John Barth - The Sot-Weed Factor

"Here ye be, sir," she said with a chuckle, and climbed up after. "They belong to a young Abaco gallant name o' Tom Rockahominy, that lives in Gum Swamp. He had to bid us a quick farewell last night when a troop of Wiwash braves moved in. Put 'em on."

"I cannot express my gratitude," Ebenezer said, waiting for her to leave. "Thou'rt almost the first kind soul I've met in Maryland."

"Make haste," the woman urged. "I am dying to see what you brave lads look like, that have love on the brain from one verse to the next."

It was only with the greatest difficulty that Ebenezer persuaded her to vacate the corncrib long enough for him to dress. Indeed, his efforts would have been entirely in vain, so determined was she to satisfy her curiosity, had not his extraordinary modesty amused her even more.

"The plain truth is, madam, I am a virgin, and mean to remain one. No woman in my memory hath ever seen my body."

"Dear mother of God!" Miss Mungummory cried. "I will pay ye two hundredweight o' tobacco to be the first — that is the price of one o' my girls!"

But the poet declined her offer, and it was with awe as well as mirth that at last she climbed out of the corncrib.

"At least ye might tell me somewhat about it, seeing I did ye a service. Haply Nature played the niggard with ye, and thou'rt ashamed?"

"I am a man like other men," Ebenezer said stiffly, "and I quite appreciate my debt to you, Miss Mungummory. 'Tis merely that I am loath to break my personal vows; else out of gratitude I would engage you in your professional capacity."

"Ah now, sir, such a boast doth not become ye! A man like others ye may well be, but think not thou'rt a match for my professional capacity!" She laughed so hard that it was necessary for her to sit down on the earthen floor of the stable. "I once knew a salvage down the county, had the fearsomest way with him ye ever could imagine. There was the man for my professional capacity! Belike ye've heard what happens to a man when they hang him? Well, sir, the day they hanged poor Charley for the murther of my sister — it makes the tears come yet when I recall the picture of him. ."

"I say now, Miss Mungummory, this is extraordinary!" Ebenezer finished dressing and climbed out of the corncrib. "What was this Indian's name?"

But Mary could not reply at once, for the sight of the poet sent her into new flights of hilarity. He was indeed an uncommon spectacle: the Indian garments were too small for his towering frame, and were rendered doubly bizarre by contrast with his English hose.

"I thought I heard you call him Charley ," Ebenezer said with as much dignity as he could muster, "and I wondered whether I'd not heard something of him before."

"Oh, everybody knows of Charley Mattassin," Mary said when she caught her breath. "One of the folks he murthered was my sister Katy, the Seagoing Whore o' Dorset."

"Marry, this is fantastic! The wretch murthers your sister, and you speak almost endearingly of him! And what is this about a seagoing whore? 'Sdeath!"

" 'Tis what they called her, and God rest her jealous soul, I bear no malice toward her, for all she turned my Charley's head."

Nothing would do then but she tell Ebenezer the story of her sister's murder at the hands of Charley Mattassin — a story which, despite his impatience to find Burlingame, the Laureate consented to hear, both because he owed his rescue to the teller and because he had recognized the murderer as that same incorrigible Indian who had told Father Thomas Smith of Joseph FitzMaurice's martyrdom. He drew up a wooden box to sit upon and pulled self-consciously at his shirt sleeves as if to stretch them into fit. Mary Mungummory elected to remain seated on the ground, but took the trouble to prop her great back against the wall of the stable before she began her tale.

" 'Tis as true a thing of women as of cats," she asserted, "that whatsoever they are told they may not have, that thing they will move Heav'n and earth to get — particularly where love is concerned. God help the husband that obliges his wife's least whim: hell be a wittol ere he's two years wed! As one o' your poets hath written:

When old Man takes young Wife to warm his Bower,

He finds his Cuckold's Horns among her Dower."

"That is well put," Ebenezer said, "though what connection it might bear to your story I can't say." "My sister Katy had just such a husband, and schemed his ruin, but was hoist by her own petard." Mary sighed. "Kate was less a sister than a daughter to me. Our mother walked the streets near Newgate Market, and in thirty years o' whoring made but two mistakes: the first was to trust a parson, and the second was to trust a physician."

Ebenezer expressed surprise at such cynicism in so charitable a soul as that of his benefactress. "Is there no one you trust?"

Mary shrugged and said, " 'Tis a question o' what ye'd trust 'em with, is't not? In any case I bear 'em no grudge: When a fox hath a hen within his grasp, he will eat her, and when a man hath a woman in his power, he will swive her. My mother was a starving orphan girl that begged about the streets for food. Ere she reached thirteen, so many men had tried to force her that she begged the rector of her parish for sanctuary and was admitted to his kitchen as a scullion. This rector was a proper Puritan, and not an evening passed but he called her to his chambers to harangue her on the Labyrinth of the Heart, and Original Sin, and the Canker in the Rose. To bolster her against the carnal wiles of men he devised a set of spiritual exercises, one of which was to uncover himself in her presence and oblige her to grasp him like a sacred relic, at the same time reciting a prayer against temptations of the flesh. He was much concerned for her virginity, and at the same time doubtful of her strength and honesty; for this reason on Sunday nights she was obliged to confess to him every lustful thought that had crossed her mind through the week, after which he would examine whether she still had her maidenhead as she claimed."

"He was a hypocritical wretch!" the poet declared.

"Haply so," Mary said indifferently. "He was a wondrous kind and gentle minister, the pride of his parishioners, and raised my mother as a member of his family. Methinks he saw no evil at all in what he did. When Mother was fifteen, and still a virgin, he had so schooled her to resist the fires of lust that they could sit for hours naked on his couch and exchange every manner of caress, talking all the while of the loftiest and most edifying matters. To do this was his pride and his delight, so Mother said, and the virtuous climax of a saintly week."

Ebenezer shook his head. "The heart's a labyrinth indeed!"

"That it is," Mary agreed with a laugh, "and anon the wight got lost in't! The riper grew his charge, the more concerned grew he for her honor. She was such an eager and accomplished pupil, and he had given her such a wondrous education — what a waste if some blackguard forced her against her will, and the joys of swiving turned her head from virtue! This notion so possessed him that he talked of nothing else, and for all my mother's vows that she loathed no thought like that of fornication, he knew no peace till he devised the most rigorous spiritual exercise of all. ."

"Ah God, don't tell me — !"

Mary nodded, shaking with mirth. " 'Twas but the natural end of all that went before. One Sabbath night whilst they knelt in prayer he went round behind and made a mighty thrust at her; when she cried out he explained 'twas but her final lesson in shackling fleshly passions, and bade her go on with her prayers as if she were in church. Albeit she was much troubled in spirit, and no silly child despite her innocence, she thought it better to oblige him than to seem ungrateful for all his past kindness; therefore she made no farther protest, but only hoped he would take measures to avoid certain consequences, and began the prayer again. Quick as a wink, on the words Which art in Heav'n, he took her maidenhead, and if he'd a mind to commit the sin of Onan for her protection, he had no time, for on the words Thy kingdom come, I was conceived."