John Barth - The Sot-Weed Factor

"Indeed, a poet!" Smith shook Ebenezer's hand vigorously. He had the habit — doubtless due in part to his small stature, but suggestive as well of a certain effeminacy — of rising on his toes and widening his clear blue eyes when he spoke. "How uncommonly delightful, sir! And doth he rhyme ad majorem Dei gloriam, as he ought?"

Ebenezer could think of no properly witty rejoinder to this tease, but Burlingame said, " 'Tis more ad majorem Baltimorensi gloriam, Father: he hath the post of Maryland Laureate from Charles Calvert."

"Better and better!"

"As for his loyalty, have no fear of't."

The priest let go a booming laugh. "I shan't now, Mr. Mitchell; that I shan't, for Satan himself hath his fiendish loyalties! 'Tis the object of't I fear, sir, not its presence."

Burlingame urged him to calm his fears, but when he declared the purpose of their visit, producing authorization from Governor Nicholson to collect the precious papers, the Jesuit's face showed still some reservation. "I have my piece o' the Journal hidden, right enough," he said, "and I know you for an agent of our cause. But what proof have we of your friend's fidelity?"

"Methinks my post were proof enough," Ebenezer said.

"Of allegiance, aye, but not fidelity. Would you die to advance our cause?"

"He hath come near to that already," Burlingame said, and told their host briefly of the Laureate's adventure with the pirates.

"The saintly look is on him, that I'll grant," said the priest. " 'Tis but a question of what cause he'll be a martyr to, I suppose."

Ebenezer laughed uncomfortably. "Then I'll confess I would not die for Lord Baltimore, much as I favor his cause and loathe John Coode's."

The priest raised his eyebrows. Burlingame said at once, "Now there's a proper answer, sir: a martyr hath his uses when he's dead, but alive he's of't a nuisance to his cause." He assumed a tone of raillery. "That is the reason why there are no Jesuit martyrs."

"In sooth it is, though we can claim one or two. But nom de Dieu, forgive my rudeness! Sit down and have some wine!" He waved them to the table and set about clearing it of papers. "Correspondence from the Society," he explained, observing Ebenezer's curiosity, and showed them some pages of finely-written Latin script. "I dabble in ecclesiastical history, and just now am writing a relation of the Jesuit mission in Maryland, from 1634 to the present day. 'Tis a sixty-year Iliad in itself, I swear, and the fortress hath yet to fall!"

"How very interesting," Ebenezer murmured. He was aware that his earlier blundering remark had been ill-taken, and looked for a way to atone for it.

The priest fetched two extra glasses from the sideboard and poured a round of wine from the bottle on the table. "Jerez, from the dusty vineyards of Cadiz." He held his glass to the candlelight. "Judas, see how clear! If Oporto is the blood o' Jesus, then here's the very ichor of the Spiritu sancti. To your health, sirs."

When the toast was drunk, Burlingame said, "And now, Father, if thou'rt quite persuaded of our loyalty — "

"Yes, yes indeed," the priest said, but poured another round and made no move to get any hidden documents. Instead he shuffled through his papers again, as though preoccupied with them, and said, "The fact of the matter is, the first martyr in America was a Jesuit priest, Father Joseph FitzMaurice — 'tis his unknown history I've pieced together here."

Ebenezer pretended to be much impressed, and said by way of further pleasing their host, "You'd think the Society of Jesus would lead the field in saints and martyrs, would you not? The saint and the citizen may share the selfsame moral principles, but your ordinary man will compromise and contradict 'em every turn, while your saint will follow them through the very door of death. What I mean, the normal state of man is irrational, and by how much the Jesuits are known for great logicians, by so much do they approach the condition of saintliness."

"Would Heav'n that argument were sound!" The priest smile ruefully. "But any proper Jesuit can show you 'tis equivocal. You confuse rational with reasonable, for one thing, and the preachment with the practice for another. The sad fact is, we are the most reasonable of orders — which is to say, we oft will compromise our principles to reach our goal. This holy man FitzMaurice, for example — "

"He is with the blessed, I'm sure," Burlingame broke in, "but ere we hear his story, could we not just have a look at — "

"Nay, nay, there's no great rush," Ebenezer protested, interrupting in turn. "We have all night to fetch the Journal, now we're here, and I for one would greatly like to hear the tale. Haply 'twill be worth mention in my Marylandiad." He ignored the disgusted look of his friend, whose eagerness he thought was antagonizing their host. "What was the manner of the fellow's death?"

The priest regarded them both with a thoughtful smile. "The truth is, Father FitzMaurice was burnt as a heretic in a proper auto-da-fé."

"You don't tell me!"

Father Smith nodded. "I learned his story in part from the mission records at the Vatican and in part from enquiries made among the Indians hereabouts; the rest I can supply from rumor and conjecture. 'Tis a touching tale, methinks, and shows both the strengths and weaknesses of sainthood, whereof Mr. Mitchell hath made mention."

"A Jesuit inquisitioned and burnt! Out on't, Father, I must hear it from first to last."

It was quite late in the evening by now, and the wind still whistled around the eaves of the cabin. Ebenezer accepted a pipe of tobacco from his host, lit it from the candle flame, and settled back with a great show of comfort; but the effect of his diplomacy was doubtless nullified by Burlingame, who drank off his wine and poured another glassful without waiting to be invited, and who made no attempt to conceal his disapproval of the progress of events.

Father Smith lit a pipe himself and ignored his guest's unseemly conduct. "In the records of the Society of Jesus in Rome," he began, "one can find all the annual letters of the mission in Maryland. Two priests and a coadjutor came hither in the Ark and the Dove with the first colonists, and another priest and coadjutor followed ere the year was done. In the very first annual letter to Rome — " He fished through the stack of papers before him. "Aye, here's my copy. We read: Two priests of Ours were assigned this year as companions to a certain gentleman who went to explore unknown lands. They with great courage performed an uncomfortable voyage of about eight months, both much shaken in health, with spells of illness, and gave us no slight hope of reaping ultimately an abundant harvest, in ample and excellent regions."

"Is't Maryland they speak of?" Ebenezer asked. "Why don't they use their patron's name? 'Twas a bit ungrateful, don't you think?" He remembered hearing Charles Calvert — or, rather, Burlingame in disguise — describe the difficulties Governor Leonard Calvert had had with these same early Jesuits.

"Not at all," the priest assured him. "They knew well old Cecil Calvert was a proper Catholic at heart, if something too liberal-minded, but 'twas necessary to use great caution in all things, inasmuch as the forces of antichrist were e'en more in ascendancy then than now, and the Jesuits lived in constant peril. It was their wont to travel incognito, or with an alias, and refer to their benefactors with coded epithets such as a certain gentleman. The certain gentleman here was George Calvert — not the first Lord Baltimore, but the brother of Cecilius and Leonard. In the same way, Baltimore himself gave out that Maryland was called after Queen Henrietta Maria, albeit 'tis named in fact for the Queen of Heaven, as surely as is St. Mary's City."