John Barth - The Sot-Weed Factor

"Beware the bulkhead, sir!" the approaching gentleman cried, and drew his short-sword.

"I cannot help it!" Ebenezer gasped, observing his peril. "This man — "

"Release him!" the stranger commanded.

Spurdance glanced wildly at the sword. "I've naught to lose, damn ye! This wretch and his devilish ally — "

The stranger smote him across the face with the flat of his sword, and before he could collect himself the point was at his gullet.

"Not another word upon that topic," the stranger said: "neither now nor later, else 'twill be your final word on earth." To the assembled stevedores he said, "This madman assaulted Master Cooke, the Laureate Poet of Maryland! If he's a friend of yours, fetch him out of here before I set the sheriff on him."

Though in all likelihood he had been recognized already, Ebenezer was alarmed at the proclamation of his name. Yet the stranger's manner quite awed the stevedores: two of them helped the injured Spurdance move off toward the inn, and another volunteered to ferry both gentlemen out to the Pilgrim.

"I'faith, you've saved my life, sir!" Ebenezer said.

"My honor, Mister Cooke," the stranger replied. He was a short, swarthy, and solidly proportioned man, rather older than the poet; he wore his natural iron-grey hair and a short beard of the same color, and his coat, boots, and breeches, though simply designed, were of expensive-looking material.

"Yonder is the Pilgrim's gig." he declared. "I'm Nicholas Lowe of Talbot, bound for St. Mary's City."

But even as he identified himself his face was illuminated by the lantern of a passing stevedore: Ebenezer recognized the bright eyes and unfortunate teeth and gasped

"Henry!"

"Nicholas is the name," Burlingame repeated. "Nicholas Lowe, of Talbot County. Are you traveling alone, sir? I understood you were a married man."

Ebenezer blushed. "I–I must try to explain that, Henry, when there's time. But i'God, 'twas not for my sake you smote Spurdance!"

"No other cause," Burlingame said. "A man may see his friend need, but he will not see him bleed. And call me Nicholas, if you will, since Nicholas is my name."

"The things he said of you, and of Father! They dizzy me!"

"Sleeveless poppycock."

But Ebenezer shook his head. "What cause had he to lie? As he himself declared, he'd naught to lose."

" 'Tis not enough for trust that a man hath naught to lose," Burlingame replied, "if by virtue of that fact he hath somewhat to gain."

"Nor that he hath naught to gain," Ebenezer added bitterly, thinking of the attack on Spurdance, "when he hath much to lose."

"Yet remove all prospects for gain and loss alike, and for all your witness hath Truth for his mainsail, his rudder will be Whimsy and his breeze inconstant Chance."

"You'd have me think no man is trustworthy, then?" Ebenezer asked. "Methinks there is a motive in that cynicism!"

"What the saint calls cynicism," Burlingame said with a shrug, "the worldly man calls sense. The fact of't is, all men can be trusted, but not with the same things. Just as I might trust a sea-captain with my life, but not with my wife, so I trust Ben Spurdance's intention, but not his information. 'Tis only fools and children, or wretches blind with love like poor Joan Toast, that will trust a man with everything."

Ebenezer's face burned. "You know my shame!"

Burlingame shrugged. " 'Tis mankind's shame, is't not, that we are no angels? What have I learnt, save that thou'rt human, and Joan Toast such a fool as I described?"

"And I another!" the poet wept. "What was't but love for you that all these months hath scaled my eyes to your behavior, plugged my ears to your own admissions and the dire reports of others, and so deranged my reason that I justify your arrantest poltrooneries?"

"You believe that booby of an overseer," Burlingame said scornfully. "Why is't you do not swallow hook and leader as well, and believe those folks who say 'twas I brought Coode and Jacob Leisler together and set off the entire string of revolutions? Why not believe the gentlemen who make me chief lieutenant of the Pope or King Louis, or James the Second, or William Penn, or the Devil himself?"

"I believe no one any longer," Ebenezer replied. "I believe naught in the world save that Baltimore is the very principle of goodness, and Coode the pure embodiment of evil."

"Then I must make your disillusionment complete," his tutor said. "But now let's board our ship, or she'll make way without us." He started for the Pilgrim's gig, but Ebenezer tarried behind. "Come on; what holds you back?"

Ebenezer covered his eyes. "Shame and fear; the same that urge me on!"

"They are the cantini ères of all great enterprise and must be lived with."

"Nay," Ebenezer said. "This talk hath clipped the wings of my resolve: I cannot fly to England."

"Nor did I mean you to, but to St. Mary's City with me, on pressing business."

Ebenezer shook his head. "Whate'er your business, right or wrong, I am done with't."

Burlingame smiled. "And with your sister Anna as well? 'Tis she I hope to meet in St. Mary's City."

"Anna in Maryland! What new enormity is this?"

"We've not time for't here and now," laughed Burlingame, and led Ebenezer by the arm toward the waiting gig. "See yonder how the Pilgrim slacks her pendant? The tide is set to turn."

For a moment longer the poet resisted the familiar, urgent spell of his former tutor, but the news of Anna — though he allowed for its being altogether false — was too astonishing and intriguing to let pass. While they were being ferried out into the creek-mouth he fingered absently at his ring, as always when his thoughts dwelt on his sister, and it was with a little shock of regret that he felt fishbone instead of silver.

"What must Joan be doing now?" he wondered, and slipped the fishbone ring into his pocket lest it elicit questions from Burlingame.

Since he carried no other luggage than his ledger-book, it took but a few minutes for Ebenezer to sign on as a passenger aboard the Pilgrim. By the time the sun's rim edged the flat horizon the ship had left Castlehaven Point to larboard and was standing for the open waters of the Chesapeake. Both to warm himself and to avoid seeing Cooke's Point again, Ebenezer insisted that they go below, and demanded at once to hear whatever news Burlingame had of Anna.

"From what you told me in the Cambridge winehouse," he said tiredly, "she is more twin to Joan Toast than to me. Yet if in sooth she hath crossed the ocean, methinks her quest is not so chaste as Joan's. What have you learnt of her, Henry?"

"All in its place," said Burlingame. "To commence, you really must call me Nicholas Lowe. Your friend and tutor Burlingame is no more, but hath perished by his own hand."

"Nay, Henry." Ebenezer waved his hand wearily. "I am surfeited with poses and intrigues, and care not how or wherefore thou'rt disguised."

"This case is different," his friend persisted. "Nick Lowe's my legal name, I swear't. D'you recall what business it was first fetched me to Dorset, other than seeing you to Malden? 'Twas to find a Mr. William Smith, that had in his keepbg some fragment of John Smith's secret history."

"Marry, that seems a decade past! You mean to say you got the papers from your friend the cooper, and they proved your name is Nicholas Lowe?"

"Slowly, slowly," Burlingame laughed. " 'Tis rather knottier than that. I've yet to lay my hands upon the papers, but when I first learned they were in Smith's possession, I asked him as if from simple curiosity what befell Sir Henry Burlingame in that final portion of the history, and in particular whether any mention was made in't of his issue. His answer was that as best he could recall, naught happened to Burlingame at all: John Smith contrived in some wise to take the salvage doxy's maidenhead, and both men returned to Jamestown shortly after."