“And now yonder,” said this graub lout Walter, “is Aldensmill, and there your good Master Kempe with all his gleeks and wit lies in the shed by Nat Weaver's cottage, an' if he hath not already passed his last breath.”
“Don't say such!” I said, and I kicked my horse's flanks with my heels to go faster, because now I feared.
And it was as poor and rude from a village as I ever seen in Bess's realm. It had a church was more like a hovel, which all villages do, and the cottages was all daub and wattle hovels also, as bad as my shtetl where I was a bubbe in the country of Poles and Moscovies where I came from to England. The cottages was bad thatched, and the common was closed with a rotted wood fencing to keep some lean cattles and dirty sheeps, and also pens with some pigs in, from straying in the night, and this village smelled from fires burning, which they did to make charcoal from the trees in the big woods all around, like this Walter stinked when he got close to me. I said to him, “Isn't it no inn here I can hire to lodge?”
And he answered me, “Nat Weaver himself may let you a room, or his stable if he loath Jews, which I wot not, for he's n'er seen one, nor had I before this day, and if he loath you, yet can you share your Master Kempe's shed pallet for all I know.” And he said to me, “Now I take my leave of you, Master Kempe's Jew, for night falls and I'm one believes like my father that the souls of suicides not buried at crossed roads do roam the dark to do folk evil,” and he went from me, down a lane to a daub and wattle hovel cottage I from later in this village Aldensmill learned was his father's, where this Walter lived with his father and also his mother, their only son. A charcoal burner he was, and possibly also a poacher some, I didn't learn.
And I went on my horse where he pointed me, to Nat Weaver's cottage, also a hovel except bigger than most, and got off my horse and tethered him at the low gate, and knocked the door so I could find where was the shed, it was getting dark, where my Will Kempe laid death-sick and would starb soon, in my arms.
I knocked long on the door, this Nat Weaver's hovel cottage in the poor village Aldensmill, because he was already sleeping because such country yokels go to sleep with the first dark and get up from bed by first light so they don't have to burn candles or lamps or tapers, to save cost. When this Nat Weaver put his head out the door from my knocking hard and long I couldn't almost not see his punim face it was darking so, and I think he was scared from me, a fremd stranger knocking his door at almost night.
He didn't say me nothing, so I said, “Is you Goodman Nat Weaver, what your Walter from your village says my Will Kempe is sick by you staying in your shed?” When he still didn't say nothing, afraid from me I think, I said, “I'm Pincus Perlmutter, impresario and partner and friend from Will Kempe, the greatest dance and comic vitz in Queen Bess's realm, he sent for me to come from London, where he's the most famous. Where is it your shed he stays in?”
Which when he finally said something, to me he said, “Be you Kempe's Jew he did say would come and pay his reckoning owed me for lodging and his suppers and beer?” Which I said I was, and he said, “He'll go not from here 'til his reckoning's paid me, an' I hold his precious cape and bells and Fool's cap and all in pawn from him 'til I have his reckoning in hand.”
To which I got angry, almost a tsimmes fussing I made, and said, “Genug from prattle, Nat Weaver! Your reckoning owed I'll pay you when it's day's light I can see to count coins from our common purse. Now get me a lantern and show me your shed where my Will is laying ill, and get fodder and water my horse I hired in London, tied by your gate, so now do this if you don't want you a zetz smack in your face!” I shouted at him.
Which was good, a tsimmes I made, because he did it, got a link from inside he lighted from his fireplace which he kept burning low so's he had fire for the next day, and he walked me behind his cottage and there I could see this shed where my Will was in the light from Nat Weaver's burning link.
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