John Barth - The Sot-Weed Factor

Burlingame smiled approval. "My lad hath gone to school with a better tutor than his old one! In any case, Francis Nicholson exists, that is neither a Coode nor a Calvert, and he counts Nick Lowe as the cleverest spy he knows. 'Twere indiscreet to press me farther."

There were still a number of questions on Ebenezer's mind, but at this point the cook — whom he recognized as the old Parisian trollop who had wept at his wedding — brought up his beef broth, and Burlingame took the opportunity to excuse himself.

"I must see to't the Governor's not murthered on your property, my dears." He kissed Anna lightly and unabashedly on the mouth, as husband kisses wife, and then, to the poet's surprise, kissed him also, but discreetly, upon the forehead, more as father might kiss son or, in more demonstrative latitudes, brother brother. "Thank almighty Zeus thou'rt back amongst the living!" he murmured. "Did I not once say there'd be great commotion at thy fall?"

Ebenezer protested with a smile that, ruined and spent though he was indubitably, as yet he was not officially among the fallen, nor did it appear likely that he would ever join their number. Burlingame responded with a characteristic shrug and departed.

"Heav'n knows our other problems are far more grave," Anna sighed, "but I cannot give o'er my concern for that man and for the three of us!"

"Will you marry him?" asked her brother.

Anna too shrugged her shoulders. "What is the use of't? As well go off with him, as I did with his brother, and live in sin." So peculiarly inapposite was the phrase, under the circumstances, that both twins had to smile. But then Anna shook her head. "What I most fear is that he'll not return from Bloodsworth Island."

This notion surprised Ebenezer. "You fear Billy Rumbly might do him in from jealousy? I'd not thought of that."

"Nay," said Anna. "Formidable as Billy may be, he is no match for Henry, and there's the danger."

Ebenezer saw her point and shivered: how slight and qualified were Henry's ties to the cause of Western Civilization (to say nothing of English colonialism!), than which his mind and interests were so enormously more complex that it seemed parochial by comparison! Had he not already been a pirate and perhaps an agent for Heaven knew what Satanic conspiracy? Had he not extolled the virtues of every sort of perversity, and pointed out to Ebenezer man's perennial fascination with violence, destruction, and rapine? It was by no means unthinkable that, whatever his present intention, Burlingame would remain on Bloodsworth Island to ally his wits with those of Drepacca and Quassapelagh; and with three so canny, potent adversaries — not to mention John Coode and the shadowy Monsieur Casteene — God help the English colonies in America!

The broth did wonders for his strength; when he had finished it he sent Anna to express his contrition to Joan Toast and beg her to allow him an interview.

"She refuses," Anna reported a minute later. "She says she hath no quarrel with me, but wishes to die without having to endure the sight of another man. Not e'en Dr. Sowter may come near her anymore."

As always upon hearing news of her, Ebenezer was stung to the heart with shame. Nevertheless he took it as a good sign that Joan had at least not sunk into apathy: where belligerence lingered, he declared to Anna, life lingered also, and while his wife lived he did not abandon the hope, not of winning her forgiveness, to which he felt no title, but of demonstrating in her presence the extent of his wretchedness at having deserted her. In the meantime he summoned McEvoy, who after commiserating with him for Joan's condition, shaking his head at the miraculous coincidence of Long Ben Avery's identity (which he said quite substantiated Ebenezer's charge that Life is a shameless playwright), and rejoicing at the ladies' safety, assisted the poet down the hall to the chamber he shared with Bertrand Burton.

"The poor wretch bolted, don't ye know, for fear Colonel Robotham and your father would have his arse, and what with Joan swooned away in the vestibule, and yourself froze up like marble, and all the stir and commotion, they ne'er found him till morning, near dead of cold. E'en so they meant to put him with the servants, but Mister Lowe and I persuaded 'em to bed him with me. I fear the cold hath got to him, poor devil."

They found the valet awake, but far from healthy. His cheeks, though fanned with fever to an unnatural red, were pinched and drawn; his nose was more sharp than ever, and angled like a Semite's at the bridge; his eyes, round as always, and protruding, looked lusterless past his beak like a sick owl's eyes. Just as Burlingame had hurried forward to Ebenezer's bedside, so now the poet hastened to his valet's.

"Poor fellow! You ought ne'er to have left us!"

Bertrand smiled wryly. "I ought ne'er to have left Pudding Lane, sir," he said, his voice half croak and half whisper. "Your servingman had better face his Ralph Birdsalls than play at Laureates and Advisers, whate'er his gifts. Hadn't we a lark, though, the day we were Drakepecker's gods and thought we'd found the golden city?"

Ebenezer wanted to protest that his servant was talking like a doomed man, but he checked himself lest the figure be read for a prophecy.

"Indeed, that was a splendid day," he agreed. "And we shall have many another, Bertrand, you and I." He assured his man that neither Andrew nor himself felt anything but solicitude for his infirmity, from which they all prayed for his swift recovery. "As for the Colonel, he hath cause enough to be wrathful, and Lucy's case is pitiful enough, but Heaven knows they brought it upon themselves! In any case, they shan't lay a hand upon you. Get you well, man, and advise me, or let me freight you back to Betsy Birdsall!"

But the valet was not to be drawn from his mood: he sighed and, rendered incoherent by his fever, spoke unintelligibly of ratafia, Great Bears, and women's wiles. He would express lucidly his chagrin at not having guessed Betsy Birdsall's scheme to save him by unmanning her husband, and almost in the same breath begin to rave about Cibola, the Fortunate Islands, and the Sunken Land of Buss.

"Ye must own," he said slyly at one point, "I had some knack for playing poet. ."

"No knack, i'faith," Ebenezer wept. "A very genius!"

Bertrand lapsed once more into mild delirium, and at Anna's suggestion the two men left him to be attended by her and Mrs. Russecks. Ebenezer returned to his own room for a short nap, after which, and a heartier refection than his first, he declared himself ready to report if need be to God Himself.

"Then I shall send for Governor Nicholson to come up," replied Burlingame. "He arrived while you slept and hath given everyone the vapors by refusing to hear a word about the estate ere he speaks with you. But I resolved to make him wait till you had done eating."

Despite his apprehension at meeting the Governor, Ebenezer had to smile. "Did I tell you that your brother hath that same maddening habit?"

"Nay, that's marvelous! I cannot wait to end this tiresome business and fly to him!"

On this ambiguous note Henry went belowstairs; he returned very shortly afterwards in the wake of Francis Nicholson, Royal Governor of the Province of Maryland, a man of Burlingame's brief height and robust frame, though a dozen years older and somewhat gone to stomach. He had the plum-velvet breeches, the great French periwig, the fastidious manicure, and the baby-pink face of a dandy; but his great jaw and waspish eyes, the snap of his voice and the brusqueness of his manner, belied all foppery. He strode into the room without asking leave, leaned heavily upon his silver-headed stick, and peered at the patient through his glasses with a mixture of eagerness, curiosity, and skepticism, as if Ebenezer were one of those stranded whales to which his royal commission gave him title, and he was not certain whether the oil would be worth the flensing. Burlingame stood by, amused; Sir Thomas Lawrence, catching up breathlessly to the others, closed the door behind him.