John Barth - The Sot-Weed Factor

" 'Twas the chamber-pot she run to!" bawled the plaintiff from across the yard, and the audience cried assent. The defense counsel held a whispered colloquy with his client.

"I hereby amend my statement on advisement from Mrs. Bradnox that she did in sooth heed nature's call, but went straight from pot to cot, as't were."

"A lie!" the plaintiff cried again. He was a dark, lean fellow in his forties, uncommonly tall and leathery, and had a small jug at his side from which he drank. "When I went upstairs anon to try her, I found her cross-legged in the window seat with a song upon her lips and my good liquor in her bowels, a-firing farts at the waning moon."

"As the plaintiff Mr. Salter hath confessed," the defense lawyer went on slyly, "he did later leave the festivities, having got my client fuddled, and did climb the stairs to Mrs. Bradnox's chamber, whereto he did force entry and assault my client in dastard fashion — the truth of't is, he swived Mistress Mary from arse to Michaelmas and did thereby cuckold her spouse the Justice!"

"Hear!" cried the spectators.

"Having finished which evil work," the defense continued, "this Salter did return to the parlor, where he ill employed his host's beliquorment to cheat him at a game o' lanterloo, to the tune of several hundred pounds of tobacco, plying him the while with yet more rum to hide the fraud. Whenas my pitiful client grew so light with his load o' drams that he tumbled to the floor, by which fall his nose did bleed much, this same John Salter did spit upon him, make water on him, and otherwise offend the laws of hospitality, telling him finally that he was not two hours a horned cuckold. Hearing which, my client did on the instant go wondrous sober and, calling this same Salter blasphemer and turdy scoundrel, did ascend unto his wife's chamber in a fearful choler. Entering therein, he did commence to chastise her for a whore and scurvy peddletwat, with divers other epithets of castigation and admonition, and anon did grab her by the birth and drag her thus from bed to floor in an inhumane manner."

"Shame!" bawled the crowd, and, "To the post with him!" Ebenezer too was shocked, but not nearly so much by this revelation as by the entire preceding narrative of the plaintiff's behavior, the like of which, for brazenness, he had never heard. He wondered, in fact, how it was that Salter was the plaintiff and not the accused in the litigation.

"In the course of which domestic altercation," the defense proceeded, "the plaintiff Mr. Salter entered, and intruding himself betwixt the man and wife my clients, did take the part of Mistress Mary against her wedded spouse, clutching same about the neck and choking him till the Justice's eyes did lose their spark and stared all emptily like pissholes in the snow. ."

"Hear!"

"Whereupon said Justice Bradnox did leave off his grip upon Mistress Mary's privates and confronted Salter with the latter's peccadilloes, contending that, by virtue of his having swived Mary from pot to pallet, said Sailer did forfeit any and all claim to the Justice's esteem and was in fact no proper guest but a gigolo and shitabed hypocrite. To which description the plaintiff did reply by blacking both the Justice's eyes and raising a duck-egg knot upon his pate, declaring the while that Justice Bradnox was deficient in manly virtue — "

"I told him he was manly as a steer," Salter specified, wiping the mouth of the wine-jug with his sleeve, "and useful as a whore in church."

"That was well said," remarked a man sitting next to Ebenezer.

"And he did farther declare," the defense went on, "that Mistress Mary was not worth the trouble to hoist her coats. ."

" 'Twas like humping Aldersgate," Salter complained.

"Whereto the Justice did reply that, should Salter not close his leprous trap, he the Justice my client would close it for him, and shoot him, knock him upon the head, and break his two legs into the bargain. To which the plaintiff rejoined — "

"Enough!" cried the judge. But then he added, "Thy drivel will have us snoring in a minute. What's the charge, for heaven's sake?"

Salter leaped to his feet at once. "The charge," he said, "is that this blackguard Bradnox never paid me for that liquor — a rundlet in all, give or take a dram — and farther, that whilst I was a-swiving Mary Bradnox from sprit to spanker, certain coins did fall from out my breeches, that were upon a chair, and these same coins the rascals ne'er returned to me."

"Mother of God!" the Laureate whispered.

"What say ye, jurymen?" charged the judge. "Is the defendant guilty, or will ye let the scoundrel go?"

The most Ebenezer could hope for during the minute or so of the jury's deliberation was that the notes being exchanged among them were messages and not tobacco-notes; he was too appalled by the conduct of the court to expect an honest judgment. It came, in fact, as something of a shock to him when the foreman of the jury said, "Your Honor, we find the defendant not guilty."

"Not guilty!" roared the judge, and his protest was echoed by the audience. "Sheriff, arrest those twelve rascals and charge 'em all with contempt o' court! Not guilty! Marry, the man's soul is black as the Ace o' Spades, and that of his short-heeled wife little whiter! Good God, men, will ye bring fair Dorset to wrack and ruin? Nay, I say: the defendant is guilty as charged!"

Ebenezer rose indignantly to his feet, but his objections were swallowed up by the crowd's applause.

"The Court here orders that Tom Bradnox pay o'er to Salter the full price of his rundlet and deliver a like amount to the Court come sunrise next, or stand pilloried till this Court adjourns. Farther, that Mary Bradnox return to the plaintiff double the value of the coins he lost while swiving her from bosom to birthright, or else suffer herself the letter T to be burnt in her hand, for thievery. Next case!"

The spectators whistled, slapped one another's shoulders, pinched one another's wives, and collected or settled their wagers. Ebenezer remained on his feet, astonished by the conduct of the court, and searched for the most scathing terms in his vocabulary, for he meant to deliver a public rebuke not only to the plaintiff and the judge, who had been clearly in collusion, but to the audience as well, for their undignified behavior. But before he could compose his reprimand the next litigants had taken the stand, and his attention was distracted by the fact that one of them — apparently the defendant — was Susan Warren's escort, with whom the judge appeared to be on familiar terms.

"What is't ye want here, Ben Spurdance?" asked the judge, and Ebenezer gave a start — the name he seemed to have heard before, doubtless from Susan, but he could not recall in what connection.

"Ye'd better ask him," Spurdance grumbled, pointing to a hale old man in the plaintiff's seat.

"Who might you be?" the judge demanded of him.

The old man answered, "William Smith, your Honor." Ebenezer started once again.

"What is your lying complaint against old Ben Spurdance?" asked the judge, and at this second mention of the name Ebenezer remembered where he'd heard it before: Captain Mitchell, as they left, had instructed his "son" to search for Susan Warren at the home of one Ben Spurdance, which he had called "a den of thieves and whores."

But he was due for yet a further surprise, for in answer to the Court's question Smith replied that upon his arrival in the Province some four years ago he had of necessity indentured himself to the defendant, having spent all his money en route for medicines to aid his ailing daughter, and that the term of his indenture had just recently expired.

" 'Dslife!" the Laureate marveled. " 'Tis not our man at all, but Susan Warren's poor sainted father that she told me of!" And he wondered angrily why Susan had been consorting with the defendant. William Smith, in the meantime, proceeded to articulate his grievance: he had, he declared, served Spurdance faithfully for the four years of his indenture in the position of cooper and smith, but upon the expiration of his service Spurdance had reneged on the terms of their agreement. Specifically, Spurdance had given over to him only an acre and a half of land — and poor land at that, full of stones and gullies — instead of the twenty called for by the indenture, and had told him he could go hang for all the more he'd get.