Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
Norton smelled the onions and stale ale as soon as he entered the hackney. He pressed his lips together to keep himself from gagging, then held the handkerchief over his nose and mouth.
It was at times like these that he wished his mentor, Dr. Ward, saw more of the details of life. However, it was the doctor’s ability to see an individual’s potential and events on a grander scale that enabled him to do such wondrous things, such as creating the Blood Nectar potion.
It was also this ability that caused him to see Norton as more than an overworked shipping clerk.
Mifflin had valued Norton, certainly, and he provided a great deal of advice and many challenges so that Norton could rise into a better man.
But it was Dr. Ward who lifted him up and encouraged him to aspire to a higher status in life.
Dr. Ward had seen him for everything he could be.
It was the reason Norton now stood as the temporary director of the Ramparts. With Sir Derrick, Mr. Antingham, and Mr. Uppleby all dead, there were four senior agents who had the ability to take charge. Five, if you counted Sol Drydale, but he was now a fugitive.
Mr. Bradbrook was the most senior of them all, and he had been serving earnestly under Mr. Uppleby. In truth, Mr. Uppleby successfully managed his agents thanks to Mr. Bradbrook’s assistance.
Mr. Elsbury and Mr. Onslow had also been working for the Ramparts longer than Norton.
They were only occasionally in the field, unlike Mr. Norton and Sol, who regularly assisted their teams. Mr. Elsbury and Mr. Onslow had capable agents under them who carried out the missions while they sat back, wrote reports that merely repeated what their agents had written, and drank a great deal of brandy provided by the illicit gaming hell in the basement of the haberdashery next door.
Mr. Elsbury and Mr. Onslow were easily persuaded to allow Norton to take on the role as director. While both men were selfish and ambitious, they were also quite lazy, and neither wanted the tremendous amount of work left to them by Mr. Antingham and Mr. Uppleby.
But Mr. Bradbrook was more resistant to the idea of refusing a position for which he believed he had been groomed to lay claim.
Norton would not have accepted Mr. Maxham’s assistance in the matter if Dr. Ward had not insisted upon it.
Norton despised Mr. Maxham’s primary responsibilities within the Citadel and the man’s eerily unemotional facade.
But he obeyed Dr. Ward and requested Mr. Maxham’s help in persuading Mr. Bradbrook.
Within only a few hours, Mr. Maxham had provided Norton with a very badly embroidered handkerchief and a ghastly ruby brooch which Norton placed upon Mr. Bradbrook’s desk.
All Norton had to say was, “I have come to persuade you to allow me to take on the onerous task of leading the Ramparts. I was certain you have been feeling poorly lately and would wish to spend more time with your family.”
Mr. Bradbrook’s family consisted of his wife and two daughters, both of whom were still in the schoolroom.
Thankfully, he was as intelligent as he was capable.
He first began to sputter with indignation at Norton’s proclamation before picking up the handkerchief and broach and falling silent. The color drained from his face.
He responded just as Norton might have expected of a man who had toiled in obscurity under Mr. Uppleby for so many years.
He gripped the items in white-knuckled hands, bending the pin of the brooch, and said in a tight voice, “I would be pleased to be of assistance in any way possible as the Ramparts director sees fit.” His head was bowed over his trembling hands, so Norton could not see his expression, but he could have guessed that it was a mix of discontent and discomposure.
And so, until the Home Secretary, Mr. Ryder, could be bothered to sort through the political threads entangling the various candidates for the position—which could take months—Norton took possession of Mr. Uppleby’s office.
It was a large space meant for the use of the leader of the Ramparts, but Sir Derrick had strangely eschewed it, preferring his old, smaller office.
It took several hours for the heavy director’s desk to be moved from Sir Derrick’s office up to Mr. Uppleby’s, and once it was finally set in place, Norton was vexed to discover that it was locked.
Upon questioning Miss Nell, who was rather colder to him than normal, he discovered that the key had been placed in the possession of Sir Derrick’s clerk, Mr. Kyleston.
In their short-tempered lack of foresight, Antingham and Uppleby had had the young man arrested and sent to a secret Ramparts prison clear on the other side of London.
And so, Norton was forced to leave the desk drawer locked while he sent an agent to the prison to retrieve the key from Mr. Kyleston.
He considered simply breaking the wooden drawer, but he would not be able to explain his urgency to Mr. Ryder, and he preferred not to bring attention to himself by doing something so vandalistic.
The contents of the locked drawer were likely not urgent, for the most pressing items appeared to have been on top of the desk itself, which were packed in a box.
Norton could not be certain because Antingham and Uppleby had made a proper mess of all of Sir Derrick’s papers, and he feared it would take days to sort through them all.
He did not have days. He must find Drydale and his team before they could find a new place to sequester themselves, before it was too late for him to find them at all.
After meeting with Dr. Ward at Jack’s house at Vauxhall Gardens, he intended to return to the Ramparts and continue his search for Drydale and Lady Wynwood, for surely one of them would know the key to unlocking the code in Bianca’s notebooks.
Instead, a scrap of a girl had arrived claiming to be Bianca’s sister, and Dr. Ward had sent Norton to request that Jack return home.
Norton wanted to protest that he had a great deal to do back at the Ramparts, but he merely bowed his head in acquiescence.
The doctor could not be bothered with mundane details such as the running of a clandestine department.
His thoughts were now filled with the allure of Bianca’s lost notes and the packet of seeds Miss Irvine claimed to possess.
Norton knew exactly where to find Jack. He had retained the lease on the chamber above a tavern in the Long Glades, and Norton knew that he had not mentioned it when he was being questioned at the Ramparts.
That was merely by virtue of the fact that none of the agents had specifically asked him about his place of business, else he might have babbled on and on about it and its proximity to his favorite treacle buns.
Or he might not have said anything at all, for Jack had been strangely incoherent for a good portion of the time in which he was imprisoned.
Norton had found it strange that Jack’s emotions should cause him to grow insensible in that manner, but Ward had commented that Jack had probably tasted some of his Root potion, and the way the Root and Blood Nectar potions mixed in his blood had likely been the cause of his insanity.
Norton was glad to quit himself of the redolent hackney at the entrance to the tavern, known as the Stuck Door despite the fact it had a crowing rooster on the sign above the door.
The owner had originally called it the Golden Hen, which made him a laughingstock later when he discovered that the image he had given to the artist who painted his sign was that of a rooster instead.
His patrons never used the official name and instead called it the Stuck Door after a single night’s hard rain had rusted the latch on the outside of the front door and caused the door to be difficult to open.
Some men also called it “the Shoulder-Breaker,” but the Stuck Door seemed to, well, stick.
Norton was forced to throw nearly his entire weight onto the heavy plank door to force it open.
The tavern was full, a mix of Jack’s men as well as a few stubborn locals who lived nearby and refused to be ousted from their favorite tavern.
Some of Jack’s men had begun gathering in the tavern after Jack moved there, and therefore the owner of the Stuck Door had raised the prices of his poor-quality food and ale in anticipation of the cost of broken furniture and crockery.
The more impecunious of Jack’s men chose to drink elsewhere, and the men on the Root who were to be found in the tavern on any given night had decreased considerably.
Those who remained were usually the more senior members, and since their prime form of entertainment was teasing the younger men, they were not often joined by those outside their immediate circle.
As Norton stumbled inside, he was hit in the face with the scent of ale and, strangely, yeast. A glance at the tables showed that each plate was served with a misshapen or burned—or both—roll.
Norton was surprised, for the owner did not usually serve bread with his meals.
His cook was a poor baker, and so any bread had to be bought from a bakery, which reduced his profits.
As Norton passed a table, one of the men threw his half-eaten roll to the floor. “What is this? I think I broke my tooth.”
One of the men at the table with him lowered his voice, but Norton was close enough to overhear. “Old Chuff has got his cook trying to make treacle buns.”
“Whatever for?”
“Apparently Jack was ordering so many, and refusing to pay more than what he usually paid for them at the bakery, that old Chuff was getting tired of it. If he bakes his own, then he can at least make a small sum out of it.”
“He’d do better to buy them,” another man at the table said. “He’s getting worse. This one’s burned on the outside and still raw in the middle.”