John Barth - The Sot-Weed Factor

The Captain sniffled. "She is a Catholic saint of a whore!"

"And to think I spoke so freely to her at Captain Mitchell's," Bertrand marveled, "when we thought her but a scurfy wench of a pig-driver!"

"Stay, sirs," Ebenezer demanded sadly; "you have not heard the beginning of my shame. D'you think, when she made this martyr's proposition, I refused to hear of't, but ordered her off to England on her own six pounds and promised to rejoin her when I could? Or did I, at the very least, go down on my knees before such charity and kiss the hem of her ragged dress? Imagine the very worst of me, sirs: d'you suppose I merely thanked her with great feeling, let her whore up her boat fare from the Indians in the curing-house, and sailed off with her to be her pimp in London?"

"God forgive ye if ye did," the Captain murmured.

"Should God forgive me thrice o'er," said Ebenezer, "I would bear still a weight of guilt sufficient to drag ten men to Hell. The fact is, gentlemen, I accepted the six pounds, sent her off to the curing-house — and fled alone to the bark in Cambridge! What say you to that, McEvoy?"

"Forgiven, forgiven!" cried the Irishman. "And God save us all! Methinks the fire that cooks our flesh will be cool beside the flames that roast our souls!"

Some minutes passed in silence while the company reflected on the story and their fate. Presently, in a calmer voice, Ebenezer asked McEvoy what ill fortune had led him to Bloodsworth Island. The query elicited a number of great sighing curses, after which, and several false starts, McEvoy offered the following explanation:

"I am but two-and-twenty, sirs, as near as one can reckon that hath not the faintest notion of his birth date; but i'faith, I've been an old man all my life! My earliest memory is of singing for ha'pennies by Barking Church, for a legless wretch named Patcher that called himself my father; I was half dead o' cold and like to faint away from hunger — for de'il the crust I'd see of a loaf old Patcher bought with my earnings! — and the reason I recall it, I had to sing myself alive, as't were, or fall down in the snow, yet I durst not unclench my teeth lest they ruin the song with chattering. Old Patcher must needs have been a music-master, for whene'er I strayed a quaver out o' key he'd cane me into tune with his hickory-crutch. Many's the lutist that can play with his eyes closed, but I'll wager 'tis a rare tenor can sing a com-all-ye with his jaws shut fast!

"Yet sing 'em I did, and true as gospel, nor did I e'er lament my plight or rail at Patcher in my mind; in sooth, 'twas not his cruelty made me vow to be shed of him but his mistakes upon the lute he played to accompany my songs! Some winters later, when I was stronger and he weaker, we were working Newgate Market in a blizzard; Patcher's fingers were that benumbed, he played as I might with the toes o' my feet, and the sound so offended my ear, I flew into a passion, snatched up the hickory-crutch, and laid him low with a clout aside the head. So doth the pupil repeat his lesson!"

"You killed him, then?" asked Ebenezer.

"I did not tarry to find out," McEvoy laughed. "I snatched up his lute and fled. But Newgate Market was near deserted, and the weather freezing, and though I begged my way through London for many a year after, singing the songs he taught me and playing on his lute, I ne'er saw old Patcher again. Thus ended my apprenticeship: I joined the ranks of those who get their living from the streets, a journeyman musician and master beggar, and my own man from that day to this."

"Unhappy child!"

McEvoy sniffed. "So speaks the virgin poet."

"Nay, John; for all your trials you were still an innocent amongst the wolves."

"Say rather a whelp amongst his elders, and no mean hand at wolfing. My virginity I lost to the whores that nursed my boyish ailments, but innocence I never lost, nor fear nor faith in God and man — for the reason one cannot lose what he never hath possessed. I played in taverns for my bed and board, and whene'er I wanted money — but 'tis no news to the Laureate that your true artist need not be handsome to please the ladies; his talent serves for face, place, and grace together, and for all he hath been sired by a legless beggar upon a drunken gutter-tart, if his art hath power to stir he may be wined and dined by dukes and spread the knees of young marquesas! In short, when I grew fond of inventing melodies, I invested in the love of wealthy women — "

"Invested!" cried Bertrand, who to this point had expressed no interest in the tale.." 'Tis a rare investment that pays cash dividends on no capital!"

"Nay, don't mistake me," McEvoy said seriously. "Time was my capital, the precious mortal time one wastes a-wooing; and my return was time as well — hours bought from singing for my supper, and from doing the hundred mean chores a poor man doth for himself perforce. 'Twas an investment like any other, and I chose it for a proper tradesman's reason: it paid a higher return on my capital than did aught else, in mortal time."

"Yet you must own 'twas something callous," ventured the poet.

"No more than any honest business," McEvoy insisted. "If hearts were injured, why, the wounds were self-inflicted; I promised naught, and kept my promise, and there's an end on't."

"But surely Joan Toast — "

"I have said naught o' Joan Toast," the Irishman reproved. " 'Tis the wives and daughters o' the rich I did my business with, that call their pandering patronage, and are much given to fornication in the noble cause of Art. Joan Toast was a penceless guttersnipe like myself — and an artist as well, in her way, only her instruments were different from my own."

"Ha! Well said!" cried Bertrand. Ebenezer made no comment.

"I was eighteen when first I met her: she had been hired to service a certain debauched young peer, whose wife, not to be outdone, hired me to play the same game with herself. The four of us sat down to pheasant and Rhenish, for all the world like two pairs o' newlyweds, which much pleased his lordship's fancy; in sooth, as the wine got hold of him he made a series of lewd proposals, each more unnatural than the one before. And since perversion, like refinement, is an arc, the which, if ye but extend it far enough, returns upon itself, by the evening's end naught tickled the wretch so much as the thought of taking his wife to bed! Joan Toast and I were turned out together, and as we'd done no more than eat a meal to earn our hire, we made a night of't in her little room near Ludgate. E'en then, at seventeen, she was the soul o' worldliness: fresh and full of spirit as a blooded colt, but her eyes were old as lust, and in her gestures was the history of the race. Small wonder his lordship craved her: she was the elixir of her sex, and who swived her swived no woman, but Womankind!

"We stayed some days there in her chamber, sending out for food till our hire was spent; when we went down again together to the street, 'twas with a certain pact between us, that lasted till the night o' your wager with Ben Oliver."

"In plain English," remarked the Captain, "ye was her pimp."

"In plainer," McEvoy replied without hesitation, "we twain were to the arts o' love like the hands o' the lutist to his music: together, at our proper work, we could set Heaven's vaults a-tremble; all else was the common business of survival, to be got o'er by whatever means were most expedient. I'd no more have quarreled with her arrangements than I'd quarrel with the sum o' history, or cavil at the patterns of the stars."

"For all that," Bertrand remarked, "thou'rt no nearer Maryland now than when ye started, and this night shan't last forever."

"Let him tell on," the Captain said. " 'Tis either a tale or the Shuddering Fearfuls in straits like these."

"Aye, John, tell on," Ebenezer encouraged. "How is't you knew Joan Toast had followed me? And how is't you fell into Tom Tayloe's hands?"