Ebenezer shifted uncomfortably.
"His reply," Anna continued, watching Ebenezer's face, "was that you harbored in your breast a grand and secret passion for one woman that the world denied you, and had liefer remain a virgin than take second choice!"
"That is true to some extent," the poet granted. "Howbeit, 'twas not so much the world that denied me Joan Toast, as John McEvoy, and — "
"Stay, I did not finish. I shall confess, Eben, Henry's news inspired me with inordinate jealousy, albeit I knew we each would marry soon or late. 'Tis that we had been so close, you know. . In any case, I demanded the name of this lady who had writ such a patent on your heart, and why you'd ne'er confided in your own dear sister that once knew your every whim and thought. Henry answered that you yourself scarce realized who she was, but that e'en if you did, the force of custom would seal your lips, inasmuch as the object of your passion was — your sister!"
Ebenezer sat upright. "Henry said that? I'Christ, there is no end to the man's nefariousness! Do you know, Anna, he told me the selfsame thing about you? I had learned of your affair with him, you see — this was before I knew of his impotence — and I was aflame with rage and envy — "
He cut his sentence short, but its implication hung clearly between them. The room was filled at once with tension and embarrassment, of a different order from what they had felt before; their positions on the bench were suddenly awkward; on pretext of scratching her leg, Anna slipped her hand from under his and averted her eyes.
"So," she said, and was obliged to clear her throat. "It would seem there was a mustard seed of truth in what he said to us."
For a time they could speak no more. The silence was painful, but Ebenezer could imagine no way to terminate it. Fortunately, Anna came to the rescue: in a mild, deliberate voice, as if no digression had occurred, she resumed the narrative of her journey from St. Giles, employing without comment the proposition that her motive had been to join Henry Burlingame. The poet's heart glowed.
"I had heard naught of his activities since 1687, when you and I abandoned him in London. Then last spring he approached me as he did you later on the Plymouth coach, disguised as Colonel Peter Sayer. When I was finally persuaded of his true identity, he told me the tale of his adventures in the provinces, his discovery of certain references to a namesake in Virginia, and the political intrigues to which he was party."
Ebenezer questioned her closely on this last subject, confessing his doubts about Burlingame's good will towards him and, what was vastly more important, his misgivings about the virtuousness of Lord Baltimore's cause and the viciousness of Coode's. It was then necessary to waive his earlier agenda and tell of Henry's impostures of both Charles Calvert and John Coode, and the transfer of his allegiance from the former to the latter; Bertrand Burton's conviction that Burlingame himself was John Coode; the evidence suggesting that Coode, Lord Baltimore, Burlingame, and Andrew Cooke himself — or some combination thereof — were involved in the deplorable traffic in prostitutes and opium of which Anna had learned from Benjamin Spurdance; and finally, Ebenezer's own sweeping suspicion that both Baltimore and Coode either did not exist save in Burlingame's impostures, or else existed as it were abstractly, uninvolved in and perhaps even ignorant of the schemes and causes attributed to them.
Anna listened with interest, but professed no great surprise at Burlingame's behavior. "As to whether Lord Baltimore and John Coode are real or figmentary," she declared, "I cannot say, albeit 'twere hard to believe that so general an assumption hath no truth in't. Neither can I say with confidence whether the two are in sooth opposed or in league, or opposed in some matters and allied in others, or which hath the right on his side. But I have cause to think that insofar as Henry hath any genuine interest in these matters, his sympathies are with neither of those men; nor doth he truly contradict himself by declaring first for one and then for the other. The man he really admires and serves, I do believe, is Governor Nicholson."
"Nicholson!" Ebenezer scoffed. "He is neither this nor that, from what I hear: he is no Papist, yet he fought for James at Hounslow Heath; he was Edmund Andres's lieutenant, and so differed with him that the two despise each other yet; Lord Baltimore chose him to be commissioned Royal Governor, thinking Nicholson shared his sympathies, but albeit Nicholson seems concerned with prosecuting Coode, he governs as if Lord Baltimore did not exist — which, to be sure, he may not."
Even as he articulated his objection, Ebenezer grew more and more persuaded of the likelihood of Anna's new hypothesis, until arguments began to sound like evidence in its favor. Burlingame had early confided that his purpose was to play off Coode and Andros against Nicholson to Baltimore's benefit — that is to say, "both ends against the middle." But was not Nicholson truly the man in the middle, and Baltimore the extremist? From all the reports of his impatience with dreamers and radicals, his hardheadedness, daring, irascibility, and efficiency, Nicholson's character seemed much more likely to appeal to Burlingame that Charles Calvert's. Moreover, while not an idealist, Nicholson was (now that Ebenezer reflected on it) perhaps the only person of influence who had actually done anything to further the cause of culture and refinement, for example, in the Plantations: he had established the College of William and Mary during his tenure as lieutenant governor of Virginia, and had avowed his intention to found a similar institution in Anne Arundel Town, at public expense. Even the less creditable aspects of the man — his bastard origins, for instance, and that obscure erotic streak that alienated him from women and gave rise to rumors of everything from privateering to unnatural practices — Ebenezer could readily imagine to be attractive in Burlingame's eyes. In short, what began as a refutation ended as a complaint.
"Why could Henry not tell me this at the outset, as he told you?"
" 'Tis not mine to answer for him," Anna said soothingly, "but he did mistrust your enthusiasm, Eben — as well about virginity as about Lord Baltimore's commission. You know how he was wont to play devil's advocate at St. Giles; with Henry one never knows quite where one stands."
There was little in this explanation to console the poet, but he held his peace while Anna went on with the story of her passage to St. Mary's City and her discovery of Bertrand there posing as Laureate of Maryland, which Ebenezer had heard previously from Bertrand himself.
"I was obliged to put ashore at Church Creek," she said, "and hire a wagon-ride to Cambridge, whence I meant to make my way to Malden; but near the wharf at Cambridge I saw a wretched old beggar in conversation with some slattern of a woman, and albeit I had no idea who they were, I chanced to spy this ring on the woman's hand — "
"Ah, God!"
"She was showing it to the beggarman, and when he laughed at it she flew into a rage and cried, 'To Hell with ye, Ben Spurdance! He is my husband nonetheless, and for aught we know that villain may have been carrying him off!'" Upon recognizing the ring as her own, Anna said, she had understood from what Bertrand had told her that the frightful-looking woman must be her sister-in-law, and the reference to Ebenezer's being carried off by villains had greatly alarmed her. She had gone up to the pair and introduced herself, whereupon the woman, for all she had just been defending Ebenezer, now cursed him as a coward, a liar, and a pimp, flung the ring at Anna's feet, and left, declaring she must get back to Malden before the new whoremaster, Andrew Cooke, came looking for her. This news, together with the testimony of Mr. Spurdance that Ebenezer had deserted his bride and returned with some other gentleman to England, had caused Anna to swoon away; Mr. Spurdance had revived her and told her of the state of things at Malden: that the cooper William Smith had transformed it into a den of sundry vices; that Master Andrew had arrived there with a party of strangers the day before, much concerned over his daughter's whereabouts and distraught by the news that Ebenezer had lost the estate, and upon seeing how matters actually stood, had become so enranged as to fall victim to something like apoplexy. He was temporarily confined to bed, where he spent his time cursing mankind in general, but it was not yet clear whether he was actually unable to regain possession of the estate or whether his wrath was occasioned merely by the distracted state of his affairs; similarly, it was not known whether or in what respect he was himself involved in Captain William Mitchell's activities.