The Sot-Weed Factor (48 page)

"Not germane?" Burlingame exclaimed. " 'Tis the very root and stem of't! Two things alone can save a man from madness." He indicated the other patrons of the inn. "Dull-headedness is one, and far the commoner: the truth that drives men mad must be sought for ere it's found, and it eludes the doltish or myopic hunter. But once 'tis caught and looked on, whether by insight or instruction, the captor's sole expedient is to force his will upon't ere it work his ruin! Why is't you set such store by innocence and rhyming, and I by searching out my father and battling Coode? One must needs make and seize his soul, and then cleave fast to't, or go babbling in the corner; one must choose his gods and devils on the run, quill his own name upon the universe, and declare, ' 'Tis
I,
and the world stands such-a-way!' One must
assert, assert, assert,
or go screaming mad. What other course remains?"

"One other," Ebenezer said with a blush. " 'Tis the one I flee. . ."

"What? Ah, 'sheart, indeed! The state I found you in at college! How many have I seen like that in Bedlam -- wide-eyed, feculent, and blind to the world! Some boil their life into a single gesture and repeat it o'er and o'er; others are so far transfixed, their limbs remain where'er you place 'em; still others take on false identities: Alexander, or the Pope in Rome, or e'en the Poet Laureate of Maryland --"

Ebenezer looked up, uncertain whether it was he or the impostors whom Burlingame referred to.

"The upshot of't is," his friend concluded, "if you'd escape that fate you must embrace me or reject me, and the course we are committed to, despite the shifting lights that we appear in, just as you must embrace your Self as Poet and Virgin, regardless, or discard it for something better." He stood up. "In either case don't seek whole understanding -- the search were fruitless, and there is no time for't. Will you come with me now, or stay?"

Ebenezer frowned and squinted. "I'll come," he said finally, and went out with Burlingame to the horses. The night was wild, but not unpleasant: a warm, damp wind roared out of the southwest, churned the river to a froth, bent the pines like whips, and drove a scud across the stars. Both men looked up at the splendid night.

"Forget the word
sky,"
Burlingame said off-handedly, swinging up on his gelding, " 'tis a blinder to your eyes. There is no
dome of heaven
yonder."

Ebenezer blinked twice or thrice; with the aid of these instructions, for the first time in his life he saw the night sky. The stars were no longer points on a black hemisphere that hung like a sheltering roof above his head; the relationship between them he saw now in three dimensions, of which the one most deeply felt was depth. The length and breadth of space between the stars seemed trifling by comparison: what struck him now was that some were nearer, others farther out, and others unimaginably remote. Viewed in this manner, the constellations lost their sense entirely; their spurious character revealed itself, as did the false presupposition of the celestial navigator, and Ebenezer felt bereft of orientation. He could no longer think of up and down: the stars were simply
out there,
as well below him as above, and the wind appeared to howl not from the Bay but from the firmament itself, the endless corridors of space.

"Madness!" Henry whispered.

Ebenezer's stomach churned; he swayed in the saddle and covered his eyes. For a swooning moment before he turned away it seemed that he was heels over head on the bottom of the planet, looking
down
on the stars instead of up, and that only by dint of clutching his legs about the roan mare's girth and holding fast to the saddlebow with both his hands did he keep from dropping headlong into those vasty reaches!

The Travelers Hear About the Singular

Martyrdom of Father Joseph FitzMaurice, S.J.:

a Tale Less Relevant in Appearance Than

It Will Prove in Fact

I
t required less than
an hour's windy ride for Ebenezer and Henry Burlingame to reach their destination; they traveled four miles eastward from the village of Oxford and then turned south for a mile or so along a path leading through woods and tobacco-fields to a small log dwelling on Island Creek, which, like the larger Tred Avon River, debouched into the Great Choptank.

" 'Tis an uncommon fellow you'll meet here," Burlingame said as they approached. "He is a kind of Coode himself, but on the side of the angels. A valuable man."

"Thomas Smith?" asked Ebenezer. "I don't believe Charles Calvert told me aught --" He stopped and grimaced. "That is to say, I have ne'er heard tell of him."

"Nay," laughed Henry, "I haply made no mention of him. He is a Jesuit to the marrow, and so 'tis certain Thomas Smith is not his real name. But for all that, he's a great good fellow that loves his beer and horses. Each Friday night he hath a drinking bout with Lillingstone the minister (the same that helped me steal Coode's letters two years past, in Plymouth harbor); 'twas after one such bout they rode a horse into Talbot courthouse and called it Lambeth Palace! Some say this Smith came down from Canada to spy for the French --"

"I'faith, and Baltimore trusts him with the Journal?"

Burlingame shrugged. "They have loyalties larger than France and England, I daresay. At any rate 'tis precious little spying Smith can do hereabouts, and we've ample demonstrations of his spirit: last year he was charged by Governor Copley with seditious speech, along with Colonel Sayer, and barely missed arrest."

The term
larger loyalties
Ebenezer found disquieting, but he was still too much preoccupied with his own problems to ask Burlingame whether it was the cause of Justice or, say, international Roman Catholicism that he referred to. They tethered their horses, and Burlingame rapped three times, slowly and sharply, on the cabin door.

"Yes? Who is't there?"

"Tim Mitchell, friend," said Burlingame.

"Tim Mitchell, is't? I've heard that name." The door opened enough to permit the man inside to raise a lantern, but was still chained fast to the jamb. "What might you want o' me this time of night?"

"I'm fetching a stray horse to her master," Burlingame replied, winking at Ebenezer.

"Is that so, now? 'Tis a deal o' trouble for a small reward, is't not?"

"I'll have my reckoning in Heaven, Father; for the nonce 'twill suffice me that
the man shall have his mare again."

Ebenezer had supposed that Burlingame was, for reasons of delicacy, speaking allegorically of Susan Warren's escape, but at the end he recognized the pass phrase of the Jacobites.

"Ha!" cried the man inside, unlatching the door and swinging it wide. "He shall in sooth, if the Society of Jesus hath not wholly lost its skill! Come in, sir, pray come in! I'd not have been so chary if there were not two of you."

Their host, Ebenezer found upon entering the cabin, was by no means as fearsome as his deep-bass voice and the tale of his exploits suggested: he stood not much over five feet tall; his build was slight, and his ruddy face -- more Teutonic than Gallic above his clerical collar -- had, despite his nearly fifty years, the boyish look that often marks the celibate. The cabin itself was clean and, except for a wine bottle on the table and a row of little casks along the chimneypiece, as austerely furnished as a monk's cell. For all his carousing, the priest appeared to be something of a scholar: the walls were lined with more books than the Laureate had seen in one room since leaving Magdalene, and around the wine bottle were spread other books, copious papers, and writing equipment.

"This young man is Mr. Eben Cooke, from London," Burlingame said. "He is a poet and a friend of mine."

"Indeed, a poet!" Smith shook Ebenezer's hand vigorously. He had the habit -- doubtless due in part to his small stature, but suggestive as well of a certain effeminacy -- of rising on his toes and widening his clear blue eyes when he spoke. "How uncommonly delightful, sir! And doth he rhyme
ad majorem Dei gloriam,
as he ought?"

Ebenezer could think of no properly witty rejoinder to this tease, but Burlingame said, " 'Tis more
ad majorem Baltimorensi gloriam,
Father: he hath the post of Maryland Laureate from Charles Calvert."

"Better and better!"

"As for his loyalty, have no fear of't."

The priest let go a booming laugh. "I shan't now, Mr. Mitchell; that I shan't, for Satan himself hath his fiendish loyalties! 'Tis the
object
of't I fear, sir, not its presence."

Burlingame urged him to calm his fears, but when he declared the purpose of their visit, producing authorization from Governor Nicholson to collect the precious papers, the Jesuit's face showed still some reservation. "I have my piece o' the Journal hidden, right enough," he said, "and I know you for an agent of our cause. But what proof have we of your friend's fidelity?"

"Methinks my post were proof enough," Ebenezer said.

"Of
allegiance,
aye, but not fidelity. Would you die to advance our cause?"

"He hath come near to that already," Burlingame said, and told their host briefly of the Laureate's adventure with the pirates.

"The saintly look is on him, that I'll grant," said the priest. " 'Tis but a question of what cause he'll be a martyr to, I suppose."

Ebenezer laughed uncomfortably. "Then I'll confess I would not die for Lord Baltimore, much as I favor his cause and loathe John Coode's."

The priest raised his eyebrows. Burlingame said at once, "Now there's a proper answer, sir: a martyr hath his uses when he's dead, but alive he's of't a nuisance to his cause." He assumed a tone of raillery. "That is the reason why there are no Jesuit martyrs."

"In sooth it is, though we can claim one or two. But
nom de Dieu,
forgive my rudeness! Sit down and have some wine!" He waved them to the table and set about clearing it of papers. "Correspondence from the Society," he explained, observing Ebenezer's curiosity, and showed them some pages of finely-written Latin script. "I dabble in ecclesiastical history, and just now am writing a relation of the Jesuit mission in Maryland, from 1634 to the present day. 'Tis a sixty-year
Iliad
in itself, I swear, and the fortress hath yet to fall!"

"How very interesting," Ebenezer murmured. He was aware that his earlier blundering remark had been ill-taken, and looked for a way to atone for it.

The priest fetched two extra glasses from the sideboard and poured a round of wine from the bottle on the table.
"Jerez,
from the dusty vineyards of Cadiz." He held his glass to the candlelight. "Judas, see how clear! If Oporto is the blood o' Jesus, then here's the very ichor of the
Spiritu sancti.
To your health, sirs."

When the toast was drunk, Burlingame said, "And now, Father, if thou'rt quite persuaded of our loyalty --"

"Yes, yes indeed," the priest said, but poured another round and made no move to get any hidden documents. Instead he shuffled through his papers again, as though preoccupied with them, and said, "The fact of the matter is, the first martyr in America was a Jesuit priest, Father Joseph FitzMaurice -- 'tis his unknown history I've pieced together here."

Ebenezer pretended to be much impressed, and said by way of further pleasing their host, "You'd think the Society of Jesus would lead the field in saints and martyrs, would you not? The saint and the citizen may share the selfsame moral principles, but your ordinary man will compromise and contradict 'em every turn, while your saint will follow them through the very door of death. What I mean, the normal state of man is irrational, and by how much the Jesuits are known for great logicians, by so much do they approach the condition of saintliness."

"Would Heav'n that argument were sound!" The priest smile ruefully. "But any proper Jesuit can show you 'tis equivocal. You confuse
rational
with
reasonable,
for one thing, and the preachment with the practice for another. The sad fact is, we are the most
reasonable
of orders -- which is to say, we oft will compromise our principles to reach our goal. This holy man FitzMaurice, for example --"

"He is with the blessed, I'm sure," Burlingame broke in, "but ere we hear his story, could we not just have a look at --"

"Nay, nay, there's no great rush," Ebenezer protested, interrupting in turn. "We have all night to fetch the Journal, now we're here, and I for one would greatly like to hear the tale. Haply 'twill be worth mention in my
Marylandiad."
He ignored the disgusted look of his friend, whose eagerness he thought was antagonizing their host. "What was the manner of the fellow's death?"

The priest regarded them both with a thoughtful smile. "The truth is, Father FitzMaurice was burnt as a heretic in a proper auto-da-fé
."

"You don't tell me!"

Father Smith nodded. "I learned his story in part from the mission records at the Vatican and in part from enquiries made among the Indians hereabouts; the rest I can supply from rumor and conjecture. 'Tis a touching tale, methinks, and shows both the strengths and weaknesses of sainthood, whereof Mr. Mitchell hath made mention."

"A Jesuit inquisitioned and burnt! Out on't, Father, I must hear it from first to last."

It was quite late in the evening by now, and the wind still whistled around the eaves of the cabin. Ebenezer accepted a pipe of tobacco from his host, lit it from the candle flame, and settled back with a great show of comfort; but the effect of his diplomacy was doubtless nullified by Burlingame, who drank off his wine and poured another glassful without waiting to be invited, and who made no attempt to conceal his disapproval of the progress of events.

Father Smith lit a pipe himself and ignored his guest's unseemly conduct. "In the records of the Society of Jesus in Rome," he began, "one can find all the annual letters of the mission in Maryland. Two priests and a coadjutor came hither in the
Ark
and the
Dove
with the first colonists, and another priest and coadjutor followed ere the year was done. In the very first annual letter to Rome --" He fished through the stack of papers before him. "Aye, here's my copy. We read:
Two priests of Ours were assigned this year as companions to a certain gentleman who went to explore unknown lands. They with great courage performed an uncomfortable voyage of about eight months, both much shaken in health, with spells of illness, and gave us no slight hope of reaping ultimately an abundant harvest, in ample and excellent regions."

"Is't Maryland they speak of?" Ebenezer asked. "Why don't they use their patron's name? 'Twas a bit ungrateful, don't you think?" He remembered hearing Charles Calvert -- or, rather, Burlingame in disguise -- describe the difficulties Governor Leonard Calvert had had with these same early Jesuits.

"Not at all," the priest assured him. "They knew well old Cecil Calvert was a proper Catholic at heart, if something too liberal-minded, but 'twas necessary to use great caution in all things, inasmuch as the forces of antichrist were e'en more in ascendancy then than now, and the Jesuits lived in constant peril. It was their wont to travel incognito, or with an alias, and refer to their benefactors with coded epithets such as
a certain gentleman.
The
certain gentleman
here was George Calvert -- not the first Lord Baltimore, but the brother of Cecilius and Leonard. In the same way, Baltimore himself gave out that
Maryland
was called after Queen Henrietta Maria, albeit 'tis named in fact for the Queen of Heaven, as surely as is St. Mary's City."

"Nay, can that be?" Ebenezer was not a little troubled by all this association of the Baltimores with the Jesuits, which brought to his mind the dark plots Bertrand had believed in. "I understood 'twas King Charles called it Maryland, after Baltimore had proposed the name --" He turned to Burlingame, who was staring thoughtfully into the fireplace. "What was the name, Henry? It slips my mind."

"Crescentia,"
Burlingame replied, and added: "Whether 'twas meant to signify the holy lunar crescent of Mohammed or the carnal crescent sacred to Priapus is a matter still much argued by the scholars."

"Ah, Henry!" Ebenezer blushed for his friend's rudeness.

"No matter," the priest said indulgently. "In any case 'twas but a piece of courtliness on Calvert's part to give out that he had chosen the King's suggestion o'er his own."

"Then pray let's go on with the tale, sir, and I'll not interrupt you farther."

Father Smith replaced the letter on the pile. "The two priests that made the first voyage were called Father John Gravener and Father Andrew White," he said. "Father White's name is genuine -- he wrote this fine account here, called
A Briefe Relation of the Voyage Unto Maryland.
The other name is an alias of Father John Altham. One of these two went with George Calvert on the journey that you just heard spoken of in the letter, which purported to be an expedition into Virginia. Methinks 'twas Father White, for he was as mettlesome a fellow as ever cassock graced. But the other wight, whose name is absent from the letters, was in fact the saint I spoke of: one Father Joseph FitzMaurice, that also called himself Charles FitzJames and Thomas FitzSimmons. The truth of't is, he ne'er returned from the journey."

"But the letter you read declared --"

"I know -- to the author's shame. 'Twas doubtless meant to impress his superiors in Rome with the mission's success. Father FitzMaurice was the last of the three priests to come hither in 1634. His was a soul too zealous for God's work in London in those troubled times, which was best done unobtrusively, and 'twas at his superiors' behest he shipped for Maryland. But alas, on his arrival in St. Mary's, Father FitzMaurice found his brothers' work aimed almost wholly at the planters themselves, that were slipping daily nigh to apostasy. He was farther disillusioned by the Piscataways of the place, that so far from being heathen, far outshone their English breathren in devotion to the One True Faith. Father White had made an early convert of their
Tayac,
as is our policy, and anon the entire town of salvages had set to making rosaries of their
roanoke.
'Tis little wonder that when George Calvert proposed his journey of exploration, Father FitzMaurice straightway offered to accompany him. 'Twas Calvert's declared intent to learn the western boundaries of his brother's county palatine, but his real design was to dicker privily with Captain William Claiborne about the Kent Island question."