John Barth - The Sot-Weed Factor

"St. Sever's tan yard! There are no charges against anyone!"

"Quite so," the Governor agreed. " 'Twere unjust to bring so grave a charge in a special court and without a hearing. In short, the lot o' ye are under house arrest for sedition pending your hearing, and there'll be no hearing till we settle the title to this estate!"

Sir Thomas himself was plainly dazzled. "It hath no precedent!" the Colonel complained.

"On the contrary," Nicholson said triumphantly. " 'Tis the very trick Justice Holt employed for King William to snatch the charter o' Maryland from Baltimore."

The confiscation was promptly made official: Sir Thomas's status was changed from judge to counsel for the defense; Andrew, William Smith, and Lucy Robotham were named joint plaintiffs; and the case of Cooke et al. v. Maryland was declared open.

" 'Sheart, now!" laughed the Governor. "There's a piece o' courtsmanship to remember!" He then ruled that Colonel Robotham, as Lucy's counsel, should be heard first, since his claim antedated the others. The Colonel, much ill at ease, repeated the particulars of the gaming aboard the Poseidon, the final wager made prior to the Laureate's capture, by virtue of which the title to Cooke's Point passed to the Reverend George Tubman of Port Tobacco parish, the Reverend Tubman's marriage of Lucy (subsequently annulled as bigamous), her acquisition to the title of Cooke's Point, and finally her marriage to the Laureate himself.

Nicholson grunted. "Now see here, Colonel Robotham, thou'rt a responsible man, for all ye once served with Coode and Governor Copley; if I hadn't thought ye a friend o' Justice I'd ne'er have made ye Judge o' the Admiralty Court. Thou'rt an honest man and a just one: a credit to the wretched Province. ."

"I thankee, sir," muttered the Colonel. "Heav'n knows I crave naught save justice — "

"Then lookee yonder at that skinny fellow on the couch and admit he is no more thy daughter's husband than I am, nor is he the wight that made the wager with George Tubman!"

"I never said he was," protested the Colonel. "Andrew Cooke himself hath declared to all of us — "

"We know his lying declarations," Nicholson interrupted, "and we know as well as you do why he called Henry here his son."

This point Colonel Robotham granted freely. "He thought his son was dead and hoped to deceive me with an impostor. But if Your Excellency please, sir, my position is that a man who will disown his own son dead would as lief disown him alive, and as lief twice or thrice as once. My position, sir, is that when he learned how his son had gambled away his property, he conspired with Mister Lowe — or Burlingame, whiche'er it is — to defraud us; and that when my poor son-in-law appeared with his companions and Mister Burlingame was obliged to reveal himself, Mister Cooke callously bribed that wretch of a servant to pose in his place. I can produce witnesses a-plenty from the Poseidon to identify my daughter's husband as Ebenezer Cooke and that treacherous rascal as his valet; and they will swear, as I do now, that oft and oft on shipboard he would presume to his master's office."

The Governor shook his head. "I greatly fear, George, 'tis thy son-in-law upstairs that is the presumptuous servant. Much as I deplore the scandal of't, and pity ye the burthen of a short-heeled daughter, I am altogether convinced that this fellow here is the true Eben Cooke. In addition to the testimony of his father, his sister, and Mister Burlingame, I have here a sworn affidavit from Bertrand Burton, the man in yonder chamber, that Mister Burlingame had the foresight to acquire before the poor devil was o'erhauled by fever. I shall read it aloud and hand it round for your inspection."

He proceeded to read a confession, over Bertrand's signature, of the valet's several impostures of Ebenezer, his unauthorized wager with Tubman, and his fraudulent marriage to Lucy Robotham. Despite Ebenezer's overwrought condition, this gesture of atonement filled his heart.

" 'Tis but a farther deception!" the Colonel objected. "They have twisted a dying man's delirium to their ends!"

"Nay, George," Nicholson said gently. "He really is a servant named Bertrand Burton."

"Ah, marry!" Lucy moaned. Mrs. Russecks hurried to comfort her.

"But God's body!" The Colonel clenched his fists and snorted. "Behold my daughter, sir! Fraudulent or no, the match hath been consummated!"

"Beyond a reasonable doubt," the Governor agreed. "Methinks no Maryland court will dispute the match unless thy daughter sues for annulment, which is her clear prerogative. But her husband is Bertrand Burton, not Eben Cooke, and this Court here disallows her claim to any part o' this estate, either through marriage or through this forgery of Tubman's. D'ye have that, Burlingame?"

Henry nodded. Andrew and Richard Sowter smiled broadly at Colonel Robotham's defeat; and Ebenezer too, though he greatly pitied both father and daughter, felt relieved that at least one of the contenders was out of the field. The Governor advised the Colonel that he was free to leave or linger, as he pleased.

"I shall leave this instant," Colonel Robotham declared with great emotion, "least I commit murther on that lying lecher upstairs. God forgive him!"

Properly hospitable now that their quarrel was settled to his advantage, Andrew offered to see the Robothams to their carriage, but the Colonel refused the courtesy and escorted his tearful daughter from the room.

"So," said Nicholson with a sniff. "Now, may I assume we're all of a mind as to who is Eben Cooke and who is not? Excellent. Then as for the quarrel betwixt Mister Smith and Mister Andrew Cooke, methinks it hangs upon three main questions: a question o' law, a question o' fact, and another question o' law, in that order. Did Eben Cooke's power of attorney give him leave to dispose o' this estate? If so, did he dispose of it knowingly or in ignorance? And if in ignorance, is the conveyance nonetheless valid before the law? I ask ye now to address yourselves to the first question, gentlemen."

Andrew took the floor to plead that while in fact there was no stipulation in his son's commission specifically forbidding him to dispose of the estate, no reasonable man could question that such was the spirit of the thing — why would he apprentice the young man to Peter Paggen to learn the plantation trade, if he meant to dispose of his holdings in Maryland? But, he added, if anyone were carping enough to challenge his intent, he offered in evidence a transcript of his will and testament, prepared in 1693, wherein he bequeathed Cooke's Point to his children, share and share alike. Did that suggest to the Court that he meant for his son to dispose of the property? Andrew concluded with high indignation and a red face. When he was finished, Roxanne nodded her belief in the justice of his arguments and lent him her linen handkerchief to mop his brow.

"If't please Your Excellency," Sowter declared in his turn, "my client freely grants Andrew Cooke's intention; we have no doubt whate'er that the young man was not instructed to dispose of Cooke's Point. But good St. Abdon, sir, the question hath to do with authority, not with instruction: I submit that if young Mister Cooke's commission lawfully empowered him to dispose of the property, the question of paternal sanction is immaterial."

The Governor rubbed his nose and sighed. "The Court agrees."

Sowter then obtained further concession from the Court that if in the management of the estate Ebenezer had found it expedient to lease, sell, or grant away some small portion of it, his action would be fully authorized by the phrase "all matters pertinent thereto" — since, after all, the very sot-weed for the sale of which the plantation existed was part and parcel of the estate. And having won this point, he declared that what applied to a part applied to the whole; to infer some arbitrary limitation from the language of the commission would be patently absurd.