The Sot-Weed Factor (44 page)

"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!"

"Ah, well, sir, if 'tis no affront to you or your gracious guests --" The swine-maiden appeared in the doorway of the parlor, answered Ebenezer's glance with a little nod, and turned a sullen glare upon the planters, who greeted her appearance with horny salutations.

"Show Mister Cooke here to a bedchamber," Mitchell ordered, and bade his guest good night.

"D'ye think she'll lay for a sonnet," Jim Keech called after him, "like that Spanish whore ye spoke of?"

"Nay, Keech," another answered. "What use hath Susie of a laureate poet? She hath Bill Mitchell's red boar to sport with!"

If these comments mortified Ebenezer they titillated him as well, and revived the vague ardor that his late conjecture had not entirely douched. The swine-maiden had donned her flogging-dress, which if scarcely more elegant than the other, was at least clean, and to judge by the smell of her she had washed herself as well. As soon as they were on the stairs he caught her arm and whispered "Where is Joan Toast? I cannot wait to see her!"

The woman's imperfect teeth glinted in the light of her candle. "Thou'rt passing ardent for a virgin, Master Laureate! I fear for your vows when ye see her in your chamber. . ."

"My chamber? Ah, God, Mrs. Warren, 'twas in my chamber I saw her last, as pink and naked as a lover's dream! You'd not believe how fine her fair skin feels, or how tight and sprightly is her whole small body -- ah, stay, not all, at that: how could I forget the fat of her little buttocks, o'ertop the hard young muscle? Or the softness of her breasts, that gently flattened when she lay supine, but hung like apples of Heav'n when she bent o'er me? I shiver at the memory!"

"Marry, thou'rt afire, sir!" Susan said, leading the way down an upstairs hall. "I dare not leave the poor girl in your clutches: ye sound more like a rapist than a priest!"

She said this drily, without any real concern, but the mention of rape was enough to calm the poet's fever. "I beg your pardon for speaking thus, madam: 'tis rum, fatigue, and joy that work my tongue. Prithee recall I never swived this girl, albeit she's everything I say and more. I've no mind to break my vows."

Susan paused outside a door and turned toward him so that the candlelight flickered on her ruined face. "How can ye know she still hath all her beauty?" she said. "I too was pretty once, and not long since. My husband wept with joy to see my body, and did I place his hand just so, his knees would fail him. Today 'twould make him retch."

"Thou'rt too severe," the poet protested.

"D'ye think I cannot see what's in your mind? Ye wish I'd get me gone posthaste, so ye might have appetite for that
heavenly fruit
ye long for. But life leaves its scars on all of us, the pure as well as the wicked, and a pretty girl gets the worst of't. Ye've changed as well, I'll wager, since she saw ye last."

Ebenezer rubbed his matted beard. "I am no courtier, at that," he admitted, "and I stink of dirt and wood smoke. Is there a pail hereabouts to wash in? Ah, fie on it! Let her receive me as she will, I cannot wait to see her! Good night to you, Mrs. Warren, and good luck. A thousand thanks for aiding my dear Joan!
Adieu,
now, and
bon voyage!"
He moved to pass beside her to the door.

"Nay, wait!" she pleaded.

"Not a moment more!" He pushed past her and stepped into the chamber, which, since it looked out on the river, received some small light from the moon but was otherwise entirely dark. "Joan Toast!" he called softly. "Precious girl, where are you? 'Tis Eben Cooke the poet, come to save you!"

The moonlight showed no other person in the chamber, nor was there answer from the shadows roundabout; when the swine-maiden came in tearfully from the hall, her candlelight confirmed his apprehension.

"Where is she?" he demanded, and when she hung her head he shook her roughly by the shoulders. "Have you deceived me too, thankless trollop? Take me to Joan Toast this instant!"

"She is not here," the swine-girl sobbed. She set the candle down and bolted for the hall, but Ebenezer pulled her back and closed the door.

"By Heav'n, I'll have it from thy horrid hide," he said, holding her tightly from behind. "If any harm befalls Joan Toast I'll kill you!" For all his great alarm, he could not but be conscious of Susan Warren's corsetless hips under the cotton, and the breasts that were mashed beneath his arm. His righteous anger thrilled him: his breath came short and he squeezed her until she paused in her struggling to cry aloud. He wrestled her to the bed, possessed with the urge to punish. Not having prior experience at such sport, he first laid awkward thumps about her back, at the same time gruffly crying "Where is Joan Toast?" A moment later he held her flat with one knee in the small of her back and commenced to spank her smartly with the flat of his hand as though she were an errant daughter.

"She's safe!" squalled Susan. "Leave off!"

Ebenezer paused between blows, but held her fast with his knee. "Where is she?"

"She's on her way across the Chesapeake to Dorset County, to wait for ye at Malden," Susan said. "The boatman said he knows the manor well."

"How's that?" Ebenezer released his hold at once and sprang to his feet, but the swine-girl, her face pressed woefully into the quilt, made no move to rise. "Where did she get the fare, and how is it thou'rt not with her?"

"She was penniless," Susan said. "I caught her on her way to borrow money from Captain Mitchell, which had been the end o'her; but devil the bit she'd take the ring for fare, till I told her who had giv'n it me and whither she was to flee. Then she took it right enough, and would see you on the instant, but I bade her make haste to find the boatman ere he sailed."

Tears sprang to Ebenezer's eyes; with one knee on the bed he hugged the girl's back. "God's body, and I struck you for betraying me! Forgive me, Susan, or I shall perish of remorse! We'll find some way to save you yet, I swear't!"

She shook her head. "The girl ye love is a fresh and comely piece, sir, for all she hath played the whore in London; she said she had got her fill o' men that behaved like goats, and had put by her profession ere it ruined her. She scorned ye once when ye would not hire her, and more when ye resolved to stay a virgin; but the farther she reflected on't the nobler ye appeared, and when she learned her pimp had got ye sent to Maryland, she left him straight and followed ye for very love."

"I'God! I'God! For very love!" the Laureate whispered. "But thou'rt a saint to sacrifice thyself for her!"

"Joan Toast was worth the saving," Susan answered. "There's naught o' Susan Warren to preserve, or I'd look to't myself. Let the poor wretch die."

"I shan't allow it!" Ebenezer cried. He sprang to his feet. "Thou'rt too fine!"

Susan sat up on the bed. " 'Tis not long since ye called me a horrid trollop, and methinks ye took some joy in beating me."

"I was a beast to touch you!" Ebenezer said. "Would God you'd give me back my blows tenfold!"

She covered her face with her hands. "I am so ugly!"

"Not so!" the poet lied. "Thou'rt still uncommon fair, I swear't!" He kneeled before her, embarrassed and contrite, yet still aroused, despite himself, from the recent tussle. "I shall confess somewhat to you for proof," he said. "My beating you was doubly wicked, for not only was it undeserved but -- ah God, how sinful! -- I took pleasure in't, as you charged. Nor was't a righteous pleasure, but a lustful one! The feel and sight of your -- of what I felt and saw -- it fired my veins with lust. Doth that not prove you have not lost your beauty, Susan?"

The boldness of his speech excited him further, but Susan was not consoled. "It proves my backside's fairer than my face. That's not the praise a woman longs to hear."

The Laureate pressed his forehead against her legs. His own knees ached a little on the floor, and he remembered, with a shiver, that the last time he had knelt beside a bed it was the legs of Joan Toast that he had clung to. "What can I do to show you my esteem?"

" 'Tis not esteem you feel; 'tis simple gratitude."

But Ebenezer ignored this sullen reply, for even while Susan was making it he found an answer as if by inspiration.

"Call't what you will, 'tis great," he said. "You have sacrificed your self-respect to save the girl I love. Very well, then: I shall sacrifice my essence to save your self-respect!"

The swine-maiden looked at him uncomprehendingly.

"Do you understand?" Ebenezer rose to his feet, breathing so hard that his speech came with difficulty. "So great is my esteem -- that though I've vowed to keep my innocence forever -- 'tis thine in token of my gratitude. 'Twill prove you have not lost your power to please a gentleman!" Trembling all over, he laid his hands on her shoulders.

Susan looked up at his flushed face with alarm. "Ye wish to swive me, sir? What will Joan Toast think, that loves ye for a virgin?"

"My chastity means more than life to me," the poet vowed, "else I'd not presume to match it against your sacrifice. My loss is great, but subtle, and leaves no broken hymen as its symbol. No one shall know but thee and me, and I shall never tell. Come, girl," he croaked, waxing hot, "tarry no longer! I itch for the combat!"

But Susan wriggled free and stepped away from him. "Ye'd deceive her, that hath come so far for love! Haply thou'rt already not a virgin, then!"