“Because what the man told you has hurt you already.” Bowsprit stood again. “We must not speak of it again.”
“But we must. I can’t bear to think this man knows things that I do not, and now it seems you know things and … Why am I not allowed to know? You’re all claiming to protect me, but …”
“He is claiming to protect you? He must be a better actor than I thought.” Bowsprit stood and flexed his hands.
Merula watched him, pleading with him with her eyes.
He sighed and sat down again. “I know nothing about your parents or your past. How could I? When you were born, I was at sea, far away from here. But I do know something about this man whom you met.”
“You know him? You’ve met him before?”
Bowsprit shook his head. “He was at the inn when I was there in my disguise to find out things about the murder and Oaks. He was with other men, and because I was unaware who knew things and who didn’t, I asked the man I was talking to who those people at the corner table were. He told me they were traveling actors who come to these parts every summer.”
Traveling actors! That fit with the wandering existence the man had mentioned to her.
Bowsprit continued, “They perform their plays out in village squares or at country houses if the owners want to hire them.”
“Have they performed with Oaks? No, he’s a hermit, so … Bixby then?”
“Indeed. I learned they’ve been coming here for many years. In fact, some of them’ve been coming here for decades. This man I spoke with at the inn told me he watched their plays when he was just a boy.”
“So it’s possible that this man was here and met my mother that one summer when she was here as well.”
“It’s possible. But how much will he remember of it? It is long ago. He might make more of it and … I’ve seen deceit everywhere, all over the world. People claiming to have information about loved ones who went missing or who died. To get money, to get attention. It is sad, but it happens. I don’t want you to become a victim of this.”
“If he had wanted to abuse my interest for money, he would have asked for it already.” Merula didn’t want to say he could easily have done so in exchange for showing her her mother’s photograph. She would have eagerly paid for that. “Where are these traveling actors staying?”
“There are some abandoned cottages that used to belong to shepherds who took their sheep out on the moors. They are now rented to the actors. They keep to themselves mostly, forming their own small community around those cottages.”
Merula’s mind raced. “Can you take me there? Now that Raven is not around?”
“I don’t know if that is such a good idea.” Bowsprit frowned at her. “An actor is used to playing a part. Why would he be honest with you? What is there for him to gain?”
“What is there for him to lose if he’s honest? I think he really knew my mother. He … had her photograph with him.”
“You’re sure that it was your mother in the photograph?”
Merula wanted to open her mouth to affirm, then realized she didn’t know for sure because she had never actually seen her mother. She had been gazing at that photo Aunt Emma had given her and stood on her dressing table at home. But who was the woman in that photograph?
“They’ve all lied to me.” Her voice was bitter. “You ask me how I can trust this man, but my own family lied to me. Aunt Emma, Uncle Rupert. Julia I don’t blame because she was a toddler when I came to live with them. She grew up with the stories Aunt Emma told us. But Aunt Emma herself and Uncle Rupert … There was also a letter they told me nothing about. They lied for all those years!”
“For a reason, I’m sure. They know something about your mother’s elopement, the circumstances …”
“Why do you call it an elopement? She might have married, she might have …” Merula swallowed as she realized the man had told her that her mother was dead. She had not become happy. She had not found whatever she had wanted when she had gone away from home.
Bowsprit continued, “Your uncle discussed this journey with Raven, and he demanded that we take good care of you. I’m sure he never meant for you to get involved with people who come from your mother’s past. Raven promised he would watch over you.”
“I don’t need watching over.” Merula clenched her hands and winced as her nails touched the markings already embedded in her flesh. “I only want to use this opportunity. You just said yourself I might never have such a chance again. Nothing will happen to me, I’m sure. Just take me to where the actors live. Let me speak with this man one more time.”
“He walked away from you. He didn’t want to tell you any more.” Bowsprit grimaced. “Either he is sincere, or it was a ruse to lure you to him. Neither of these is a pleasant prospect. He either wants to protect you against the truth, which means it is bad, or he is after something, like a predator after prey. How can I go with you and put you in peril?”
Merula considered this for a few moments. “I want to know. Raven once said to me that not knowing is the worst thing.” They had talked about his mother’s death, the questions surrounding it, the fear that had grown over the years that her drowning hadn’t been an accident but rather that she had been driven to death by some malicious person.
Raven blamed himself that he hadn’t been able to protect his mother, and that he hadn’t looked into her death more closely when papers suggesting she had been murdered had come into his hands upon his eighteenth birthday. The weight of that guilt pressed heavily upon his life, darkening his future. “I’m sure that if he had a chance to find out about … things from his past he wants to know, he would do it. No matter what the risk.”
Bowsprit thought about this. He threw his head back and stared up at the ceiling. The silence seemed to grow heavier as it stretched before them. Then he looked at her again. “I’ll do it. I’ll take you. But we’ll tell Raven about it when we are back. You need not tell him what you learned if you like. But we’ll tell him that we went there. I don’t want to keep secrets from him.”
Bowsprit hesitated and then added, “You have the advantage of me, Miss Merriweather. You know things about Raven that he never told me. Apparently he puts much faith in you. You must not damage that faith. You understand?”
Merula’s eyes pricked with tears unshed. Bowsprit had every reason to be mad at her because she had become Raven’s confidant about matters he himself knew nothing about. He had every reason to be mad at Raven for treating him the way he had, yelling at him for having allowed Merula to meet that man at the tor.
Still Bowsprit was loyal, to both of them.
She was very lucky indeed to know such people. To be able to rely on them.
CHAPTER 14
When Bowsprit had mentioned abandoned shepherds’ cottages, Merula had imagined low gray stone buildings with a thatch roof and mud all around them. Not these cheery little homes with slate roofs and wooden benches in front on which women sat sewing colorful costumes and doing each other’s makeup.
An elderly man played on a violin, a strangely haunting melody that seemed to mix with the wind whispering across the moor.
There was a table with glasses of wine, cheeses, and cold cuts, and a cute little spaniel lounging underneath in the tall grass and weeds, waiting for a bite to come his way.
Two men in costumes were fencing with each other, the steel of their épées glinting in the light of the sun high above. When one of them attacked and stabbed the other, Merula gasped, raising a hand to her mouth, expecting to see blood stain the man’s shirt. But the épée’s point had slid back into the handle and the victim wasn’t hurt at all.
“A stage prop,” Bowsprit explained with disgust in his voice. “Nothing real.”
She glanced at him. “Do you not like the stage? Acting? I think it’s such an exciting world. I’d like to know more about it.” Had her mother been to the plays? Had she met the actors and then struck up a friendship of sorts with the man who still carried her
photograph?
Bowsprit shrugged. “It’s all a game. Deception in their masks and the trapdoors they use to whisk players away from the stage or have them appear out of nowhere. Nothing that you see is real.”
The women who sat sewing looked at them with sharp interest, and a man with a shiny high hat came over and made a mock bow. “Welcome to the Moorland cottages, our humble abode for the summer. How may we help you? Are you perhaps looking for a night’s entertainment? We perform several plays, from the lofty Shakespeare to something more … may I say, risqué?”
He grinned mischievously. “In present company I will not mention details, but gentlemen will very much appreciate the novelty and wit.”
“We’re looking for someone,” Bowsprit said quickly. “I saw him recently at the inn. He mentioned the name of a communal acquaintance, and as we apparently have friends in common, I thought I’d look him up to talk some more. Unfortunately, I didn’t ask for his name, but I do know he lodges here.”
“That is unfortunate indeed.” Distrust sparkled in the man’s eyes. “We are a large party here. I can’t call them out one by one to present them to you so you can see if your drinking mate is among them. But thank you for coming by, and if you’d care for a glass of wine, you’re welcome to help yourself to it.”
Brusquely, he turned away to go.
Bowsprit said, “There has been a murder in this region. Not just any murder—a man getting stabbed after a loss in a card game, or a wayside robbery gone wrong—but a deliberate gruesome matter. A girl strangled when she was alone by the river.”
The man froze. Without turning to them, he asked, “And?”
Bowsprit leaned casually on one leg. “Well, you know how it is when people in small towns start talking. They blame outsiders for all of their problems.”
The man turned back to them, his eyes now hostile. “Especially when someone points them in that direction. Is that what you mean?”
Bowsprit didn’t deny or confirm.
The man narrowed his eyes. “You must have urgent business with the man you seek.”
Bowsprit smiled. “Let us just say he owes a debt.”
“I see. That can be urgent indeed. I suggest you look around and find him for yourself. I’m no debt collector. And I want no trouble either. We’re hardworking people who earn an honest living with our performances.”
“I’m sure of that.” Bowsprit gestured for Merula to follow him past the table with the playful dog and the fencing man to where a large barn was. Voices resounded inside.
Merula whispered to Bowsprit, “Why did you have to threaten him? I don’t want to alienate these people.”
“Because he wasn’t going to help us. Like the villagers, these actors form a closed group. They’ve been together for many years. They’re like family. They don’t betray one another.”
They came to the open doors of the barn. Inside, two men stood on a makeshift stage of wood and hay bales, and a woman was just reciting her lines, raising her hands to the ceiling as she wondered why on earth fate had sent two men her way, both of whom she loved.
A fourth was watching their performance, his arms crossed over his chest. Merula’s heart skipped a beat when she recognized the man she had spoken with earlier at Harcombe Tor.
“No, no,” he called out, stamping his foot. “You’re making it all sound far too trivial. You need to use your facial expression more. Like this.”
He came up to the actress and raised his own arms up, twisting his face into a look of utter despair. “By the time we get to this part of the performance, most spectators will have drunk so much they’re barely following along. Exaggeration is the way to go, my dear.”
He gave her a playful pat on the back and then turned away, suddenly spotting Merula and Bowsprit. He froze a moment, his eyes betraying a flash of anger. Then he came up to them with a smile. “Welcome, welcome. You want to hire us? I’ll step outside for a moment to discuss the terms.”
“Especially the money,” one of the men shouted after him. Roaring laughter accompanied their exit.
Outside the man drew them behind the barn, out of sight of the women sewing and the table with the dog. He walked fast, muttering to himself. Then a safe distance away, he stopped and hissed, “What on earth do you think you’re doing? Do you want the others to recognize you as well as Blanche’s daughter? You should never have come here.”
“Do you care so much for Miss Merriweather?” Bowsprit asked. “Or for your own hide? I mentioned the murder of a local girl to your leader, and he about fainted away.”
“Murder?” the other breathed. “What has that got to do with …?”
Bowsprit planted his feet firmly apart. “Nothing. For the moment.”
“Is that a threat?”
“I’m not sure. Do I need one?”
The man exhaled. Then he half laughed. “You’re a most chivalrous gentleman. But you’re barking up the wrong tree. I’ve done Miss Merriweather no harm.” There was a hint of amusement in his pronunciation of the name.
Merula said, “Why do you find my name amusing?”
“Because it was made up, of course. For our plays, the ones we wrote ourselves, we always made up names. Blanche laughed at our more daring creations. She always used to say, why not choose something straightforward and happy like Merriweather?”
“But my aunt and uncle didn’t know that, did they? How can they have …?” Merula stared at him. “Did my mother name me?”
“To her dying breath, she believed that the man she had given up everything for would come and make everything right. She had not registered your birth yet because she wanted you to have his name. But I knew he would never agree to that. Besides, it wouldn’t have been a good thing. So when she died, I registered you. I chose Merriweather, as she might have liked it.”
“And Merula?”
“That was her choice. She loved birds. She could sit outside and listen endlessly to their singing.” His expression was soft and his eyes had a faraway look, as if he saw Blanche sitting and listening to her feathered friends.
“And what about the pendant?” Merula touched the place where it rested under her clothes.
“I don’t know where or how she got it. But she clutched it in her hand when she died. She whispered that he would keep his promise to her. But he never did.”
“So it was a gift from my father? Did you know him? Was he an actor too? Was he here with this group?”
The man shook his head. “Merula …” His voice shivered a moment on her name. “You ask too many questions. It has been twenty years. It’s over and done with.”
“Not for me. I’ve never known anything. I’ve been fobbed off with a photo that is not of my parents, with lies about them having been married. They never were, were they?”
He said nothing.
Merula’s voice rose. “Were they? Tell me!”
“What is the use of it?” The man grabbed her arm.
Bowsprit seemed to want to come between them but hesitated as the man spoke pleadingly. “Leave it be. It was my fault for coming up to you at Gorse Manor. For a brief moment I thought it couldn’t hurt to speak with you and ascertain that you were happy like I had hoped you would be when I sent you to live with your aunt and uncle. I’m a sentimental old man. But I meant you no harm. Go away from here, cherish that other photograph and whatever your aunt and uncle told you. They love you, you can believe that.”
“But what they told me were lies. I suspected that already and now I know for certain. I can’t go back to believing what they said. I need to know the truth. Whatever it may be.”
The man sighed. “The truth?” He sounded wistful. “What is the truth? You should have asked Blanche’s friends at the time, the girls she confided in, the ones she whispered to when they stood around the campfire and toasted each other with the wine.”
Merula stared at him. “She was with the actors? Part of your group?” Had Aunt Emma felt ashamed to admit that her sister
had run off to be an actress? “Was my father an actor, then? Did she follow him? Or was it her own idea, and did they meet out here?”
“He brought her to us and we took her in. She needed a new family, having abandoned the old.” His lips tightened. “How she needed family.”
“Did she miss her parents and her sister?”
“She pretended not to. She wanted to show him a happy face. But he was away for days on end, and she pined for him. She only lived when he was around. Like a flower opens up to the sunshine. I once told her she had to leave, go back home. But she just scoffed at me, blamed me for having said it. She avoided me from that day forward. Nobody took much notice of me back then. I was just a stagehand. And a fool.”
Merula studied his features. Was he sincere? Or playing a part like Bowsprit had warned her? Was he simply exaggerating like he had just told the actors to do?
“Every summer we’ve come back to this region. And every summer I’ve asked myself if it could have been different. If she could have survived. If we could have had a happy ending. But it could not have. I know that. And you must believe it as well. She loved a man so blindly and devotedly that she gave up everything for him. The safety of her home, the prospects she had. She threw it all away with a smile, for love. It sounds so grand, but in the end it was all but grand when she died, alone.”
Merula clenched her jaws, her heart breaking for this life-hungry, wide-eyed girl who had grabbed for happiness and lost it all. Had she regretted it on her deathbed? Had she blamed the man who hadn’t even come to be with her?
She managed to say through gritted teeth, “And what about my father? Where was he when she died?”
The man looked past her. “He is dead. As he should be. He deserved no better.”
“So both my parents are dead. I really am an orphan.”
Putting it into words, Merula felt like the world grew wider around her, expanding into an enormous open space without cottages and music and laughing people and sweet little dogs, a space in which she was all alone. No parents, no siblings, no past, no future in which her mother would hug her on her wedding day and her father would give her away. Nothing.
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