The Sot-Weed Factor (70 page)

Ebenezer winced.

"She was as taken aback at sight of me as was I at sight of her. I told her what I knew of your straits, without mentioning my own, and for all I begged her not to rush in recklessly, there was naught for't but she cross the Bay that afternoon, traitors or no, and either nurse ye back to health or be murthered at your graveside."

"Dear, darling Anna!" Ebenezer cried, and blushed when he recalled Burlingame's discourse of the morning. "What happened then?"

"She found passage in a sloop for the Little Choptank River," said Bertrand. "I spoke to her captain later below stairs, and he told me she'd gone ashore at a place called Tobacco Stick, his closest anchorage to Cooke's Point. Neither I nor any soul else, to my knowledge, hath farther news of her than that."

"Merciful God! No farther news?" A thought occurred to him, so monstrous that the gorge rose in his throat: William Smith was most certainly angry over his flight from Malden in violation of his indenture-bond, and Joan Toast more wrathful still at having been abandoned; suppose poor Anna had fallen into their clutches, and they had taken revenge on her for her brother's deeds!

"Heav'n save her!" he gasped to Bertrand, rising weakly from the chair. "They might have forced her into whoredom! This very minute, for aught we know, some greasy planter or great swart salvage --"

"Hi, sir! What is't ye say?" Bertrand ran alarmed to pound his master on the back, who had fallen into a fit of retching.

"Hire us a boat," Ebenezer ordered, as soon as he caught his breath. "Well set out for Malden this instant, and hang the consequences!" Without mentioning his desertion of Joan Toast, he explained as briefly as he could to the astonished servant the fallen state of Malden, the circumstances of his departure, his rescue by Henry Burlingame, the enormous conspiracy afoot in the Province, and the particular danger awaiting Anna whether or not Andrew arrived before her at Cooke's Point. "I'll tell you more the while we're crossing," he promised. "We daren't lose a minute!"

"I know a captain we might hire," Bertrand ventured, "and I'd as well be murthered by your cooper as by Colonel Robotham when he finds me, but in truth I've no more than a shilling left of Lucy's money. . ."

His anger at the man fired anew by this reminder, Ebenezer was ready to chide him further for his abuse of Lucy Robotham, but brought himself up short with a shiver of mortification. "I've money enough," he grumbled, and offered no explanation of its source.

At the waterside they found the captain Bertrand had in mind, and despite the lateness of the afternoon and the unpromising weather, that gentleman agreed, for the outrageous price of three pounds sterling, to carry them to Cooke's Point in his little fishing boat. As they were about to step aboard Ebenezer remembered his scheduled rendezvous at the Statehouse.

"I'faith, I well-nigh forgot -- I must leave word for Henry Burlingame, that hath gone to ask John Coode for aid." He smiled at Bertrand's surprise. " 'Tis too long a tale to tell now, but I will say this: that Tim Mitchell who sent you hither was not Captain Mitchell's son at all -- 'twas Henry Burlingame."

"Ye cannot mean it!" The valet's face was horror-struck.

"No Christian soul else," the poet affirmed.

"Then ye have more need of prayers than messages," said Bertrand. "God help us all!"

"What rot is this?"

"Your friend need look no farther than his glass to find John Coode," the valet declared. "He
is
John Coode!"

The Poet Crosses Chesapeake Bay, but

Not to His Intended Port of Call

" 'Tis
gospel truth,
I swear't!" Bertrand insisted. "There is no better place for news than a St. Mary's tavern, and I've had eyes and ears wide open these several months. 'Twas common knowledge amongst his hirelings that Tim Mitchell was John Coode in disguise, and now ye've told me your Master Burlingame was Tim Mitchell -- b'm'faith, I should have guessed ere now! 'Tis in the very stamp and pattern of the man!"

Ebenezer shook his head. " 'Tis an assertion not lightly to be matched for implausibility." Nevertheless, he showed no indignation, as he had on other occasions when the valet had aspersed his former tutor.

"Nay, sir, believe me; 'tis as clear as a schoolboy's sums! Only think: Where did ye first hear of this fiend John Coode?"

"From Lord Baltimore, ere I left," Ebenezer replied. "That is --"

"And when did Coode commence his factions and rebellions in the Province? Was't not the very year Burlingame came hither? And is't not true that whene'er Master Burlingame is in England, he tells ye Coode is there too?"

"But Heav'n forfend --"

"D'ye think Master Burlingame could pass for two minutes as Coode with Slye and Scurry, much less make a three-month crossing in their company? 'Tis past belief!"

"Yet he hath a wondrous talent for disguise," the poet protested.

"Aye and he doth, b'm'faith! From all I've heard from yourself and others, he hath posed as Baltimore, Coode, Colonel Sayer, Tim Mitchell, Bertrand Burton, and Eben Cooke, to mention no more, and hath ne'er been found out yet! But what's the chiefest talent of John Coode, if not the same? Hath he not played priest, minister, general, and what have ye? Is't not his wont to travel always incognito, so that his own lieutenants scarce know his natural face?"

"But he was six years my tutor! I know the man!" Even as he made it, Ebenezer realized the vast untruth of this declaration. Although he continued to shake his head as in disbelief, at their ferryman's suggestion he abandoned the idea of returning to the inn to leave a message, and the fishing sloop made way down the St. Mary's River.

" 'Tis all shifting and confounded!" he complained shortly afterwards, when he and Bertrand had retreated from the weather to a tiny shelter-cabin behind the mast. He was thinking not only of Burlingame and the transvaluation of Lord Baltimore and Coode which his former tutor had argued so persuasively that morning (and which, after Bertrand's announcement, seemed most self-incriminating), but for that matter Bertrand, John McEvoy, and virtually everyone else. "No man is what or whom I take him for!"

"There's much goes on." the valet nodded darkly, "that folk like thee and me know naught of. Things are de'il the bit what they seem."

"Why, i'Christ --" Ebenezer gave himself over to exasperated conjecture. "How do I know 'tis Burlingame I've traveled with in the first place, when he alters everything from face to philosophy every time I re-encounter him? Haply Burlingame died six years ago, or is Baltimore's prisoner, or Coode's, and all these others are mere impostors!"

" 'Tis not impossible," Bertrand admitted.

"And this war to the death 'twixt Baltimore and Coode!" Ebenezer laughed sharply. "How do we know who's right and who's wrong, or whether 'tis a war at all? What's to keep me from declaring they're in collusion, and all this show of insurrection's but a cloak to hide some dreadful partnership?"

" 'Twould not surprise me in the least, if ye want to know. I've never trusted that Jacobite Baltimore, any more than I've trusted Mr. Burlingame."

"Jacobite,
you say? 'Sheart, what an innocent rustic thou'rt become! Think you King William's not secretly as much in league with James as he is with Louis and the Pope o' Rome? Is't not a well-known fact that
More history's made by secret handshakes than by all the parliaments in the world?"

"There's much would surprise an honest man, if he just but knew't," the valet murmured, but he shifted uneasily and stared out at the lowering sky.

"I'faith, thou'rt a greater sage than Socrates, fellow! These sayings of yours should be writ in gold leaf on the entablatures of public buildings, lest any wight forget! What is't but childish innocence keeps the mass o' men persuaded that the church is not supported by the brothel, or that God and Satan do not hold hands in the selfsame cookie-jar?"

"Ah. now, sir, ye go too far!" Bertrand's tone was hushed. "Some things ye know as clear as ye know your name."

Ebenezer laughed again, in the manner of one possessed by fever. "Then you really believe 'tis Eben Cooke thou'rt speaking to? How is't you never guessed I was John Coode?"

"Nay, sir, go to!" the servant pleaded. "Thou'rt undone by thy misfortunes and know not what ye speak! Prithee go to!"

But the poet only leered the more menacingly. "You may fool others by playing some looby of a servingman, but not John Coode! I know thou'rt Ebenezer Cooke, and you'll not escape murthering this time!"

"I'll tell the captain to fetch us back to St. Mary's City at once, sir." Bertrand whined, "and summon a good physician to bleed ye. 'Tis late in the day for a crossing anyhow, and marry, look yonder at the whitecaps on the Bay! Rest and sleep -- rest and sleep'll make ye a new man by tomorrow, take my word for't. Only look astern, sir: there's a proper hurricane blowing up! I'll speak to the captain --"

"Nay, man, come back; I'll tease no more." He closed his eyes and rubbed them with thumb and forefinger. " 'Twas just -- Ah well, I had a picture in my mind, that I'd forgot till now, and I thought --" He paused to pinch himself unmercifully on the forearm, grunted at the pain of it, and sighed.

"Please, sir, 'tis a frightful storm coming yonder! This wretched toy will go down like stone!"

"And you think we're really here, then, and can drown? This thing I spoke of, that had just jumped to mind -- 'twas back in Pudding Lane last March -- marry, it seems five years ago! I had been offered a sort of wager with Ben Oliver, an obscene business, and had flee to my room for very mortification --"

" 'Sheart, feel how she rolls and pitches, sir, now we're clear o' land!"

The poet ignored his man's terror. "When I was alone again in my room, I had a perfect fit of shame; I longed to go back and play the man with Joan Toast in the winehouse, but I'd not the courage for't, and in the midst of my brooding I fell asleep there at my writing table."

The roll of the boat threw Bertrand to his knees; his face went white.

" 'Tis all very well, sir, all very well indeed: but I must shout to the captain to turn back! We can fetch Miss Anna another time, when the weather's clear!"

Ebenezer declared they would fetch her now, and went on with his reminiscence. "The thing I just recalled," he said, "was how Joan Toast waked me by knocking on my door, and how I was so amazed to see her, and still so full of sleep, I could not tell to save my life whether 'twas a dream or not. And I remember reasoning clearly 'twas doubtless a cruel dream, for naught so wondrous e'er occurred in natural life. All my joys and tribulations commenced with that knock on the door, and so fantastical are they, I wonder if I am not still in Pudding Lane, still wrapped in sleep, and all this parlous history but a dream."

"Would Heav'n it were, sir!" cried the valet. "Hear that wind, i'Christ, and the sky already dark!"

"I have had dreams that seemed more real," Ebenezer said, "and so hath Anna, many's the time. There was a trick we knew as children: when the lions of Numidia were upon us or we'd fallen from some Carpathian cliff, we'd say,
'Tis but a dream, and now I'll wake: 'tis but a dream, and now I'll wake
-- and sure enough, we'd wake in our beds in St. Giles in the Fields! Why, we were even wont to wonder, when we talked at night betwixt our two bedchambers, whether all of life and the world were not just such a dream; many and many's the time we came nigh to trying our magical chant upon't, and thought we'd wake to a world where no people were, nor Earth and Sun, but only disembodied spirits in the void." He sighed. "But we ne'er durst try --"

"Try't now, sir," Bertrand pleaded, "ere we're drowned past saying charms! I'God, sir, try't now!"

The poet laughed, no longer feverishly. " 'Twould do you no good in any case, Bertrand. The reason we never tried it was that we knew only one of us could be
The Dreamer of the World
-- that was our name for't -- and we feared that if it worked, and one of us awoke to a strange new cosmos, he'd discover he had no twin save in his dream. . . What would it profit you if I saved myself and left you here to drown?"

But Bertrand fell to pinching himself ferociously and bawling "
'Tis but a dream, and now I'll wake! 'Tis but a dream, and now I'll wake!"

His concern for the safety of the boat was justified. The sudden half-gale that had blown up from the southwest was piling seas in the open water of the Chesapeake as formidable as any the poet had seen, except during the storm off Corvo in the Azores, and instead of the
Poseidon's
two hundred tons and two dozen crewmen, his life was riding this time in a gaff-rigged sloop not forty feet long, manned by one white man and a pair of husky Negroes. Already the light was failing, though it could be no later than five in the afternoon; the prospect of sailing through some fifty miles of those seas in total darkness seemed truly suicidal, and at length, despite the urgency of his desire to find Anna, he asked the Captain -- a grizzled gentleman by the name of Cairn -- whether they had not better return to St. Mary's.

" 'Tis what I've been trying to do this past half hour," the Captain replied sourly, and explained that even with his jib and topsail struck and his mainsail triple-reefed, he had been unable to sail close-hauled back into the Potomac, which lay to windward; so strong were the frequent gusts that the minimum sail required for tacking was enough to dismast or capsize the sloop. The only alternative had been to drop anchor, and even this, according to the Captain, was but a temporary expedient: had the bottom been good holding ground, the anchor pendant would have parted at the first gust; as it was they were dragging to leeward at a great rate and would soon be beyond the depth of the pendant entirely.

"Yonder's Point Lookout," he said, indicating an obscure and retreating point of land in the very eye of the wind. " 'Tis the last land ye'll see this day, if not forever."

Ebenezer felt cold fear. " 'Sbody! D'you mean 'tis over and done with us?"

Captain Cairn cocked his head. "We'll heave to and rig a sea anchor: after that 'tis God's affair."

Thus delivered of his sentiments, he and the Negroes bent a little trysail onto the mainmast to keep the bow to windward and replaced the useless iron grapple with a canvas sea anchor, which, so long as the tide was ebbing towards the ocean, would retard the vessel's northeastern leeway. There was nothing else to be done: when the work was finished the Captain lashed the tiller and took shelter with his passengers in the cabin, which, unfortunately for the crew, had room enough for just three people. Point Lookout very soon vanished, and as if its disappearance had been a signal, darkness closed in immediately, and the wind and rain seemed to increase. The sloop was flung high by each black sea and fell with a slap into the trough behind; the sea anchor, though of value in preventing the boat from broaching to, caused her to nose rather deeply and ship a quantity of water at the bow, which the Negroes were obliged to bail out with a crude wooden bilge pump.

"Poor devils!" Ebenezer sympathized. "Should we not spell them at the pumps and give them some respite in the cabin?"

"No need," the Captain replied. "Three hours shall see the end of't, one way or another, and 'twill keep 'em from freezing in the meantime." What he meant, the poet learned on further interrogating him, was that if the storm did not blow itself out, change direction, or sink them, the present rate and course of their leeway would carry them across the Bay in three hours or so and bring them stern-foremost to the Eastern Shore.

"Then marry come up, we've hope after all, have we not?" Even Bertrand, who had been chattering with cold and fright, displayed some cheer at this announcement.

"Ye've hope o' drowning near shore, at least," the Captain said. "The surf will swamp her in a trice and haply break her up as well."

The valet moaned afresh, and Ebenezer's cheeks and forehead tingled. Yet though the prospect of drowning horrified him no less now than it had when he walked the pirates' plank off Cedar Point, about a dozen miles northwest of their present position, the prospect of death itself, he noted with some awe, held no more terrors. On the contrary: while he would not have chosen to die, especially when Anna's welfare was so uncertain, the thought of no longer having to deal with the lost estate, his father's wrath, and the sundry revelations and characters of Henry Burlingame, for example, was sweet. Delicious Death! Not in broodiest night hours of his growth, when in anguish or fascination he would cease to breathe, hold still his brain, and hear the blood rumble in his ears while he strove dizzily and in vain to suspend the beating of his heart -- not even then had cool Oblivion seemed more balmy.

Except to grunt at occasional extraordinary crashes of water or lurches of the boat, no one was much inclined during the period that followed to speak aloud to anyone else. The storm, though uneven in its violence, showed no signs of abating, and could at any moment have swamped or capsized them without warning in a sea too cold and rough for the ablest swimmer to survive more than twenty minutes. Yet thanks to the sea anchor, the indefatigable Negroes at the pump, and an apparent general seaworthiness about the hull, not to mention blind Providence, the vessel remained hove to and afloat through gust after gust, sea after sea -- and slipped steadily, if not apparently, to leeward all the while. After a time -- which to Ebenezer could as reasonably have been twenty as two hours -- the Captain left off stroking his beard and raised his head attentively.

"Hark!" He raised a hand for silence. "D'ye hear that, now?" He threw open the door, stepped onto the deck, and, at the risk of swamping, ordered the Negroes to suspend for a moment both their pumping and the rhythmical chantey with which they paced and lightened their labor. Ebenezer strained his ears, but though the open door amplified the noises of the storm and admitted no small quantity of rain and cold air into the bargain, he could detect no novel sound, nor could he see anything at all.