John Barth - The Sot-Weed Factor

"In a day the final alterations were completed, and without risking another consultation with Alfred, Cecile sent the workmen back to St. Mary's City, where they doubtless still relate the tale of their curious labors. As soon as they were gone Monsieur entered his castle, inspected the three bricked-up doorways to make certain no cracks were left unsealed, swung the two great crossbars to and fro upon their pivots to assure himself of their adequacy, and ascended the dark stairs to his sitting-room — all the habitable rooms were perforce upstairs; only Cecile slept below, away from the window slits. He summoned Alfred to him.

" 'Is it not a pleasant thing to be altogether secure from the onslaughts of the salvage?'

"Alfred held his peace.

" 'Damn you, sir; speak up! Do we not rest here in a fortress in no way vulnerable?'

"Alfred went to one of the apertures and surveyed the scene below.

" 'Answer me! If there is a gap in my defenses (which of course there is not), I command you to tell me, or by our Lord I'll have you flayed alive!'

"Alfred was afraid to turn from the window, but he said, 'There is one, Monsieur.'

"Cecile sprang from his chair. 'Then tell me!'

" 'I should rather not, Monsieur, for the reason that it is irremediable."

" 'You have gone mad!' Monsieur Edouard whispered. 'Nay, I see it! You say these things to torment me; to make me spend myself into poverty! I see the plot, sir!' He demanded again to be told, but Alfred durst not speak. At that moment there was a sound at the front door: someone entered, and in the room the two men heard the crossbars swing into place and soft footsteps ascend the stair. Monsieur Edouard came near to swooning.

" 'The salvages are in the house! How shall we escape?'

"Alfred's expression was apologetic. 'Where many exits are,' he said, 'are many entrances, Monsieur. Where but one entrance is, there is no exit.'

"Then the voice of Madame Edouard came meekly from the stair. 'Cecile? Would you please have Alfred attend those crossbars? I find them difficult to close.'

"Her husband made no reply, and Sophie, who was used to such rebuffs, presently returned downstairs. Alfred, meanwhile, had gone once more to the embrasure, and now Monsieur Edouard, his heart still pounding, crept up behind and caught him under the shoulders. The servant was old and frail; the master middle-aged and robust: albeit the opening was none too large, Cecile soon had his valet squeezed through it, and Alfred's head was entirely smashed upon the new brick terrace below.

" 'He fell,' Cecile announced to the household shortly after, and no one questioned bun. That night Monsieur had his bedding shifted from the first floor up into the attic, under the rafters, where despite the poor ventilation he retired content beside the great hewn piers. Below, where the household slumbered, the single door was fastened with its double crossbars. Jacques, the new valet, assured his master that he was in every way invulnerable — and Cecile slept soundly."

Henrietta delivered the final sentence with her eyes closed and her voice sardonically hushed. There was a pause, and then Anna cried, "Is that the end, Henrietta?"

The girl pretended surprise. "Why of course it is! That is, the tale ends there — what could Homer add to't? As for the history, 'tis curious enough, but it hath the nature of an anticlimax. The Castle burned to the ground not long after, from the inside out, and my grandfather and grandmother burned with it. Maman was saved by Jacques, that some folk guessed had set the fire; he raised her in his own house till she married Papa, and pretended to be her uncle till the day he died. Don't you think a castle should last longer than that?"

The three listeners praised both the story itself and Henrietta's rendering of it; Ebenezer, in particular, was touched by her combination of spirit, beauty, and wit, and was surprised to discover among his feelings a certain envy for McEvoy.

" 'Twas a tale well told," he said, "and nicely pointed as one of Aesop's. Throw wide the doors and let the pirates in!" Henrietta reminded him of his promise to surpass it, and the poet's tone grew warm and serious. " 'Tis a chore that gives me pleasure, for it brings you closer to Anna and me than ever friendship could."

"Marry, then out with't!" Anna too regarded him wonderingly.

" 'Tis as rare and happy a turn as e'er the dice of Chance have thrown," Ebenezer said. "Your mother, Henrietta, is the same our father once saved from drowning in the Choptank! She — she was our wet nurse after Mother died a-bearing me and her own child died a-bearing, and till the fourth year of our life, when Father fetched us back to England, she was as much to us as any mother could be!" He finished his revelation with tears in his eyes.

"Dear Heav'n!" Mary whispered. "Is that true?" Anna and Henrietta clasped hands and regarded each other with astonishment.

Ebenezer nodded. "Aye, 'tis true, and haply it sheds some light upon Mrs. Russecks's shifting attitudes toward us. Father told me the story just before I left: Roxanne's uncle — that is to say, this rascal Jacques — must have been a man of Sir Harry's temper, inasmuch as he guarded her in the way Henrietta hath been guarded, and when Nature slipped through his defenses, as is her wont, he turned Roxanne out to starve." He related quickly what Andrew had told him of the rescue and Roxanne's unusual indenture-terms. "There were some lying rumors after Mother died that Roxanne had become his mistress," he concluded. "In part, 'twas to give these slanders the lie he left Cooke's Point for London. I recall his saying that Roxanne's 'uncle' had approached him with apologies and begged for her to come back to him; he was supposed to have arranged a good match for her."

Henrietta winced. "With Papa!" Mary shook her head and sighed.

"Aye," the poet affirmed. "This Jacques, evidently, was indebted to Harry Russecks and hoped thus to settle his obligations. To be sure, Roxanne had no need to consent; but she told me not long since that she had come to loathe all men, and wed Sir Harry in effect to mortify her sex and gratify this loathing. She was much attached to Anna and me, and I daresay she felt abandoned, in a sense. ."

"In every sense." Mrs. Russecks's voice came from the hallway stairs and was followed by the lady herself. Ebenezer rose quickly from his chair and apologized for speaking indiscreetly.

"Thou'rt guilty of nothing," Mrs. Russecks said, looking past him to her daughter. " 'Tis you that have been naughty, Henrietta, to tell tales out of school — " She got no farther, for Henrietta ran weeping to embrace her mother and beg forgiveness; yet it was clear that the girl's emotion was not contrition for any misdemeanor, but sympathy and love inspired by what she had learned. Mrs. Russecks kissed her forehead and turned her eyes for the first time, eager and yet pained, to the twins; she managed to control her feelings until Anna too was moved to embrace her, whereupon she cried "Sweet babes!" and surrendered to her tears.

There ensued a general chorus of weeping that for some minutes no other sound was heard in the millhouse. Everyone embraced everyone else in the spirit summed up by Ebenezer, the first to speak when the crest of the flood had passed and everyone was sniffling privately.

"Sunt lacrimae rerum," he declared, wiping his eyes.

But the day's surprises were not done. As soon as Mrs. Russecks had satisfied, for the moment, her hunger to embrace the twins and beg pardon for her previous aloofness — refraining, as did Ebenezer, from any illusion to her innocent attempt to seduce him, as well as to her own seduction by Anna's supposed lover Burlingame, either of which in itself could account for her distress — she joined them at the tea table and said to Ebenezer, "You made good your vow to surpass Henrietta's story with a postscript, Eben (I'God, how can my babies have grown so! And what trials have they not suffered!); but I believe I may yet snatch back the prize with a postscript of my own. To begin with, that 'vicious lying gossip' about your father and myself — 'twas gossip in sooth, and vicious, but it was no lie. For three years after poor Anne's death — that was their mother, Henrietta — Andrew and I mourned her together. But in the fourth year — i'faith, I loved him then, and hinted vainly at betrothal! — in the fourth year I was in sooth his mistress. Prithee forgive me for't!"