The Last Witchfinder

by James Morrow

  “Therapeutic?” sneered Captain Fergus. “We shall see about that. Methinks I’ll put your claim to the test.” Reaching inside the nearer sea-chest, he caressed the Tunbridge Wells Bloodsucker. “On my last trip to the Azores, I endured a dreadful attack of the gout, and two years later I can still feel its fire and throb, as if the Spanish boot were clamped round my foot.”

  “You must understand, sir, the healing effect doesn’t always happen instantly,” Barnaby said. “Oft-times the sufferer must wait till sunrise.”

  Jennet said, “In many cases a full two days will pass ere—”

  “’Sheart!” the captain cried. “Do I deceive myself? Nay! The pain’s starting to fade!” He stroked the stillborn more vigorously. “My foot feels as fit as when I first kicked my brutish brother in the cods!”

  “The Bloodsucker’s always been singularly antagonistic to gout,” Barnaby said.

  “Fœtal vampires are the very bane of that affliction,” Ben said.

  Captain Fergus lifted the Bloodsucker from the sea-chest, bringing its gargoyle ugliness into the sun’s unflattering glare. “Marry, such a hideous pill, and yet so potent.”

  Jennet wasn’t sure how to explain the abrupt abatement of the captain’s pain. She suspected that his cure represented yet another Newtonian desire of the mind, not unlike her experience thirty years earlier of seeing, under Okommaka’s persuasion, her mother and grandmother encamped in the sun’s corona.

  “Very well, Doctor, you may cart along these freaks of yours.” The captain restored the vampire to its brethren. “I’Christ, we shall deploy ’em against whate’er plagues of flux and scurvy lie before us!”

  Two hours later the Berkshire caught the tide, received the wind, and started down the Thames. In contrast to their departure from Philadelphia, no lawyer or businessman arrived to displace Jennet and Ben from their private cabin, and so they passed the afternoon in one another’s arms. As always, she found herself pitying any woman obliged to settle for the flaccid passions of an aging lover, as opposed to the endless ardor of a nineteen-year-old. Did she provide Ben with reciprocal satisfactions? Yes, she decided, though doubtless he occasionally longed for the bloom of youth. Saddened though she was by her daughter’s flight to France, at least she would never have to witness Ben casting one eye on his perfection-matrix whilst the other strayed toward Rachel’s comely frame.

  “Oh, Ben, how my forty-seven years do pull upon me,” she lamented. “My bosom droops under gravity’s persuasion.”

  “Only because ’twas such a robust specimen of bosomhood to begin with,” he said.

  “And my neck hath acquired many a wrinkle.”

  “But see how easily my tongue lays them smooth.”

  “And my legs are all shot through with veins.”

  “Lodes of perfect turquoise, enriching the precious flesh in which they lie.”

  Honorable and well-meant sentiments, unquestionably—and yet she feared that he was not so much speaking his heart as mouthing what she wanted to hear. Still, if he must bend the truth, better these blandishments than any outright lie. Flattery was such a noble sort of sin, a pilgrim vice wandering forever homeless betwixt the kingdom of mendacity and the country of kindness.

  Three days into the crossing her usual mal de mer arrived, but this time they were prepared, for Ben had spent the previous Friday visiting the apothecary shops of Tavistock Street. Many proprietors swore by ginseng, others favored mulberries, some endorsed dried silkworms, and a few recommended rose-hip tea. Unable to appraise these competing claims, Ben had acquired all four remedies, amalgamating them into a stinking and repellent syrup. Strangely enough, the mixture proved efficacious—not by its merits, she decided, but simply because her stomach, unable to choose betwixt ordinary seasickness and the more complex distress induced by Ben’s nostrum, had entered into a state of paralysis.

  Jennet had always imagined that Ben and Barnaby would become good friends, and as the voyage progressed this expectation enjoyed extravagant fulfillment. Both were natural philosophers at heart, though of a distinctly pragmatic bent, each hopeful of converting Nature’s secrets into contrivances of great utility. Ben had of late grown obsessed with the potential applications of electricity, a force he believed (despite Newton’s indifference to the hypothesis) manifested itself in Von Guericke sparks and lightning-bolts alike. “The day is not far off,” he insisted, “when Heaven’s fire shall become domestic as the ox and compliant as the horse, readily harnessed to illumine our houses, warm our beds, and cook our food.”

  For Barnaby, meanwhile, it was the chemical processes that promised to mitigate human misery. His work with fœtal preservation had made him knowledgeable concerning alcohol and other vegetable liquids, and he was evidently near to concocting “that invaluable elixir sought by all the world’s surgeons, a universal insensibility drug.” If his next round of experiments proved successful, posterity would remember him as “the man who’d raised up amputations and ablations from the bloody bowels of Hell and carried ’em into the sunlight of rational medicine.” This same Barnaby Cavendish, he added with a sly wink, “had grown rich as Croesus in the bargain.”

  As the sixth week of the voyage began, the ocean gradually thickened around the Berkshire’s waterline like butter coagulating in a churn. Vast mats of algae pressed against her hull, conjoined to swaying rafts of seaweed. Everyone took heart at this development, for such greenery most probably heralded the American continent, and the ship’s cook, a garrulous German named Friedrich Schwendemann, was particularly delighted. In his experience the seaweed would contain an abundance of that red-shelled shrimp known as the brine-berry—an eminently edible creature, succulent and delicious as the plum. Upon considering the cook’s claim, Captain Fergus ordered a longboat lowered, and two hours later a mound of newly harvested seaweed rose from the main deck like a haystack in a farmer’s field.

  Herr Schwendemann had spoken truly. Thousands of brine-berries wriggled amidst the grassy tufts. Beguiled by visions of shrimp cakes, shrimp pies, shrimp stews, and shrimp chowders, the crew set about the task at hand, and soon the ship’s larder was filled to bursting with the raw materials of a dozen feasts.

  Observing the hungry sailors at work, Ben and Barnaby found themselves formulating rival theories concerning the genesis of brine-berries. Whereas Ben supposed the shrimp were indeed an aquatic equivalent of fruit, issuing from the seaweed as did apples and pears from trees, Barnaby contended that the vegetation functioned merely as a dwelling-place for the shrimp, which, in the manner of so many ocean creatures, came from eggs. At length Jennet fell upon a method for resolving the dispute. All they need do was fill a tub with a clump of seaweed devoid of shrimp, set it on the quarter-deck, and note whether any brine-berries appeared amidst the strands. Both the printer and the curator appreciated the elegance of her test, and they quickly agreed on its parameters. If the seaweed yielded no shrimp within ten days, Ben would concede the superiority of Barnaby’s hypothesis.

  During the subsequent week the cook wrought banquet after banquet from the aquatic crop, but Jennet and her friends were concerned less with culinary matters than with the great shrimp experiment. Every morning they climbed to the quarter-deck and inspected the liquid nursery. On the evidence of their first seven observations, it seemed that the seaweed per se possessed no procreative powers.

  “Are you ready to admit that the court of Nature hath ruled unfavorably on your claim?” Barnaby asked Ben.

  “Mayhap the shrimp will burst forth later today,” Ben replied. “Mayhap they’ve already hatched, but they’re much too small to see without aid of microscope.”

  Jennet scowled and said, “Do you really believe that?”

  “In sooth—no,” Ben said. “But since my perfection-matrix contains no grid for graciousness, methinks I’m free to be as stubborn in this matter as I wish.”

  j

  THE GREAT SHRIMP EXPERIMENT: day eight—a day that began like those before it, with Jenn
et, Ben, and Barnaby ascending to the quarter-deck whilst the Berkshire cruised through the Atlantic as smoothly as a child’s toy sailboat navigating the Serpentine. Bending over the tub, they fingered the seaweed, examining each strand in the morning light, when suddenly a vehement wind seized Ben’s hat and carried it out to sea. Other winds followed, equally ferocious, swooping across the decks with a force sufficient to topple the binnacles, steal the oars from the longboats, and set uncoiled lines to dancing like East-India cobras.

  Instinctively the three experimenters retreated to the open stall beneath the quarter-deck, where they huddled like a family of cave-bears taking refuge from a flood, and by ten o’clock the brigantine lay in thrall to a thunder-gust.

  “Surely there’s no stronger power in the universe!” Jennet cried as a lightning-bolt arced across the ashen sky like a filament of divine thought. “I’Christ, I am skeptical that such a terrible flame”—a mighty boom shook the air—“could share a heritage with Von Guericke sparks!”

  “You have common intuition on your side, Miss Stearne,” Barnaby shouted over the shriek of the storm, “and yet methinks Mr. Franklin’s hypothesis is true!”

  “Sparks and holocausts, mites and moose—they’re all the same to God!” Ben yelled.

  The Berkshire rolled from side to side in cycloids so erratic their description would have defied even Newton’s fluxions. Whitecaps bloomed everywhere, turning the Atlantic the color of goat cheese. The rain descended in vast silvery sheets, like a gigantic curtain demarking the finish of some epic but demented opera. Once more the angry sky brightened with Heaven’s fire, and a second later the expected explosion rattled the ship.

  “I must lash down my prodigies!” shouted Barnaby, backing deeper into the stall.

  “You are a true father to your children!” Jennet cried.

  “A true father, aye,” he said, lifting the cover from the hatch, “even if I do sell one of ’em off now and again!”

  Shortly after Barnaby went below, Jennet glanced toward the rigging, where an astonishing sight greeted her gaze. Most of the sailors had climbed aloft and for reasons that defied rationality were busily setting the royals and topsails.

  “Have they gone mad?” she shouted. “They should be reefing all that canvas, not putting it in the wind!”

  “I would guess our captain hath sensed an even greater storm brewing to the east!” yelled Ben. “He means to stay ahead of the tempest, lest it catch and smash us!”

  No sooner had Ben voiced this conjecture than it received unsolicited substantiation. Lurching into the quarter-deck stall, rainwater spouting from his coat sleeves, Mr. Eliot reported that in Captain Fergus’s view an unequivocal hurricane was chasing the Berkshire, and their only hope was to fly so fast and far that the beast could never overtake them.

  “I must ask a favor of ye!” Mr. Eliot told Ben. “With all my men occupied in settin’ the canvas and bracin’ the beams, we’re short on souls to purge the hold! If ye’ll work the larboard pump, the boatswain’ll take its companion to starboard!”

  “I shall happily lend my back to our salvation!” Ben replied.

  “And I shall do likewise!” Jennet informed Mr. Eliot.

  “’Tis not a task for a person of your sex!” the mate insisted.

  “Compared to the tribulations of childbirth,” she said, “I would judge the job about as arduous as baking bread!”

  Prompted by either desperation or chagrin, Jennet couldn’t tell which, Mr. Eliot offered a deferential bow. Ben took her by the arm, and together they quit the stall and ventured into the gale. The main deck was a veritable river, the breaking waves and the driving rain washing tumultuously across boards sleek as glass and slick as ice, but at last they reached the larboard pump. In tandem she and Ben grasped the lever and set to work—down, up, down, up, down, up, stroke upon stroke. The wind screamed. The waves rose high as battlements. The rain slapped her face, drenched her hair, and saturated her dress so thoroughly it became as heavy as chain-mail. To steady her nerves and rouse her spirits she imagined she was operating a Blaeu press in Keimer’s Printing-House, churning out copy after copy of an imperially persuasive argumentum grande.

  After twenty minutes of struggling to keep the Berkshire a-float, Jennet suggested to Ben that they were caught in a Sisyphean loop, and betimes Mr. Eliot appeared and corroborated her pessimism. The hold, he reported, was filling with water as quickly as the machines could empty it.

  “Shall we keep to the task?” Ben asked.

  “Aye, if ye own the strength, sir!” Mr. Eliot replied.

  “I do!” Ben said. “And you, Jenny?”

  “Turn on, turn on, Ben!” she said. “We shall make it glitter by and by!”

  As noon came to this wild and sunless sector of the Atlantic, an unnerving sound arose from the rigging, the low guttural croak of the wind cleaving the mizzen-royal in twain. Seconds later the main top-gallant succumbed to the slashing storm, and next the fore-royal was torn asunder.

  “’Twould seem our captain hath lost his contest with the hurricane!” Jennet shouted to Ben.

  “He’d best pop the sheets, else we’ll capsize!”

  Evidently Captain Fergus had reached the same conclusion, for the crew now descended from the rigging and set their hands to the belaying pins, yanking them loose with the grim efficiency of barbers removing rotted teeth. Set free of the fife rails, the sails snapped and fluttered like the banners of a goblin army on the march.

  Whilst the captain’s failure to outrace the storm was ominous on the face of it, Jennet decided to concentrate on a felicitous implication: the crew, praise God, would soon assume the pumps. Gasping like a beached flounder, she gave the lever an especially energetic push, whereupon a burst of Heaven’s fire disclosed a long green island rising from the white ocean. So lush a landmass being foreign to the New-Jersey coast, she leapt to a conclusion that the hurricane had dragged the helpless brigantine well off its course.

  “Look ye, Ben! Caribbean island to starboard!”

  “Island?” he shouted. “I see no island!”

  “’Tis a Caribbean island!” she cried.

  “Caribbean? We cannot be so far south! You saw but a water-mirage!”

  “We’re in the Caribbean!”

  “Your eyes deceive you!”

  She was about to assert the probity of her eyes when the Philadelphians’ situation declined abruptly from the perilous to the cataclysmic. An enormous wave rolled across the deck, smacking both Jennet and Ben off their feet and pitching them over the larboard rail. Briefly they arced through empty space and, filling their lungs with Caribbean air, plunged into the sea.

  Jennet had descended barely ten feet when buoyancy’s blessed law sent her in the opposite direction. With the exuberance of an eaglet smashing free of its egg she broke the frothing surface, then expelled several ounces of saltwater from her nose and a full pint from her throat. She blinked madly, squeezing the brine from her eyes. Staring into the troughs betwixt the waves, she beheld the relentless rain—and next a bobbing Ben—and then, many yards beyond, the Berkshire. Shreds of sail flapped madly on their spars. Uncleated sheets flailed about like the tentacles of a deranged kraken. The hurricane battered the ship mercilessly, hurtling passengers and crew alike into the ocean with the crude indiscriminate power of an orangutan shaking down its breakfast from a banana plant.

  “We’re swimmers, Ben!” she cried. “This storm can ne’er kill us!”

  “Swimmers!” he agreed, spewing out a mouthful of seawater.

  Stripped of her company, the Berkshire made a final stand against the storm. A more thorough dismemberment could scarcely be imagined. Like a philosopher preparing a hare for micrographic scrutiny, the gale anatomized the ship. Foremast snapped free of fo’c’sle. Mizzenmast and quarter-deck parted company. Spritsail abandoned bow. Shrouds tore loose from deadeyes. Braces, foretops, and crosstrees vanished into the squalls.

  “Where be that isle of yours?” Ben called.<
br />
  “I’m all turned round!” she shouted. “I can only pray some guardian angel will point the way!”

  “I’ll do the praying, you do the pointing, and by God’s grace we’ll soon feel sand beneath our feet!”

  Shedding their boots and outer garments, the Philadelphians swam in tandem, riding each mountainous swell as if it were Poseidon’s wildest horse, until at last they encountered a solid mass—not a beach, but merely a ten-foot section of the poop-deck bulkhead. Heaving themselves from the water, they scrambled aboard this accidental raft, then sprawled atop its flooded surface, Jennet prone and coughing, Ben supine and shivering.

  Having demolished the Berkshire, the hurricane gradually departed the scene, exporting its chaos to a higher latitude, leaving only a light shower to mark its memory. The Philadelphians looked in all directions, hoping to spot additional survivors, but the storm had evidently borne away every other relic of the wreck.

  “Mrs. Crompton, a strange phenomenon is upon me,” Ben said, teeth chattering. “Here I find myself facing either a slow and painful extermination by thirst, or else a quick and gaudy devouring by sharks, and yet I have but one desire.”

  She rolled on her back and said, “Ben, I’m too distracted to think on carnal matters.”

  “Dearest, you’ve read my thoughts. My great yearning is to join with thee in erotic embrace.”

  “Even as we confront our deaths?”

  “Carpe diem.”

  Like Mrs. Millamant taking over the stage in Scene Two of The Way of the World, the sun made a resplendent entrance from behind a rose-colored cloud. “Tell me, my brave gallant,” she asked, “are there any conditions under which you might not heed the call of concupiscence?”

  “None that come to mind.”

  “What if a cannonball had shorn off your leg?”

  “My lady’s touch would ease my agony.”

  “What if ants were eating you alive?”

  “I would avail myself of whate’er comforts lay at hand.”

  The rain stopped. Seagulls circled high above. Golden sunlight washed across the raft, drying the philosophers’ underclothes and warming their bodies as they exchanged frightened kisses beneath the wide West-Indies sky.