I peered through the cell bars into the shadows. I saw no movement, no color. No light. “Father?”
Nothing. No sound.
“Father, it’s me, Thomas.” Maybe he was sleeping. Or unconscious. Perhaps he was even dead—how often did the guards check their prisoners?
A clink of chains. “Why are you here?”
It was his voice, and yet not. Instead of the solid tenor I’d come to know, it was a scratchy wisp of a thing. My nerves cringed at the pain in it.
“I . . .” There were no right words. “Father, I’m sorry.”
“Leave me.”
I gripped the bars, though I didn’t know if he was looking at me. “I would rather perish with you than leave you in loathing of me.” Please come. Please come into the light so I can see you.
“I don’t fault you. You were too young.” Too young to be part of the plot. Too young to be trustworthy. Too young to receive my mask.
“It is not the immaturity of my age that swayed me, Father. There was a different voice speaking reason into my ear—a voice I grew to trust.” I wanted him to say it. I wanted to know that he knew.
“White Light.”
“The voice you were trying to protect. You were faithful to your beliefs, but it was your beliefs that were set awry.” Could he see the anguish on my face? Could he see how desperately I wanted him to understand?
A low, humorous laugh. “Do you think,” he said, “that after torture beyond what you’ve ever dared to imagine, I would sway now?”
My vision blurred as I peered into the gloom. “Will you not speak to me face-to-face? Will you not come forward?”
Another clink of chains. Then I saw a small corner of black wood. His mask? But something was off. It was only a piece. Then another one came visible as he moved into the limited light. They’d smashed his mask into four pieces and reattached it to his face with nails and tar. The chunks of mask nailed to his skull and cheekbones glowed like a sickly skeleton.
I stared at his broken mask—hiding a face that I would never see revealed. Now representing his shame. For a fierce moment, I wished I could take his place. But the best I could do was try to make him understand. This was my chance. Be bold now or be guilty forever. “I don’t ask you to sway. I ask you to listen. If White calls out to you, will you listen?”
Father slunk back into the half shadows, low to the ground as though living on all fours.
“I wish I could have seen your face.”
“A mask is a man’s honor. A man’s pride.” His usually bold and strong statement sounded halfhearted.
I lifted my White mask from my belt. “If that’s true, why don’t you respect mine?”
“You meddled with White Light to get it. It is not of honest means.” He lifted a hand to pick at the dead skin around his mask shards.
“I never asked for it!” My voice echoed off the stones. “I never asked for White to speak to me or to create a mask. Of its own accord, it led me, warned me, cured me, and helped me defeat John Dee. It used me to eradicate the plague. It saved . . . it saved me.” My voice clogged. “Why are those things so wrong to you? I might have had the stone eye, but you are the blind one.”
He remained silent at my insult. My next statement was quiet. Resigned. “I sought the source—like Wintour is always encouraging us to do. And . . . it answered me. White Light is the source of color power and it showed me truth.”
“You succumbed to its will!”
“No, I sought to understand its will and I found that I agree with it. How can you claim to fight for White’s name if you won’t even speak to it?”
The mask pieces on his face clattered together as he cringed. He turned his face away and I barely heard his response. “You know the answer. It’s too dangerous.”
“More dangerous than trying to blow up the king?” I leaned closer. “Father, fear has never held you back from anything. Why are you afraid of this?”
“Skilled and knowledgeable Keepers have protected us for generations.” He sounded like he was trying to convince himself.
“So you are going to trust the voice of a man above the voice of the first color that designed color power and made it bond with our masks?”
A broken sigh. Father seemed to be resigning himself to the fact we’d never agree. Perhaps I should do the same. “What are you trying to accomplish, Thomas?”
“I want you to know that my decision was worth it.” That was what it came down to. “You need to set aside your fear. Bonding with White Light was worth every single heartache and regret that I will live with until I die. And I couldn’t let you perish without knowing that.”
“Thank you, Thomas.”
I didn’t move. The guard—sensing the end to our conversation—came to escort me out. I gripped the bars. “Please, Father—please tell me you’ll try.”
He shook his head slowly, as though in pain.
“Time to go,” the guard muttered.
“Please!” I pleaded through the bars. “Do this one thing. If not for you, then for me!”
He lowered his head onto his knees, his greasy hair falling like a curtain between us. The guard tugged at my arm. But then I heard it—the barest broken whisper. “For you.”
Forty-Nine
Dawn approached to the countdown of my heartbeat.
Emma and I stood at the gallows, dressed in thick cloaks. Beside us, a wagon was loaded with what few belongings we shared between us—mainly canvases and her bottles of paint. After the hanging, we were leaving London. Together.
She, with a glowing portraitist recommendation from the queen herself. I, with a mask on my belt and a small pouch of what remained of my reward money. And both of us free. Almost more than the queen’s recommendation letter, Emma clutched another proclamation to her chest that she’d torn from the doorfront of the church.
A new edict that all English people—whether they be of colored skin or white—should train with a mask.
Granted, no master or masked was willing to train those of color. Yet. But the first step had been taken.
A crowd had gathered—the largest one I’d ever seen at a hanging. They called for blood. Many carried straw men strung up on sticks that they waved over their heads. I couldn’t understand the thirst.
I was born too soft to have such bloodlust. But a man can be both soft and strong, maintaining hope for the world. Emma had shown me hope.
She held my hand in hers while we watched the proceedings—her mask around her waist, revealing her stunning black skin and hair in all their glory. We got stares, but she held her chin high. Some people even stumbled away from her, giving a wide berth. I didn’t know why they feared her.
Perhaps it was the same type of fear Father battled—fear of the unknown.
I didn’t want to watch the hanging, but I had to see this plot through. I owed it to my comrades. To Father.
Rookwood went first. The platform rose above the crowd and a line of guards kept the people at bay—some still threw rocks. A ladder led to the top of the hanging post. Rookwood crawled up, adorned with a broken mask and bruised body. As his boots landed on each peg, a flash of his talents and qualities entered my mind. Even in the little time I knew him, I’d learned he was one of England’s most skilled horsemen and a stalwart soldier. Talents wasted because of his commitment to murder.
I admired him for his bravery—for his concern for Keepers and willingness to do what was needed to stop the persecution.
He reached the top of the ladder. A man slipped the noose around his neck. Then Rookwood leaped from the ladder and met his death with the crack of a neck. The crowd booed. They wanted him to survive the fall so he would suffer the disemboweling.
I was thankful he was dead.
Did anyone in the crowd have the courage these men did?
Wintour climbed the gallows next. Still short, but almost all his pudginess gone. I wouldn’t have recognized him without his mask shards stuck to his face with pins and tar. He loo
ked over the crowd as he ascended the ladder. Who was he looking for? Me?
His face stopped, turned in my direction. I couldn’t tell if it was because he saw me or someone else, but I gave a nod. He nodded back and my heart broke. Thus, Wintour ascended—a stubborn but kindhearted man who had negotiated with kings and fought loyally, who had never once feared the noose.
His drop left me ill.
Father was the last.
Two soldiers had to drag him to the gallows. He looked unconscious, and his entire form changed from the mighty vigilante I once followed through shadows. His legs shook, knobby and barely strong enough to support him. What had they done to him?
They deposited him on the ladder and left him the honor of climbing it himself. The mask pieces on his face were smeared with fresh blood.
The crowd started chanting, “Fawkes! Fawkes! Fawkes!” Not in an admiring way. His name—our name—had left the greatest mark on London’s people because Father was the first one captured. They were chanting for his death.
He forced one foot over the other, headed toward the gallows. He made it halfway up the ladder before he stilled, looping an arm through the rungs to catch his breath. The crowd screeched for his death. They mocked his weakness.
Everything within me cried, I can’t watch this! But I would not leave. I would not leave him this time.
“Father!” I screamed above the crowd.
No one stopped, but Father stilled and then scanned. Emma’s hand tightened in mine. I waved my free hand, choking. I wanted him to see me. I wanted to be with him when he died. I wanted him to have some sort of hope—some tiny measure of comfort in his death. The knowledge that I loved him, however little he might value that.
Then he saw me. He gripped the ladder rung so tightly, his knuckles turned white.
He must hate me.
But then he reached up with his free hand and wrenched the pieces of mask from his face, one after the other. He threw them to the ground and the crowd lunged for them. I didn’t know what they planned to do with them and I didn’t care. Because for the first time . . .
I saw my father’s face.
And it was kind.
Broken, twisted, bleeding, and bruised, but filled with a fierce strength that buoyed my courage beyond what it had ever been. In the clench of his jaw, the lift of his head, and the crinkle of his eyes . . . I saw pride.
In me.
The guard behind him struck him with a stick and Father continued his ascent, keeping his eyes on me. Near the top, he stopped, looping an arm through the rung to stabilize himself.
“Do you see?” he cried.
The crowd hushed, hungry to devour the convict’s last words. What they didn’t catch in his question was the wild joy. And that was when I saw the flash . . . the glimmer of White mingling with the blood that slipped from the nail holes.
White Light.
The hangman had had enough. He reached down and yanked Father upward, breaking Father’s balance. His foot slipped; his hand groped for a hold and met nothing.
Father knocked against the side of the ladder and then fell, headlong, to the cobblestoned ground. I didn’t see him land and the crowd’s exclamation drowned out the sound. But I shoved through bodies, dragging Emma behind me.
Then I saw him, lying in a twisted form, but with a relaxed body. Free of pain. White and Red pooling around his head.
The executioner checked him. The masses held a collective breath. “Dead,” he proclaimed.
Some groaned. Others cheered.
I. Breathed.
Take care of him.
I never stopped.
Emma said not a word until I finally turned away. “It is done.”
I nodded. “Let’s go.”
We didn’t stay to see them drawn and quartered—that was the excessive step that appeased the crowds and proclaimed them traitors. Their heads—with their cracked masks—would be stuck on spikes above London Bridge or maybe even the Parliament building.
But Emma and I were leaving the city of death—the city where my life changed and we both found truth. It was bittersweet, but the newness of the future sustained our hearts.
I couldn’t stop thinking of how Father abandoned his pride and threw his mask pieces to the ground. When he pointed to his face and screamed, “Do you see?” It was as if he were saying, “Do you see what you did?” And it was something for which he was thanking me. Something of which he was proud. A new mask for him to wear—of blood and light.
I would never know what exactly happened to him the last night he spent in his cell, and I knew White Light wouldn’t tell me if I asked. But what mattered was that it had happened.
Father had seen what I’d seen. He’d seen the wall that the Keepers had built between themselves and White Light. He’d seen the misunderstanding that Igniters had about using its power.
He’d seen truth.
We climbed into the wagon. I grabbed the reins and flicked the mare’s flanks. We rolled through the empty streets, passing shops and market stalls that had once been places of secret meetings and a hesitant relationship between Emma and me.
I had entered London in a prison cart, set on revenge and riddled with plague.
I left a free man—free of prison, revenge, and my plague. But what a cost I’d had to pay. I’d handed over my pride, my cowardice, and my relationships. In return, I found life.
“How are you doing?” Emma asked once we’d broken free from the city and rolled through the countryside.
I would be annoyed if that question came from anyone else. “I’m sorrowful . . . but no longer burdened.”
She rested her head on my shoulder. I put my arm around her. A small flare of warmth came from where my mask rested at my belt.
Before I received my mask, I didn’t know who I was—my skill, my purpose, my identity. I thought I was supposed to know. But instead, I learned how to search—how to track down the origins of skill, purpose, and identity. How to get to the source.
It’s really not that hard, you know. I’m right here.
My lips curved. It was almost a smile.
I still didn’t know exactly who I was going to become.
—I pulled my White mask free and set it against my face, warmth flying through my veins—
But it was time to find out.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
WHAT’S TRUE AND WHAT’S NOT
My dear reader, you made it. To be honest, I wasn’t sure I’d make it to the end of this story. This book is historical fiction (with a fantasy twist), but so much of it is built off a true story. I wanted it to be as historically accurate as possible outside of my creation of Thomas and color power. I think you’ll be surprised to find out what aspects are true. And to think . . . I used to find history boring.
The Gunpowder Plot was real—one of countless failed attempts to assassinate King James. All the plotters were real men—Catesby, Wintour, Percy, Jack, Kit, Bates, Keyes, Rookwood, Fawkes—and their involvement, roles, descriptions, and deaths are as accurate as the history books allow. The plotters not really touched on in this story were Tresham, Digby, and Tom Wintour’s brother, Robert.
Yes, Catesby was the ringleader and Percy was an undercover mounted guard. And yes, those two were killed by a single bullet that passed through them both.
Guy Fawkes is the most infamous because he was caught in the belly of Parliament with the gunpowder. Yes, he really did die by falling off the gallows ladder. For his sake, I’m glad.
I wanted to tell their stories. Because every story, every stance, every passion, and every war has two sides. Sometimes three. Sometimes more. And Thomas’s story is one of exploring, of seeking, of examining and digging for truth. His and Emma’s story is one of listening. Much healing can be found through the commitment to listen and the willingness to talk the hard talks and dig for truth.
So, speaking of truth . . .
WHAT’S TRUE
The Masque of Blackness was a real masquera
de put on by Ben Jonson—and yes, it showed black-skinned travelers turning white when they set foot on land in England. While slavery was not legal in England, there was clearly an opinion about people of color that affected their acceptance into society.
Although slavery was illegal in England, Queen Elizabeth did allow John Hawkins to start and profit off the slave trade. But by the 1600s, a black community began to form in England—sometimes called the first. They were ordinary working class, often employed as servants, musicians, dancers, and entertainers. But at this time in England, very few inhabitants of London had seen black people before; some were fascinated and some were uneasy. Most were paranoid and labeled blacks as terrible creatures. Through Thomas’s story, I wanted to capture what it might be like for a light-skinned person to encounter a dark-skinned person with fresh eyes—free of a lengthy history of racism. While Thomas was still impacted by his environment and the knowledge of the slave trade, he was able to see Emma for who she was and to see her skin color as something startlingly unique and beautiful.
A movie—and true story—that deeply moved me and inspired me for Emma’s character was the movie Belle. Go watch it.
WHAT’S STRETCHED
Thomas Fawkes. He may or may not have existed—go do your own digging and see what you find. There’s a mysterious record of his birth, but nothing more. So I snagged that loophole and made it my own. While there is a single record of his existence, I did fiddle with a few dates to make sure that he was the correct age for the story. I’m an author. I can do that. ;-)
John Dee was a real man—an alchemist known for having the greatest library in England. But—to my knowledge—he wasn’t involved in the plot in any way. But he was perfectly set up to serve as one of my villains.
The plague existed and terrorized people (though obviously it wasn’t turning people to stone). However, it wasn’t officially eradicated from England until 1666, during the Great Fire of London (which was started by Emma’s favorite bakery on Pudding Lane. Oopsie.).
Emma Areben was not the Baron Monteagle’s ward. To my knowledge, the Baron never even had a ward. Emma comes straight from my imagination, but represents real women and people of diverse backgrounds and skin color caught up in this culture of newness, caution, and change.