punishment.”

  Ebenezer was moved by this speech, but at the risk of offending her he ventured to point out that she had not scrupled to commit adultery in the past.

  “What doth that serve to prove,” she demanded sharply, “save that mortals sometimes stray from the path of saints? ’Tis true I’ve played him false with pleasure; ’tis likewise true I rejoiced to see him fall (albeit ’twas not my motive when I pulled the lever), and would rejoice thrice o’er to see him in the grave. But ’twill ne’er be I that puts him there or gives any soul leave to murther him.”

  Mary sniffed. “ ’Sheart, is this Roxie Russecks I hear, or Mary Magdalene? At least don’t nurse the scoundrel back to health, if ye’ve any love left for the rest o’ mankind.”

  But Mrs. Russecks stood firm and ordered Henrietta—now properly attired and rescued from the loft—to help her carry the still-senseless miller to his chamber. The girl looked uncertainly to McEvoy, whose eyes challenged her, and refused to obey.

  “I pray ye’ll forgive me, Mother, but I shan’t lift a finger to save him. I hope he dies.”

  Her mother frowned for just an instant; on second thought she smiled and declared that if Henrietta intended to “place herself under the protection” of Mr. McEvoy, the two of them could depart immediately with her blessing and should do so befo
re Russecks regained consciousness; then, to the surprise of Ebenezer and McEvoy, she added something in rapid, murmuring French, of which the poet caught only the noun dispense de bans and the adverb bientôt. Henrietta blushed like a virgin and replied first in clearer French that while she had reason to believe McEvoy actually admired her à la point de fiançailles, she had no intention of becoming his mistress until she had further knowledge of his station in life. “For the present,” she continued in English, “I mean to stay here with you and share your misfortunes, but dammee if I’ll do aught to hasten their coming!”

  “Well spoken!” Mary applauded. “No more will I, Roxie.”

  “Nor I,” McEvoy joined in. “Neither will I run off like a mouse ere the cat awakes. I mean to stand guard outside his chamber with this sword, if ye will permit me—or on the edge o’ yonder woods if ye will not—and the hour he lays a wrathful hand on Henrietta shall be his last on earth, if it be not mine.”

  “ ’Tis past my strength to carry him alone,” Mrs. Russecks entreated Ebenezer. “I beg you to help me, sir.”

  Feeling partly responsible for the miller’s condition, Ebenezer agreed. The brief exchange in French had set his mind strangely abuzz, so that he scarcely heard the protests of the others until Mary happened to say, as they left the mill, “Whence sprang this nice concern for the devil’s health, Roxie? There was a time you abandoned him right readily to be murthered!”

  “ ’Twas that time taught me my lesson,” Mrs. Russecks replied, “else I’d ne’er have ransomed him. If they had thrown him to the sharks, methinks I’d have ended my own life as well.”

  A number of villagers had gathered between the inn and the mill to learn the outcome of the fight; on catching sight of the vanquished miller they sent up a cheer, whereupon Mrs. Russecks dispatched Mary to warn them that their joy was in some measure premature. The rest of the party entered the house; Henrietta and McEvoy remained in the parlor, while Mrs. Russecks and the poet carried their burden to the master’s bedroom. The miller showed no signs at all of recovering from his coma, even when his wife set to work washing and bandaging his injury.

  “I shall bind up his head and fetch him a physician,” she sighed. “If he lives, he lives: if he dies, he dies. In any case I am your debtor for humoring my wishes.” She paused noticing the poet’s distracted countenance. “Is something amiss, sir?”

  “Only my curiosity,” Ebenezer answered. “If you fancy yourself in my debt, dear lady, prithee discharge it by allowing me one bold question: were you and your daughter once captured by a pirate named Thomas Pound?”

  The woman’s alarm made clear the answer. She looked with new eyes at Ebenezer and marveled as though to herself, “Aye, but why did it not occur to me before? Your weathered clothes and story of a shipwreck—! But ’tis nigh six years ago you captured us, ’twixt Jamestown and St. Mary’s—howe’er could you recall it?”

  “Nay, madam, I am no pirate,” Ebenezer laughed, “nor ever was; else ’twere not likely I’d be yet a virgin, do you think?”

  Mrs. Russecks colored. “Yet surely our shame is not the talk of England, and thou’rt not a native of the Province. How is’t you know the story?”

  “ ’Tis more famous than you imagine,” the poet teased. “I swear to you I heard it from my tutor, in the coach to Plymouth.”

  “Nay, sir, don’t shame me farther! Speak the truth!”

  Ebenezer assured her that he had done just that. “This tutor is an odd and formidable fellow, that hath been equally at home in Tom Pound’s fo’c’sle and Isaac Newton’s study; to this hour I know not whether he is at heart a fiend or a philosopher. ’Tis in search of him and his salvage brother I came hither, for reasons so momentous I tremble to tell them, and so urgent—ah well, you shall judge for yourself anon, when I explain. This man, dear lady, you were once of wondrous service to, albeit you knew it not, and in consideration of that service he saved your life and honor from the pirates. Have you e’er heard tell of Henry Burlingame?”

  Mrs. Russecks crimsoned further; looking to assure herself that neither her husband nor the couple in the parlor had overheard, she closed the bedroom door. Ebenezer apologized for his ungallantry and begged forgiveness on grounds of the great urgency of his mission, adding that Henry Burlingame (which, he gave her to understand, was actually the name of her saviour and quondam lover) had surely not told the story to anyone else, and that he had expressed nothing but the fondest and most chivalrous opinions of both Mrs. Russecks and her daughter. The miller’s wife glanced uneasily toward the door.

  “Let me assure you farther,” Ebenezer said. “You need not be anxious after Henrietta’s honor: McEvoy knows naught of this.”

  “Methinks he hath learned already she is no virgin, for all that’s worth,” Mrs. Russecks said candidly. “But I must tell you, Mister—Benjamin—albeit ’tis an empty point of honor and bespeaks no merit for us whatsoever, thy tutor is a most uncommon sort of lover, such as I’ve ne’er heard tell of before or since, and ’tis quite likely you have a wrong conception of our adventure…”

  Ebenezer lowered his eyes in embarrassment and admitted that he had indeed been misled on that matter—and not alone with regard to the two ladies present—until quite recently, when the curious truth about Burlingame had been discovered to him.

  “I’God, lady, such a deal I have to tell you! Burlingame’s quest, that you yourself played no small role in! My own enormous errand, wherein you may play yet another role! What a shameless, marvelous dramatist is Life, that daily plots coincidences e’en Chaucer would not dare, and ventures complications too knotty for Boccacce!”

  Mrs. Russecks concurred with this sentiment and expressed her readiness to hear the full story once she’d had a private word with Henrietta to spare her daughter unnecessary alarm. “Methinks my husband will not soon be dangerous, and whate’er this weighty quest of thine, I’m sure it can wait till morning. Twill make a pleasant evening’s telling, Sir Benjamin.”

  “Ah, then, may we not have done with pseudonyms at last?” He boldly put his arm about Mrs. Russecks’s waist. “I am no more Sir Benjamin Oliver than McEvoy is His Majesty’s Commissioner of Provincial Wind- and Water-Mills; did you not hear Mary call me ‘Mister Poet?’ ”

  He felt the miller’s wife stiffen and removed his arm, assuming that she was not pleased by the familiarity; to cover his embarrassment he pretended that it was his vocation which disturbed her. “Ah, now, is a poet less attractive than a knight? What if peradventure he bore a pompous title, like Laureate of Maryland?”

  Mrs. Russecks averted her eyes. “You replace one disguise with another,” she said tersely.

  “Nay, I swear’t! I am Ebenezer Cooke, that once pretended to the title Laureate of Maryland.”

  The miller’s wife seemed not so much skeptical as angry. “Why do you lie to me? I happen to know for a certainty that the Laureate of Maryland is living in Malden this minute with his father, and doth not resemble you in any particular.”

  Ebenezer laughed, though somewhat disconcerted by her manner. “ ’Tis no surprise to me if certain evil men have hired a brace of new impostors; their motives still appall me, but I’ve grown used to their methods. But look me straight in the face, my dear Roxanne: I swear by all that’s dear to me, I am Ebenezer Cooke of St. Giles in the Fields and Malden.”

  Mrs. Russecks turned to him a drained, incredulous face. “Dear Heav’n, what if we—” She turned to the door, laid her hand upon the knob, and swooned to the floor as senseless as her husband.

  15

  In Pursuit of His Manifold Objectives the Poet Meets an Unsavaged Savage Husband and an Unenglished English Wife

  HENRIETTA AND McEvoy came quickly at Ebenezer’s summons, and with the assistance of Mary Mungummory Mrs. Russecks was put to bed in Henrietta’s room. When, a little later, she was revived by salts of ammonia, she demanded, through Mary, that Ebenezer leave her house immediately and never return.

  “Thou’rt a sly deceive
r, Eben!” McEvoy teased, though he was as mystified by the demand as were the others. “What is’t ye tried to do in the chamber yonder?”

  “I swear to Heav’n I have done naught!” the poet protested. “Prithee, Mary, tell her I shall go instantly, but I must know in what wise I offended her, and crave her pardon for’t!”

  Mary delivered the message and came back to report that Mrs. Russecks would neither explain her demand nor give ear to any apologies. “She said ‘The man hath done naught amiss, but I cannot bear him in my house’—her very words! De’il take me if I’ve e’er seen the like of’t, have you, Henrietta?”

  The girl agreed that such passionate unreasonableness was quite out of character for her mother.

  Ebenezer sighed. “Ah well, then I must leave at once and find a bed somewhere. Prithee think no ill of me, Miss Russecks, and do endeavor to learn what lies behind all this, for I shan’t rest easy till I’ve heard and redressed it.” In the morning, he went on to say, he would find some means of traveling to Tobacco Stick Bay; whether his double mission there met success or failure, he would soon return to Church Creek, where he profoundly hoped to find Mrs. Russecks relenting enough, if not to forgive, at least to explain his faux pas. “You had best remain here,” he told McEvoy. “If the twain of us go, Billy Rumbly might think he’s being threatened.”

  “Did you say Billy Rumbly?” Henrietta asked.

  “He did,” Mary affirmed, “but ye must swallow your curiosity till Mr. McEvoy and I can tell ye the tale.” To Ebenezer she said, “ ’Tis you must forgive poor Roxie, Mr. Cooke; this wretched afternoon hath o’erwrought her. As for tomorrow, ye must allow me to take ye in the wagon. I greatly wish to see this Billy Rumbly my own self, for what reasons I scarce need say, and ’tis not impossible I may be able to help persuade him to our cause.”

  Ebenezer gratefully accepted both her offer and a loan of two pounds sterling, his own resources being exhausted. He charged Mary to inform him at once of any change in Mrs. Russecks’s attitude or the miller’s condition, and departed. He walked alone to the inn, much troubled in spirit, and was received almost as a hero by a number of villagers who lingered there for news from the mill. Ebenezer’s announcement that as yet Russecks showed no improvement was greeted with ill-disguised rejoicing, and the innkeeper himself, an employee of the miller, insisted that the poet take supper and lodging at the house’s expense.