The Sot-Weed Factor (83 page)

The trapper resumed. " 'Twas just a few days later I saw Billy again, coming out of Trinity Church -- aye, I swear't, just a Sunday since! He was knee-hosed and periwigged like any gentleman, not a trace o' bear-grease on him, and for all some folk misdoubted what to make of him, the rector and he shook hands at the door and spoke their little pleasantries cordial as ye please! When I drew nigh I heard him chatting with a brace o' sot-weed planters in better English periods than ye'll hear in the Governor's Council. His companions were two of the same that had tricked him before, but ye'd ne'er have guessed it from their manner: the one was inviting him to join the church, and the other was arguing with him about next year's sot-weed market.

" 'This here's Mr. Rumbly,' they said to me, 'as decent a Christian gentleman as ever shat on sot-weed.' At sight o' me Billy smiled and bowed, and said, 'I've already had the honor, thankee, gentlemen: Mr. Russecks was generous enough to lend me one of his cabins against the day I raise a house of my own.' We twain shook hands most warmly, and, do ye know, I was the envy of no fewer than half a dozen souls round about, so jealous were they grown already of his favor! Billy declared he had a call or two to pay, after which he wished I'd take dinner at his cabin, and when he'd strolled off, his courtiers gathered round me like fops round a new-dubbed knight. From them I learned that the Church Creek Virgin had set out one day from Roxanne's house and disappeared, nor was heard from after till the day Billy Rumbly came to town, dressed in English clothes, and declared she was his bride. Some said he had made a prisoner of her, and told stories of seeing him torture her over the hearth fire, but others that had spied on him declared she could leave the cabin when she pleased and stayed with him of her own will. To them that took the liberty of calling for a proper Christian wedding, he replied that naught would please him more, but his wife was content with the Indian ceremony he'd performed himself and would have no other, nor would he oblige her against her will.

"In any case, albeit 'twas but a short time since that first appearance, and there was still some talk against him here and there, Billy seemed to have won the heart of every woman in Church Creek and the respect of nearly all the men. He hath great plans for improving everything from the sot-weed market to the penal code, as I hear't, and albeit no man would speak out and say't -- me being a Russecks, ye know -- 'twas clear they looked to Billy to stand up to my brother Harry soon or late. They have changed allegiance well-nigh to a man; Billy's too strong and full o' plans, and Sir Harry too jealous of his power, for the twain not to come to grips. What's more, rumor hath it 'twas Harry drove Miss Bromly to run off, from trying to have his way with her, and everyone reasoned Billy would have satisfaction of the wretch when the right time came.

"On our way to the cabin -- I forgot to tell ye I was the first wight he'd invited into his house and was envied the more for't -- on the way out there I told Billy frankly what I'd heard of him and asked him to sort out fact from fancy, but he was so full of his own questions about everything under the sun, he made me no proper answer. Why could not the tobacco-planters form a guild, he wanted to know, to bargain with the Lords Commissioners of Trade and Plantations? Who was Palestrina, and did I think a man of forty was too old to learn the harpischord? Why did Copernicus suppose the sun stood still, when it and its planets might be moving together through space? If a Christian ascetic comes to take pleasure in mortifying the appetites, must he not gratify them to mortify them, and mortify them to gratify them, and did this not fetch him to a standstill?"

Mary Mungummory shook her head. "So like my Charley, rest his soul! Had the De'il's own packsack o' questions, and no man's answers pleased him!"

Ebenezer pressed the trapper for tidings of Miss Bromly. " 'Tis e'er the lot of the innocent in the world, to fly to the wolf for succor from the lion! Innocence is like youth," he declared sadly, "which is given us only to expend and takes its very meaning from its loss."

" 'Tis that makes it precious, is't not?" asked McEvoy with a smile.

"Nay," Mary countered, " 'tis that proves its vanity, to my way o' thinking."

" 'Tis beyond me what it proves," Ebenezer said. "I know only that the case is so."

Russecks then went on to say that he had found the cabin (which already he had ceased to think of as his own) in excellent repair, its windows newly equipped with real glass panes and the grounds around it clear of brush. In the dooryard stood a recently constructed sundial, perhaps the only one in the area, and atop one gable was a platform used by its builder for readier observation of the stars and planets.

"He'd mentioned along the way that he'd shot a young buck the night before and was waiting till Monday, like a proper Christian, to butcher it, but when we rode around the cabin I spied a salvage woman up to her elbows in the bloody carcass, cleaving off steaks and rump-roasts. She was dressed in dirty deerskin like the old
squaws
wear; her hair was coarse and tangled, and her brown skin greasy as a bacon-flitch. Her back was turned to us as we rode in, and she paid us no heed at all. 'Twas on my mind to twit Billy for her industry -- tell him 'twas a merry bit o' Jesuitry, don't ye know, setting heathens to break the Sabbath for him -- but ere ever I got the words out he addressed her in the salvage tongue, and I saw when she faced round 'twas no Indian woman at all. I could only gather, she was the famous Church Creek Virgin!"

Ebenezer and McEvoy registered their astonishment.

"I'faith, sirs," Russecks proceeded, "it doth give a civil man pause when first he lays eyes upon a salvage, for't carries him back to view the low origin of his history: yet by how much rarer is the spectacle of one of his kind fallen back to the salvage condition, by so much more confounding is't to behold, for it must drive home to him how strait and treacherous is the climb to politeness and refinement -- so much so, that one breath of inattention, as't were, may send the climber a-plummet to his former state. And in the civillest among us, don't ye know -- in Mister Cooke the poet there, or who ye will -- this precious cultivation -- 'sheart, sirs, on sight of one like Billy Rumbly's wife. . . !" He paused and started over. "What I mean, sirs, 'tis like the cultivation of our fields, so't seems to me: 'tis all order and purpose -- and wondrous fruits doth it bring forth! -- yet 'tis but a scratch, is't not, on the face of unplumbable deeps? Two turns o' the spade cuts through't to the untouched earth, and under that lies a thousand miles o' changeless rock, and deeper yet lie the raging fires at the core o' the world!

"The sensible man, I say, is bound to reflect on these things when he sees one of his own gone salvage like the Church Creek Virgin. She was dressed in Indian garb, as I said before, and pig-dirty from head to foot. She'd browned her skin with dye, so't appeared, and basted it with bear-fat, which with the dirt and deer-blood gave her a splendid salvage stink, e'en in the cold out-o'-doors. Never a glance did she cast to me, but stared always at Billy like a good retriever, and at his command she gave o'er hacking the buck and plodded off with two steaks to broil for dinner."

The interior of the cabin, Russecks went on to say, he had found as clean as the housekeeper was not, who in the heat from the fireplace grew redolent as a tan yard; throughout the afternoon, when dinner was done, she had sat stolidly on the hearthrug, Indian fashion, grinding meal in an earthenware mortar, and had spoken only in grunts and monosyllables when Billy addressed her. Yet though her manner and condition were slavelike, at no time had the trapper observed anything suggestive of coercion or intimidation.

"In sum," he said, "she was an English lass no longer, but a simple salvage
squaw
. 'Tis my guess he sought her out in his bear-grease and magical loin-pouch and did such deeds o' salvage love and ravishment that she gave o'er the reins of her mind for good and all."

"Thou'rt off the mark," Mary said flatly. " 'Tis that he made such a conquest with his amorous lore, the girl renounced her Englishness on the spot for ever and aye. I
know
'tis thus."

"Ah, but I loathe the monster nonetheless!" Ebenezer said. "E'en granting our innocence was given us to lose, still and all -- any, rather
therefore
-- its whole meaning is in the terms of its surrender, is't not? To have it wrested will-ye, nill-ye, ravished away --" He tried to envision the struggle: he fancied himself in the position of Miss Bromly, forced upon her back among the cold briars of the forest; the knife was at his neck, his coats were flung high, the wind bit his thighs and private parts; and over him, naked and greased, hung a swart, ferocious savage with the face and herpetonic eyes of Henry Burlingame. "God damn him for't! How the wretch must gloat in his victory!"

"How's that?" Russecks showed some surprise. "Gloat, ye say? Ah, well, now, he didn't gloat, ye know. Nay, friend, ye forget Billy Rumbly hath climbed a far greater distance than the lass hath sunk; aye, e'en higher by far than the station she left, I'll wager! Such a civil, proper gentleman as he could ne'er take pleasure in such a victory; yet 'twas the conquest, as I see't, that raised him up. The fact is, sirs, his wife is a constant shame to him: he entreats her to clean herself and dress like an English lady; he yearns to join the Church and have a Christian wedding; naught would please him more than to set sail tonight for Rome, or an English university. But she will none of't; she wallows in her filth and salvage ways, and poor Billy is too much the man of honor now either to desert her or to force her against her will!"

Mary Mungummory shook her head. "How well I know her heart and his as well! I wonder again what I wonder nightly as I watch the circus in my wagon: is man a salvage at heart, skinned o'er with Manners? Or is salvagery but a faint taint in the natural man's gentility, which erupts now and again like pimples on an angel's arse?"

For Ebenezer, at least, absorbed in recollection of certain violences in his past, the question was by no means without pertinence and interest; neither he nor the other men, however, ventured a response.

Northward to Church Creek, McEvoy

Out-Nobles a Nobleman, and the Poet

Finds Himself Knighted Willy-Nilly

S
oon after Harvey Russecks
had concluded his story the company retired for the night on corn-husk mattresses provided by the host, which, with a plentiful supply of blankets from Mary's wagon, afforded Ebenezer and McEvoy the most comfortable night's lodging they had enjoyed for some time. The poet, however, was kept sleepless for hours by thoughts of Miss Bromly, his sister, the gravity of his mission, and the story he had just heard. Next morning as they breakfasted on platters of fried eggs and muskrat -- a dish they found more pleasing to the tongue than to the eye -- he declared, "I had cause enough before to find this Cohunkowprets, or Billy Rumbly, for he may be the means of sparing my conscience the burthen of two English lives; but now I've heard what state Miss Bromly hath fallen to, purely out of loyalty to my sister, 'tis more urgent than ever I seek the fellow out and try to save her. One ruined life the more on my account, and I'll go mad with responsibility!"

"Nay, friend," McEvoy urged, "I respect your sentiments, Heav'n knows, but think better of't! Thou'rt bound to save our hostages from Chicamec at any cost to yourself, so ye declared, and ye've shamed me into the same tomfoolish honor: d'ye think this Rumbly fellow's likely to oblige us if he sees thou'rt after wooing his wife away? And if he turns his back on us -- i'faith! -- 'twill not be two, but two hundred thousand lives ye may answer for; with Dick Parker and that other wight to general 'em, not all the militia in America can put down the slaves and Indians!"

"I tremble to think of't," said Mary Mungummory from her station at the cook-fire. "Don't forget, Mr. Cooke, what-e'er foul play brought the girl to her present pass, 'tis of her own will she stays there." Suddenly she gave an irritated sigh and called on an imaginary tribunal to witness the poet's wrongheadedness. "Marry, sirs, the world's about to explode, and he concerns himself with one poor slut's misfortunes!"

Ebenezer smiled. "Who's to say which end of the glass is the right to look through? One night when Burlingame and I were watching the stars from St. Giles in the Fields, I remarked that men's problems, like earth's mountains, amounted to naught from the aspect of eternity and the boundless heavens and Henry answered, 'Quite so, Eben: but down here where we live they are mountainous enough, and no mistake!' In any case, I mean to do what I can for Miss Bromly. I've no mind to prosecute Billy Rumbly for rape -- 'twere a vain ambition in a Maryland court! -- and he'll not object to my solicitude, if I have his case aright from Mr. Russecks."

It was still early when they bade the trapper goodbye and set out in Mary's wagon for Church Creek; though the journey took five hours, the sun was scarcely past the meridian when they arrived at the little settlement.

"Yonder's an inn," McEvoy said; he indicated a neat frame structure some distance ahead.

"Aye, there we'll go, like it or not," Mary said, " 'tis Sir Harry's place." She explained that Harry Russecks flew into a dangerous temper when visitors to the town failed to appear before him and state their business. "He knows mine well enough, and ye twain need say no more than that I'm ferrying ye to Cambridge on business for the Governor."

"I say, he is a highhanded rascal!" Ebenezer cried. "What right hath he to pry into everyone's affairs?"

"Ah, well," Mary replied, "for one thing, he can carry five hundredweight o' grain upon his back, so they say, and break a man's neck as ye'd break a barleystraw. For another, he owns the inn, the mill over yonder on the creek, and half the planters hereabouts." The mill, she went on to say, like most in the Province, had been built originally at Lord Baltimore's order and financed in part with funds from the provincial treasury; hence the government maintained an interest in its operation. Harry Russecks was aware of this fact, but St. Mary's City being so far removed from Church Creek, and the Governor's Council having so many pressing problems to engage its attention and such feeble machinery of enforcement, he did not scruple to exploit his monopoly in every way. What with charging extortionate fees for grinding, and regularly purloining a capful of grain out of each bushel, he had early become a man of means; subsequently he had built the inn and taken to making loans on acreage collateral to the tobacco-planters in the area, so that, regardless of the market, he made large profits every year. If the tobacco price was good, his loans were repaid with interest, his milling fees went up, and his tavern was filled with celebrating planters; if the market fell, he increased his landholdings with forfeited collateral, ground grain as always for his neighbors' daily bread, and sold the planters rum to drown their sorrows in. It was not surprising, then, that he was presently the wealthiest man in the area and one of the wealthiest in the Province: such was the power of his position in Church Creek that he had secured to be his wife the only truly noble lady for miles around, by what arrangements the townsfolk could only conjecture; one and all were obliged to address him by his false title even as he robbed them at the mill, to leap clear whenever he brandished the sword which he affected, even at the grindstones, as an emblem of his rank, and in general to submit without protest to his poltroonery.

"Sir Harry respects naught in the world save patents o' nobility," she concluded, "nor fears any man in the Province -- save a brace o' commissioners from St. Mary's, that some folk think have been dispatched to inspect the mills and ferries."

Drawing up before the inn they saw upon its sign a curious armorial device in bold colors: on a field
azure,
between flanches
sable
with annulets
or
(or roundlets square-pierced to look like millstones), a fleur-de-lis
gules
beset from alow and aloft by hard crabs armed
natural.
Their examination of it was cut short by a great commotion within the place it advertised: there was a crash of crockery, a woman shrieked, "Ow! Ow" a man's voice cried, and another roared out "I'll crack thy skull, John Hanker!
Arrah!
Hold still, dammee, whilst I fetch ye a good one!" From the door burst a young colonial, clutching his bare head in both hands and running for his life. At his heels pumped a shaggy bull of a man, black-haired, open-shirted, squint-eyed and mottled; in his right hand he waved a sword (no gentleman's rapier, but a Henry Morgan cutlass fit to quarter oxen with) and in his left he clutched by the arm a distraught young woman -- the same, they soon heard, whose shriek had announced the scene. Had his pursuer not been thus encumbered, the young man would have lost more than just his periwig; even with this handicap the wild-haired swordsman -- whom Ebenezer understood to be the miller Russecks himself -- came within an ace of adding homicide to the catalogue of his sins.

"Yah!
Run, Hanker!" he bellowed, giving over his pursuit. "Come to Church Creek again, I grind ye to hogswill!"

" 'Twas only in sport, Father!" cried the girl. "Don't go on so!" Now that the crisis was past she seemed more embarrassed than alarmed.

" 'Sheart!" McEvoy murmured to Ebenezer. "There's a handsome lass!"

The miller turned on her. "I know thy sports! D'ye think I didn't see where he laid his drunken paw, and you smiling him farther?
All dogs pant after the salt bitch!
Dammee if I don't unsalt ye, and thy quean of a mother into the bargain!" With the flat of his cutlass he caught her a swat upon the rump.

"Aiee!"
she protested. "Thou'rt a devil out o' Hell!"

"And thee a goose out o' Winchester!" Again he swung, and clapped her smartly along the leg. Ebenezer flushed, and McEvoy sprang to his feet as though ready to leap to the damsel's aid from his perch on the wagon seat. But though the girl protested loudly at her punishment, her complaints were anything but abject.

"Ow!
I swear to Christ I'll murther ye in your sleep!"

"Not till I've done basting ye, ye shan't!"

The third blow was aimed where the first had struck, but by dint of wrenching about and biting the miller's wrist, the girl caught it on her hip and broke free as well.

"Hi!
Now try and clout me, damn your eyes!" She did not run off at once, but lingered a moment to taunt him from a distance. "Look at him wave his sword, that he bought to beat helpless women with! A great ass is what he is!"

"And thee a whore!"

"And thee a cuckold! La, what a time we'll have, when Billy-Boy takes the scalp off ye!"

The miller roared and charged towards her, but the girl scampered off and led him in a circle around the wagon. When he gave up after a few moments, apparently resigned from past experience to her nimbleness, she halted as well, bright-eyed and panting. Her nostrils tightened; her chin dimpled with scorn. She spat in his direction.

"Buffoon!" With a toss of ash-blond curls she turned her back on him and marched down the street towards the mill; her father sashed his weapon with a grunt and trudged after, but in the manner of a skulking bodyguard rather than that of an assailant.

"Henrietta Russecks," Mary chuckled. "Ain't she the lively one, though?"

But the men were appalled by the scene. It was some moments before Ebenezer could find voice for his indignation, and then he railed at length against the miller's spectacular ungallantry. McEvoy expressed even greater outrage, and added for good measure a panegyric on the young lady.

"Mother o' God, what spirit, Eben! How she gave the great bully as good as she got! Nor quailed for an instant! Nor shed a tear for his bloody bastinadoes! I here swear to Heav'n I'll see her free o' that beast, if I must murther him myself!"

Ebenezer showed some surprise at his companion's vehemence, and McEvoy blushed.

"Think what ye will," he grumbled, "and be damned t'ye! She hath the face o' Helen and the soul of Agamemnon, hath that girl! Fire and fancy, what Ben Oliver was wont to call the chiefest female virtues; oh, 'tis a rare, rare thing!"

"Best not toy with Henrietta," Mary warned cordially. "Ye saw what befell young Hanker yonder, for no more'n a pat. La, the rector o' Trinity Church himself couldn't court Sir Harry's daughter without a patent out o' peerage."

McEvoy sniffed and furrowed up in thought.

They decided to go directly to the mill, where, in addition to announcing their presence to Russecks, Mary could consult the miller's wife for further news of Billy Rumbly and his bride. On the way, for McEvoy's benefit, she chattered on about Henrietta: the girl was four-and-twenty and of the same lively temper as her mother, who had been a famous beauty in her youth and could still turn the head of any young man with an eye for pulchritude seasoned by experience. It was well past time for the daughter to be wed, but so jealous was the miller of the title he had appropriated from his wife, he would permit Henrietta no husband from among the youth of the place; he held out for a suitor of noble birth. And though with every passing year the task of chaperonage grew more difficult -- especially since Mrs. Russecks, so far from sharing her husband's sympathies, not only allied herself with Henrietta in the cause of love but was prepared to join her daughter in any amorous adventure they could contrive.

"Yet for all their ingenuity and the wiles of a score of would-be lovers, Sir Harry hath managed to keep his eye on 'em day and night. When he's at the inn, they are his barmaids, more often than not; when he's at the mill, they are his grist-girls. They even sleep all in a room, with Sir Harry's cutlass hanging ready at the bedpost. Only once in all these years have the pair of 'em got free of him -- and marry, 'twas a fortnight folk still talk about!"

When they were still a hundred feet from the mill -- which from the look of it served also as the family house -- Harry Russecks stepped outside and glared at them, arms akimbo. At the same time they saw in an upstairs window the figures of two women regarding them with interest. Mary Mungummory returned their wave, but Ebenezer shivered.

"And ye say he fears these mill commissioners like the plague?" McEvoy mused. Suddenly he laid his hand on Mary's arm. "I say, thou'rt a good sort, Mary; will ye aid me in a little lark? And you as well, Eben? I owe ye my life already; will ye stand me farther credit?" All he wished to do, he explained to his skeptical companions, was give the boorish miller a draught of his own prescription; if he failed, none would be the worse for it, and if he succeeded --

"I'Christ, but let's put it to the test!" he said hurriedly, for they were almost within earshot of the miller. "State thy own affairs as always, Mary, and say ye know no more of us than that ye picked us up along the road after the storm. Nay, more: ye suspect there is more to us than meets the eye, inasmuch as we've been uncommon secretive from the first, and chary o' stating our names and business."

" Twill ne'er succeed, lad," Mary warned, but her eyes twinkled already at prospect of a prank.

"Prithee, John," Ebenezer whispered, "we've no time for frivolous adventures! Think of Bertrand and Captain Cairn --"

He could protest no more for fear of being overheard, and McEvoy's expression was resolute. The Irishman's sudden interest in the miller's daughter struck him not only as a conventional impropriety and a breach of their solemn trust, but also as a sort of infidelity to Joan Toast, despite the fact that Joan had clearly abandoned McEvoy for himself, and that he himself had been unfaithful to her in a sense by far less honorable than the sexual. He held his peace and waited miserably to see what would develop.

"Afternoon, Sir Harry!" Mary called, and clambered down from the wagon. "Just passing through, and came to pay my respect to Roxie."

The miller ignored her. "Who are they?"

"Them?" Mary glanced back in surprise, as if just noticing her passengers. "Ah,
them
ye mean! They're two wights I found near Limbo Straits after the storm." In a voice just audible to the poet she added, "Said they had business in Church Creek, but they'd not say what. Is Roxie in?"

"Aye, but ye'll not see her," the miller declared, still glaring at the two men. "Thou'rt no fit company for a lady, e'en though she be a bitch o' perdition. Get on with ye!"