The Gunpowder Plot:
Filling in the gaps
Where do the ‘facts’ come from?
Historians rely heavily on contemporary accounts for information about historical events. But when you look at 17th-century accounts of the Gunpowder Plot and its discovery, they all seem suspiciously similar and implausibly tidy. And they all demonise the conspirators – e.g. The Divell of the Vault and A Brief Discourse upon the Arraignment and Execution of the eight traytors ... (both January 1606). In other words, most of our information is based on what was, most likely, government spin.
Luckily, novelists live in the gaps in the landscape where scholars’ maps peter out or disagree. We can speculate and make educated guesses about what might lie in those unseen places. In The Firemaster’s Mistress, to fill the gaps (and those outlined above are only the beginning), I offer a startling new version of the Gunpowder Plot story – a different conspiracy, on an international scale, with royal scandal at the highest level, and with new whys as well as new whats. It’s fiction, of course (that’s what novelists do). But I believe that, after all my careful research, my version might also, just possibly, be true.
Christie Dickason was born in the United States but spent part of her childhood in Thailand, Mexico and Switzerland. This Harvard-educated theatre director and choreographer (at, among others, the Royal Shakespeare Company and Ronnie Scott’s) now lives in London with her family. She would be happy to hear from readers who either agree or disagree with her.
