John Barth - The Sot-Weed Factor

"Poor wretch!" Ebenezer commiserated to himself. He was all the more ready now to deliver his harangue, but thought it best to wait until he had the whole tale of Smith's misfortunes.

The defendant then testified that while the plaintiff's speech was substantially correct, he Spurdance had not told Smith to go hang for all the rest he'd get.

"I told the old goat to thrust his acres up his arse and leave me in peace," he declared.

"I'God, he e'en admits his guilt!" thought Ebenezer.

The judge frowned uncordially at the plaintiff. "Are ye trying to lie to the Court, sir?"

"Haply 'twas as he says," admitted Smith, "albeit my memory is he said 'Go hang, for all the more ye'll get!' "

"Well, which was't?" the judge demanded.

" 'Twas Thrust it," Spurdance insisted.

" ''Twas Go hang," Smith maintained.

"Thrust it!" shouted Spurdance.

"Go hang!" cried Smith.

"Thrust it," the judge ordered, rapping for silence. "Your friend here hath a slippery lawyer, Ben," he said to the defendant. "Where's yours?"

Spurdance sniffed in the direction of the prosecuting attorney, a plump little man in a black suit such as Quakers often wore. "I need no liars like Richard Sowter to defend me."

"Call your first witness, then, and let's get on with't."

No one except Ebenezer seemed to see anything unorthodox about hearing the defense before the prosecution, and when he saw Susan Warren take the stand in Spurdance's behalf, his wonder was replaced by sheer astonishment.

Susan's testimony, however, surpassed for incredibility anything else he had heard said that afternoon. She had fled to Maryland, she declared, under the protection of one kindly Captain Mitchell of Calvert County, in order to escape the incestuous demands of a father who lusted after her like a billy-goat! "He did then privily pursue me aboard the ship itself," she went on, "and squandered all his money to bribe Captain Mitchell. 'Twas his object to make the Captain play the pander and deliver me into his evil hands, that he might ravish me from fo'c'sle to poop deck!"

The spectators, though they had greeted Susan's accession to the stand with lewd remarks, were now in obvious sympathy with her plight; they murmured their approval of the testimony that her father's efforts to corrupt her guardian had been in vain, and that as a consequence he had been obliged to indenture himself to Spurdance.

"Good Ben here took him only as a favor to me," she declared, "and 'twas an ill bargain I bade him strike, for my father scorned his end of't. He proved an idler and a rabble rouser, e'en as I'd feared: Mr. Spurdance gave him the acre and a half out of pure Christian charity, for he owed him not a ship fitter's fart. He is my father, worse luck for me, but 'twould give me joy to see the rascal put to the post, I swear, and have the nastiness flogged from his wretched bones!"

The judge commended Susan warmly and with no further ado dismissed the untrustworthy jury and declared himself ready to find the plaintiff guilty of lying and idleness; but before he could render an official verdict, Ebenezer, who had sprung to his feet and trembled with rage through the latter part of Susan's testimony, now raised himself to his full height on the grassy bank and cried, "Stop! I demand that this outrageous proceeding be stopped!"

Susan gasped and turned away; the crowd hooted and threw twigs, but the judge brayed louder and banged his gavel.

"Order! Order, damn ye! Now who in the name of Antichrist are you, and why are ye obstructing the justice of this court?"

As he turned to dodge a twig, Ebenezer saw Henry Burlingame hurrying toward him around the top edge of the amphitheater and signaling urgently for him to hold his peace. But the Laureate's indignation was not so lightly held in check: in fact, the pertinence of the present situation to what he and Burlingame had been arguing not long before made him even more eager to speak out when he saw his former tutor among the audience.

"I am Ebenezer Cooke, Your Honor, Poet and Laureate of this entire province by grace of Charles, Lord Baltimore, and I strenuously object to the verdict just proposed, as being a travesty of Justice and a smirch on the fair escutcheon of Maryland law!"

"Hear!" cried some of the audience, but others shouted "Turn the Papist out!" As soon as the declaration was made, Ebenezer saw Burlingame halt in full career, clap a hand to his brow, and then with a shrug sit down where he happened to have stopped.

"Oh la," scoffed the judge, " 'tweren't that bad." He winked broadly at the assemblage. " 'Twas the best verdict old Ben Spurdance could afford."

Burlingame's alarm had taken its toll on the Laureate's self-confidence, but it was too late now for him to retreat; uncertainty put new wrath into his voice.

"You know not whom you twit, sir! Poltroons greater and blacker than you have felt the sting of Hudibrastic and been brought low! Now will you render Justice to yon poor wretch the plaintiff, whose inequitable case cries out to Heav'n for remedy, and cause the defendant and that perfidious slattern of a witness to suffer for their calumnies? Or will you bring upon yourself the Laureate's wrath, and with it the wrath of an outraged populace?"

Spurdance, meanwhile, had turned pale, and as the crowd murmured to one another, he went to the bench to whisper in the judge's ear during this last challenge.

"I care not a tinker's turd who he is!" the judge swore to Spurdance. "This is my court, and I mean to run it honestly: nobody gets a verdict he hath not paid for!"

"So be't!" the poet shouted over the laughter of the crowd. "If Justice in this province belongs for the nonce to the man that buys her, then in this instance I shall pay the harlot's fee." He glared meaningfully at Susan. "Whate'er this evil Spurdance bribed you I shall raise by half, for the privilege of rendering both verdict and sentence."

"Two hundred pounds o' sot-weed," said the judge.

"Three hundred, then," the Laureate replied.

"I object!" cried Spurdance, greatly alarmed.

"And I!" chimed Susan, whose look of terror brought a proud smile to the poet's lips. William Smith stood up as if to add a third objection, but his little black-suited counsel quickly stopped him and whispered in his ear.

"Objections overruled," snapped the judge. "The case is in your hands, Master Poet. But bear in mind 'tis not allowed to take life or member."

The defendant and Susan showed surprise and consternation over the progress of events, as did Burlingame, who sprang up at the judge's ruling and once again hurried towards Ebenezer. But he was still several hundred feet away, and the Laureate proceeded undisturbed.

"I wish neither," he declared, "only Justice. Spurdance, it appears, did no bodily injury to the plaintiff; therefore none shall be done to him. 'Twas a matter of land-payment, and I shall administer Justice of the nature of the crime. My verdict is that the defendant stands guilty as charged, and my sentence is that the plaintiff be awarded in damages not alone the twenty acres originally due him, but all the property from which the grant was made, saving only the acre and a half now held by the plaintiff. In other words, the defendant shall own the pittance he so grudged to give up, and the plaintiff shall own the hoard from which it came! As for Miss Susan Warren, since it seems by no means uncommon in this court to sentence persons not on trial, I find her guilty of fraud, calumny, defamation, lewdness, whoredom, and filial disaffection, and here decree that she must remain in the custody of her father the plaintiff whilst an enquiry be made into the legality of her indenture to Captain Mitchell. Farther, that at the soonest opportunity her father is to arrange a fit match for her, that under the connubial yoke she might instruct herself in the ways of virtue and piety. These strictures, penalties, and decrees to be executed within the fortnight on pain of increased sentence and imprisonment!"