Nettleblack, page 46
I wrenched out the smaller bicycle, its pedals scouring into my ankles in the old visceral greeting. Septimus’s I left where it was. She’d still have need of it.
Figs. Cycling. I had done more today than ever in my life, and I quite wasn’t about to forget the knack now.
The voice from the lamplit gloom nearly struck the wheels out from under me. I had only just hit the market square, pedalling as fast as I dared between bouts of map-squinting – wary not just of the terrifying speed, but of the rattle of the bicycle on the cobblestones, horrendously loud against the cottage-windows. I had met not a single human soul on my inexpert scorch past the candlelit homes, but sneak was rather of the essence, and I was determined to be careful. My plan had been to cycle past the Division and double back on foot from the farthest side of the building – the one with the back door into the dormitory. The bicycle could be hidden behind Checkley’s Tavern, and I’d lose no time trying to tiptoe the full length of the Division.
But a pale shadow sprang out from the log-shed before I could cross the market square, until my choice was either to clutch at the brakes or run it down. Septimus could have swerved and scorched on, of course, but it was quite all I could do to manage regular turns, never mind emergency skidding.
The bicycle shrieked for me, jolting to a halt so violently I almost pitched clean over the handlebars. The pale shape before me gasped, settling into a face – a corpse-candle of a face, hovering above a dowdy grey gown and a lace collar the very hue of polished bone. Only several dazed blinks turned it from ghoul to girl. Even so, she was distinctly ghoulish in her look: lank wavy hair in a bun, too ashy to really call blonde, and stark green eyes with an eerie paleness to the lashes.
It was a measure of my addled state, perhaps, that my first squinting stare into those eyes gave me the vaguest impression of Rosamond. But Rosamond hadn’t followed me, and now the stranger was speaking.
“Division?” she asked briskly. Her eyes didn’t follow her voice, detached and staring and quite motionless. “Are you one of Cassie’s assistants?”
It was a vain endeavour to stop myself gaping at her. I knew her now, though I’d only ever had the one real glimpse. She was the governess, that terrifying young child-minder of the family Ballestas, who had stared me into trembling across this very same square only a matter of days ago. The same governess Septimus and I had been chasing through our pursuit of Lady Miltonwaters, before the Sweetings had blundered in and shattered our original plan. And here she was again, freezing Cassandra’s name in her icy voice – Cassandra, who not a matter of hours ago had believed her inextricably connected with some dastardly plot against the Division. At least, that was as much of Septimus’s frantic explanation as I could recall –
I swallowed. The governess’s face was younger than mine, but she was still half a head taller, even with the teetering height the bicycle gave me. It was the easiest thing in the world to widen my eyes, to pinch words from an intimidated stammer and offer them up to her.
“I – erm – quite – I’m sorry – who – ?”
She blinked at me. Slowed her voice, glacial, as if my answer had been far too stupid to merit a riposte at normal speed. One of her pallid hands reached out to steady my shaking handlebars, long and sharp-nailed at the fingers, searingly cold where her skin brushed against my thumb.
“You must be new. I thought I saw you before, but evidently you didn’t notice me. I work as a governess for the Ballestas family – not Cassie, obviously, but her younger brother – she must have mentioned me? Adelaide Danadlenddu?”
Persimmons.
And I was crouched under the Nettleblack drawing-room window again, with Edwina’s voice spearing out into the night. I obtained Adelaide Danadlenddu a respectable post with Lady Miltonwaters some years ago – I advised her not to anglicise her name – I did not think it would be appropriate to have a maid in Lady Miltonwaters’s house calling herself Adelaide Nettleblack – but with Rhys as her father I doubt she will remain content –
This – and that – and – and I’d not even had the wit to make the connection! What a comfort it had been, to think of some vaguely villainous governess aiming her bolts somewhere that wasn’t me – and to think of Adelaide Danadlenddu, if I thought of her at all, as a family ghost that no longer applied, a spectre flung off with the Nettleblack surname!
But I clearly wasn’t sufficiently devoid of the surname to stop Adelaide Danadlenddu from thwacking me round the head with her mere existence. She was my cousin. She had a post in Lady Miltonwaters’s house, courtesy of Edwina. And even if she now worked for the Director, she would have been Lady Miltonwaters’s first.
There was Cassandra’s link!
But what did Cassandra want to do with the link?
Sweet unplucked sloes, Adelaide Danadlenddu was still watching me.
“Oh – erm – of course,” I gasped. “Henry – erm – Hyssop – I – yes – I – I work with Cassandra – ”
I quite don’t know what stopped Nettleblack skidding across my tongue. Those frozen eyes, that steady face – the girl could have leeched truth from a stone. It would have been perfectly natural to crumple beneath the familiar green of her eel-eyed stare, and give her my name, our kinship, in a desperate bid to draw her into some cooperation with me. I had just lost Rosamond – and Adelaide surely shared my position as a walking inconvenience to Edwina’s arrangements – and being sent to work for Lady Miltonwaters was no guarantee of anything – and a thousand other such half-plausible reasons –
But, as much as it stung, I couldn’t be sure of her. Not until I knew what she meant to tell me, when she dashed up to stop my bicycle. Not with Septimus, and the Director, and the Division, and more than I entirely feared I understood, all hanging on every paltry word I gave her.
Adelaide dropped her hand from the bars, curled her fingers around her elbows, slender arms crossed over her dull gown. “Henry Hyssop. Of course. Well – Cassie has a message for you, and it can’t wait.”
I tugged at my face until it shaped a smile. My heartbeat shivered in my throat, scaldingly fast. “I – erm – what message?”
Her voice quickened, unmistakeably impatient. “A tip-off, about the Head-Hider. She says to go to Gulmere and knock on every house on Stavinge Lane – she doesn’t know which one – but the right one should know you’re coming. They should have some information. She wants you to go immediately, though. Apparently there isn’t much time.”
I blinked at her. There was only one test for it.
“Should I – erm – should I report to the Director first – or – or just go straight there?”
“Straight there,” she returned, with not a single twitch of hesitation. “Why else do you suppose she sent me out to watch for you? My young charge is with his father, and the case takes priority over all – such is the Ballestas world. But perhaps you’ve not been in the Division long enough to get used to it.”
Was it desperately foolish of me to feel it like a slap?
“I – yes – no – I mean – that – I’ll get right on it – if that’s Cassandra’s plan and she knows I’m – right – yes – quite – very good – very helpful – thank you – erm – Miss Danadlenddu – ”
Just for a moment, her eyes shifted, narrowing as they pinched at my face. I’d quite no intention of waiting out the reason. My feet scrabbled for the pedals, kicking them into my shins, nearly driving the bicycle over her toes as I dragged it around –
“Idiot,” she hissed, springing away from me. Her voice was so low, and the clattering of the bicycle so cacophonous, I suppose she imagined I couldn’t hear her. “At least that’s the last of them.”
One final frantic kick got the bicycle moving. I kept it going, shaking all the more for the jab of her contemptuous glare in my back, until I rounded the opposite corner of the market square, and the Ballestas apothecary started out between us, its stack of tincture-bottles blocking me from her sight. Then, brimful of the smarting and the shattered hope and the sheer simmering rage that I quite couldn’t permit myself to set into words, I shoved my feet down and sped up. Across the bruised cobbles of Angle Drag, towards where the town’s largest houses and their lavish windows swelled out of the gloom.
Figs, but I wasn’t in the least headed for Gulmere!
What you are, and what you do, the Director had said. Well. If I couldn’t get near the latter with my traitorous relation guarding the door, the former – and all I could wrangle out of it – would have to suffice.
I knocked. Sharp and vigorous as Septimus had done, enough to flake a little more of the paint. The lights on the upper floor were blazing away above my head; Mr. Adelstein was quite evidently in residence.
25.
IN WHICH MR. ADELSTEIN’S
BEDTIME READING IS
INTERRUPTED
Casebook of Matthew Adelstein
Pertaining to – oh, there’s no neat delineation
If written records are what’s wanted now, permit me to add mine to the evening’s fray. Not that I was anywhere near my casebook when everything began to unfold at a newly hectic rate. Nicholas and I had retired to bed early, night-clad and curled up with two cups of his most soothing chai. He was reading one of his chirpy novels aloud – specifically one that was very much not Life and Limbs – to distract us from the imminent horrible need to thwart the trust of the town’s most famous resident. I had attempted to compose, and subsequently burned, no less than six drafts of the letter that would resign me from Edwina Nettleblack’s commission, and I still wasn’t happy with the contents of the seventh.
We both heard the knocker, even three floors up, bludgeoning the silence out of the evening. Nicholas was in favour of ignoring it, and initially I was of the same opinion. How could I be otherwise, after the events of that ghastly afternoon, which his desperate caresses and relentless good cheer were only just beginning to soften? The butler would have dealt with it, perhaps, but the butler had been dispatched on half-holiday, and the cook and her skivvy knew not to answer the door. And here was Nicholas, his curly head warm through my nightshirt, with a thumb’s width of his novel still to read.
But the hammering only continued, louder and more relentless than ever. I began, I confess, to tip back into panic. If Rosamond Nettleblack had been expecting me to break with her elder sister immediately – if she had taken my hesitant silence as disobedience, and arranged her counter-attack accordingly –
This line of thinking left me somewhere poised somewhere relief and incredulity, when the voice came shrieking up the housefront.
“Figs! Mr. Adelstein! I quite know you’re in there!”
I recollect myself spluttering, whilst Nicholas gazed at me in equal stupefaction: were the family dispatching sisters here purely to torment us now?
But as my options in that immediate moment seemed to be either let her in and take the consequences, or let her scream the streets awake and take the consequences of her siblings, I had little choice but to spring out of bed and clatter down the stairs at triple-pace, candle in hand. I would, unsurprisingly, have greatly preferred to have strode into a confrontation with Henry Nettleblack in something more substantial than a nightshirt and dressing-gown, but by the time I reached the door she was actually kicking it, leaving me rather no alternative.
Of all the peculiar states I had seen the little wretch in, this was by far the most perplexing. I could only observe her in dimly-lit glimpses, as she shoved past me and sprinted up the stairs to the drawing-room, but her every step left crusts of mud trampled into the carpet. She appeared to still be flaunting her Divisionary disguise, but the uniform was damp and filthy, and now seemed to include an incongruously expensive cravat trailing limply from her neck.
My first instinct, naturally, was to assume that the straits of the Division had finally got too much for her. By the time I’d followed her back up the stairs, Nicholas already had the gaslamps sputtering to life, and she was slumped on our chaise, breathlessly oblivious to the havoc her clothes would wreak on the material, her head tipped forward into hands streaked black with ink and bicycle-grease. Nicholas was on his knees beside her, admirably unfazed by this public disclosure of his novelty rat pyjamas, his questions undeservedly gentle: was she alright, what had happened, could he get her anything (could he get her anything!) –
“What are you doing here?” I demanded, in a more appropriate tone. Nettleblack the youngest jumped like a starling.
“You – erm – ” – and she swallowed hard, presumably to amend that clockwork-trick of a stammer – “You don’t seem – especially pleased – to have me turn up on your doorstep – ”
At which, it became patently obvious that the chit had no idea what Rosamond had done, that she still believed herself to be the ill-fated object of my unshakeable pursuit. If it kept her on edge, and sufficiently wary of me not to wreck any more of my furniture, I wasn’t especially inclined to correct her.
Nicholas would have done it regardless, in his mollifying way, had I not glowered him to silence. It was more than enough for now to reiterate to Nettleblack that she hadn’t answered my question.
She regarded me a moment, her wide eyes the uncanny spit of her sister’s, evidently assessing the situation for herself. Her paltry intellect apparently didn’t disappoint. Having worked out that any overt request for my time, help, and patience would have resulted in her instantaneous ejection, through door or window, she flung a new gambit at me, even more insane than the last.
“The Director needs you – there’s a plot – erm – against the Division – ”
What, I was on the verge of snarling, did I care about the Division – ?
But Nicholas caught my eye, and shook his head. “Listen to the fieldmouse, Matty. Can’t tell you why she’s here if you don’t let her finish the sentence, eh?”
The reprimand was so gentle, so solemn, yet so much firmer than his usual wafting cautions, that it silenced me on the instant. Nettleblack proceeded –
“Forget you’ve resigned – erm – and help me – something’s happening in the building – and the Director has some kind of plan – and – I can’t get to her – or Cassandra – and Septimus hasn’t got back yet – and Gertie and the others are gone – and you’re the only one left in Dallyangle who can assist – so you have to – ”
“I don’t take orders from you,” I snapped. Nicholas waved me frantically to silence again, an absentminded rodent on his wrist flicking its tail across his knuckles. I stared at him: twice in one evening?
“Pretend he’s not still sulking, Henry,” he blurted, without so much as a wince for my incredulous splutter. “And give him all the facts you’ve got. Matty enjoys facts, eh, Matty?”
Only sheer love for the man kept me from strangling him.
“Cassandra’s deduced something,” Nettleblack declared wildly, as if she thought Mrs. Ballestas’s scatterbrained author-child in any way capable of doing my job. My former job. Regardless. “As far as I – erm – understand it – there was only so much time to explain – Cassandra seems to think that Lady Miltonwaters and Adelaide Danadlenddu have some connection – erm – to a plot against the Division – and now Adelaide is keeping people out of the Division on false pretences – with the Director inside – and very probably Lady Miltonwaters too – and – the Director – she – she wants me to – figs, I don’t know! – to get into the Division – and do something for her – but I can’t work out what – and – and – quite!”
Nicholas patted her shoulder, glanced over to me with the same infectious panic glinting in his eyes. “Matty, we have to help – ”
But we had, if anything, to remain within the perimeters of reason, even dishevelled and half-dressed as we were.
“Do you have any proof of this so-called plot?” I demanded. “Or, indeed, proof that anything remotely untoward is happening inside the Division building? Or – most pertinently of all – a sensible and thorough explanation from Cassandra, that sounds less like a semi-devised melodrama and rather more resembles an actual strand of deductive logic?”
Her pale face twitched, evidently with an impatient desire to injure me in some not insignificant way. “I can’t get to Cassandra without giving the game away to Adelaide – and I don’t want to do that until I know what the Director needs! Can you not simply believe me? You have my word!”
I was about to inform her with justified viciousness that, even if what she said was true, yelling at me was not going to make the mystery clearer – but the moment she finished her sentence, her whole expression changed. Where she had been pinched in a glare, she was now startlingly slack, gaping at some unfixed point inside my eyes. Nicholas darted closer; he assumed, reasonably, that she was on the verge of toppling down senseless again.
“My word,” she gasped. “That’s – that’s it! That’s her plan! Not the journal! My written word – written tonight – now that they’re all at the Division – and she can trick them into explaining themselves – and I know the back way in! She’s seen how quickly I can transcribe – how much I can remember – and she wants to catch them with it! Figs! Of course!”
“Whose plan?” – but I asked purely, at this stage, for confirmation of what I already suspected. If anyone could quietly deduce Nettleblack’s identity, store it up in her mind until it proved useful, then summon a way to weaponise it against whatever threat happened to arise – of course it would be Keturah Ballestas.
Unsurprisingly, Nettleblack blurted the very same name. “And Septimus said that Adelaide and Lady Miltonwaters just walked in – demanding to speak to the Director – whatever they’re saying, I – I need to write it down – merciful peaches, and she must be running out of time!”
