John Barth - The Sot-Weed Factor

They paused briefly at the mill, where he introduced McEvoy to the object of their mission, announced his current plans, and learned that while Mrs. Russecks had finally been got to sleep, there was no change whatever in the miller's condition; then they set off westward along a dark and narrow path. The night was still and frosty; through the trees the poet spied the great triangle of Deneb, Vega, and Altair, though the constellations to which they belonged were obstructed from view.

"Our little drive takes half an hour," Billy said. "If I may request it, spare me the message from my father till later, as I can estimate its substance out of hand. But I must hear about this gentleman who claims to be my brother, and methinks 'twere better we spoke our minds on the subject of my wife ere we arrive. Yet stay: we durst not essay these weighty matters with dry throats; the first thing to do is take Lady Rundlet's maidenhead!"

"Marry," Ebenezer laughed, "thou'rt more a twin than a common brother to Henry Burlingame! How of't have I burned to hear some news he had for me, or tell him news of my own, and been obliged to sit through a chine of pork ere he'd give me satisfaction!"

They sampled the rundlet, and the good white Jamaica scalded the poet's innards most gratifyingly. Both the Indian and himself had availed themselves of lap robes, which, together with the rum and the absence of wind, kept them as comfortable as if the month were April instead of latest December. The team stepped leisurely in the frozen path, and the wagonwheels creaked and crunched with a pleasing sharpness. Ebenezer permitted his body to rock with the motion of the springs; the task of relating once again the story of Burlingame's quest and his own intricate history had previously appalled him, but in these circumstances it seemed a pleasant labor. He sighed as he commenced, but it was the sigh of a man certain that his story will give its bearers unusual pleasure. Making no mention of his doubts, reservations, disappointments, and astonishments, he told of Burlingame's rescue by Captain Salmon; his boyhood as sailorman, gypsy minstrel, and Cambridge scholar; his tenure at St. Giles in the Fields and the twins' affection for him; his adventures in the provinces as political agent and unwilling pirate; his rescue of the Russecks ladies; his vain endeavors to discover his parentage; and the poet's recent solution of that mystery.

"The question," he asserted near the end of his relation, "was who came 'twixt Sir Henry and Henry the Third, and how my friend came to be lightskinned as any Englishman, when neither Sir Henry's Privie Journall nor Captain John Smith's Secret Historie referred to any Lady Burlingame. E'en that last installment of the Historie, that your people call The Book of English Devils, did not resolve these questions, inasmuch as any offspring of Sir Henry and Pokatawertussan must needs be a blend of English and Ahatchwhoop — as is the Tayac Chicamec, in fact."

" 'Tis as much a mystery now as erst, for all I grasp it," Billy confessed. "Yet I have no doubts this fellow is in sooth my brother. Miraculous!"

"Aye, and no less so is the chance that gave me the key." He told of his visit with Burlingame to the Jesuit Thomas Smith, who had entertained them with the tale of Father FitzMaurice. "When I spied Father Joseph's chests in the house of the Tayac Chicamec and learned the King had wed that martyr's offspring, I had the answer: 'tis by decree of the Law of Averages their union should have issue not alone like thyself, who have the same commingled blood as both thy parents, but also pure-blooded Indian and pure-blooded English, in equal number. In short, Mattassin and Henry Burlingame."

"What a gift you have presented me!" Billy exclaimed quietly. "A brother, to replace poor Mattassin! I am forever in your debt, sir! But what is his trade at present, that hath plied so many in the past, and where might I find him? For I mean to seek him out at once, whether in Cambridge Maryland or Cambridge England."

With his imminent plea for Billy's assistance in mind, Ebenezer replied that Burlingame was still very much engaged in provincial politics as an agent for Lord Baltimore, in whose service he had jeopardized his life time and again for the cause of justice. It was difficult to praise as anti-revolutionary a man who had lately changed allegiance to John Coode (and who for all Ebenezer knew might be the arch-rebel and insurrectionist himself), but the poet reasoned that Billy Rumbly would be more likely to assent to a plan of which he believed his long-lost brother would approve.

"As to where he is now, I am not certain, for his home is where'er the cause of civilization leads him. But my desire to find him is no less urgent than your own, for I know well he'd gamble his life to prevent a massacre." Here, though he had promised to save the story, he could not resist telling of the perilous circumstances under which he had learned about the coming attack, and of Chicamec's ransom terms for Bertrand and the aged sea-captain. "He wants a son with the power of Quassapelagh and Drepacca to lead the Ahatchwhoops in the insurrection. My prayer is that you or Henry, if not the twain of you, will deceive him in the name of peace and good will; take your place as King of the Ahatchwhoops and use your influence for the good of red man, black man, and white man alike. 'Twere not beyond question, methinks, if only you — "

"Ah, sir, your pledge, your pledge!" Billy held up his hand. "Let us proceed to the subject of my wife. Before you speak your business, may I assume thou'rt acquainted with the story of our — courtship?"

"Aye, from Harvey Russecks and from Mary Mungummory, who had it from Sir Harry's wife."

"Both excellent sources. Then you doubtless know I share your alarm at Miss Bromly's self-imposed degradation. I am not yet either a Christian or a legal denizen of the Province, sir, and thus cannot properly marry her as I wish to. But she would have none of't e'en were't possible; she wishes no more than the simple Ahatchwhoop rite I performed — the which neither I nor the laws of Maryland honor where one of the parties is English."

"Then in reality she is not your wife at all, save in the spirit of Common Law?"

Billy acknowledged that this was unhappily the case. "I freely own, what you know already, that I was prepared to ravish and abduct her after the old Ahatchwhoop manner. I hid in the woods near Sir Harry's mill and brought her to the window by means of certain noises, whereupon I revealed myself to her sight. The object of this is to terrify the victim, but so far from swooning away, Miss Bromly came out to me alone, and when I offered to attack her — ah well, 'tis enough to swear no attack was necessary: she came with me of her own choosing, and of her own choosing remains. Moreover, for all my pressing her to live like a proper gentlewoman, she hath transformed herself into a salvage — nay, worse: into a brute, that neither speaks nor grooms itself! You have heard tales that I torture her over the fire? I swear to you that I would not willingly harm a hair of her head, but she hath learned somewhere that Indian husbands are wont to truss a shrewish wife near a green-wood fire, to cure their ill temper, and she obliges me to rope and smoke her in like manner above the hearth."

Ebenezer clucked his tongue. "Alas, poor woman!"

Billy regarded him carefully and gave the reins a little snap. " 'Tis with reason I tell you these things, my friend. I would imagine there hath been some adverse sentiment regarding Miss Bromly and myself; for aught I know, despite your cordial air you may be her brother or her betrothed, come to take revenge for her abduction — she tells me naught of her former life or past connections." He did not mean to suggest, he went on to say, that he was devoid of responsibility in the affair: whatever Miss Bromly's past, it was he who had in ignorance assaulted her in Russecks's tavern and set out deliberately to ravish her afterwards; it was not impossible that her current state was a deranged one caused by the shock of his attacks. However, he dearly loved her and wished her well, and was willing to do anything to improve her condition or otherwise discharge his responsibility.