John Barth - The Sot-Weed Factor

"Done!" the poet exclaimed, well pleased. "I cannot fathom why she is in Maryland, but I shall rejoice to see her!"

"And prithee, are ye sure she'll feel the same?" the swine-maid teased. "Can any tart believe thou'rt still a virgin?"

"That doth not matter," Ebenezer declared. "No man would think me Laureate, either, in this condition, yet Laureate I am, and virginal as well. Marry, Susan, how I yearn to see that girl! I beg thee not to fail me!"

Susan sniffed acknowledgment and they came up to the house, a large but ill-kept split-log dwelling. It squatted amid the fields of green tobacco and weed-ridden garden crops, and the bare earth round it was malodorous with the stools of many hens.

"Methinks your master hath fallen far," Ebenezer observed, "to be reduced to such a dwelling."

"How's that?" the woman exclaimed. " 'Tis one o' the finest on the river! Far too fine a seat for such a wretch as he!"

Ebenezer made no comment, but wondered briefly whether to cast away certain verses in his head which praised the grace of Maryland's dwellings, or preserve them lest Susan's knowledge prove incomplete. When the swine-girl left him in order to drive her charges back to the barn, he called for Bertrand, who came forth hurling curses after her, and they made their way to the front of the house.

"Pray Heav'n the wench is right about her master," Ebenezer said, and knocked on the door.

"I would not trust the strumpet twenty paces," Bertrand grumbled. "The man could murther us in our sleep."

The door was opened by a fleshy man in his fifties, red-nosed and chop-whiskered, who had nonetheless an air of good breeding about his person.

"Good evening, gentlemen," he said with a slightly mocking bow. His clothes were fashionable, if seedy, and the excellent gravity of his voice came partly from cultivation, Ebenezer suspected, and partly from a well liquored larynx. Despite their wretched appearance he was as hospitable as Susan had predicted: he introduced himself as Captain William Mitchell, invited the visitors into the house most cordially, and insisted they stay the night.

"Be ye from jail or college," he declared, "thou'rt welcome here, I swear. Dinner's on its way, and do ye set down yonder with the rest, there's cider to whet your hunger."

Ebenezer thanked his host and launched into an explanation of their plight — which, however, Captain Mitchell pleasantly declined to hear, suggesting instead that it serve to entertain the table. The guests were then led to the dining-room, from which sounds of merriment had all along been issuing, and were introduced to a company of half a dozen planters of the neighborhood, among whom, to his considerable surprise, Ebenezer saw the clip-eared old ferryman and one or two others who had stood that day in Scotch cloth on the landing. They greeted him merrily and without malice.

"We looked for ye to join us, Mister Cooke," one said. "Ye must forgive Jim Keech's little prank."

"To be sure," Ebenezer said, seeing no other position to take. "I'll grant I look more like a beggar than the Poet Laureate of Maryland, but when you've heard what trials my man and I have suffered, you may appreciate our state."

"We shall, I'm sure," the host said soothingly. "Indeed we shall." He then sent Bertrand to eat back in the kitchen and directed Ebenezer to a seat at the dinner table, which made up in quantity what it lacked in elegance. Being very hungry, Ebenezer fell to at once and stuffed himself with pone, milk, hominy, and cider-pap flavored with bacon fat and dulcified with molasses, washing down the whole with hard cider from the cask that stood at hand. He had, in fact, debated for a moment the wisdom of revealing his identity, but since he had already revealed it on impulse to the men on the landing, and since the company showed no trace of hostility, he saw no harm in relating the whole of the story. This he proceeded to do when the meal was finished and all the guests had retired to greasy leather couches in the parlor; he left out only the political aspects of his capture and the adventure with Drakepecker and the Anacostin King, whose safety he feared the tale might jeopardize. His audience attended with great interest, especially when he came to the rape of the Cyprian - his tongue inspired by the rum-keg in the parlor, Ebenezer spoke with eloquence of Boabdil in the mizzen-rigging and the nobly insouciant ladies at the larboard rail — yet when done he saw, to his mild chagrin, small signs of the pity and terror that he thought his tale must evoke in the most callous auditor: instead, the men applauded as if at some performance, and Captain Mitchell, so far from commiserating, requested him to recite a poem or two by way of encore.

"I must decline," the Laureate said, not a little piqued. "This day hath been fatiguing, and my voice is spent."

"Too bad our Timmy is not with us," said Jim Keech of the branded palm. "He'd spin ye one would ferry ye 'cross the Bay!"

"My son Tim's no mean hand at rhymes himself," Captain Mitchell explained to Ebenezer, "but ye might say they're of a somewhat coarser breed."

"He is a laureate too," Jim Keech affirmed with a grin. "He calls himself the Laureate of Lubricity, that he says means simple smut."

"Indeed?" the poet said, more out of politeness than genuine curiosity. "I did not know our host possessed a son."

He was, in fact, preoccupied with thoughts of Joan Toast and the swine-maiden, of whom he'd been reminded by Keech's reference to crossing the Bay. Captain Mitchell apologized to the group for the absence of his popular son, who he declared had gone to do some business in St. Mary's City and was due to return that night or the following day; it was difficult for Ebenezer to realize that this affable country squire before him was the villain of Susan Warren's tale, yet there were the whip-scars on her legs, every bit as cruel as those on Drakepecker's back, and the otherwise unaccountable resemblance between the victims of his passion.

The company now was ignoring him: pipes made after the Indian fashion had been distributed, and the room was filled with smoke and general gossip. Knowing nothing of the crops, fish, rattlesnakes, or personalities under discussion, irritated that his plight had not aroused more sympathy, and weary of the long, eventful day during which he'd been a castaway, a god, a deliverer of kings and maidens in distress, and the Poet Laureate of Maryland, Ebenezer disengaged his attention from their remarks and slipped into a kind of anxious reverie: How would Joan Toast receive him, after all? Where had she gone from his room in Pudding Lane, and how had her fearful dudgeon led her hither? He burned to know, yet feared the answers to these questions. The hour was growing late; soon now, if she were not deceiving him, Susan Warren should send word of his rendezvous, and the prospect was in no small sense arousing. He recalled the sight of Joan Toast in his room and of the girl he'd meant to assault aboard the Cyprian —

"Dear God in Heaven!" his thoughts cried out, and he tingled to the marrow. The connection he'd not seen till then suffused him with remorse and consternation: had Joan Toast somehow got aboard the Cyprian? Was it she whom he had stalked with prurient cries, and whom the horrid Moor. .? His features waxed so rampant at this unspeakable possibility that his host at once inquired about his health.

"Nay, sir, I beg pardon," Ebenezer managed to say. " 'Tis but fatigue, I swear't!"

"To bed, then, ere ye die here in the parlor," Captain Mitchell laughed. "I'll show ye where to sleep."

"Nay, prithee — " begged the poet, afraid lest he miss his scheduled assignation.

"Fie on your London manners, Mister Cooke!" the host insisted. "In Maryland when a man is tired, he sleeps. Susan! Susan, ye lazy trollop, get thee hither!"