John Barth - The Sot-Weed Factor

"Now it happened that the medicine-man English Devil had lain with divers women of the Ahatchwhoops on the night before he died — as is the privilege of a man condemned, except he be a prisoner of war like yourself — and had got three of them with child. The issue of the third was a daughter, more red than her father and more white than her mother, and the Ahatchwhoops took the child and made to drown her in the Chesapeake; but the Tayac Chicamec stayed their hands, observing to them that the skin of the girl-child was of the same hue as his own. He took her to his empty hut and raised her as his daughter, and this was a mighty sin against the gods, but the Tayac Chicamec knew it not.

"Thus it was that the child of the Devil was reared as a princess amongst the Ahatchwhoops, and grew more beautiful to behold with every circuit of the seasons, so that all the young men of the town became her suitors and applied to the Tayac Chicamec for her hand. But evil spirits put a torch to the Tayac's heart, and albeit he was then in his forty-fourth summer, and she in her fifteenth, he was possessed with love for her and desired her for his own. The fire mounted to his head, and caused him to believe that inasmuch as the blood of the Princess was mixed in the same manner as his own, he could father sons upon her whose skins would have the color of their parents'. To this end he sent away the suitors and revealed to the Princess that albeit he had raised her as his own, she was not in fact the daughter of his loins, and he meant to have her for his Queen. Greatly did the girl protest, whether because she had some favorite amongst the young men of the town or because she was wont to think of the Tayac Chicamec as her father; but such is the power of the vengeful gods, her tears were merely fuel for the Tayac's passion, and he who had lived long years without a wife grew. ."

Drepacca too had to reflect for a moment before he could supply an English approximation. "Enthralled? Nay, not as a slave. . to be helpless, but not as one in shackles. ."

"Driven?" Ebenezer suggested quickly. "Exalted? O'ermastered?" Chicamec's nostrils flared with impatience at the delay.

"He was driven with lust," Quassapelagh declared. "So much so, that he shook in every limb like a beast in season. Now the Secret of the Sacred Eggplant, whereby Queen Pokatawertussan was destroyed, had perished with her heavenly spouse, but the Tayac Chicamec had no need of it, being a man in all his parts. When the maid sought to move his pity by kneeling at his feet, he could no longer wait to make her his Queen. Nay, he climbed her then and there, and in the night that followed filled her with his seed!"

Although Quassapelagh had remained impassive as he translated, Chicamec's voice had grown excited; his breath was coming faster, and his old eyes shone. Now he paused, and his face and tone grew stern again.

"In the morning, unknown to all, she was with child, and the Tayac made her his Queen. The evil spirit that had possessed him now left his head at last, and all the while her belly grew he did not touch her again, for shame, and trembled lest she bear a white-skinned boy for him to slay. But strange and far-reaching is the vengeance of the gods! She bore him a fine dark son, a very prince among Ahatchwhoops, a man-child perfect in every wise save one, which the Tayac observed at once the boy had. ."

"Inherited."

". . had inherited from his grandsire Henry Burlingame One — the single defect of that lordly man; and it was clear, his grandsire's Secret of the Holy Eggplant being lost, this boy would ne'er be able to carry on the royal line. For that reason he was not called Henry Burlingame Three, but Mattassinemarough, which is to say, Man of Copper; and for this reason as well, albeit the lust was gone out of him, the Tayac Chicamec durst force his Queen a second time, and plied her with seed the night through to get another son on her. And again he trembled lest she bring forth a white child for him to slay, and did not go into her the while her belly rose beneath her coats. As before, the Queen was brought to bed of a son, this one neither dark as the dark Ahatchwhoops nor white as the English Devils, but the flawless golden image of his father, save for one thing: like his brother Mattassin he had not the veriest shadow of that which makes men men, and since none but God imparts to men the Mysteries of the Eggplant, this boy could never in a hundred summers get grandsons for the Tayac Chicamec. Thus he was not called Henry Burlingame Three, but Cohunkowprets, which is to say, Bill-o'-the-Goose, forasmuch as his mother the Queen, on first beholding his want of manliness, declared A goose hath pecked him; and farther, She would that goose had spared the son and dined upon the father.

"But the Tayac Chicamec waited for the Queen to gather her strength, and a third time drove her with the seed that brings forth men; and until the harvest he trembled like an aspen in the storm. But the third son of his loins was neither dark like Mattassinemarough, nor yet golden like Cohunkowprets, but white as an English sail from head to foot, and his eyes not black but blue as the Chesapeake! He was his grand-sire born again, e'en to that defect shared by his brothers, and albeit the gods might have seen fit to impart to the boy the Eggplant Secret, as they had imparted it to his divine grandsire, there was naught for it but the Tayac Chicamec must fulfill his awful vow and slay the boy for an English Devil.

"Mark how the sinner pays thrice o'er! When the Tayac Chicamec declared to the town that the white-skinned child must die, the Queen snatched up a spear, flung herself upon it, and perished rather than witness the new babe's slaying or bear another child to take its place. But the Tayac Chicamec fetched the white-skinned prince alone to the waterside to drown him, and his heart was heavy. The Queen was dead, that he thrice had ravished in vain, nor durst he get children on the concubines who would share his bed thenceforth, but sow his murtherous seed in the empty air. And at last he was not able to drown the child: instead he painted with red ochre on its chest the signs he had learnt from his father and The Book of English Devils: HENRY BURLINGAME III; then he laid the boy in the bottom of a canoe and sent him down the mighty Chesapeake on the tide. And he prayed to the spirit of the Tayac Henry Burlingame One to spare the child from drowning and impart to him the Magic of the Eggplant, that he might further the royal bloodline — even if amongst the English Devils."

"I'God!" Ebenezer marveled. Yet though he remembered Mary Mungummory's tale of her singular love affair with Charley Mattassin — a tale which not till now could he fully appreciate — and also certain startling assertions of Henry's — for example, that he had never made actual "love" to Anna — nonetheless he found this "certain defect" of Chicamec's offspring most difficult to reconcile with the staggering sexuality of his friend.

"The Tayac Chicamec enquires of Quassapelagh's brother," Drepacca said, "whether the man you call Henry Burlingame Three hath many sons in his house?"

Ebenezer was on the verge of a negative reply, but he suddenly changed his mind and said instead, "Henry Burlingame Three was still a young man when he tutored me, but albeit I know where he dwells, I've not seen him these several years. Yet I know him for a famous lover of women, and 'tis quite likely he hath a tribe of sons and daughters." In fact there had occurred to him the dim suggestion of a plan to save his companions as well as himself; not so rash as before, he pondered and revised it as Chicamec, evidently disappointed by the reply, concluded his narration through the medium of Quassapelagh.