“Now here's the door opens to pleasures not too nice for such as we, noble gallants mine!” Will said to the Essex men, which was a big whitewashed public house with a sign said The Cardinal's Hat, which was a tall red hat a Catholic divine should wear. Which I said to them, it was a puzzle to me from a sign for a stew, the hat from a Catholic divine, which caused them merriment, and Will said, “Pinky sweet, look ye close. See ye the cardinal's hat? See ye not what else it likes?”
I said, “I see from a cardinal's hat. What's more is it?”
“Think you 'pon your nether parts, Pincus,” Will said, and they laughed all at me. And then I seen this sign of the cardinal's hat could also be like a big red putz, gorged from blood for shtupping!
“Fie, Will Kempe!” I said, and they laughed the more from me.
“Aye,” Will said, laughing from this coarse gleek, “not a whit unlike a salt eel as any hat a Popish divine wore, an' yet I'll wager me odds on your divine, heretic or not, knows it so well as my gallants here know theirs!” Which was a gleek from Catholic divines or any, doing dalliance the same as any man, and also from salt eel, a coarse name English had for putz if they didn't say just cods.
Which I blushed my punim rosy red in the taper's light to think this, shamed I was, to which Will said, “An' now your visage, sweet Jew mine, flares as red as any prelate's gown, red as the rashes our gallants mayhap hide 'neath their codpieces, yea, red as your own cods when flared to arousal, what, Pinky?” To which I blushed even more rosy, like with choler, and then we went in this brothel stew which wasn't a real inn, named by its sign The Cardinal's Hat, there in Southwark, in 1599 I think it was.
So in this Cardinal's Hat bawdy house brothel was a big common room all lighted with tapers and candles and a fireplace fire where the tapster and his serving wenches mulled drinks with a hot poker, but also where cup-shot revelers pissed in the coals so it stinked, because they was too fap to go outside behind to the jakes. And this big room stinked also from so many revelers already there when we went in, and the air was all smoke from tobacco pipes, which was such a fashion in London a archbishop I think it was made a law said no tobacco pipes couldn't be smoked in churches because it stinked so bad, even if English said it was good, tobacco, against plague and also against pains if a surgeon or a barber cut on you.
And such a tsimmes boisterous noise it was, all loud talking and vile oaths and laughing and shouts and shrieking from wenches dallying and making drollery with revelers, which all or most I think from these wenches was kurveh whores, lace-mutton English called them. I could see they was kurveh because most just wore shifts, you could see bosoms and bare legs with nothing on top covering, such indecency!
And everyone almost from the Cardinal's Hat knew my Will Kempe. My Will, he jumped up on a stool and took off his plumed hat and did a bow like on a theater stage, and said loud, “Mark you all, madcap Will's come to play, an' if any deny me, then they're foresworn, and I'll name them knaves and bumpkins all not to know merry Will 'mongst you for a carouse 'til Tom Tapster calls him halt and bolts his door against good cheer!”
To which they called out, “Good morrow, Will Kempe, we did fear thee dead in a ditch an' you had not joined us ere this!” and “What ho, is it Will Kempe, bedlam-mad, dost show with money in his purse will buy us all drink?” and “An' is it dancing Will Kempe come to make all Southwark merry this night?” and “I 'trow 'tis Will Kempe or his dancing ghost come to haunt the weak and the wicked alike!” And other such they all said, these revelers, a crew from all kinds, rude mechanics and wild apprentice boys dressed in fustian, and some gallants like our carpet knight Essex men, attired fine for show, and some was certain I think rogues come to cadge drink and possibly rob, cut-purses and coney-catchers and hookmen from the look, so I kept my hand on our common purse and wished I had a cudgel or a dagger, something any the more than the small knife I carried to cut my dinner meats.
The tapster was a big man, fat with a round head and long bart and black teeths, he wore a foul apron and made us a table with benches to sit, and our gallants paid the link boy lighted us there and said he could go if he wanted, we wouldn't need him to go back across London Bridge because it would be morning light before we went, which I didn't like to hear. But this boy I remember from said he was afraid to go alone in the dark night all that way, so he stayed by us and our carpet knight gallants gave him money to buy a dinner and drink, which I was glad again it wasn't me and Will paying the reckoning for all this carouse.
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