The Sot-Weed Factor (67 page)

"I must own I scarcely see the need for't," Ebenezer said, "much less how 'twould save your life. But Heav'n knows 'tis not your first mysterious action."

"If you think it mysterious, reflect again on the fact that 'tis not Smith's history the cooper hath, but Sir Henry's
Privie Journall.
Do you recall how I came by the first half of that journal? 'Twas when I stole Coode's letters in England from his courier Ben Ricaud! The
Privie Journall
was John Coode's possession, not Baltimore's!"

In spite of his disinclination to show any great interest in Burlingame's affairs, Ebenezer could not conceal his curiosity at this disclosure.

"At first, after what I'd learned from Ben Spurdance," Burlingame went on, "it seemed no great wonder to me that Coode should trust Bill Smith with the papers, since Smith was Captain Mitchell's chief lieutennnt on the Eastern Shore. But the more I reflected on't, the muddier it grew: why was the cooper's name included in the list I'd got from Baltimore, if he was one of Coode's company? And how explain the marvelous coincidence that Coode, as well as Baltimore, entrusted his papers to men of the surname Smith? 'Twas not till some days after your wedding, when I chanced to mention the matter to Spurdance at the Cambridge tavern, I learned that Coode had ne'er given Smith the papers in the first place -- the cooper had long since stolen 'em from Ben Spurdance. 'Tis Spurdance is Coode's lieutenant, and 'twas on the strength of this prize that Bill Smith became Baltimore's; in fact, 'twas just this
coup
decided Baltimore to divide his precious Assembly Journal into halves -- not thirds, as we supposed -- and to entrust it to two other friends of his named Smith. He hath a bent for such theatrics, and the move hath cost him dearly."

"Then Smith is Baltimore's man and Spurdance Coode's?" Ebenezer asked incredulously. "How can that be, when the one is such a thorough-going varlet and the other, for all his temper, an honest man? And how is't an agent of Baltimore's is trafficking in whores and opium for Captain Mitchell -- which is to say, for Coode? La, methinks expediency, and not truth, is this tale's warp, and subterfuge its woof, and you've weaved it with the shuttle of intrigue upon the loom of my past credulity! In short, 'tis creatured from the whole cloth, that even I can see doth not hang all in a piece. 'Tis a fabric of contradictories."

"It is indeed," Burlingame conceded, "if approached with the assumptions we both have steered by. But we are like a Swedish navigator I knew once in Barcelona that had dreamed up a clever way of reckoning longitude by the stars and was uncommon accurate in all respects save one: to his dying day he could not remember whether Antares was in Scorpius and Arcturus in the Herdsman, or the reverse. The consequence of't was, he reckoned his longitude by Antares with azimuths he'd sighted from Arcturus, and ran his ship into the Goodwin Sands! In plain language, I knew Mitchell had support from some powerful outside agency whose motive was more sinister than mere profit and, since his traffic is wicked, I assumed from the first that Coode was at the bottom of't. 'Twas not till this matter of Spurdance and Bill Smith that alternatives occurred to me --"

Ebenezer had been slouched wearily in his seat, but now he sat upright. "Surely thou'rt about to tell me Baltimore's involved in Mitchell's traffic!"

Burlingame nodded soberly. "Not merely
involved,
Eben: he is the heart, brains, and hand of't! His plan, no less, is so to enervate the English in America with opium, and friendly towns of salvages with the pox, that anon the several governments will fall to the French and the Naked Indians of Monsieur Casteene. Thereupon the Pope hath pledged himself to intervene and unite all the colonies into one great bailiwick of Romanism, and Baltimore, as reward for his services, will be crowned Emperor of America for his lifetime and a holy Catholic saint upon his death!"

"But 'tis absurd!" Ebenezer protested.

Burlingame shrugged. "That Baltimore stands behind Mitchell I am certain, and viewed through the lens of this knowledge, the entire history of the Province takes on a different aspect: who knows but what old William Claiborne was a hero, along with Penn and Governor Fendall and the rest, and Baltimore the monster all along? All I know of Coode is that he hath worked counter to every government in Maryland: did it e'er occur to you that they all might have been as corrupt as Baltimore himself, and that Coode, like Milton's Satan, might more deserve our sympathy than our censure?"

Ebenezer pressed his palm to his forehead and shuddered. "The prospect staggers me!"

" 'Tis not that the facts are absent, after all -- I have been Baltimore's chief intriguer these four years, and am privy to more facts than ever Sallust knew of Catiline. The difficulty is, e'en on the face of 'em the facts are dark -- doubly so if you grant, as wise men must, that an ill deed can be done with good intent, and a good with ill; and triply if you hold right and wrong to be like windward and leeward, that vary with standpoint, latitude, circumstance, and time. History, in short, is like those waterholes I have heard of in the wilds of Africa: the most various beasts may drink there side by side with equal nourishment."

"But what is this," Ebenezer asked, "except to say the facts avail one naught in making judgments! Is't not that very notion I affirmed last fall in Cambridge, at the cost of my estate?"

"Not at all," Burlingame replied, "for the court judge dons his values with his robe and wig, that are made for him by the legion of the judged, and the jury hath no other office save to rule on facts. Besides which, they see the litigants face to face and hear their testimony, and so can judge their character; but for all his notoriety I ne'er have met the man who hath seen John Coode face to face, nor, despite his fame and influence and the great trust he hath placed in me, have I myself ever seen Lord Baltimore, any more than you have."

"How can that be?"

Burlingame answered that all his communication with the Lord Proprietary had been through messengers, for Baltimore had confined himself to his chambers on the grounds of illness.

"There is no way to lay eyes upon Baltimore now," he said, "but I have lately sworn myself a solemn vow: if there lives in fact such a creature as this John Coode -- that hath been Catholic priest, Church-of-England minister, sheriff, captain, colonel, general, and Heav'n alone knows what else -- I shall confront him face to face and learn once for all what cause he stands for! 'Tis to seek him out, and Anna as well, I am en route to St. Mary's City."

At mention of his sister's name all thoughts of Maryland politics vanished from the poet's mind, and he demanded once again to know why she and Andrew had come to the province so long before their scheduled visit.

"Your father's cause will be clear," Burlingame said, "once I've told you that they did not make the voyage together. 'Tis to seek her out he's come, and haply to negotiate with Mitchell. He little dreamt, when last I saw him, that he had no more estate in Maryland -- but haply he hath heard the news by now. . ."

"Then Spurdance's charge is true, that my father is in league with Mitchell!"

"Not yet, to the best of my knowledge, but 'twill be true enough anon. What with the war, the want of foreign markets, the unseasonable weather, the scarcity of ships and hardy plants, the fly, the ground worm, the horn-worm, the house-burn, the frostbite, and the perils of sea and enemies, your sot-weed planter nowadays is in sore straits. Some have sold half their landholdings to clear the rest; some have turned to other crops, scarce worth the work of growing; some have moved to Pennsylvania, where the soil hath not as yet been leached and drained of spirit; and some, that have no love for these alternatives, have turned from planting to more lucrative fields. I have cause to think old Andrew had an audience on this topic with Lord Baltimore ere he sailed, else he'd no reason to come straight from Piscataway to Captain Mitchell's, where Joan and I caught sight of him two days past. 'Twas then we fled together -- she to warn you of his presence, I to make my bargain with Colonel Henry Lowe and meet the twain of you here. I could stay no more with Mitchell, not alone because I'd learned my search was hopeless, but also because the real Tim Mitchell, so I have heard, is en route to the Province. What's more, the Jesuit priest Thomas Smith, that we called upon near Oxford, hath complained to Lord Baltimore of my abusing him, and on all sides I was looked at with suspicion."

"But damn it!" Ebenezer cried. "What of my sister? Where is she now, and why hath she come to Maryland?"

"You know the cause as well as I," said Burlingame.

"That she loves you!" Ebenezer groaned. "Ah God, how pleased that news would once have made me! But now I know you for the very essence of carnality, I feel as Mother Ceres must have felt, when Pluto took Proserpine for his bride. And galled -- i'faith, it galls me sore to think how she praised my innocence, joined hers to mine there in the London posthouse, and sealed our virgin vows with her silver ring! And all was guile and cruel deceit: you'd long since had her maidenhead in the summerhouse, and swived her behind my back in London, and e'en that very day of my departure, ere my business with Ben Bragg was done, the twain of you had billed and cooed all shameless in the public view. Hypocrisy! What lewd delight she must have taken in swearing to me she would be chaste, when even as she swore she still felt your hands upon her, and yearned for one last tumble on your bed! 'Tis clear now why that last farewell discomfited me, and the matter of the rings: she was so taken with rut for you, that stood disguised not ten yards distant, she fancied 'twas you whose hand she toyed with, and the fancy near made her swoon!"

"Enough!" Burlingame ordered. "If you believe this rot in sooth, thou'rt not so much innocent as stupid!"

"You deny it?" the poet cried. "You deny 'twas your lewd connection my father learned of in St. Giles and sacked you for?"

"Nay, not entirely."

"And those foul boasts in the Cambridge tavern!" Ebenezer pressed angrily. "That she hath begged you to have at her, and discovered her secrets to your eyes, and gone mad with joy in your lubricious games -- do you deny these now?"

"They are true enough in substance," Burlingame sighed, "but what you fail to see --"

"Then where lies my stupidity, save in esteeming her too much to see 'twas common lust for you that fetched her to our rooms in Thames Street, and that this same monstrous lust hath brought her half round the world to warm your bed?"

"No more, you fool!" exclaimed Burlingame. " 'Tis love in sooth hath driven her hither, or lust, if you prefer; but love or lust -- i'Christ, Eben! -- have you not remarked these many years 'tis
you
that are its object?"

A Layman's Pandect of Geminology Compended

by Henry Burlingame, Cosmophilist

E
benezer's features
contorted wondrously. "Dear Heav'nly Father, Henry! What have you said?"

Burlingame turned his fist in his palm and frowned at the deck as he spoke. "Your sister is a driven and fragmented spirit, friend; the one half of her soul yearns but to fuse itself with yours, whilst the other half recoils at the thought. 'Tis neither love nor lust she feels for you, but a prime and massy urge to
coalescence,
which is deserving less of censure than of awe. As Aristophanes maintained that male and female are displaced moieties of an ancient whole, and wooing but their vain attempt at union, so Anna, I long since concluded, repines willy-nilly for the dark identity that twins share in the womb, and for the well-nigh fetal closeness of their childhood."

"I shudder at the thought!" Ebenezer whispered.

"As well doth Anna -- so much so, that her fancy entertains it only in disguise -- yet no other thought than this impelled her to me in the summerhouse! 'Twas quite in the middle of a fine May night, the night of your sixteenth birthday, and though the time for't was some days past, a shower of meteors was flashing from Aquarius. I had lingered late outside to watch these falling stars and plot their courses on a map of my own devising; so engrossed was I in the work that when Anna came up behind --"

"No more!" cried Ebenezer. "You took her maidenhead, God curse you, and there's an end on't!"

"Quite otherwise," Burlingame replied. "We spent some hours discussing you, that were asleep in your chamber. Anna likened you to Phosphor, the morning star, and herself to Hesper, the mortal star of evening, and when I told her those twin stars were one and the same, and not a star at all but the planet Venus, the several portents of this fact near made her swoon! We tarried long in the summerhouse that night, and long on many a balmy night thereafter; yet always, I will swear't, I pleased her in no wise save as your proxy."

"I'God, and you think this argues to your credit?"

Burlingame smiled. "There are two facts you've got to swallow, Eben. The first is that I love no part of the world, as you might have guessed, but the entire parti-colored whole, with all her poles and contradictories. Coode and Baltimore alike I am enamored of, whate'er the twain might stand for; and you know what various ground hath held my seed. For this same reason 'twas never you I loved, nor yet your sister Anna, but the twain inseparably, and could lust for neither alone. Whence issues the second fact, which is, that de'il the times her blood waxed warm the while she spoke of you, and de'il the times I kissed her as the symbol for you both, and played the sad games of her invention, yet your sister is a virgin still for aught of me!"

He laughed at Ebenezer's shock and disbelief. "Aye, now, that wants some chewing, doth is not? Think with what relish, as a child, she would play Helen to your Paris, but ever call you
Pollux
by mistake! Recall that day in Thames Street when you chided her for lack of suitors and as a tease proposed me for the post --"

Ebenezer clutched his throat. "Marry!"

"Her reply," Burlingame went on, "was that the search for beaux was fruitless,
inasmuch as the man she loved most had the bad judgment to be her twin!
And reflect, in the light of what I've told you, on this matter of your mother's silver ring, that Anna gave you in the posthouse: did you know she was wont to read the letters
ANNE B
as
ANN
and
EB
conjoined? Can a poet be blind to the meaning of that gift and of the manner of its giving?"

"To contemplate it is to risk the loss of my supper," Ebenezer groaned, "yet I must own there is some sense in all you say --" His face hardened. "Save that she's still a maid! That's too much!"

His friend shrugged. "Believe't or no. We'll find her anon, I pray, and you may get a physician's word for't if you please."

"But what you bragged of in the Cambridge tavern!"

"Many shuffle the cards that do not play.
I could as easily have had at you in Bill Mitchell's barn, but the truth is, as I said before, 'tis not the one nor the other I crave, but the twain as one. Haply the day will come when Anna's secret lust will get the better of her reason and your own likewise (which, deny't as you may, is plain to me!): if such a day dawn, why then perchance I'll come upon you
sack a sack
as did Catallus on the lovers, and like that nimble poet pin you to your work -- nay, skewer you both like twin squabs on a spit!"

The poet shuddered. "This is too much to assimilate, Henry: Coode a hero; my father in Maryland searching for Anna and leagued with the villain Baltimore; Anna herself yet virginal; and you, after all that hath transpired -- you wholly innocent and still my friend! And marry come up, you make matters no simpler when you declare my sister's lust to be reciprocal! Such a prurient notion hath never crossed my mind!"

Burlingame raised his eyebrows. "Then you quite deceived your servants at St. Giles. Mrs. Twigg was wont to tell me --"

"She was a foul-fancied harridan!"

"Why, they even had a rhyme, the which --"

"I know their scurrilous rhyme, whate'er it be," Ebenezer said impatiently. "I have heard a dozen such, since I was small. Nor is your wicked imputation foreign to me, if you must know, albeit I'm not a little shocked to hear you share it. Poor Anna and I since birth have breathed in an air of innuendo, the which hath oft and oft caused us to blush and lower our eyes. Since I was ten our father's household hath assumed the worst of us, for no other reason than that we were twins. 'Twas Anna's ill luck her body blossomed at an early age, and e'en her fondest girl friends -- e'en that same Meg Bromly who took your letters to her from Thames Street -- they all declared her ripening was my work and drove Anna to tears with their whispering! All this, mind, on no grounds whate'er save our twinship, and the fact that unlike many brothers and sisters we never quarreled, but preferred each other's company to the concupiscent world's! I cannot grasp it."

"Then for all thy Cambridge learning," Burlingame laughed, "thou'rt not by half the scholar your sister is! When first I guessed her trouble, long ere she saw't herself, we launched a long and secret enquiry into the subject of twins -- their place in legend, religion, and the world. 'Twas my intent by this investigation not so much to cure Anna's itch -- which I was not at all persuaded was an ailment -- as 'twas to understand it, to see it in's perspective in the tawdry history of the species, and so contrive the most enlightened way to deal with it. I need not say my interest was as heartfelt as her own; her oft-sworn love for me, I could see clearly, was love for you, diverted and transmogrified by virtuous conscience. When she would run to me in the summerhouse, 'twas as a jilted maiden runs to a convent and becomes the bride of Christ, and I sorely feared, if her case were not soon physicked, 'twould bereave her altogether of her reason or else drive her to some surrogate not so tender of her honor as was I."

"Dear God!"

"For this reason I led her on," Burlingame continued. "I declared my love for her -- half in truth, you understand -- and together we explored the misty land of legends, Christian and pagan. Four years we studied -- from your fourteenth to your eighteenth year -- and all in secret. On the face of't our enquiry was beyond reproach, and I yearned for you to join us, but Anna would have none of't. I'faith, Eben, what a tireless scholar is your sister!" He shook his head in reminiscent awe. "I could not find her volumes enough of voyage and travels, or heathen rites and practices: she would fall on 'em like a lioness on her prey, devour 'em in great bites, and thirst for more! I'd wager my life on't, at seventeen years she was the world's foremost authority on the subject of twins, and is today."

"And I knew naught of't!" Ebenezer shook his head and laughed uncomprehendingly. "But what is there to know of us twins, save that we were conceived in a single swiving?"

"Why, that Gemini is your sign and springtime your season," Burlingame replied.

"It wants no scholarship to hit on that. 'Tis common knowledge."

"As is the fact that springtime -- and Maytime in particular -- is the season of fertility and the year's first thunderstorms."

"Don't tease!" the poet said irritably. "This day and night have been my life's most miserable, and I am near dead from shock and want of sleep, to say naught of misery. If all your study ploughed up no lore save this, have done with't and let us rest. 'Tis all impertinence."

"On the contrary," Burlingame declared. "So pertinent are our findings, methinks you'd as well give o'er the search for Anna unless you hear 'em: 'tis better to be lost than saved by the wrong Messiah." His manner and tone grew serious. "You know that spring is the season of storms and fertility, but do you know, as doth your sister, that of all the things our rustic forebears feared, the three that most alarmed them were thunder, lightning, and twins? Did you know thou'rt worshipped the whole world over, whether by murther or by godhood, if not both? Through the reverence of the most benighted salvage runs this double thread of storms and fornication, and the most enlightened sages have seen in you the embodiment of dualism, polarity, and compensation. Thou'rt the Heavenly Twins, the Sons of Thunder, the Dioscuri, the Boanerges; thou'rt the twin principles of male and female, mortal and divine, good and evil, light and darkness. Your tree is the sacred oak, the thunder-tree; your flower is the twin-leaved mistletoe, seat of the oak tree's life, whose twin white berries betoken the celestial semen and are thus employed to rejuvenate the old, fructify the barren, and turn the shy maid's fancies to lusty thoughts of love. Your bird is the red cock Chanticleer, singer of light and love. Your emblems are legion: twin circles represent you, whether suggested by the sun and moon, the wheels of the solar chariot, the two eggs laid by Leda, the nipples of Solomon's bride, the spectacles of Love and Knowledge, the testicles of maleness, or the staring eyes of God. Twin acorns represent you, both because they are the thunder-tree's seed and because their two parts fit like male and female. Twin mountains represent you, the breasts of Mother Nature; the Maypole and its ring are danced round in your honor. Your sacred letters are
A, C, H, I, M, O, P, S, W, X,
and Z --"

"I'Christ!" Ebenezer broke in. " 'Tis half the alphabet!"

"Each hath its separate import," Burlingame explained, "yet all have common kinship with swiving, storms, and the double face of Nature. Your
A,
for example, is the prime and mightiest letter of the lot -- a god in itself, and worshipped by heathen the great world round. It represents the forked crotch of man, the source of seed, and also, by's peak and by's cross-line, the union of twain into one, that I'll speak of anon. When you set two
A's
cheek by jowl you see the holy nippled paps of Mother Earth, as well as the sign of the holy Asvins, the twin charioteers of Eastern lore. Your
C
betokens the crescent moon, that in turn is held to resemble man's carnal sword, unsheathed and rising to the fray; two
C's
entwined are the union of Heaven and Earth, or Christ and his earthly church --"

"In Heav'n's name, Henry, what are these riddles thou'rt flooding me with?"

"Anon, anon," Burlingame said. "Your
H
portrays the same happy union of two into one: 'tis the zodiac sign for Gemini; the bridge 'twixt the twin pillars of light and dark, love and learning, or what have you; 'tis also the eighth letter, and inasmuch as 8 is the mystic mark of redemption (by virtue of its copulating circles), 'tis no surprise that
H
is the emblem of
atonement
-- the making of two into one."

"Again this mystery of twos and ones!" the poet protested.

" 'Tis no mystery when you know about
I
and
O,"
said Burlingame. "In every land and time folk have maintained that what we see as
two
are the fallen halves of some ancient
one
-- that night and day, Heaven and Earth, or man and woman were long since severed by their sinful natures, and that not till Kingdom Come will the fallen twain be a blessed one. 'Tis this lies 'neath the tale of Eve and Adam, and Plato's fable, and the fall of Lucifer, and Heav'n knows how many other lovely lies; 'tis this the Lord Himself refers to, in the second epistle of Pope Clement: He declares His Kingdom shall come
When the two shall be one, and the outside as the inside, and the male with the female.
Thus all men reverence the act of fornication as portraying the fruitful union of opposites: the Heavenly Twins embraced; the Two as One!"

Ebenezer shivered.

"Your
I
and
O
are plainly then discovered," Burlingame said with a smile: "the one is male, the other female; together they are the great god Io of Egypt, the ring on the maidens' merry Maypole, the acorn in its cup, the circumcised prepuce of the Jew, the genital letters P and Q -- and the silver seal ring Anna slipped upon your finger in the posthouse!"

"I'God!"

"As for the others, your
M
is the twin mountain breasts I spoke of;
S
is the copulation of twin C's face to face, and is sprung as well from the sacred
Z; W
-- the double-vow, as
M
is the double-we --
W,
I say, is a pair of
Vs sack a sack:
'tis thus the sign of the Heavenly Twins of India, called
Virtrahana,
and the third part of the Druids' invocation to their god, the whole of which was I.O.W. X, like A and H, is the joining of Two into One, and as such hath been venerated since long ere the murther of Christ; Z is the zigzag lightning flash of Zeus, or whatever god you please, and is ofttimes flanked, in ancient emblems, by the circles of the Heavenly Twins --"

"Enough!" the poet cried. "This dizzies me! What is the message of't, and what hath it to do with Anna and me?"