John Barth - The Sot-Weed Factor

By spring, then, everyone had left except the twins and Joan Toast, and life at Malden settled into a tranquil routine. Ebenezer did indeed contract his wife's malady, which, though virtually incurable, he contrived to hold in check by means of certain herbs and other pharmaceuticals provided him earlier by Burlingame, so that for the time at least he suffered only a mild discomfort; and after the first two weeks Joan's health grew too delicate to permit further physical relations with her husband. The three devoted most of their time to reading, music, and other gentle pursuits. The twins were as close as they had ever been at St. Giles, with the difference that their bond was inarticulate: those dark, unorthodox aspects of their affection which had so alarmed them in the recent past were ignored as if they had never existed; indeed, the simple spectator of their current life might well have inferred that the whole thing was but a creation of Burlingame's fancy, but a more sophisticated observer — or cynical, if you will — would raise an eyebrow at the relish with which Ebenezer confessed his earlier doubts of Henry's good will, and the zeal with which he now declared that Burlingame was "more than a friend; more e'en than a brother-in-law-to-be: he is my brother, Anna — aye, and hath been from the first!" And would this same cynic not smile at Anna's timid devotion to the invalid Joan, whom every morning she helped to wash and dress?

The equinox passed. In April, true to his word, Burlingame appeared at Malden, for all the world an Ahatchwhoop in dress and coiffure, and announced that, thanks to the spectacular effect of the Magic Aubergine (for which, owing to the season, he had substituted an Indian gourd), his expedition had achieved a large measure of success: he was positively enamored of his new-found family and much impressed by Quassapelagh and the able Drepacca — whose relations, he added, had deteriorated gratifyingly. He felt confident that he could get the better of them, but of his brother he was not so sure: Cohunkowprets, thirsty for blood, had the advantage of copper-colored skin, and the problem of deposing him was complicated by Burlingame's great love for him. His work there, Henry concluded, was not done; he had planted the seeds of faction, but after marrying Anna he would be obliged to return to the Island for the summer, to cultivate them properly.

His appearance disrupted the placid tenor of life at Malden. Anna had grown increasingly nervous with the coming spring, and now she seemed positively on the verge of hysteria: she could not sit still or permit a moment's lull in conversation; her moods were various as the faces of the Chesapeake, and changed more frequently and less predictably; a risque remark — such as Ebenezer's, that he had seen dried Indian gourds in Spurdance's cabin on the property — was enough to send her weeping from the room, but on occasion she would tease her brother most unkindly about his infection and speculate, with deplorable bad taste, what effect the eggplant-plaster might have on it. Burlingame observed her behavior with great interest.

"You do want to wed me, Anna?" he asked at last.

"Of course!" she insisted. "But I'll own I'd rather wait till the fall, when thou'rt done with the Salvages for ever and aye

Henry smiled at Ebenezer. "As you wish, my love. Then methinks I'll leave tomorrow — The sooner departed, the sooner returned, as they say."

To what happened in the interval between this conversation, which took place at breakfast, and Burlingame's departure twenty-four hours later, Ebenezer could scarcely have been oblivious: the very resoluteness with which he banished the thought from his mind (only to have it recur more vividly each time) argues his awareness of the possibility; his sudden need to help Spurdance oversee the afternoon's planting argues his approval of the prospect; and his inability to sleep that night, even with cotton in his ears and the pillow over his head, argues his suspicion of the fact. Anna kept to her room next morning, and the poet was obliged to bid his friend good-bye for the two of them.

"The fall seems terribly distant," he observed at the last.

Henry smiled and shrugged his shoulders. "Not to the fallen," he replied. "Adieu, my friend: methinks that prophecy of Pope Clement's will come to pass."

These were his final words to the poet, not only for the day and season, but forever. Later that day Anna declared her fear that Burlingame would remain with the Ahatchwhoops all his life, and much later — in 1724 — she confessed that she had sent him away herself in order to be, literally and exclusively, her brother's keeper. In any event, unless a certain fancy of Ebenezer's later years was actually the truth, they never saw or heard from their friend again. Whether owing to his efforts or not, the great insurrection did not materialize, though by 1696 it seemed so imminent that Nicholson raised the penalties for sedition almost monthly: even the loyal Piscataways, who had fed the very first settlers in 1634, were so inflamed — some said by Governor Andros of Virginia — that they abandoned their towns in southern Maryland, removed to the western mountains with their emperor (Ochotomaquath), and either starved, they being farmers rather than hunters, or were assimilated into northern groups. The great Five Nations, thanks to the efforts of Monsieur Casteene, General Frontenac, and perhaps Drepacca as well, were wooed away entirely from the English to the French, and the massacres of Schenectady and Albany would almost surely have been multiplied throughout the English provinces had the grand conspirators on Bloodsworth Island not been divided. The fact that Nicholson never mustered a force to attack the Island itself suggests both communication with and great faith in Henry Burlingame; by the end of the century the place was an uninhabited marsh, as it is today. One supposes that the Ahatchwhoops, under whatever leadership, migrated northward into Pennsylvania like the Nanticokes, and were in time subsumed into the Five Nations. On the ultimate fate of Quassapelagh, Drepacca, Cohunkowprets, and Burlingame, History is silent.

But though the twins' extraordinary friend departed, life at Malden never regained its former serenity. Anna remained in a highly nervous state; then in May it became apparent that during their brief cohabitation three months previously, Joan Toast had been impregnated by her husband. Here was a grave matter indeed, for if she carried the fetus to term, the labor of bearing it would surely kill her, and in any event the child would be born diseased; thus despite his sudden passionate desire for fatherhood, which he felt with an intensity that frightened him, Ebenezer was obliged to pray for a spontaneous early abortion. But not only were his prayers unanswered: as if in punishment for his having made them, Anna confessed in midsummer that she too was in a family way, and it took all the resources of the poet's rhetoric to dissuade her from ending her life!

"I–I'm a fallen woman!" she would lament, fascinated by the term. "Wholly disgraced!"

"Wholly," Ebenezer would agree: "as I have been since ever I came to Maryland! You must wed thy shame to mine or see me follow you to the grave!"

So it was that Anna remained at Malden, in relative seclusion, while among the servants and neighboring planters the most scandalous stories ran rife. Once Ebenezer returned ashen-faced from Cambridge and declared: "They're saying 'twas I got the twain of you with child!"

"What did you expect?" Anna replied. "They know naught of Henry, and 'tis unlikely I'd take Mister Spurdance for my lover."

"But why me?" Ebenezer cried. "Are people so evil-minded by nature? Or is't God's punishment to shame us as if we did in sooth what — "