He said, “I but asked at the place where they fly the flag and blow trumpet tuckets to call folk to the playacting, and a great progress of folk it is come to see it. I said to a gentle, 'An' it please you, good sir, know you the whereabouts of Master William Kempe's Jew?' and one said he did know you, Jew, but not where you hid save possibly under a stone or behind some jakes, where a Jew should be found. But his manservant I think it was said me, 'Kempe's Jew's out and about in search of shekels after some mad scheme to dance across Europe they say, quite like one of his kind after coins, an' I hear at last Monday's market he dwells in a mean room, if not the stable where he's more rightly housed, at the inn of The King's Touch, may he catch him a King's Evil for a sly and scheming Jew!' and then said me be off else they'd call a watch and name me cut-purse for troubling them, and said me also as you that I do stink of the fires I tend to make charcoal in the woods by my village,which I say is a great wrong, for I'm an honest man, Jew, and the stink of honest work is no shame.”
To which I said, “Which I am also, which is why I give you a silver sixpence from the common purse of Will Kempe and Pincus Perlmutter, and also I'll honor my Will's word, we'll eat a nosh, some good beef and strong beer I'll buy you, but not a wine which would hurt your head if you don't drink it regular, and then you can lead me the way to my Will, Goodman Walter.”
Which I did. I bought him a dinner there in The King's Touch, a boiled beef, which he said he never ate before, the only meat he knew was from venison and rabbits, which he said he snared, but never poached on land he shouldn't, which he possibly lied to me I think. And he eat the boiled beef, a fresser he was, eat with his fingers he didn't even cut his meats up, like a man didn't eat for days before, and I bought him the big cup of the tapster's best beer, and then we went, me following his way, to find my Will, and I didn't breath deep close to him, so bad he stinked from ashes and soots. For which, our journey, I hired myself a horse to ride, which I decided I should do so he should know I was a person could afford and was accustomed, not just a poor Jew living spare in my inn's smallest room, an impresario and the partner of famous Will Kempe I was. So he walked and I followed him on my gelding horse I hired.
It was a good ride I did on my hired nag to this lout Walter's poor village. I rode and he walked, like he was my manservant and me his master, not just a rude messenger sent to bring me. It was English midsummer, warm it was, with sun shining bright, so when we went by a village, not Walter's it wasn't, on our way, women was out from washing their hairs in alkali water and drying in the sunlight to bleach it fair, which English like most of all from women's hairs, even country yokels like this Walter. I could see he liked to see the wenches kneeling on the grass in their yards with heads down and their hairs all spread out to dry bleached in sunlight. It must be also it was a washday in this village we went by because it was bed linens all white spread on hedges to dry, and small boys watched them if hookmen should come by with rods to steal linens by hooking.
When we saw the wenches drying their hairs, and the village boys watching for hookmen, I seen this Walter was merry from that, so I said to him to make us merry together, “Goodman Walter, you like looking at pretty country wenches with their hairs all spread out so's you can see the fair skin from their necks, nu?”
To which he said, “Mark you, Master Kempe's Jew, I'd the rather see any one of 'em in a deep ditch by night's dark an' if she were not too nice to let my hand in her placket!” Which was merry, but indecent coarse, talking from shtupping. “And thou, Jew, do you a like tumble in a ditch or 'neath a hedge? Or is it true as that your Jew would the rather stroke a coin than any maid's cunny?”
To which I said, “Sha! I can be so merry as any English without I talk coarse gleek indecencies, Walter!”
To which he said, “Then I doubt you the friend of the Master Kempe I know, for that's all he talks, and makes us right merry save when he's too ill to speak, even sometimes in rhyme!” And he laughed and ran ahead of me on my hired horse and shouted a halloo at the village boys was watching out for hookmen, and then we was out this village and back in country, and then through a big woods we went later.
Even now, years gone, I remember this good ride, even if it was such a toris grief, that my Will was going soon to starb, the reason I did the ride. But I still think from the warm midsummer day, until twilight I followed Walter with his longstaff on my hired horse, and from the greening good smell, and larks' songs, and from the wenches drying their hairs to bleach fair, and village boys watching from hookmen to steal the drying linens, and from green corn growing high in common fields we went by, and then the big woods we went in before the poor village where my Will laid death-sick, and even from that rude lout Walter I think now, only a graub vulgar country yokel he was, possibly a poacher from deer and rabbits maybe, and what's strange to me now, I almost weep tears into my white bart from thinking of the good ride journey we made, the same as I many times still weep tears for Will Kempe gone so long now. It's for me like the country ride was as much a tsoris grief for me as my Will Kempe who starb in my arms.
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