John Barth - The Sot-Weed Factor

"Thou'rt not his agent?"

"I swear not. Why is't you fear him so?"

Mary sniffed and glanced about her. "No matter why. Yell learn soon enough if ye take him for a friend." Beyond this she would say no more, and only with considerable entreaty could the poet persuade her even to return to the story, so uneasy had the name Tim Mitchell made her.

"What hath your lover Charley to do with Kate and Mynheer Tick?" he asked. " 'Twere cruel to leave so good a tale half-told."

" 'Tis not far to the end of't," Mary grumbled, and with some reluctance picked up the thread of her story. "Kate soon got wind of how my life was changed, and lost no time in seeking out the cause of't. I knew she'd set her cap for Charley directly she laid eyes on him, and so made every effort to avoid her. The plain fact is, 'twas not till he had killed her that I learned he'd been two months her lover."

"Nay!"

"He told me so himself, along with many another thing, before they took him off to jail. Somehow Miss Kate had sought him out, and told him she was my sister. She was fair of face, as I was not, and her body was a sweetmeat, where mine was e'er a nine-course meal. But for all her conniving she was dull and gameless, and a sluggard in the bed, and spiteful, and a snot; and while Charley loved and hated me at once, he could only loathe a bitch like Kate, as even he confessed. In sooth, that is the explanation of't."

Ebenezer nodded. "An hour ago I'd not have grasped your meaning, but it seems no paradox now. Why did he do the awful murthers?"

"They hanged him for the lot of 'em," Mary said, "but Kate was the only one he slew. The rest slew one another, albeit dear Charley was the engineer."

She explained that on becoming Katy's lover, Charley had soon learned how matters stood in the house of Mynheer Tick, and for reasons not immediately clear had taken pains to gain the brothers' confidence — not a difficult achievement, since they were regular patrons of Mary's traveling brothel and knew no more than did its proprietress of his relationship with Kate. He guided them on hunting trips, raced horses with them, and at their invitation was a frequent visitor on the Tick estate, where he would drink and carouse on the lawn with Willi and Peter and slip away at intervals to cuckold Mynheer Wilhelm. It was not long before the brothers made known to him their fear and hatred of their stepmother, and Charley, with a laugh, at once proposed a double murder.

Willi had cried, "Thou'rt not serious!"

To which Charley had replied, " 'Twould be quite easy. Peter could go down to the end of the path that runs through the woods behind the house, and hide himself in the junipers where you were wont to swive Miss Katy in the old days. Then Willi can send Katy down there on some pretext, whereupon Peter leaps upon her and kills her. In the meanwhile, 'twill be simple for Willi to murther old Wilhelm alone in the house. Do't with a knife or tomahawk, and blame the Indians for't."

Willi had applauded the plan at once, but Peter, though he expressed his readiness to scalp Kate, was less enthusiastic on the matter of parricide. "A common whore is no great loss, but can we not leave Father to die naturally, or from grief? He is old, and shan't stand long 'twixt us and wealth."

Charley Mattassin had then replied, "Do as you wish, 'tis your affair; but methinks you'll be no sooner rid of Kate than he will wed the next wench with art enough to fool him."

"Aye," Willi had agreed. "Let's kill him now. He hath no love for us."

At length Peter was obliged to overcome his reluctance, and left the drinking-bout to take up his station at the end of the path, carrying with him his hunting knife. But scarcely had he gone before Willi, the cleverer of the two, began to question the division of responsibility.

" 'Tis nowise fair," he complained to Charley, "that I be given the tasteless task of murthering Father, whilst Peter hath Katy to himself in the junipers and may do his list with her ere he doth her in." And the longer he reflected, the less equitable seemed his lot, until at last, forgetting who had proposed the scheme, he commenced to blame Peter for it.

"Check your wrath," Charley had urged him then. "I planned it thus, and for a purpose: send Katy down to Peter, and then tell Wilhelm they are swiving in the junipers. Two of the three will soon be dead, and you've only to kill the third to have the whole estate yourself."

It did not take long for Willi to see the merits of this plan, and when a cursory search failed to discover his stepmother, he readily acted on the Indian's next advice: "Tell Wilhelm anyhow, and I shall run to warn Peter that his father comes to shoot him. The result will be the same, and in the meantime you can search farther for the whore and take your pleasure on her."

Willi went off beaming towards his father's accounting room, and Charley took a short cut through the marshes to the juniper grove where Peter waited, knife in hand. But so far from warning him of Wilhelm's approach, the Indian said "Mistress Kate is hurrying hither and never looked more fetching. Since you mean to kill her in any case, why not have your will of her first? Drop your breeches, man, and stand in ambuscado."

"Peter needed no urging," Mary Mungummory laughed, "for dull wits do not mean dull desires, and a clotpoll in the classroom may be brilliant in the bed: even as Charley left, the boy lowered his breeches, took cod in hand, and waited for his victim to arrive."

"But where was your sister whilst these machinations were in progress?" Ebenezer demanded.

Mary clucked her tongue. "She was neither innocent nor idle, ye may be sure." In fact, Mary explained, it was Kate, and not Charley, who had conceived the scheme to begin with. She had told him in detail of her fear of the brothers and of her life with Wilhelm — how, unable to aspire to natural intercourse, he obliged her to dance for him lasciviously every night in the accounting room, amid his tobacco-notes and business papers — and she had pledged to marry Charley and make him master of the Tick estate if he would aid her in disposing of the other legatees. Their trysting-place was a thick clump of myrtles some distance down the path behind the house: hither it was that she would slip away any hour of the day or night when she heard her lover's signal — a high-pitched yelp like that of a fox or an Indian cur; here it was that she would linger while he caroused with the brothers, and wait for him to find pretext to join her; and here it was she lay this fateful evening, and watched the scheme unfold. She had seen Peter go down the path to the juniper trees and had even heard Charley urging him to rape before he slew; it was scarcely necessary for Charley to tell her, when immediately afterwards he joined her in the myrtles, that their conspiracy was under way. Moreover, their hopes were additionally confirmed a few moments later, for Wilhelm himself came stalking down the path, a pistol in each hand and anger in his face, clearly in response to Willi's announcement. And when he met his trouserless son, they could hear quite clearly the string of Dutch curses he let fly.

"Wait!" they heard Peter cry. "For the love o' God, don't shoot!"

And Wilhelm, to their disappointment, instead of firing at once, asked, "Where is your mother, Peter?"

"I do not know!"

"Why were ye standing so," Wilhelm had demanded then, "with your breeches in one hand and your shame in the other?"

And it must have been that Wilhelm had come closer as he spoke, and threatened with the pistols, for Peter grunted and then replied, "There ye see, 'twas but to ease nature I came hither!"

"Willi told me ye were swiving Katy from stump to stump," Wilhelm had declared.

"Ah," said Peter. "But I am not doing what Willi said, as any wight can see."