John Barth - The Sot-Weed Factor

Ebenezer held up his hand. "Forego thy wondrous pity," he said. "I'm sure it soured your dinner at the Colonel's and made you a zestless lover for Miss Lucy."

"It did no less," Bertrand admitted. "Though of course I durst not give the slightest outward sign of't."

"Of course not."

Instead, declared Bertrand, he had confessed to Colonel Robotham that the same traitors to the King who had arranged to have him kidnaped and murdered by pirates were attempting to work his ruin in the Province, lest by the power of his pen he expose their seditious plots to the light of day. It was in anticipation of their schemes that he had sent his man before him to reconnoiter in the guise of Laureate — that same amanuensis who had served him thus, unasked, on earlier occasions — little dreaming that the stratagem would so misfire. The Colonel then, eager to oblige his guest in any way he could, offered to intercede at once with Governor Nicholson, who had a perfect hatred even of debate, to say nothing of insurrection; but Bertrand proposed a quite different plan of attack, so agreeable to the Robothams that as one they laid down their euchre-hands and tearfully embraced him.

"I wait in mortal fear to hear it," said the poet.

" 'Twas as simple as it was effective," the valet sighed, "- or so it seemed at the time I hatched it. I proposed to keep the matter entre nous — "

"Entre nous? Marry, thou'rt learning to scheme in French!"

Bertrand blushed. " 'Tis a word Lucy uses whene'er she means to have profit at some other wight's expense. My plan, I say, was to keep the matter entre nous until I knew more of your plight and how I best might aid ye; I saw no merit in discovering my true name and rank to the Robothams, nor in risking my disguise by taking my troubles to the Governor. I declared I'd given ye the power of attorney, the better to carry out your pose at Laureate, and that this power lent the cooper's title to Cooke's Point a certain slender substance, if 'twere contested in a biased court; for albeit the grant was made by a false Laureate (so I told the Colonel), yet the impostor was my legal agent and proxy, empowered to do my business in my name."

"I swear, thou'rt as grand a casuist as Richard Sowter!" Ebenezer said. Bertrand beamed.

" 'Tis but the giblet-sauce and dressing to what followed, sir: on the heels of't I proposed to marry Mistress Lucy on the instant and offered as my reason that, though her claim as such had no more law in't than a bumswipe, yet 'twas prior to any the traitors might shark up; if I was to support it as author of the note, husband of the claimant, and bona fide Laureate o' Maryland, 'twould cany the day in the Devil's own assizes!"

"Marry come up!" the poet exclaimed. "You meant to steal my estate to go with my name and office!"

" 'Twas stolen already," Bertrand reminded him. "I meant to steal it back to its rightful owner, if I could, whereupon I'd declare my actual name, and Lucy Robotham could go hang for all she'd be my legal wife!" The Colonel, he added, had been pleased with this proposal, and Lucy more than pleased; the marriage had been solemnized at once and consummated beyond cavil, and although he had not been able, as he had hoped, to enter on Lucy's note a clause of relinquishment in favor of her husband, nonetheless he considered Cooke's Point saved.

"I am staggered by this duplicity!" Ebenezer said. "Where is this miserable creature you've deceived, and her poor father? How is't thou'rt cowering in this tavern instead of lording it at Malden?"

"Colonel Robotham hath been on business up the country these two months," Bertrand sighed, "and his daughter hath been with him at my behest. I declared she was in danger from the traitors and must stay with her father at least till her confinement; but the truth of't was, I had been living at the Colonel's whole expense and would be revealed an arrant pauper the day he left. 'Twas my good fortune Lucy had a few pounds saved, that she entrusted to my keeping: 'twas just enough to buy my food and drink, and pay the hire of this verminous chamber." In vain, he said, had he endeavored to learn more news of Ebenezer's plight and to set in motion the legal strategy he had devised: his hands were tied for lack of money and influence until the Colonel's return.

"And in any case, the game is o'er," he concluded gloomily. "Colonel Robotham will return next week to Talbot, and if he doth not learn the truth from your father, he must guess it when he sees the state I'm in. Or else Master Andrew himself will search me out here when he learns thou'rt not at Malden — I had ne'er escaped him this last time had your sister not forewarned me he was coming — "

"Where did you find Anna, and where is she now?"

" 'Twas she found me," said Bertrand, "the very day she stepped ashore in Maryland. She came to find you in this room, where all St. Mary's knows the Laureate hath been quartered, and at first I scarcely knew her, she hath aged so."

Ebenezer winced.

"She was as taken aback at sight of me as was I at sight of her. I told her what I knew of your straits, without mentioning my own, and for all I begged her not to rush in recklessly, there was naught for't but she cross the Bay that afternoon, traitors or no, and either nurse ye back to health or be murthered at your graveside."

"Dear, darling Anna!" Ebenezer cried, and blushed when he recalled Burlingame's discourse of the morning. "What happened then?"

"She found passage in a sloop for the Little Choptank River," said Bertrand. "I spoke to her captain later below stairs, and he told me she'd gone ashore at a place called Tobacco Stick, his closest anchorage to Cooke's Point. Neither I nor any soul else, to my knowledge, hath farther news of her than that."

"Merciful God! No farther news?" A thought occurred to him, so monstrous that the gorge rose in his throat: William Smith was most certainly angry over his flight from Malden in violation of his indenture-bond, and Joan Toast more wrathful still at having been abandoned; suppose poor Anna had fallen into their clutches, and they had taken revenge on her for her brother's deeds!

"Heav'n save her!" he gasped to Bertrand, rising weakly from the chair. "They might have forced her into whoredom! This very minute, for aught we know, some greasy planter or great swart salvage — "

"Hi, sir! What is't ye say?" Bertrand ran alarmed to pound his master on the back, who had fallen into a fit of retching.

"Hire us a boat," Ebenezer ordered, as soon as he caught his breath. "Well set out for Malden this instant, and hang the consequences!" Without mentioning his desertion of Joan Toast, he explained as briefly as he could to the astonished servant the fallen state of Malden, the circumstances of his departure, his rescue by Henry Burlingame, the enormous conspiracy afoot in the Province, and the particular danger awaiting Anna whether or not Andrew arrived before her at Cooke's Point. "I'll tell you more the while we're crossing," he promised. "We daren't lose a minute!"

"I know a captain we might hire," Bertrand ventured, "and I'd as well be murthered by your cooper as by Colonel Robotham when he finds me, but in truth I've no more than a shilling left of Lucy's money. ."

His anger at the man fired anew by this reminder, Ebenezer was ready to chide him further for his abuse of Lucy Robotham, but brought himself up short with a shiver of mortification. "I've money enough," he grumbled, and offered no explanation of its source.

At the waterside they found the captain Bertrand had in mind, and despite the lateness of the afternoon and the unpromising weather, that gentleman agreed, for the outrageous price of three pounds sterling, to carry them to Cooke's Point in his little fishing boat. As they were about to step aboard Ebenezer remembered his scheduled rendezvous at the Statehouse.