John Barth - The Sot-Weed Factor

"Marry, what a wondrous small world! You must pay me a call sometime, sir: I'll be managing our place on Cooke's Point."

"And writing a deal of verse, did I hear Mr. Bragg aright."

Ebenezer blushed. "Aye, I mean to turn a line or two if I can."

"Nay, put by your modesty, Master Laureate! Bragg told me of the honor Lord Baltimore did ye."

"Ah well, as for that, 'tis likely he got it wrong. My commission is to write a panegyric on Maryland, but I'll not be laureate in fact till the day Baltimore hath the Province for his own again."

"Which day," Sayer said, "you and your Jacobite friends yearn for, I presume?"

"Stay, now!" Ebenezer said, alarmed. "I am as loyal as you."

Sayer smiled for an instant but said in a serious tone, "Yet ye wish King William to lose his province to a Papist?"

"I am a poet," Ebenezer declared, almost adding and a virgin from habit; "I know naught of Jacobites and Papists, and care less."

"Nor knew ye aught of Maryland, it seems," Sayer added. "How well do ye know your patron?"

"Not at all, save that he is a great and generous man. I've conversed with him but once, but the history of his province persuades me he was done a pitiful injustice. I'faith, the scoundrels that have fleeced and slandered him! I am confident King William knows not the whole truth."

"But you do?"

"I don't say that. Still and all, a villain is a villain! This fellow Claiborne, that I heard of, and Ingle, and John Coode, that led the latest insurrection — "

"Did he not strike a great blow for the faith, against the Papists?" Sayer demanded.

Ebenezer began to grow uncomfortable. "I know not where your sympathies lie, Colonel Sayer; belike thou'rt a colonel in Coode's militia and will clap me in prison the day we step ashore in Maryland — "

"Then were't not the part of prudence to watch thy speech? Mind, I don't say I am a friend of Coode's, but for all ye know I may be."

"Aye, 'twere indeed the part of prudence," Ebenezer said, a trifle frightened. "You may say 'tis not always prudent to be just, and I 'tis not always just to be prudent. I am no Roman Catholic, sir, nor antipapist either, and I wonder whether 'tis a matter 'twixt Protestants and Papists in Maryland or 'twixt rascals and men of character, whate'er their faith."

"Such a speech could get thee jailed there," Sayer smiled.

"Then 'tis proof of their injustice," Ebenezer declared, not a little anxiously, "for I'm not on either side. Lord Baltimore strikes me as a man of character, and there's an end on't. It might be I'm mistaken."

Sayer laughed. "Nay, thou'rt not mistaken. I was but trying your loyalty."

"To whom, prithee? And what is your conclusion?"

"Thou'rt a Baltimore man."

"Do I go to prison for't?"

"That may be," Sayer smiled, "but not at my hands. I am this very moment under arrest in Maryland for seditious speech against Coode and have been since last June."

"Nay!"

"Aye, along with Charles Carroll, Sir Thomas Lawrence, Edward Randolph, and half a dozen other fine fellows that spoke against the blackguard. I am no Papist either, but Charles Calvert is an old and dear friend of mine. May the day I fear to speak up against poltroons be the last of my life!"

Ebenezer hesitated. "How am I to know 'tis not now thou'rt trying me, and not before?"

"Ye can never know," Sayer replied, "especially in Maryland, where friends may change their colors like tree frogs. Why, do ye know, the barrister Bob Goldsborough of Talbot, my friend and neighbor for years, deposed against me to Governor Copley? The last man I'd have thought a turncoat!"

Ebenezer shook his head. "A man will sell his heart to save his neck. The picture looks drear enough, i'faith!"

"Yet there's this to say for't," Sayer said, "that it makes the choice a clean one: ye must hold your tongue with all save your conscience or else speak your mind and take the consequences — discretion goes out the window, and so doth compromise."

"Is this the Voice of Reason speaking?" Ebenezer asked.

"Nay, 'tis the Voice of Action. Compromise serves well enough when neither extreme will let ye what ye want: but there are things men must not want. What comfort is a whole skin, pray, when the soul is wounded unto death? 'Twas I wrote Baltimore his first full account of Coode's rebellion, and rather than live under his false Associators I left my house and lands and came to England."

"How is it thou'rt returning? Will you not be clapped in irons?"

"That may be," Sayer said. "Howbeit, I think not. Copley's dead since September, and Baltimore himself had a hand in commissioning Francis Nicholson to replace him. D'ye know Nicholson?"

Ebenezer admitted that he did not.

"Well, he hath his faults — chiefly a great temper and a passion for authority — but his ear's been bent the right way, and he'll have small use for Coode's sort. Ere he got this post he was with Edmund Andros in New England, and 'twas Leisler's rebellion in New York that ran him out — the very model of Coode's rebellion in Maryland. Nay, I fear no harm from Nicholson."

"Nonetheless, 'tis a bold resolve," Ebenezer ventured.

Sayer shrugged. "Life is short; there's time for naught but bold resolves."

Ebenezer started and looked sharply at his companion.

"What is't?"

"Nothing," Ebenezer said. "Only a dear friend of mine was wont to tell me that. I've lost track of him these six or seven years."

"Belike he made some bold resolve himself," Sayer suggested, "though 'tis easier to recommend than do. Did ye heed his counsel?"

Ebenezer nodded, "Hence both my voyage and my laureateship," he said, and since they had a long ride before them he told his traveling-companion the story of his failure at Cambridge, his brief sojourn in London with Burlingame and his long one with Peter Paggen, the wager in the winehouse, and his audience with Lord Baltimore. The motion of the carriage must have loosened his tongue, for he went into considerable detail. When he concluded with his solution to the problem of choosing a notebook and showed him Bragg's ledger, Sayer laughed so hard he had to hold his sides.

"Oh! Ha!" he cried. "That for your golden mean! Oh, 'shodikins! Thou'rt a credit to your tutor, I swear!"

" 'Twas my first act as Laureate," Ebenezer smiled. "I saw it as a kind of crisis."

"Marry, and managed it wondrous well! So here ye sit: virgin and poet! Think ye the twain will dwell 'neath the same roof and not quarrel with each other day and night?"

"On the contrary, they live not only in harmony but in mutual inspiration."

"But what on earth hath a virgin to sing of? What have ye in your ledger there?"

"Naught save my name," Ebenezer admitted. "I had minded to paste my commission there, that Baltimore drafted, but it got packed in my trunk. Yet I've two poems to copy in it from memory, when I can. The one I spoke of already, that I wrote the night of the wager: 'tis on the subject of my innocence."

At his companion's request Ebenezer recited the poem.

"Very good," Sayer said when it was done. "Methinks it puts your notion aptly enough, though I'm no critic. Yet 'tis a mystery to me, what ye'll sing of save your innocence. Prithee recite me the other piece."

"Nay, 'tis but a silly quatrain I wrote as a lad — the first I ever rhymed. And I've but three lines of't in my memory."

"A pity. The Laureate's first song: 'twould fetch a price someday, I'll wager, when thou'rt famous the world o'er. Might ye treat me to the three ye have?"

Ebenezer hesitated. "Thou'rt not baiting me?"

"Nay!" Sayer assured him. " 'Tis a mere natural curiosity, is't not, to wonder how flew the mighty eagle as a fledgling? Do we not admire old Plutarch's tales of young Alcibiades flinging himself before the carter, or Demosthenes shaving half his head, or Caesar taunting the Cilician pirates? And would ye not yourself delight in hearing a childish line of Shakespeare's, or mighty Homer's?"