John Barth - The Sot-Weed Factor

"Good evening to you, Your Excellency," Ebenezer ventured. "I am Ebenezer Cooke."

" 'Sheart, ye had better be!" cried the Governor. His air was curt but not unkind, and he laughed along with the others. "So this is Charles Calvert's laureate, that we hear such a deal about!"

"Nay, Your Excellency, 'twas ne'er an honest title — "

"The Governor will have his jest," interposed Sir Thomas. "Mister Lowe hath apprised us already of the circumstances of your commission, Mister Cooke, and the sundry trials and impostures wherewith it burthened you."

" 'Tis not a bad idea at that," declared Nicholson, "albeit I'll wager old Baltimore did it merely to play at being king. Only give me time to found myself a college in Annapolis — that's what I call Anna Arundel Town — just grant me a year to build a school there, and whether these penny-pinching clotpolls like it or no, we'll have ourselves a book or two in Maryland! Aye, and belike a poet may find somewhat to sing about then, eh, Nick?"

"I daresay," Burlingame replied, and added, upon the Governor's further inquiring, that he had established communication with a certain Virginia printer and, in accordance with Nicholson's directive, was endeavoring to hire the fellow away from Governor Andros to set up shop in Maryland. For a time it looked as if Ebenezer had been forgotten, but without transition the Governor turned to him — indeed, turned on him. so formidable was the man's usual expression — and demanded to hear without ado the details of "this fantastical story of slaves and salvages." His apparent skepticism put the poet off at first — he commenced the story falteringly and with misgivings, almost doubting its truth himself — but he soon discovered that the Governor's incredulity was only a mannerism. "Absurd!" Nicholson would scoff on being told that Drepacca was in communication with the northern chiefs, but his pink brow would darken with concern; by the time he called the story of Burlingame's true name and parentage "a bold-arsed fraud and turdsome lie," Ebenezer was able to translate the obscenities accurately to read "the damn'dest miracle I e'er heard tell of!" In short, though he protested his utter disbelief at every pause in the poet's relation, Ebenezer felt confident, as did Burlingame, that he accepted every word of it: not only the grand perils of the Negro-Indian conspiracy and the traffic in whores and narcotics, but also such details as the illicit trade in redemptioners practised by Slye and Scurry, the depredations of Andros's "coast guard" Thomas Pound (upon learning of which he rubbed his hands in delighted anticipation of embarrassing his rival), and the duplicity of the Poseidon's Captain Meech — whom, ironically, Nicholson had recently hired to cruise against illegal traders in the provincial sloop Speedwell.

"Sweet Mother o' Christ!" he swore at the end. "What a nest o' wolves and vipers I'm sent to govern!" He turned to his lieutenants. "What say ye, gentlemen: shall we make for Barbados and leave this scurfy province to the heathen? And you, you wretch!" He aimed his stick at Burlingame. "You go about posing as a proper Talbot gentleman, and all the while thou'rt a bloody salvage prince! Marry come up! Marry come up!"

Burlingame winked at Ebenezer. For some moments Governor Nicholson paced about the bedroom, stabbing at the floorboards with his stick. At length he stopped and glared at his Council President.

"Well, damn it, Tom, can we prosecute this Coode or not? 'Twill be one rascal the less to deal with, and then we can look to arming the militia." Aside to Ebenezer he confessed, "If the truth is known, we've more balls in our breeches than we have in the bloody armory."

Sir Thomas appealed to Burlingame for a reply and received a tongue-lashing from His Excellency for having to get his answers from "a red-skinned spy."

"We can prosecute whene'er we find him, sir," Burlingame declared, "but we'll need to choose our judges with care, and e'en so there's a chance he'll get off lightly." One portion of the 1691 Assembly Journal, the Province's most damning evidence against Coode and the "Protestant Associators," had yet to be retrieved, he explained; though its relevance to the tale of his own ancestry was presumably slight (it was that portion of Sir Henry Burlingame's Privie Journall which dealt, so William Smith had vaguely averred, with the Englishmen's escape from the Emperor Powhatan), its importance as evidence might be very great indeed. " 'Tis in the possession of that loutish cooper belowstairs," he concluded, "who will not part with't for love nor money. Howbeit, we may threaten it loose from him yet, and once I've seen it we shall look for the Reverend General Coode."

"We shall have it, right enough," Nicholson muttered, "ere this day is done. If I'm to be massacred by the heathen, I want to see that rascal Coode in Hell before me."

"There's a more worrisome business," said Burlingame. "You know as well as I that if the Negroes and salvages take a mind to, they can murther every white man in America by spring — more especially with three or four good generals." It was his intention, he said, to go in any case to Bloodsworth Island as soon as possible and present himself to the Tayac Chicamec and Cohunkowprets; there was every chance that they would doubt his identity, as he had no proof of it, but if by some miracle they should believe him, he would endeavor to depose his brother and set Quassapelagh and Drepacca against each other. Faction and intrigue, he was convinced, were the only weapons that could save the English until their position was stronger in America.

"Ye'll not live past your preamble," Nicholson scoffed. "The brutes are slow, but they're not stupid enough to bow to any Englishman that strolls in and declares he's their king."

"Ah, well, 'tis not a role that any Englishman could play. Not that I claim any special talent, sir — on the contrary, this role wants a most particular shortcoming, doth it not, Eben?"

He proceeded to describe quite candidly the congenital infirmity which he had inherited from Sir Henry Burlingame, his grandfather, and which he meant to employ by way of credentials on Bloodsworth Island. The Governor was astonished, sympathetic, and vulgarly amused by turns: he declared that the stratagem would surely fail nonetheless if the Indians had even one self-respecting skeptic in their number — "D'ye think old Ulysses would have scrupled to eunuch Sinon if he'd judged it to his purpose?" he demanded — but for the present, at least, he could offer no better proposal. He turned to Ebenezer, all the surliness gone for once from his face and manner, and asked, "Have ye aught else to tell me now, my boy? Ye have not? God bless ye, then, for your courage and reward ye for your trials: if thou'rt half as much a poet as thou'rt a man, ye deserve a better laureateship than Maryland's."

And having extended himself so vulnerably into sentiment, he retreated into character before the poet could find words to express his gratitude. "Now then, Tom, I want every wight and trollop on the premises assembled in the parlor, saving only that one poor devil that's mad with his fever. We'll hold us a fine court-baron here and now, as Charlie Calvert was wont to do when things grew tame, and rule on the patent to this estate ere moonrise."

"Very well, sir!" replied Sir Thomas. "But I must remind you what Judge Hammaker — "

"My arse to Hammaker, let him take a toast in't!" cried the Governor, and Ebenezer could not help recalling a certain libelous story once told him by Bertrand. "Stir thy stumps, there, Nicholas me lad — nay, what is't, now? Henry? I'Christ, a fit name for a codless Machiavell Ring in the parishioners to be judged, Henry Burlingame: Tom here shall play old Minos, and I'll be Rhadamanthus!"