The Sot-Weed Factor (81 page)

"Well, she stood them off as haughty as ye please, but they reckoned she was holding out for a higher price. Finally they asked her to name her hire, whereupon she drew a little pistol from her coat and replied, she'd charge a man his life just to lay hands on her, and King William himself couldn't buy her maidenhead. With that she went up into the loft, and no man in the room durst follow her. Thenceforth they called her the Virgin o' Church Creek, merely for a tease, inasmuch as they all believed she was the mistress of Governor Nicholson, or John Coode, or some other important man. She came and went whene'er she pleased, and no man touched her. Now and again she'd make enquiries of 'em, whether they knew aught of the state o' things at Malden, on Cooke's Point, and o' course they knew Malden to be the fleshpot o' Dorset County, so they took her all the more surely for a fashionable whore.

" 'Twas only a few days later, so Roxie told me, this half-breed Indian buck came into Church Creek. As a rule, the salvages travel in pairs when they come to town, but this wight was alone; he strode into Russecks's store as bold as ye please, put a coin on the table, and called for rum!"

"Ah, that can't be Cohunkowprets, can it, John?" Ebenezer asked McEvoy. "I doubt he knew English enough to order rum."

But McEvoy was not so certain. "He might have learned from Dick Parker, ye know; Dick Parker himself learned decent English in two or three months."

"And Charley Mattassin in less time yet," Mary added, and continued her narration. "This salvage was so fierce-looking, Harry Russecks gave him his rum with no argument, and he drank it off like water. 'Twas plain he'd never tasted liquor before, for he gagged and choked on't, but when 'twas down he called for another to follow the first. (All this is my Charley to the letter, Mister Cooke -- bold as brass and bound to learn all in a single gulp.) By this time the men saw a chance for some sport with him. They poured him his rum and asked his name, which he gave as Bill-o'-the-Goose --"

"That's it!" Ebenezer and McEvoy cried out at once.

"The Tayac Chicamec told us
Cohunkowprets
means
Goosebeak"
Ebenezer explained. "Why he bears the name I shan't tell here, only that --" He blushed. "I shall say this, Mary, you declared his manner resembled Mattassin's; know then, that save for the lighter hue of his skin, Bill-o'-the-Goose is the likeness of his brother in every particular of his person."

Mary's eyes filled with tears. " 'Sheart, then he is in sooth poor Charley's brother!" She shook her head. "How clear I see it in his behavior, now I know it to be so! Why, marry come up, 'tis Charley and I all over again, after a fashion!"

Bill-o'-the-Goose, she went on tearfully to say, had not got into his second glass of rum before Miss Bromly, the Church Creek Virgin, happening to pass through the room on her way outdoors from her quarters, encountered him face to face. Until that moment she had preserved through all their catcalls and lubricities the iciest demeanor; but by the testimony of every man present in Russecks's tavern, when she beheld the Indian she drew back, shrieked out some unintelligible name, and tottered for some moments on the verge of a swoon; yet when a patron made to assist her she regained her composure as quickly as she had lost it, drove the Samaritan back by reaching under her cape -- where the whole town knew she carried her famous pistol -- and made her exit with a tight-lipped threat to the company. Bill-o'-the-Goose, like all the others, had stared after her and was the first to speak when she was gone.

"Bill-o'-the-Goose no longer wishes to be Bill-o'-the-Goose," he had declared. "You tell Bill-o'-the-Goose what ordeals he must brave to be an English Devil."

These, Mary Mungummory swore, were his very words as reported to her. Everyone agreed on the context of his statement; they remembered it so exactly because Bill-o'-the-Goose had had difficulty finding an English word for the initiation rites to which, in many Indian nations, young men were subjected as prerequisites to official manhood. A trapper present had at length supplied the word
ordeal,
to the great delight of the company when they grasped the Indian's meaning.

"Ye say ye want to become an Englishman?" one of them had asked gleefully.

"Yes."

"An
English Devil,
ye say?" had asked another.

"Yes."

"And ye want to know what tests a salvage has to pass ere we look on him as our brother?" demanded the miller.

"Yes."

The men had exchanged glances then and found unanimous design in one another's eyes. By tacit agreement the miller had proceeded with the sport.

"Well now," he had said thoughtfully, "first off ye must show yourself a man o' means; we want no ne'er-do-wells about -- unless they're pretty as the Virgin, eh, gentlemen?"

The Indian had been unable to follow this speech, but when he was made to understand that they wished him to show his money he produced five pounds in assorted English currency -- acquired no man knew where -- and a quantity of
wompompeag,
all of which the miller Russecks had promptly pocketed.

"Now, then, ye must have a proper English name, mustn't he, lads?"

It was short work for the men to change
Bill-o'-the-Goose
into
Billy,
but the problem of a fitting surname required much debate. Some, impressed by the stench of the bear-grease with which their victim was larded, held out for
Billy Goat;
others, with his naï
vet
é
in mind, preferred
William Goose.
While they deliberated, Bill-o'-the-Goose drank down his rum -- with less difficulty than before -- and was commanded to take another on the grounds that a proper subject of Their Majesties should be able to put away half a rundlet of Barbados without ill effect. It was this third drink, and the solemnity with which the Indian, already gripping the table-edge to steady himself, had raised his glass like a ceremonial grail, that had inspired the miller with a third suggestion.

"He hath the makings of a proper rummy, hath our Bill," he had remarked, and added when the Indian gave up just then -- in the manner of all the Ahatchwhoops -- a raucous, unstifled belch: "Hi, there, he's nimbly with the spirit already!"

And since no man present cared to defend his own preference in the matter against the miller's, Bill-o'-the-Goose's new English name became
Billy Rumbly,
and was bestowed on him with much blasphemous mumbo-jumbo and a baptism of cider vinegar.

"Then they shaved off his hair," Mary said, and Ebenezer guessed that in earlier tellings of the story her voice had been marked by nothing like its present bitterness; "shaved it off to the scalp, poured another glass o' rum in his guts, and told him no civil English gentleman e'er reeked o' bear-fat. There was naught for't, they declared, but he must hie himself down to the creek -- in mid-December, mind -- strip off his clothes, wade out to his neck, and swab himself sweet with a horse-brush they provided. 'Twas the miller's idea, o' course --
br-r-r,
how I loathe the bully! -- and they packed Billy off to crown their pranks, never dreaming they'd see him again; if he didn't freeze or drown, they reckoned, he'd be shocked fair sober by the creek and skulk away home."

In fact, however, she said, they laughed not half an hour at their wit before the butt of it reappeared, returned the horse-brush, and called for more rum: his skin was rubbed raw, but every trace of the bear-grease was gone, and his liquor as well, and he showed no sign of chill or other discomfort. While they marveled, Billy pressed them to set him his next ordeal, and by unhappy coincidence Miss Bromly chose this moment to re-enter the tavern from wherever she had been, cross the room in disdainful silence, and disappear up the stairway to her loft. Even so, nothing further might have come of it, it was Billy who undid himself by demanding to know whose woman she was.

"Why, Billy Rumbly, that's the Church Creek Virgin," the miller had answered. "She's nobody's woman but her own, is that piece yonder."

"Now she is Billy Rumbly's woman," the Indian had declared, and had drawn a knife from his belt. "How doth an English Devil take a wife? What man must I fight? Where is the Tayac to give her to me?"

Not until then had the men drawn their breath at the vistas of new sport that lay before them. Not surprisingly, it was Harry Russecks who had spoken first.

"Ye say -- ye claim the Church Creek Virgin for your wife?"

At once Billy had moved on him with the knife. "Is she your woman? Do you speak for her?"

"Now, now," the miller had soothed, "put up your knife, Billy Rumbly, and behave like a decent Englishman, or she'll have naught of ye. So she's to be Mrs. Billy Rumbly, is she? Well, now!" And after repeating his earlier assertion, that Miss Bromly had none to answer to but her own good conscience, Russecks declared his huge satisfaction with the match, a sentiment echoed by the company to a man.

"But don't ye know, Billy Rumbly," he had continued, " 'tis not just any Englishman
deserves
a lass like the Virgin Bromly. Ye know the -- what-d'ye-call-'em, Sam?
Ordeals:
that's the rascal! -- ye know the ordeals of an English bridegroom, don't ye, lad?"

As all had hoped, Billy Rumbly confessed his entire ignorance of English nuptial rites and was enlightened at once by Russecks, who spoke in a solemn and supremely confidential tone:

"In the first place, ye dare not approach an English virgin with marriage in mind till ye have at least a dozen o' drams to fire your passion. They loathe a sober lover like the pox, do our London lassies! In the second place ye must say nary a word: one word, mind ye, and your betrothal's at an end! D'ye follow me, Billy Rumbly? 'Tis a custom with us English Devils, don't ye know, to see to't no shitten pup-dogs get our women. No talk, then; ye must come upon her privily, like a hunter on a doe -- i'Christ, won't she love ye for't if ye can catch her in
ambuscado
and take her maidenhead ere she knows what wight hath climbed her! For there's the trick, old Billy, old Buck: our laws declare a man must take his bride as a terrier takes his bitch, will-she, nill-she, and the more she fights and hollows, the more she honors ye in the rape! Is't not the law o' the land I'm reading him, friends?"

Now the others had entertained nothing more serious than a prank, so they all claimed afterwards to their wives; their only thought was to have some sport with a drunken Indian at the expense of the high-and-mighty Miss Bromly. But whether because they dared not gainsay Sir Harry or because his plan was altogether too attractive to resist, they affirmed, with little nods and murmurs, that such indeed were the customs of the English. As Billy took to himself the requisite rum, they told themselves and subsequently their wives that a man with twelve drams of Barbados in his bowels was no more dangerous than a eunuch to any woman's honor; when he had done they made way solemnly for Sir Harry, who with final hushed injunctions led him reeling to the stairway and watched him tiptoe up in drunken stealth.

"Marry, and to think," groaned Mary, interrupting her narrative, " 'twas Mattassin's golden likeness they made a fool of! 'Tis like -- oh, God! -- 'tis as if ye made a pisspot o' the Holy Grail!"

" 'Twas a heartless prank," Ebenezer agreed, "but not alone for Bill-o'-the-Goose! 'Tis poor Meg Bromly I fear for."

"Let's get on with't," their host suggested. "I've heard what I've heard, but there's many a change been rung on the tale of Billy Rumbly these few days. Gets so a wight collects 'em, like tusk-shells on a string."

" 'Twas Roxie Russecks I heard it from," Mary said, "as honest a gossip as ever spread the news, and she had it from Sir Harry not five minutes after it happened. Henrietta heard the shot all the way from the mill and ran outside to see whence it came -- for all Sir Harry wallops her just for showing her face at the window. But when she saw folks running to her father's tavern-shop she had perforce to fetch her mother to get the news, and the Indian was gone in a trail o' blood when Roxie got there. . ."

"The shot!" Ebenezer broke in. "Did you say Miss Bromly shot him?"

Mary raised a fat forefinger. "I said the poor salvage was wounded and gone, with his own sweet blood to mark his path: that's all I said."

"But who else --"

"When Roxie got to the tavern," she pressed on, "there was blood on the ground, blood on the gallery, blood all over the floor. The men were fair sobered, ye may wager, but too shamed to look her in the eye; as for Harry, that was braying like a jackass at his prank, she could get no sense from him at all. 'I'Christ, i'Christ!' was all he'd say. 'Did ye see the fool a-hopping and a-croaking like a new-gelt frog?' Then off he'd bray and say no more."

"Miss Bromly!" Ebenezer demanded. "I must know what happened to Miss Bromly! Was't she that shot the poor wretch?"

" 'Twas the Church Creek Virgin," Mary said tersely. "The truth is, she had reckoned from the first that if Sir Harry himself did not try for her maidenhead one day or another, he'd send some drunken lecher to try it for him; hence the pistol, always charged and ready to fire. 'Twas in her coat whene'er she set foot down the stairway, and while she slept, she kept it hid beneath her pallet, whence she could snatch it at the first step on the stairs. The trouble was, even a drunken salvage is still a salvage to the core; Billy Rumbly crept upstairs with no more noise than a Wiwash hunter stalking game, and the first she knew of her danger was when he laid his knife against her throat!"

McEvoy clucked his tongue. "How did she manage to fetch the pistol?"

"There's the rub of't." Mary smiled. "The walls were broached beyond defense, and naught was left to her but to open the gates, surrender the castle, and take vengeance against the invader whilst he plundered."

"Ah God!" cried Ebenezer. "D'you mean the poor girl lost her honor after all?"

"Not yet, though every man thought so, as I did when I heard the tale from Roxie, and wondered how Billy Rumbly was not unstarched by the rum. But ye forget, Mr. Cooke, what we know now: he is Mattassin's brother, and by your own statement shares my Charley's one defect: he carries his manhood not under breeches but in his fancy, where rum is more a virtue than a burthen." Mary shivered again. "Nay, now I think on't, 'tis all in what ye mean by the word: no brother o' Charley's could ever take her in the usual way, and belike she hath her maidenhead yet; but I know well he was at her
honor
from the first instant, and since she was obliged to let him fetch her to the pallet, ye may be sure her precious
honor
was well tattered by the time she got there. Then, of course, she snatched out her pistol and aimed to murther him. Howbeit, her shot was low, from what I gather; it cut him inside the thigh and sent him packing like a wounded rabbit. E'en then Sir Harry couldn't end his wretched game: he must chase after poor Billy Rumbly all the way outside and hollow 'Ye wasn't man enough, damn ye, Bill! Try her again in a fortnight!' "