Twelve-year-old Thomas, born into a family of charcoal burners has grown up deep in the forest isolated from local villages. Blackened by their trade, and seldom seen, charcoal burners were regarded with suspicion. Because of this, Thomas knows little of the religious and political disturbance of the outside world in Tudor England. His isolation has also meant no one is aware of his amazing artistic ability to catch the direct likeness of anyone he might draw. Life changes when the local landlord sees it and arranges to sponsor him to try for a seven-year apprenticeship with his friend Nathaniel Hilliard, Queen Elizabeth’s famous miniaturist.

Spending a week in the landlord’s house to learn manners he has a fight with Sir John’s son, falls through an open door where a hearth stone tips up and deposits him in a priest’s hole. To his horror there is already someone hidden there. Fortunately, the man is able to show Thomas the way out and when he comes across him several times in London he is able to repay him by helping him.

The opening chapter of this tale was first published as a short story in the Aquila, children’s magazine. As readers seemed to enjoy the idea, I thought it would be fun to find out what Thomas would have had to learn for seven years before qualifying as an artist and during my research I found the inspiration for Thomas’ adventure. I discovered that before you could paint, colours required to be prepared, necessities such as ink had to be made from scratch using basic soot from a candle and chicken bones ground fine to prepare the surface of a canvas. Thomas enjoyed this but he really he longed to have access to colour.

On his way to fetch oyster shells to serve as paint trays Thomas discovers London, passing by great cathedrals and London Bridge with houses built along it, and on to the tall ships’ anchorage beyond. Once settled in with his London master, Nicolas Hilliard, Thomas senses that in London the religious atmosphere has become very political. Unmarried Queen Elizabeth has no children to succeed her, so the next in line to the English throne is her catholic cousin Mary Queen of Scots. Catholic hopes are raised, and plotters begin to search for ways to bring this about. Sir Francis Walsingham the queen’s spymaster is on their trail. Thomas who has come across him in the past visiting his master thought him frightening, like a hawk about to kill, nicknames him the Goshawk.

Required to deliver some suspicious letters to a group of young men, Thomas fills his time waiting for an answer by making a sketch of each one. The group are amused, and their leader Babington suggests they find an artist to paint a portrait of them all together. To Thomas’s surprise, his sketch caught the attention of someone who offered to buy it on his way home. Later this drawing allows Queen Elizabeth to recognise a young man when he approaches her with what looks like an intent to kill. To Thomas's amazement the Queen calls for him to come so she can offer him her thanks. Another letter comes but now worried by the thought that it may put his master in danger. Thomas is able by a clever twist to save the day which is just as well when Walsingham appears accusing Sir John of involvement in a catholic plot. Having tied up this problem Thomas is called to rescue his priest hole friend who is about to be captured and tortured on the rack. Unable to read and write he sends a message by drawings for the help needed to allow the priest board a ship back home. At last the day has come for his master to take him to be indented as his apprentice and Thomas not only wins the apprentice boys blue doublet but also finds that his master who knows how much he longs to learn about colour, has presented him with his own oyster shell dishes ready to begin.