Fawkes

by Nadine Brandes

  I barely caught his words. “They have Norwood.” I looked up at Father, who now stood silent. “Benedict Norwood. My friend. My instructor from St. Peter’s.” My voice rose. “They have him!”

  He must have gotten caught coming into London. Blast it all! No! We should go to Catesby. We should get Jack and Kit Wright to come fight with us.

  “All the more reason to rule our emotions and outbursts tonight. We need to find the cart of Keepers. Have you seen him maskless?”

  “Aye.”

  “Then keep an eye out for his face. Let’s go. It is already past midnight.”

  We should go after Scar Face and his friend. “Those men attacked Mistress Areben one night,” I said mostly to myself. “And she was an Igniter.”

  “The Baron Monteagle’s ward?” Father asked.

  “Aye.”

  We passed a street filled with raucous laughter. I glimpsed men slumped against houses. One lifted his tankard. “Down with the Keepers!” Ale mixed with mud.

  “God save King Philip!” replied another.

  “Peace and freedom at last. Now if only the Scots would go back to their stinking highlands!”

  I wanted to shove all their heads into the ale barrels until their lungs filled with the liquid. Hypocrites! They claimed to crave peace and freedom; meanwhile, they attacked Keepers and imprisoned us for no reason other than different beliefs. I loathed the lot of them.

  Father stopped us by the bank of the Thames beneath the shadow of a wattle-and-daub house. Laundry fluttered overhead, mimicking the tempo of my erratic pulse. “When they come, you focus on getting the prison cart open. If there are fewer than three assailants, I can keep them busy.”

  “I’m good with a sword.”

  “Swords are no match for masks.”

  We waited for an hour. The cool air from the Thames chilled my body but did nothing to calm my mind. Norwood. They had Norwood. Father remained a statue, as though he had no concern or care for my friend.

  “What if we’ve missed the cart?” I finally said.

  “We haven’t.” He pointed. All I made out were shadows. Night. Darkness. My plagued left eye forced me to turn my head to get a full view. Then I caught it. Movement. Silhouettes. Whispers. A giant box on wheels crept by. I wanted to rush it. To burst it open and incapacitate the swine who dared trade people for coin.

  Father bounced on his toes. My heart leapt to my throat. I bent my stiff knees to warm my muscles. Then we advanced. I heard not a single footfall from Father’s progress. I willed my movements to be as obedient.

  As we drew nearer, the jeers of the captors met my ears. It sounded like more than three. In fact, as we rounded a corner, it sounded more and more like a . . . crowd.

  Why would there be a crowd at two in the morning? Even the revelers ought to have been stumbling to their mats by this time.

  The cart came into view again and Father slowed to a halt. It headed to a wider street.

  That boarded-up cart was identical to the one in which I’d traveled to London, with a small barred window on each side.

  A mob, intoxicated by King Philip’s peace treaty, followed, cheering as they did at the hanging. They threw old food and dirt clods at the cart.

  “Good riddance, plague bringers!”

  “May the drop be quick and the swing short!”

  “Deceivers! Scum! Hiding the White Light from us!” A glob of mud slammed into the side of the wagon.

  “There are too many.” Father’s voice sounded heavy. The wagon drew closer.

  “No! You do this every week. Surely you can do some—”

  “It has never been like this. We’re too late.”

  “No!” My shout was lost to the noise of the crowd. I wanted to scream, “You’re Guy Fawkes!” I couldn’t attack them without him. Maybe I’d overestimated Father’s color power. Maybe he wasn’t the Black I thought he was.

  The crowd and carriage exited the alley and headed toward the Tower. I couldn’t give up. “I need to know if Norwood’s in there.” I bolted toward the wagon, not pausing at Father’s call. “Thomas!”

  My actions were rash, I knew. But I also knew I’d neither sleep nor rest for the remainder of my plagued life if I didn’t at least try.

  I pushed through the crowd, letting the anger show on my face, so as to appear as one of them. I even let out a few shouts to release my fury, though my words of “Swine!” and “Heartless vermin!” were meant for the bodies surrounding me.

  My momentum carried me through the throng and I leaped onto the wooden step, gripping the metal bars with my fists. I shoved my face against the bars. “Norwood? Norwood! Benedict Norwood!” I prayed for no answer. That would mean he wasn’t there.

  But then a swollen and bruised face appeared inches from mine. “Thomas?”

  “No!” My cry of despair wrenched my heart. I tugged at the cage lock. “No. You shouldn’t be in here! How did they take you?”

  As though the crowd realized that I was not part of them, hands tugged at my clothing. Nails scraped my skin. “Get off, boy!”

  I gripped harder. “No. Norwood. What can I do?”

  The hands yanked me off, leaving me with a last view of Norwood’s wide eyes just before a lump of horse manure splattered his face. I kept my feet and fought the masses. People released me, but not before one man pulled my sword from its scabbard.

  “You’re one of them, aren’t you?” he shrieked, eyes red and wild. “You should be in that cart!”

  Despite the sword tip at my chest, I screamed, “You should be strung up for condemning innocent men!”

  He lunged, but I sidestepped him easily and planted a boot in his rear, and he flopped face-first into the mud. I retrieved my rapier and lifted it to run the drunken Igniter through, but hands grabbed me. It felt like a hundred pairs. The mob had turned the moment they realized a Keeper ran free among them.

  My sword was wrenched from my hand, my boots from my feet, and a blade pressed against my throat. But then a cloud of the deepest black swept over us with an earth-shaking gust of wind. We all toppled over one another.

  Screams and clangs of metal filled the night. Then, “Thomas, get out of here!”

  Not Norwood’s voice.

  Father’s.

  I stumbled to my feet and searched the ground for my sword, but the street beneath my boots writhed and roiled like a sea, tossing bodies this way and that. I could make no sense of it, let alone spot my weapon.

  I obeyed and ran pell-mell along the road, trusting I would eventually exit the alley. A cry of pain from somewhere to my left. Then I slammed into a wall and tumbled to the ground. A gush of warm liquid covered my face and entered my mouth.

  Blood.

  Had someone struck me?

  I lurched back to my feet and felt around. Wood. Wheels. Metal. The prison wagon.

  I fumbled for the door. My fingers brushed the lock. I yanked on it, but my hands slipped free, slick with mud. I felt on the ground for a rock, a piece of debris, anything to break the door open.

  Nothing.

  I pounded the lock again with my fist. I rammed my shoulder into the wood. I begged every color I’d ever studied to open the blasted thing. But the colors wouldn’t obey me. Not when I didn’t have a mask. I even screamed at the White Light, more in hatred than for help.

  The cries of the people and the surrounding mayhem left me disoriented and lost. Father—where was he? He’d caused the black cloud. He’d caused the tempestuous ground.

  Could he open the lock?

  “Fath—”

  An explosion of light sent me reeling back. The torch crashed against the cart. I squinted my good eye. Flames filled my vision. Fire lapped at the exterior of the prison cart. Igniters with Yellow masks spread the fire in seconds and all of Father’s color powers ceased.

  The screams didn’t.

  This time they came from inside the wagon.

  “No!” I rushed to the wagon, flames now scorching the walls. Smoke billow
ed into the air and the fleeing mob stopped as one. People eyed the flames and then swarmed the burning wagon.

  Were they going to help me?

  Relief, sharp and swift, allowed me a single breath before the cry, “To the Thames!” reached me. “Don’t let the fire spread to the houses!”

  The wagon moved under the force of twenty pairs of hands. Those wearing masks commanded the mud and the wood of the wagon to send the cart trundling toward the Thames.

  I ran after it. “Norwood! Norwood!”

  With flames eating his prison, Norwood kept his face pressed against the bars. The skin on his knuckles peeled back from the heat. I couldn’t get through the throng to him. Not even when the cart careened into the river.

  “Norwood!”

  His gaze locked with mine. The cart bobbed once, then tipped and sank beneath the Thames like a weighted body.

  Nineteen

  I sat on the soggy bank of the Thames for hours, staring at the spot where Norwood drowned. I didn’t have enough in me to spare a care for the others in the cart—the others who were Norwoods to people in their own lives. The innocents who had just been murdered over a disagreement.

  Already they were forgotten.

  No one mourned them—they mourned only the coin they lost by not delivering those men to the Tower.

  Igniters did this. Igniters who claimed to fight for freedom, who proclaimed, “White Light for all.”

  They murdered.

  “Igniters believe that for each Keeper that dies, one person is cured of the plague,” Father had said.

  If it were true, then Norwood’s death would have had a purpose. As it was, though . . . He died in vain. And that sickened my heart most of all.

  Emma was an Igniter. She was one of them. She might not condone the actions of her fellow Igniters, but she perpetuated the problem—spreading the use of White Light and blaming Keepers for the Stone Plague. How could I have allowed myself to consort with her? To work for her guardian?

  At the hanging in the summer, she was desperate to save the African boy, but she said nothing when the three Keepers were hung.

  Father joined me on the bank for the first hour, weak from his use of Black color power and not speaking. I was glad. No words could comfort and I didn’t want to talk. This was between me and Norwood.

  I hadn’t been there for him, yet he’d been there for me every time I’d needed him. He’d been my true father.

  Guy Fawkes was a pretender.

  I pushed myself to my feet. I couldn’t let Norwood’s story end this way. It was no longer about curing myself of the plague or convincing Father I was worthy of a mask. I would make Norwood proud.

  He represented Keepers everywhere. And I would not let them down.

  November passed in a blur. Keyes had secured several barrels of gunpowder from his cousin, Rookwood, so I spent most of the time helping load it into Catesby’s house.

  The Monteagle household was away on holiday. Good riddance. Their absence freed me to focus fully on the plot and the stewing of my fury.

  Father did not invite me on any more nightly excursions. Perhaps he thought me too weak. I no longer had a sword. I hadn’t even gotten to show my skill. Every time he returned to the Whynniard house, it was with a number of Keepers saved.

  “Four.”

  “One.”

  “Three.”

  That was the extent of our interaction. He knew things had changed. I think he believed I was finally a Keeper. Finally committed to the plot. And he was right.

  Now it was personal.

  On some days, I found myself sitting down to write a letter to Norwood before remembering he was gone. The hollow feeling grew and grew, as though bitterness had taken a pickax to my chest. Chipping out a cold cavern.

  I had no one with whom to share life.

  No one to trust.

  And that freed me to be emotionless.

  Emma Areben sought to invade my thoughts, but I shoved her out. What did I care if she secured an apprenticeship? She was an Igniter. She was an enemy. And for now, she was gone.

  December came with a dusting of snow, which made vigilante work particularly difficult for Father. Being a Black, he could control only items completely shrouded in darkness, and winter brought out the braziers and the street dwellers to the warmth as witnesses. So he spent most of his nights observing and scouting.

  He didn’t have long to wait.

  A week in, I entered Catesby’s house in Lambeth with sodden boots and my cloak tight around my shoulders. I stepped into a house filled with conspirators—Catesby, Percy, Wintour, the brothers Kit and Jack, Father, Keyes, and—Bates? I thought Catesby said his servant wouldn’t take part in the meetings.

  They surrounded a cask of ale.

  Percy whirled to face me, his cheeks pink from drink. He lifted his glass. “Thomas! Come join!”

  I walked in, hesitant, and hung up my cloak. Then I situated myself on the left side of the room so as to keep the wall in my blind spot and the plotters in my sight.

  “The Scots are gone!” Percy’s proclamation was accentuated by a cheer. Only Father did not drink, his mask still secured to his face.

  “Gone?” A hard joy lit in me. “So we can finally . . .” My eyes cut to Bates. He was a thin, wiry fellow and stared mostly at the ale cask.

  Catesby stepped forward. “Bates is one of us, Thomas. He’s officially joined the plot, taken the oath, and he’s a Green.”

  Meaning he took the place Norwood would have filled.

  I couldn’t help but compare Bates to Norwood. He didn’t hold a candle to my friend. Bates looked spineless. Did Catesby consult with anyone or did he just act? I didn’t like that our safety and our lives now relied on another person.

  But at last we would tunnel from the Whynniard house to Parliament. With Parliament meeting two months from now, we needed to set the plan into action. “When do we start?”

  Catesby slapped me on the back so heartily, it knocked the breath from me. “Tomorrow, lad. Though I daresay if we gave you a shovel, you’d start this very night.”

  My arms longed to pour my hatred of the Igniters into manual labor. Too much time was wasted on reveling. “I would, sir.”

  “Have some ale. Tomorrow we fetch timber to uphold the tunnel and Jack will secure the tools.”

  “Are we digging all by hand?” I scanned their belts for their masks.

  “Wintour and Keyes are our Browns. They will help where they can, as their energy allows.”

  I nodded and accepted the cup of ale, though not yet in a reveling mood. I stood by Father while the others refilled their cups. In an undertone, I asked, “When did Bates officially join?”

  “Tonight. I think Catesby determined he’s heard too much and might as well be inducted.”

  So he had been eavesdropping. At least he hadn’t turned us in. Yet. Bates could ruin us all if he was not faithful. “May Parliament come quickly.”

  “Aye.”

  To the group, I asked, “What else of the plan? Timber tomorrow, then what?”

  Catesby laughed, but Percy held my stare with narrowed eyes. “We will dig in rotations. We need to find ways to dispose of the dirt.”

  “How about in the Thames?” I suggested. It was forty yards or so away—that was our best option.

  “Too many ships.” Wintour refilled his ale. “Too many opportunities to be spotted.”

  “Not if we put the dirt in ale barrels.” Keyes slapped a hand onto the top of the ale cask in the room. “No one would question the transport of ale. We’ll drink them and then fill them with dirt, transporting them somewhere else for disposal. The countryside maybe.”

  Catesby toasted Keyes. “Cheers.”

  “What of the gunpowder?” I asked. “When will we move that to the Whynniard house?” We had barely finished hiding it in Catesby’s house.

  Father nudged me with his elbow. “After the tunnel is started, then you and I will row the gunpowder along the Thames a
nd store the barrels in the tunnel.”

  Percy finally gave me the answer I craved. “The tunnel should be complete mid-January, a few weeks before Parliament.”

  He, at least, seemed to share my passion for starting on the tunnel. It unnerved me to find my desires aligning with those of the murderer in the room. But what did it matter? By the end of this plot, we’d all be murderers.

  Tomorrow it would begin.

  At last, I joined in the reveling.

  19 December 1604

  My muscles burned as I pulled the oars through the water. Mist hung in the air like a damp cloak, shielding Father and me from view. We’d made the trip enough times now to gauge direction without being able to see the Whynniard house. The first night of rowing, we’d misjudged so severely that we spent another hour rowing upstream.

  The three barrels of gunpowder weighed the boat down so that if I didn’t keep my elbows tucked, they’d dip into the icy water as I rowed. One overcorrected teeter and we’d be sunk and then frozen and then drowned in the December Thames.

  Like Norwood.

  But rowing one barrel across at a time would lead to too many journeys and we’d be bound to be noticed. Even these barrels were covered in straw to keep their contents from the straying eye.

  Our alibi, if caught, was that we’d been delayed by drink on our way back to our master and were rowing his goods to his house before he could notice in the morning. The alibi was weak at best, but it would serve us appropriately enough to avoid suspicion a first time. If we were caught twice . . . there was no excuse. Especially if whoever did the catching decided to break open the barrels.

  Large shipments of gunpowder near the Parliament of a paranoid king were bound to alert someone.

  I bit down a grunt as I matched Father’s oar pace. Where I’d gained speed and strong legs from my errand runs, he maintained strength in his arms. But now, on our fourth night of rowing, he broke a sweat same as I did. It served as my only source of warmth on the frigid river, but I didn’t wish for summer. The stench of the Thames beneath the heat would have made our deep breathing near impossible.