Maria took him to be her father the instant she saw him approach. His horse was black, as was his hair, and he wore a long overcoat and black velvet breeches that had once been elegant, but now were threadbare. It was clear that witches didn’t frighten him. He shouted out for Rebecca, a grin on his face, and in return she called him Robbie, such a sweet name in her mouth she sounded like a girl again, the one she’d been on the day she’d first met him, when he’d been a member in a company of players, often taking the part of the hero, and she had been rapt all the while she watched him, certain that he was the one for her.

He’d turned to crime during the plague years, when theaters were shut down due to illness and Puritan beliefs. Many of Shakespeare’s plays hadn’t been revived until recently, and then, in altered form; still there were rogue companies of players, and some would still hire Robbie despite his history and his bad reputation in the theaters of London, where he had stolen from some of his contemporaries, charming them as he did so. As time went on, he became more of a thief than a player, and he couldn’t return to his true calling. All the same, he thought of himself not as a robber, really, but rather as a man portraying a robber, and in this role he had excelled. Horses were his specialty, and the hearts of women, and other men’s savings.

When he noticed Maria, he gazed at her, curious, but asked no questions, merely nodded a greeting. She was such a solemn creature, with her black hair parted down the middle and her pretty, somber mouth in the shape of a black rose. He would not know how to describe her, so he merely shook his head. He was quite marvelous at speaking other people’s words, but otherwise could not express himself. Some men are tongue-tied in that way; they need a prompt that allows them to release their emotions, unless they are in bed with a woman they love, and then they reveal themselves in a thousand ways. Maria gazed at her parents as they embraced. She herself would want more. A man who talked, who could speak for hours and still be worth listening to, as he told stories of his own making. A man who listened to what you had to say.