I washed him so clean as I could, and dressed him in Nat Weaver's slops garment, and also got fresh straw for a clean pallet, which was also added, a penny, like it was a quart of beer sold at theaters, added the reckoning. And I asked my Will where William Bee the shikker was, and he said he didn't know, they went apart somewhere on their long carouse. He said, “An' if good William's luck's ill-favored by fortune as mine, then likely he's the like as burned in his guts as I, if not already gracing a pauper's grave, for what dance could he do for his dinner? What a reeky, horn-headed lewdster was Will Bee, Pinky!” Always a gleek, my Will, even if he was death-sick, which I feared he was, but not yet certain sure. I told him William Bee was a shikker rogue was all he was, to which my Will laughed as good as he could, from his pain, and shook his head no, William Bee was more, which I think he meant he was a mensch, just like Will Kempe and me.
I got him a draught then, pretty good strong beer was the best I could get, made from Nat Weaver's wife in her kitchen, and gave Will to drink, which he did some, but he couldn't much, because he couldn't swallow so good, it made him to choke and spill it on his chin, which I combed his bart clean, and also his hairs, with a powder from Nat Weaver also.
From before, when Will Kempe graced a stage for a play or the comic jig after performance, he cut and combed his bart by London Court fashions, bodkin and Cadiz and pencil and spade and swallow's tail styles just like the Court gentles and gallants, which his bart now was just a scraggle like bumpkins let grow on their chins and punim cheeks. “Will,“ I said, “you need your bart a trim, but I can't do this, I ain't got that skill.”
To which he said, “”An' have I not since birth been hard-favored to look upon? So wenches have told me with sworn oaths untolled times, Pinky, and yet most were not so nice they denied my hand their plackets!” A gleek.
Then I tried to make him well if I could. I got Nat Weaver, who put on his fringed hat the English call thrummed, which was the fashion country yokels mostly wore, and he took me to find a old woman named Goody Watson, who in this village they called Old Goody, she was the midwife and could make physics and clysters and salves and herb plasters. She was alt, more old than even me now when I'm telling. Nat Weaver said eighty years, the church register had a writing from her baptism to prove, which is alt, but I heard once from a Court gentle how there was a country lady of quality family, Bess of Hardwicke her name was, was more than ninety years, which they talked about much in London then for a miracle from God's grace, and also this noble country lady ninety years she said she lived because she was her whole long life chaste, which is maybe true, because I'm now so alt and was always chaste, but maybe if it's a god I got also such a grace?
And I paid this Goody Watson a groat for a physic and also a clyster, which she said was specific for pain in the guts, unless it was the stone my Will suffered, for which she didn't have no specific for melting away a stone, which you had to cut by a surgeon, which she wasn't and there wasn't in this Aldensmill. Also she could bleed, but I didn't trust her to do this because she wasn't a barber. I said to her, “A groat's more than what a physician costs in London!”
To which she did me a curtsey, this old Goody Watson, eighty years alt proved by a church register from her baptism, she curtsied me with her apron and said, “God bless, they say you are a Jew, for our young Walter tells it to all this is so, but e'en if you are, good master, the price of a thing will vary in accord where you be, shall it not?” Which I said was possibly true, but a four pence groat would still pay her a groundling's place to see a London play, and buy two quarts the best brewer's beer and a orange to eat there, to which she said she never saw playacting, only strolling mummers and singing bards and church performance on holy days, but said she did drink beer, which she said gave her long life with God's grace. “And bless your man they say's a merry dancer of jigs from London too, good sir!”
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