To which I said he wasn't my man, and I wasn't his. I said I was his impresario and he was more as just a dancer, and she told me she didn't know from what was a impresario, and I told her it was a Italian word from Italy, and she asked me if Italy was also in London, so I said her thanks for her medicines and blessings also, took them to my Will to maybe make him well.
Which I gave him, Old Goody Watson's specifics, the physic he swallowed, even if it made him choke some, and the clyster I put in his bum myself. And by just noon they worked like they should, he made a big turd there on his pallet, he couldn't stand up to go to the jakes, and a joint-stool Nat Weaver didn't have to bring to the shed, from which I had to get more mostly clean rainwater and a cloth to clean my Will again, and it was blood also came from the physic and clyster, which made me afraid, but still not certain he would starb. From which, washing him all, I seen he didn't probably have a French pox, which the French call Spanish disease, because it wasn't no sores from it on his putz or his cods.
“Does it feel more well, Will, in your guts now?” I asked him.
He said, “Aye, precious pearl Pinky, but a starving wretch will take so much joy in a bun as an' it were a fat roast goose stuffed with hashed rabbit, and were he dying athirst, small beer will taste so well as sugared sack 'pon his tongue, think you not?” A gleek.
After the noon he was some little more better, I think, we could talk lots, even merry some we were like before, even if I feared from night coming. It was another the warm midsummer days, and it would of been good to be there with my Will Kempe even if Aldensmill village was so poor and the air stinking from the fires they burned to make charcoals from the woods near to sell in markets, even as far as London, which was far away from us now.
But we talked lots some of that day, until it got dark when he starb, my Will.
We talked from the first time I seen him, in the country north, when a Maypole fair it was in a village, where he danced his comic Morris I seen, how the yokel swains and yoemen and their wenches laughed to see him dance, and I laughed also to see Will Kempe the first time ever dancing, half-fap drunk he was on wines and strong country beer, and singing and saying gleeks and coarse japes and witty sallies and trying to pinch wenches on their bum and see down their bosoms when they didn't wear a kerchief, madcap he was the first time I seen him.
I said, “Will, can you remember from the first time I seen you dancing by the Maypole fair in that village north? Can you remember from that like I do?”
To which he said, with his teeths shut closed because of pains in his gut hurt him so, “Ah, Pinky, I see thee in mind's eye an' if t'were yesterday, not years ago, a ragtag vagrant Jew knave thou wert, a-selling those books of claptrap natural wonders you called them, chock-full of falsehoods dreamed by hack scribes for pennies, and you a false Jew yourself, for you wandered a-selling on a forged magistrate's warrant! Go to, Pinky!”
Which I said, “I needed me a warrant, without they could put me in a stocks or even whip for a vagabond could be a hookman.”
“And spoke such a twisted English on your tongue, no more proper than a trained bear dances, sweet false vagrant Jew you were, my Pinky pearl! And still you speak no nicer than some crow's tongue's been split to mimic speech! Go to, Pinky!”
To which I said, “You was a shikker cup-shot drunken even that first time,” I said, “but still you could dance the best jig with bells ever in England!” We laughed some.
7