Chapter 33

Content Warning: Graphic descriptions of food adulteration and bodily discomfort. (You may want to finish eating before reading!)

A substandard food full-course buffet?

Surely they don’t expect me to actually die from eating junk food?

I racked my brain, recalling the childhood treats from back home—those questionable snacks sold outside neighborhood stationery stores, squid legs and sausages roasted over wire grates, brightly colored candies that dyed the tongue in neon hues.

Adults called those “junk food,” so were similar things circulating in 19th-century Britain as well?

No, surely not.

I shook my head vigorously.

Where was this?

19th-century Britain, where the weak could not survive.

Just as the Times article stated, people had died from drinking black tea.

What was printed in the Times wasn’t roasted squid legs.

It wasn’t colored candy.

People died after drinking tea—a family of four.

Which meant that the substandard food of this era was far from the harmlessly crude junk food of the 21st century.

“Baroness Lehzen.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

“Have you seen this article? People died from drinking counterfeit black tea.”

At my question, Baroness Lehzen arranged a teacup and replied indifferently, as though it were nothing out of the ordinary.

“Ah, that article. Such occurrences are quite common in the slums. Falling ill from spoiled food or sudden digestive troubles happens so frequently, you see.”

Her voice remained calm.

As though reporting that a carriage wheel in the street had slipped into a mud puddle. Within that casual calmness, I glimpsed yet another abyss of this era.

“Still, to make it into the newspaper… isn’t it a major incident?”

At my words, Baroness Lehzen replied with an expression that conveyed she could not possibly fathom why I cared about such a thing.

“It is the sort of tidbit one might recall and use when conversation flags in a salon or social gathering, Your Majesty.”

Gossip.

The deaths of four people, reduced to mere gossip.

Baroness Lehzen was not a bad person.

She possessed the average moral sensibilities of this era—an educated, diligent woman.
And that very “average” nature was precisely what occasionally sent a shiver straight down my spine.

I cannot let this go unpunished.

This wasn’t a matter of cheap knock-off handbags flooding the market; someone was stealing the name of the brand I created and using it to kill people. Such a menace had to be uprooted from the very start.

“Send word to Sir Charles Rowan immediately and have them send over that fake black tea. And tell Sir James Clark to come to Buckingham.”

“Pardon?”

“Because I need to verify precisely what on earth was inside that tea.”

At my uncharacteristically firm tone, Baroness Lehzen bowed her head and hurried out of the room.

I kept my eyes fixed on the newspaper until the sound of her footsteps faded down the corridor.

Two hours later, Sir James Clark arrived, hanting and breathing heavily.

“Your Majesty, you summoned me urgently, so I rushed here. Has some trouble occurred?”

“I am quite well. The trouble lies elsewhere.”

I pointed toward the box of evidence Sir Rowan had dispatched in advance.
It was a lump of grayish-black powder packed inside a shabby burlap sack.

“Did you read this morning’s newspaper?”

“Yes, Your Majesty. I saw the reports concerning the incident in the East End.”

“This is said to be the tea leaves recovered from the scene of that incident. I received them through Sir Rowan of the Metropolitan Police.”

“Might I examine them?”

With that, Sir Clark cautiously opened the sack and took a sniff, his brow instantly furrowing deep. Smells travel faster than judgment, faster than classification, faster than guesswork. The look of revulsion that bloomed across his face served as the most honest diagnostic method available.

“…The odor is foul. Far from the aroma of tea, it smells of rotting straw.”

“Can you determine what on earth was mixed into it to produce such a stench?”

“Understood. I shall take it to the laboratory immediately for examination.”

Evening arrived.

When the study door swung open and Sir Clark returned, I could already guess the outcome simply by looking at his expression. For the shadow of the news one carried always arrived across a person’s face first.

In his hand rested a paper detailing the analysis results, and the fingertips gripping the page were trembling faintly.

“Your Majesty…”

“Have the results come out?”

“Yes… I can scarcely believe it.”

Sir Clark swallowed hard and approached me.

A doctor is a person trained throughout their entire life to deliver bad news—pronouncing terminal diagnoses to patients, notifying families of deaths.

Yet, as though the words refused to cross his lips, he merely parted them before finally squeezing out a strained voice.

“This… is not tea, Your Majesty.”

“Not tea, you say?”

“According to the analysis, the proportion of tea leaves did not even reach 10%. And even those were spent tea leaves that had already been brewed once and discarded.”

“Then what about the rest?”

Sir Clark shut his eyes tightly, then opened them.

“To impart a black coloration… graphite powder was mixed in.”

“Graphite? The graphite used in pencil leads?”

“Precisely.”

Pencil lead. That black powder meant for writing letters was flowing right down into human stomachs here.

“And to make them resemble tea leaves, dried leaves of unknown origin were tossed in… and in order to maintain the green coloration of those leaves…”

Unable to continue, he clapped a hand over his mouth as though suppressing a dry heave.

“Copper was detected. To be precise, it is copper carbonate (verdigris).”

“Copper…?”

My head spun.

Copper… the stuff used to mint coins? They coated tea leaves in copper?
Just to make the color look pretty? In food meant for human consumption?

My head spun.

It felt as though the baseline of human conscience I thought I understood had suddenly vanished.

“Your Majesty, that is not all.”

As though the worst was yet to come, Sir Clark’s expression twisted as though he were on the verge of tears.

“To shape them into the form of tea leaves, they mixed in an adhesive substance… and that component was…”

“Out with it. What was it?”

“…Animal excrement. Specifically, sheep excrement, among others.”

“…What?”

At those words, my train of thought ground to a complete halt.

Just as eyes close tight before an overly blinding light, thought itself shuts down before a truth too dark.

Excrement…?!

“So… that is… they crushed the excrement to create adhesive properties, kneaded it together with graphite and copper powder, and mixed it into the dried leaves… and molded it to resemble tea leaves, is what is surmised… Of course, while I cannot claim 100% certainty, nonetheless… that is my professional judgment.”

Molded into the shape of tea leaves.

Just as a potter shapes clay to craft a vessel, just as a painter mixes pigments to paint a picture—someone had molded sheep excrement, graphite, and copper to manufacture tea leaves…?

“Ugh…!”

“Your Majesty!”

A sudden wave of nausea surged up from within.

It felt as though the scone I had eaten that morning was performing a tap dance inside my stomach.

Which meant that what people believed to be tea and drank was actually a dough of sheep excrement, graphite, and copper?

Are they insane… Are these people out of their minds?

Crude junk food from the 21st century?

No, this wasn’t even junk food—it was a literal mass of poison.

How on earth could anyone sell something like this as food unless they were deliberately trying to kill people?

“Have Commissioner Rowan of the Metropolitan Police brought before Us at once!”

A short while later, Sir Charles Rowan entered with heavy footsteps, wearing an exhausted expression as though he had just been about to fall asleep, yet his face looked both grim and composed, as if he already knew everything. However, looking composed did not mean he was fine; rather, it was perhaps the fatigue of a man for whom terror had already become a part of daily life.

“Commissioner Rowan, I apologize for the late hour, but have you heard what these madmen are selling right in the middle of London?”

“…Yes, Your Majesty. I have received reports.”

Commissioner Rowan bowed his head deeply as though expecting this, but his reply only left me even more astounded.

“However, with all due respect, Your Majesty… This is not a matter of yesterday or today.”

“…Pardon?”

“The majority of the tea circulated in the slums of London… is of this sort.”

“…”

The majority?

For a moment, I was struck speechless.

Did that mean the people in the slums were drinking that horrifying paste every single day?

“It may sound like an excuse, but genuine tea is far too heavily taxed for the lower classes to even dream of affording. More than half the cost of tea consists of tariffs.”

Commissioner Rowan continued his explanation in a flat yet bitter tone.

“To economize on tea leaves, merchants purchase spent tea leaves discarded by hotels and cafes at bargain prices. Because drying them out again washes out the color, they mix in copper to make them look greenish, and apply graphite to impart a luster. Mixing in sheep excrement or dirt to bulk up the volume is also… an open secret.”

“A secret? That is a secret? While people are dying out there?”

“Even attempting a crackdown yields no end. Stamp out one, and two more spring up, and above all…”

Commissioner Rowan paused.

A brief silence. Within that silence, Commissioner Rowan was weighing the gravity of what he was about to say next.

When those words followed, I received the single greatest shock of everything I had heard tonight.

“People want it.”

“Wait a moment. What did you just say?”

They wanted poison?

“The impoverished lack the funds to buy real tea. Yet after backbreaking labor, they cannot endure without drinking at least a single cup of warm tea. Even knowing it is fake… they must drink that astringent flavor and black water… to find solace.”

Solace.

The moment that word left his lips, it felt as though I had been struck across the head.

People were drinking poison for solace, knowing full well it could kill them.
Perhaps it was even crueler than opium.

Opium sold pleasure and left behind addiction, whereas excrement-tea sold the imitation of solace and left behind death.

The greater problem was that opium addicts had chosen pleasure, whereas the consumers of this poison had made no such choice. They never had a choice to begin with. They weren’t pondering between real tea and fake tea; they had to pick between fake tea and absolutely nothing at all.

When I stopped the Opium War last time, I had flattered myself into thinking I had become a reasonably competent monarch. And I even harbored pride in having distributed salicin to save people… but to think darkness was hiding so close beneath the candlestick.

Right beneath my feet, in the back alleys of London, a poison worse than opium was being sold under the name of tea—and piggybacking right on the popularity of the Earl Grey I had popularized at that.

That phrase written in the diary flashed through my mind.

Even stomachs made of titanium, rather than steel, would have melted down under this.

“Ha…”

A deep sigh burst forth. My chest felt so constrained I thought I might go mad.

Is this a problem that can be resolved simply by rounding up a few unscrupulous merchants?

No.
There was poverty, there were taxes, there were distorted desires, and there was averted conscience.

Beneath the ceiling supported by those four pillars, poison-laced tea circulated in the gray zone between legality and illegality. Breaking a single pillar would not bring the ceiling down.

All four had to be shattered. And in their place, the pillar of law had to be erected.

I cannot simply stand by and watch.

A substandard food full-course buffet?

Would I even be able to survive by the time that course came to an end?

No. Failing to resolve this is no different from dying.

A paste of sheep excrement, graphite, and copper. There was a family that had believed that was tea and drank it.

Perhaps they had purchased something special for a special day to celebrate Easter.
A small bag the head of the household bought for a penny on his way home from work.
It might very well have been the best gift he could offer his family.

The wife would have boiled the water, the children would have gathered around the table, sharing teacups from which steam rose in soft wisps.

For that brief moment, it must have been warm. It must have been happy.
And that became their final meal.

I clenched my fists tightly.

The pain of my fingernails digging into my flesh snapped my mind sharply to attention.

“Commissioner Rowan.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

“Unearth every single fake tea manufacturing plant in London—every last one of them.”

“However, Your Majesty, their numbers are vast and they operate as fragmented cells…”

“If the Metropolitan Police force is insufficient, I will mobilize the military. Root out every last rat.”

I glared at Commissioner Rowan and growled.

“Because we are going to overturn the dining tables of this nation.”

My gaze was so murderous that even Commissioner Rowan, who had spent decades wading through battlefields, flinched.

“Those scoundrels who play games with what people eat… I will hunt them down to the very ends of hell and smash them to pieces.”

The Food Safety Act?

Very well. I will draft it with absolute severity.

I am going to show the 19th-century British the blistering spice of the 21st-century Ministry of Food and Drug Safety.

“Commissioner Rowan, what are you standing around for? Why aren’t you moving?”

“Ah, understood! I am moving immediately!”

Commissioner Rowan scrambled and bolted out the door in a panic.

I looked back down at the horrifying sample of excrement-tea brought by Sir Clark earlier, resting upon the table.

Right. It was an issue that had to be addressed head-on sooner or later anyway.

I picked up the diary from the floor. I brushed the dust off its cover.
The fingerprints remaining on the leather surface were akin to a signature accepting the task set forth by the diary.

I opened the diary once more and read the text on the second page.

Whether it was a command, a plea, or a threat, it had now merged with my own will to become one.

Not because the diary desired it, but because I desired it.

Ever since I laid eyes on that black powder, ever since I heard the tale of death forged by that powder, I had become an interested party.

Smoke rising from a chimney far away was obscuring the stars.

Beneath that smoke, in the narrow alleys of the East End, someone at this very moment would be boiling black water. Steam would be rising from a kettle, and within that steam, they might be trying to find a fleeting solace for their day.