What a fool! Would I and my wet clothes be thrown back into the stormy night? Back into the cold with no help and no fire?
I glanced around the room. There was nothing with which to block the door. The best I could do was use my own bare skin as a weapon. They wouldn’t force a naked boy onto the street.
Anticipating an invasion any moment, I did the only thing I could: I climbed into bed. Perhaps I’d gain a wink of slumber beneath a soft feather blanket before being wrenched from my reprieve.
And perhaps they’d leave me be. I paid good coin after all.
The slam of the door against the inner wall startled me from my dream of London, Father, and my mask.
“There he is, Sheriff Nix. The plagued.” I blinked away my confusion, only to recognize the innkeeper’s shout. “Contaminating my room!”
Someone yanked the blanket off me. I instinctively curled my limbs against the rush of chill air, not just to shield myself from the cold, but also from blows. My good eye finally focused and took in the scene.
Still dark. The innkeeper stood in the door, while the maid gathered my feather blanket into her arms. I should have paid her off.
“Burn it outside.” At the innkeeper’s command, she disappeared.
A third person filled my vision. His tall frame caused his head to skim the ceiling. He wore a shining Grey mask and a saber at his side. He threw my clothes at me. Still wet, they slapped me in the face and drew a gasp. “Dress, boy. It’s to the prison with you.”
“But what—”
The sheriff raised a fist. “I give you ten seconds. Then I’m dragging you out whether you’re clothed or not.”
I struggled to pull on my wet clothing—every muscle tense against the ice. “Please, sir. I’ve been traveling long. It’s no crime to be infected!”
“Have you a pass to travel?” Sheriff Nix rounded on me as I tied my leggings. “Urchins like you are spreading the plague by wandering from town to town!” He yanked the doublet over my head and then pulled me after him. I barely managed to snag my dripping cloak.
“No one’s caught the plague from me since I contracted it a year ago.” I stumbled from the room. “It’s dormant!”
But that was now a lie. Five days ago it had spread. Overnight.
The inn had filled with the late-night revelers, all of whom stopped their drinking to watch the sheriff drag a half-clothed, maskless, one-eyed boy down the stairs and out the front door. I ducked my head to block their stares.
Father would be ashamed.
But who cared about him? He was the true swine behind my predicament. At least I had food in my belly, though my body ached and my good eye stung from the need for rest.
The prison was an enormous stone gate that arched over the road. Barred windows flanked the street. I’d seen plenty of prisoners through the windows in York’s prison, begging for alms so as to pay their debts.
The wooden door creaked as Sheriff Nix threw me to the ground, then rifled through my clothes. His fist emerged with my remaining groat. I scrabbled for footing. “That coin is mine!”
“This is payment to the innkeeper for a new mattress and blanket.” Sheriff Nix tucked it in his own pocket.
My eyes narrowed. “You’re keeping it for yourself, aren’t you?”
He smacked my head, then shoved me into a cell with a barred window and a huddle of sleeping inmates. He slammed the door and with a harsh whisper, the lock clicked.
I gripped the bars. “How long do I have to stay in here?”
Sheriff Nix turned, but I caught his low mutter. “Depends on if the inmates leave ye alive.” He left.
I heaved my weight against the door, but it didn’t budge. “Come back!” A prisoner shushed me and then rolled onto his other side. I pressed my face against the bars to stop my shivering.
“If the inmates leave you alive.”
I looked over my shoulder. Five lumps of cloth and stench. Five men, from what I could tell. Those men would wake in a few hours, and when they saw they were imprisoned with a plagued . . .
They would surely kill me.
Three
“What’s wrong with your face, boy?” A maskless prisoner with wild hair and even wilder eyes peered at me through the morning light.
I pulled my makeshift bandage lower over my stone eye. “Sheriff struck me.” While the prisoners slept, I’d ripped a sleeve from my shirt and tied it around my head.
The man’s spidery eyebrows popped upward. He scooted closer. “Let me see.”
I jerked away. “Thank you, no. It is tender.”
“A cloth won’t help the tenderness. Give your bruise some air.”
“Leave me be!” My heart thudded.
He shrugged and made his way back to the window. Early risers were out on the streets, passing by our cell. “Marie!” the old man cried. “Marie, do ye not love me anymore?”
A young lady with a Green mask and a basket of flowers over her arm wended her way to the window. “My farthings sure don’t.” With a gentle whisper, she sent a sunshine-yellow flower through the air and into his outstretched palm. “That’s worth a ha’ penny. Perchance ye can sell it to a passerby, yes?” She blew a kiss and disappeared through the gate.
“Until tomorrow, sweet Marie!” The old man brought the flower to his nose and remained that way until another passerby returned him to begging.
The other prisoners, once woken, peppered me with questions.
How old was I?
“Sixteen.”
What got me thrown in prison?
“Traveling without a permit.”
What had I heard during said travels?
I recalled the passing chatter of the men at the Castle and Crown. “Another Keeper was executed in London.”
They all went silent. Then . . . “Poor soul.”
One man in the back corner snorted. “Those Keepers are causing this plague. The faster we rid our country of them, the sooner the plague leaves. King James is too soft on ’em.”
“Too soft?” The window man sneered. “Keepers are being executed every month!”
“Should be every week,” the corner man said.
None responded and that’s when I knew. The rest of them were Keepers. Like me. Imprisoned for believing that color power should be limited to one color.
The window man turned his face toward me. “Be ye from a Keeper family, boy? Or were you raised Igniter?”
As if any man would answer such a question.
The creak of a door preceded a beam of light as Sheriff Nix entered, wearing his Grey mask. It reflected the sun and blinded me for a moment. “Keepers, out.”
The cell lock clicked without a key.
All prisoners but myself and the corner man exited, dragging their chained feet. I didn’t want to incriminate myself. They’d hang me—mask or no, I was sixteen. And once you hit sixteen, you could swing for your beliefs.
Nix moved to close the door but paused when his gaze landed on me. “Boy, you’re to be sent back home. Keep the plague to your own people.”
“Plague?” one of the Keepers squawked.
Now Nix had done it. He hauled me out and then locked the door again. “Where did you come from?”
I opened my mouth to say York, but with a single hiccup of thought, I switched. “London.”
“I thought so.” Before I knew it, I was on my back in a cage wagon with the four Keeper prisoners, trundling toward London. Had my heart not been thumping so frantically, I might have cheered.
The Keepers huddled in the opposite corner. Even they were wary of my plague, despite the fate of execution awaiting them in London. I stared at them with my good eye.
These men were going to die.
Suddenly obtaining my mask and getting revenge on Father seemed inconsequential. They were being taken to London to be hanged. What was going to happen to me? I needed to escape. They needed to escape. I had roughly one hundred ten miles in which to figure out a plan.
The May sun was finally shin
ing, warming my core and drying my clothes through the window and door bars. I settled myself on the wooden bench next to the door. Thick wood blocked the metal lock from view, but I tried Grey speech anyway.
Unlock. Let me out. Not even a tickle of Grey obedience touched my mind.
I tried again and even touched on Brown to talk to the wood surrounding the lock, to no avail. I needed a mask. Curse Father!
But what about that color that spoke to me on the road to Nottinghamshire? It had to have been Grey. What had it said on the evening of my testing? I am the one you want. And then on the road, it said it would help me.
Hello? Grey? I thought, though I didn’t know where to place my focus.
No response. I would keep trying.
The bumps on the road jarred my body and interrupted my focus every few seconds. I slumped over my knees and set to scraping mud off my shoes with my fingernail while I thought. Since I had just one good eye, perhaps the colors didn’t feel like they had my full attention.
At noon, I was let out to relieve myself. I took my time soaking in the warmth of the sun. The cart drivers kept a sharp watch on us, masks on and matchlock pistols in hand. No opening for a bolt.
Once we returned to the cart, I tried Grey speech again. And again.
Open. The lock didn’t even wiggle. Open! I glared at the lock, trying to show authority. This was simply a lock. It would obey me. It was my slave. I was master of the lock. I was a Fawkes.
“No matter ’ow ’ard you stare at that lock, it won’t obey you ’less you ’ave a mask.” One of the Keepers sat nearer me than before. Perhaps he figured that catching the plague didn’t matter if he was about to hang.
“You could help,” I said. “I’m doing this for all our sakes.”
“I can do nothing without my mask. It was taken. Broken.”
My throat tightened. They broke his mask? Would they allow no honor to ascend the gallows? “I have to try.”
“Best accept your fate.”
Accept my fate? That wasn’t the way of a Fawkes. “Has a color ever spoken to you without a mask?”
The response was instant. His eyes narrowed and the heads of the other Keepers snapped up. “Only one color ever speaks to a person,” said the Keeper with spiked eyebrows who flirted with Marie.
I waited.
He looked around and the others avoided his gaze. My intrigue increased. He finally looked back to me, grim. “White Light. It is the color through which all other colors come.” The carriage struck a rut in the road and we knocked into each other. He rested his elbows on his knees to steady himself. “White Light is the cause of war between Keepers and Igniters.”
Huh. That didn’t align with my understanding of the war. In my mind, it wasn’t that complicated: Keepers were loyal to one color, and had been for thousands of years. Whereas Igniters wanted to control all colors. Igniters broke the laws of color magic to bind with multiple colors.
Apparently monarchs loved power, because both Queen Elizabeth and King James were Igniters. Consequently all Keepers were exiled, hunted, and executed for “resisting progress.”
And that was the war in a nutshell. Simple as skipping. The only time I’d heard of White Light was when Norwood said to ignore it—it would turn me into an Igniter. “So is it good or bad?”
“Depends which side you’re on.”
“I’m on the side of whoever and whatever will get me out of this cage.” They went silent at that. So much for answers.
I leaned against the wall of the cart and closed my eye as though trying to nap. I doubted I fooled them—no one could nap in this bumpy hand basket.
Leicester came and went, adding three more infected prisoners and four Keepers to the cage—all of whom were older than me. We passed through Northampton, then Bedford, and finally Henford.
With each passing day, I grew more and more desperate to escape the cage of eleven prisoners and get some real food in my body.
I’d spent the previous three days of the jostling ride thinking about Father. London was ten times the size of York. He would take some time to find, but I’d track him down. Father kept to the Keeper way. If I found London’s Keepers, I would find him.
“Home sweet hell.” One of the prisoners used the window bars to hoist himself to a crouched position. I popped up from my bench and joined him at the window.
We trundled through a junction marked not by signs but by gallows. The worn structure bore the carved street names and also three swinging naked bodies—a couple days old by the looks of their swollen corpses and the flies that swarmed around them.
Distant bells rang. “They ring for the dead,” one Keeper said. “The plague is heavy in London.”
The horizon gave way to the rise of steeples and an expanse of houses with thatched roofs. The sun sank, taking the light with it and leaving behind a damp fog settling over the city. I wanted to stare longer—but a bump sent us sprawling.
“Get a good look, Keepers,” one of the plagued men said. “London be your graveyard.”
I didn’t want to think about these Keepers or their looming executions. I didn’t want to think about these men I’d spent three days in a cage with . . . dead. Perhaps it was cowardly of me, but I pushed them out of my mind and shored up any soft emotions.
I climbed back onto my bench spot. I needed to escape before the light completely left so I’d be able to navigate the city. White? Are you there?
Blast it all. What was its color speech? Did I need to command it? Coax it? Bow to it?
Free me. If you can.
How could White do anything? Nothing in my view was White, except the clouds above. It would do no good to move clouds—they could not help me escape from the prison wagon.
The cart trundled along, jostling my already exhausted and bruised body. I clutched my hands tight in my lap. The city grew nearer. I looked to the clouds, zeroing in on the White. Please. Please. I care not whether you’re for the Igniters or Keepers . . . Get me out of this place.
The other prisoners drooped like water-starved shrubs. None paid attention to me, each caught in his own dread. Buildings passed by the cart window, blocking my view. Blast it all! Blast the White color!
Just be quiet already! It’s your turn to listen.
There it was. I gripped the bench edge to keep from falling over. Please. Free me—
LIST-EN.
I stilled, willing myself to listen to the color that spoke in the deep recesses of my mind. What was I going to hear? Instruction? A command? Perhaps it was going to bargain with me—and I was willing to give it what it wanted.
Click.
The door creaked as we went over a bump. Then . . . it opened with a swing and a clang. I stared. The other prisoners jumped at the sound and the crack of dusk light that entered the paneled cage.
One breath.
Two.
Three.
On the fourth breath I overcame my shock and leapt out of the cart. My knees buckled when I landed and I collapsed to all fours. Mud slid between my fingers. I scrambled back up, joints protesting.
Shouts arose. Some of the other plagued prisoners ran free too. But the Keeper with spiked eyebrows stood in the doorway as the cart trundled on. I gestured with a caked hand for him to jump out.
He was old. Did he need help?
I didn’t have time for this! The drivers would notice the commotion any moment. I ran after the cart. I’d catch him if needed. “Come on!”
“How?” he called as I caught up. The other Keepers hovered behind him.
“Just jump!” I reached out with a hand, my limp legs quaking from lack of sustenance and exercise. “I’ll assist you.”
“How?” the Keeper bellowed. Only then did I realize he wasn’t asking how to get out of the cart.
“The White color did it!” I was losing momentum. “Now jump, old man!”
He shook his head and backed into the cart. “I cannot. A Keeper does not use White Light for his will. You have dabbl
ed in it like the Igniters.”
I stumbled to a halt. Was he jesting? He was going to stay in that blasted wagon because of . . . because of some twisted conviction?
“Have it your way.” I ran off as I caught the shouts of the drivers and the whinny of a reined horse.
I darted into an alley. I shouldn’t have left those Keepers there. I should have forced them out of the cart. Or perhaps followed and freed them a different way.
But what were they to me? They chose death. I chose to hide. I forced away the guilt. They made their choice. I could do nothing about that.
Still, a single word chanted in my brain as I turned my back on the road and the Keepers.
Coward.
Coward.
Coward.
My chest pounded and I couldn’t swallow. I crossed the street and entered the opposite alley. Then I ran, though my weak limbs swung to and fro and my mind didn’t process the streets of London beyond the fact they were a maze. A coward I might be, but at least I was a free one.
Four
The apple crates behind which I huddled smelled of rot. I crouched low, my stomach grumbling . . . craving even the rotten apples. But I knew better. For the moment, starving would fare me better than an ill stomach.
No shouts. No pursuit. I allowed a solid quarter hour to pass before moving again, wandering through the narrow alleys lit by single lanterns, dodging the evening shoppers and slosh of urine tossed from upper windows.
As I navigated the streets, my mind traversed the map in Norwood’s apothecary. Norwood was from London. It seemed unfair to be here without him.
At last I found a name mounted to the herringbone brick of a corner home: Tooley Street. It didn’t ring a bell, but as I continued down it, I stopped at the base of a cathedral. Its tower stretched so high, I expected it to puncture the moon.
The giant wooden door groaned as I entered on muddy tiptoes. Ahead were lines of pews beneath an impossibly high ceiling with equally tall stained glass windows. Spiral stone stairs waited in an alcove to my left.
I climbed them two at a time, until my chest heaved. They deposited me near the top of the steeple, where the bells hung. The walls were open, arched windows, and wind tried to push me to my death, all the while whistling threats in my ears. I stepped upon the ledge, one hand on the beam support.
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