Fawkes

by Nadine Brandes

  “That’s because the moment he stepped foot in England, Keepers tried to murder him! I’m sure that made him think twice.”

  Blood pumped in my ears. I wanted to vent these thoughts, but I didn’t want our meeting to be an argument. I wanted to hold her passions and views, but I needed to know they were right. I needed to do what both she and I had already expressed—get to the core of things. Go to the beginning.

  But on my own.

  I couldn’t let her shape my decision just because I cared about her. And I couldn’t let Father shape my decisions just because I wanted to please him.

  I swallowed once. Twice. The words stuck thick and bulgy in my throat. I forced them down and sought a new avenue of conversation. “Was it hard to get away?”

  She shook her head and her dark, earthy curls swept into her face. “It will be harder to return. Henry will be angry.”

  I wanted to go somewhere and really be with Emma. Not hiding in some dark alley, cold and suspicious-looking, at risk of having a bucket of waste upended on our heads. So I held out an arm. “May I treat you to a pastry?”

  Her somber face broke into a grin. “Only if it’s the baker on Pudding Lane.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “The best.”

  She looped her arm in mine. I let her keep the basket. One of the cloths gave a poor attempt at concealing a lump. “Why aren’t you wearing your mask?”

  “There’s so much paranoia in the streets about the plague and the war between Igniters and Keepers, best not to add black skin with a mask to the mix. There is no law against my having a mask, but neither is there a law in favor of it. It’s those grey lines that send innocents to the noose.”

  We walked slowly down the cobblestone street, turning onto another wide lane made of dirt. Two men stood on either end of an enormous log held up by crossed mounts, each one gripping the end of a saw. Back and forth. Back and forth.

  We smelled the bakery before we actually saw the wooden sign displaying a painted stalk of wheat. Fresh bread, scones, and warm pasties filled with hash. Every few sniffs would mix with the stench of raw meat and fish from the surrounding stalls. I alternated salivating and gagging.

  Emma hung back while I stepped up to the baker’s window. A young girl with a long blond braid slung over her shoulder flipped a bowl of dough upside down onto a huge flat wooden spatula. Then she shoved it into the burning oven.

  The heat of the oven radiated through the serving window. It would be a nice workplace in winter, but I didn’t envy the girl now that summer was heating up. I ordered two scones.

  She handed them to me and I used one of the cloths from Emma’s basket to keep in the heat. Fresh. Perfect.

  We wended our way down Pudding Lane. Scattered straw helped lessen the amount of muck on the street—one of the busiest lanes for the poor of London.

  I led Emma around a pushcart and through a group of women shopping for vegetables. A shipyard worker nearly ran us over with a basket of fish on his shoulder. We finally made it to Grace Church Street and then London Bridge, and then I knew where I’d take her.

  We left London Bridge and turned right onto the Bankside, then to Maiden Lane. Emma’s intake of breath told me when she saw it.

  The Globe Theater.

  Built a few years ago by the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, the daub was still white in the weathered grey wooden framing, rising three stories from the earth. The green roof consisted more of moss growth than thatch. The promise it held of story and performance from Sir William Shakespeare was enough to lift it to a height of awe.

  From its brick base up to the thatched roof, the round theater represented acceptance for all. Built with cheap materials, it was accessible to both rich and poor. Currently, the wooden doors were closed, but I caught movement through the small square windows in the second story.

  The actors were there. Perhaps even Shakespeare.

  Emma and I found a place on the stretch of field beyond the Globe and sat with our scones. Already my stomach grumbled for dinner, but I nibbled the pastry to hold me over. “Have you ever attended one of his plays?”

  She shook her head. “Henry won’t let me. Not even when we were invited to Whitehall for Shakespeare’s performance of a play called Othello.”

  I lowered my scone. “What hold does Henry have over you?”

  Emma stared at her scone, then shoved half of it in her mouth. I would have laughed at her bulging cheeks, but instead I took a bite of my own scone so she wouldn’t feel like the only one chewing.

  When she finally swallowed, she seemed to have gathered strength. Who knew the power contained in a scone? “It’s a long story, Thomas.”

  “I’m willing to listen.”

  Her hands plopped into her lap. I couldn’t stop staring at her—the way her dark eyelashes kissed her cheeks with each blink, or how her line of freckles seemed like a tearstain, or how her mouth formed words carefully, gently, when she finally spoke. “My father was a navigator under John Hawkins.”

  I’d heard of John Hawkins. He’d transformed Queen Elizabeth’s navy and died a wealthy man from enslaving Africans and selling them to Spain.

  “During one of their trips, he met my mother. He was barely seventeen at the time, but he used most of his navy payment to purchase her and free her from her Spanish owner. Once they returned to England, he offered to set her up with money and a small lodging. Instead, she married him. Father left the navy, refusing to participate any longer in the trade, and then joined the gentry.”

  I could see the strength of her father’s convictions in Emma. But the downward tilt of her eyes told me the story didn’t end happily.

  “He kept his marriage to Mama as much of a secret as he could—for her safety. Many knew he’d married foreign, but didn’t realize he’d married black. Those who did know couldn’t understand why he wed her. They said he should marry well and marry white and hire my mother as a servant and concubine.” She darted a glance up at me. My distaste must have shown on my face because she laughed. “You’d be surprised at how common that is, Thomas. But thankfully my father was a man of honor.”

  Her use of was instead of is didn’t escape me.

  “Mama was a musician,” she went on. “I loved watching her play the lute, tabor, viol-de-gamboys . . . Eventually I painted her. She was my first portrait. I can’t paint only people because I don’t simply see people. I see their stories. Their emotions. That is what I paint.”

  I recalled the painting of me—and how seeing it stirred a deep sense of being known in me. Then I thought of the cobbler weeping over the portrait in the Royal Exchange. It didn’t seem so odd now.

  “Mama always felt sorrow that she wouldn’t be able to make me a mask, since she had no mask of her own. After I started painting, she sought out every bit of information she could find—writing letters to masters, seeking out books, questioning my father. Then she carved me a mask. She begged and begged the White Light to put color power into the mask. And the white rose showed up.” Emma removed her mask from the basket and handed it to me.

  It was heavier than I’d expected. “It’s exquisite.” My fingers ran over the white rose, smooth and sleek. Would my mask be this heavy? This smooth?

  “White Light instructed me in the colors. Mama was so proud. But when she contracted a fever, doctors refused to attend her because they feared her black skin. They didn’t know what it meant or what it might do to their color powers. Father was furious and wrote to every doctor.” Her lip quirked up to one side. “One finally came—though he was more an herbalist than a color doctor.”

  “Norwood.” I could tell by the way she looked at me that she expected me to piece it together. “But he’s an apothecary.”

  “Yet he came.”

  Even as a Keeper, he went to her family’s aid. All that time at St. Peter’s, he’d known about Emma’s heritage and secret.

  “He couldn’t save her, but I never forgot his heart. Then, two years later, a Keeper shot my father in
the back during a hunting expedition.”

  My breath stalled. “Shot? But . . . why?”

  “Because Father supported King James.”

  Her father was killed for being an Igniter. So often I had viewed Igniters as being the killers, but now I saw it went both ways. Emma had more reason to hate Keepers than I had to hate Igniters. Yet she didn’t hate me—she didn’t seem to hate anyone.

  “The Baron Monteagle—who had frequently sought my father’s advice on certain matters—agreed to take me in. He knew about my color power. It would build his reputation and show him as charitable. But he said I was never to remove my mask except to eat in private. He sent Henry to fetch me and take me to St. Peter’s Color School with him.”

  “The Baron is a coward.”

  “Don’t judge him too harshly. Look at what happened to my parents. People thought less of my father once he married my mother. We were shunned from public events—no matter how appropriate they were for our station. Those sorts of things would distress the Baron to no end.”

  I liked the Baron less and less. I could see from whom Henry got his charm.

  “Thomas, you have to understand that black skin is seen as being from the devil. The gentry don’t believe an African will ever hear from White Light. They believe we are so evil we cannot have color power.”

  I gestured to her mask. “But you are proof otherwise!”

  “I am an exception. My mask came from Mama’s pleading. I don’t know how people will react—”

  “You will tame their prejudice.”

  “I can’t.” Her voice sounded so small.

  “Why no—”

  “Because I’m afraid!”

  The wind caught away her exclamation, leaving an echo in my chest—an echo of my own struggles. Fear of revealing myself and reaping the reactions. I understood more than she knew.

  I stopped pressing her and instead returned to her story. “So you and Henry went to St. Peter’s.”

  “I wore my mask all hours of every day. I didn’t know how long the Baron would keep me as his ward, and since I couldn’t provide for myself, I trained in color power with hopes of securing an apprenticeship.”

  “Why doesn’t Henry want you to have an apprenticeship?”

  “Because I am a lady. Noble families don’t work. For me to take on an apprenticeship would shame the Monteagle name.”

  “It’s for pride?”

  “That and because Henry’s color power is a lie.” She sounded sad, like she pitied him. “The Baron has high expectations for Henry, but Henry can’t command the colors. They don’t obey him.”

  That didn’t make sense. “I saw him at St. Peter’s. He was the best in our class.”

  She took her mask from me, returning it to the basket. “That was me. I hid behind doors during his tests. I was the one commanding the colors and earning his grades and prestige.” She grimaced.

  “But why would you do that? Why would you lie like that and lessen yourself?” Did she care for Henry?

  “Because we needed each other. I needed his secrecy so that I could have a position and future at St. Peter’s. He needed me so that he could earn his father’s approval and inheritance.”

  “You can leave him now, though, right? You have color power. You have talent. You have everything you need!”

  Her fist clenched around a clump of grass and the small blades tore from their roots. “I’m an African woman, Thomas. An African. I can’t just leave. The way to move on is if I secure a reputation as a portraitist . . . or if I marry. Society demands—”

  “Forget society! Just . . . run away.” It sounded rash coming from my mouth, but I could think of nothing else.

  “And become some street dell? No. Henry has eliminated my chances of an apprenticeship through threats and letters. He wants me at his side forever. If I continue to pursue an apprenticeship, he and the Baron will take my mask from me.”

  “They have no right!” I was shouting now and caught myself before my words drifted too far to the ears of passersby.

  “Where would I go?” Emma continued. “What would I do? Hang laundry for some lord’s family? Henry and the Baron hold my skin color over me like a whip to a horse’s rear. One step out of line and I’ll be penniless. No master will take me in London and I’d have no means of traveling. No matter my skill, I wouldn’t last one night on the streets.”

  Vagabonds, ruffians, fraters, Igniters hunting Keepers, whorehouses . . . What woman could combat all of that alone and penniless? Chill bumps dotted my arms. “Can’t you expose Henry’s secret?”

  She breathed deep through her nostrils and released the captive grass. Several pieces stuck to her palm and she picked them off one by one. “It’s not worth exposing my own. Besides, I will not do to him what I fear he will do to me.”

  “Not even if he exposed you?”

  She looked up. “Not even then.”

  I wanted to say so many things. I wanted to tell her that I would help her. But the Gunpowder Plot still owned my allegiance. “There’s no one else you can go live with?”

  She brushed the grass from her skirt. “Norwood was coming down here to see what he could do. That was my last option. And now”—her voice almost disappeared under a gust of wind—“now Henry wishes to marry.”

  So it was true. I had hoped, until this moment, that his comment was a lie. “Why does he want this?”

  “I’m the only one who truly knows him. And until you, he was the only one who knew me. It is not such a wild idea. I think he’s afraid. He doesn’t know who he is without me. What woman will have him if he can’t even master color power? He’s already been trying to train under strong Igniters—even seeking out Keepers with no success.”

  I couldn’t imagine Emma bowing to the whim of that snake for the rest of her life. Caged. Tamed. It would ruin her. Not for the first time, I was glad I’d broken Henry’s hand at the masquerade.

  “He has no right to cage you.” The coldness of my words would have frozen the very beams of sunlight lighting Emma’s cheeks.

  She looked up—not surprised, but hopeful.

  “I’ll help you get away. You can go to a different town where they don’t know Henry. Where you can paint portraits and make a living with or without a man.”

  “And live under a false name? Hiding who I am so Henry doesn’t find me? That is not freedom.” She tried a smile. It wavered.

  “Well, you can’t marry Henry.”

  “The Baron has the final say. His son marrying his ward would paint him as an even greater benefactor.”

  I shouldn’t respond. I shouldn’t. “What if the Baron dies?” He was a Parliament member—he was a victim of the plot. His death might free Emma. My stomach turned sick at the thought.

  She paused a long time, possibly offended by the question. I prayed she didn’t read into it, but how could she not? “Henry would become my guardian. He could marry me the very next day if he so wished.”

  That couldn’t be the answer. “Why does he have that power? You’re just a ward! You shouldn’t have to marry!”

  “I want to marry someday, Thomas. Life as a spinster is much more difficult than life as a wife—but I don’t want to marry for ease. I want to marry the right man.”

  A weird twist tightened in my stomach. I hadn’t really thought of marrying anyone. Not even Emma, though I admired her. I hadn’t put in much thought beyond finding a cure.

  Emma lifted her eyes and I saw the hesitancy in them—like she was waiting to see if I accepted her openness. Or if I’d be open in return. I wanted to tell her about the plot—tell her that I could be dead in a few months. Tell her I wanted to help her, but I couldn’t until I had my mask.

  “Ask me, Thomas,” she whispered.

  The words hung on the tip of my tongue. Come away with me. Even if the impropriety would shock the Baron into a heart attack. Even if it was only to get her away from Henry, we could do it.

  But Henry would hunt us. The very crown
might come after us if Henry revealed Emma’s heritage and my political standing. And if the plotters were caught and revealed names, my treason would condemn Emma. And fleeing would do nothing to save Keepers or plagued.

  This was getting too entangled.

  “I can’t.” Those words sliced through my lips like a knife being yanked out of my throat.

  She straightened, as though combating the temptation to slump in defeat. “I understand.”

  But she couldn’t. She had no idea why. I wanted her to know my secrets like I now knew hers.

  “So what have you been up to since the masque?” Her voice was thin iron—hard, cold, but a façade of cordiality.

  I wasn’t ready to switch to me. I hadn’t thought up what to say. But then, why not the truth? Or at least part of it. “I’ve been trying to rescue Keepers who are being sold to the Tower for hanging.”

  Her eyebrows shot up. “You have?”

  “Well, I’m trying to.” My endeavors seemed a bit lackluster when I really thought about what I’d done—dragged one drunken Keeper back to an inn filled with ale. For all I knew, he had died the next night. “Father had been doing it, but he’s away for a few months so I’m trying to fill the shoes of a very powerful Black.”

  “It’s not fair that he expects you to do this without color power.”

  A sudden urge to defend him rose up in me. “He’ll be returning with a mask.”

  “He’s made you wait long enough. But you and your father need to be cautious. Henry goes out at night too. He may not be skilled with a mask, but his blade would put any man’s swordsmanship to the test.”

  “I’ve sparred with him before.” He was skilled, but not enough to best me. Henry had trained while also pouring his focus into color power. “What does he do when he goes out?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know, but I think he’s training under someone.”

  I remembered him whispering in John Dee’s ear at the masquerade. “Who?”