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The servants’ hall lay between the stone stairs and the kitchen; a long room with a fireplace halfway along one side and a row of windows along the other. (These were set high up in the wall, level with the front drive so any visitors—or their feet, at least—might be seen approaching.) Staff tea was served in there at half past five; and Jem followed Thomas, hanging back and waiting to be shown where to sit at the long table. He knew how much these things mattered in the below-stairs kingdom.
‘It’s not usually like this,’ Thomas said apologetically, gesturing him to a chair. ‘There’s normally only a few of us here—me and the girls, and Joseph. A lot quieter.’
Everyone had been too busy for proper introductions, but Jem was able to work out who was who. Lord and Lady Etchingham had arrived in time for afternoon tea, and their maid and valet took seats opposite each other now, on either side of Mr Goddard. Walter Cox, the loud London footman, tried to slide into the chair between the two housemaids, but the housekeeper, passing behind, redirected him, with a tap on the shoulder, to the empty space beside Jem. Cox grinned. ‘Worth a try, ladies,’ he said as he got up.
Randolph Hyde’s valet was the last to sit down. As everyone bowed their heads and the ancient butler recited grace, Jem could feel the valet’s eyes on him. When he looked up, the man was still staring, and their eyes held. Jem looked away first.
Around him, the business of eating got underway and the room filled up with the chink of china, the scrape of cutlery. It was the same in every servants’ hall; the race to swallow something down before a bell summoned you or time ran out and you had to set aside your own needs to attend to someone else’s. In some houses no talking was allowed at mealtimes, which at least allowed you to get on and eat, but this clearly wasn’t the case at Coldwell. Conversation was conducted in quick bursts, between mouthfuls.
‘Did you hear about the break-ins?’ Lady Etchingham’s maid said, addressing the table at large with an air of self-importance.
‘Break-ins?’
It was Miss Addison’s maid who spoke. She looked as on edge in this unfamiliar place as Jem felt.
Lady Etchingham’s maid glanced at her in surprise, as if she hadn’t noticed she was there and was directing her story at a more important audience.
‘Yes, two of them: one at Darnhall Park, one at Fellside—both in the last month.’ She leaned over to fork a slice of ox-tongue onto her plate. ‘They got in through a window both times and took some bits of silver and what have you. Isn’t that right, Mr Burns?’
Lord Etchingham’s valet didn’t look up from his plate as he nodded. Miss Addison’s maid put her hand to her throat as if feeling for absent diamonds, though the only adornment she wore was a white ribbon pinned to her plain dress. Looking down the table towards the housekeeper, she asked for confirmation that someone had put Miss Addison’s jewels in the safe.
Opposite Jem, the blonde housemaid, Eliza, rolled her eyes. ‘I did. Not in the safe—that’s in the library and we’re not permitted in there—but I took them to the silver cupboard in the butler’s pantry. That’s where we keep the valuables.’
‘You don’t have to worry, Miss Dunn,’ Walter Cox added, with a wink at Eliza, ‘I’ve been reliably informed that the hallboy’s bed is across the door to the silver cupboard, so anyone breaking in to steal would have to get past him first.’ He raised his voice to address the scrawny lad eating his tea on a chair by the door. ‘Isn’t that right, Joseph?’
Looking up, Jem was ambushed by a shock of emotion that sucked all the sound from the room. In that second, with his fair head bent and the plate balanced on his bony knees, the hallboy looked for all the world like Jack.
Jack, ten years ago, when Jem had seen him last.
Joseph nodded vigorously, his bulging cheeks turning pink. Everyone laughed.
Jem felt light-headed, as if he couldn’t get enough air. The conversation moved on to the upcoming coronation, and whether Sir Henry would be well enough to go to the London house during the celebrations. The light outside was fading, the lamps yet to be lit, and the shadows seeping in from the passage outside seemed full of secrets and menace. The livery Thomas had found for him was on the small side across the shoulders and in the collar. Perhaps that was why he felt so constricted. So suffocated.
‘So… Arden, isn’t it…? I must say, your arrival was well-timed. I understand you join us from a… railway inn, is that right?’
Hyde’s valet had been silent so far, as if the domestic small talk was beneath him. His tone now was friendly enough, but it didn’t conceal the barb.
Jem cleared his throat. ‘I was at the Station Hotel in Sheffield.’
‘I know that place,’ Thomas said. ‘It’s massive. Well—I say I know it—never been in, of course. Far too grand for the likes of me.’
Henderson ignored him, one eyebrow arched at Jem. ‘And where were you before that—the Coach and Horses in Hatherford?’
If this was an attempt at humour, it was an awkward one. Jem decided not to rise to the valet’s bait and to answer in earnest, to banish any speculation from the outset.
‘Before that I was footman for an American gentleman—a Mr Randall Winthrop, in Mayfair.’
He was aware of everyone around the table listening. Sweat sprang up on the back of his neck, but he forced himself to continue. ‘I’ve moved around a bit. I started out with Lord Halewood at Upton Priory and then I was at Deeping Hall in Hampshire for five years, with Lord Benningfield. His wife is French, so the household spent half the year abroad—’
‘Did you travel with them?’ Eliza asked, her eyes widening. ‘To France?’
Across the table, the valet’s face was in shadow, but Jem could feel the weight of his stare. He nodded, grateful for the interruption, and even more grateful when Thomas joined in, cheerfully spooning piccalilli onto his plate and relieving Jem of the burden of attention.
‘Rather you than me. I couldn’t go in for all that travelling abroad. In my last place, I worked with a lad who’d gone to America in his previous job. Sick as a dog all the way there and back, he was—five days each way. He said he—’
‘Thank you, Thomas, that’s enough.’
It was the first time Jem had heard the housekeeper speak, though he’d been aware of her all through the meal and had to make a conscious effort not to turn to look at her directly. He was certain she was the figure he had seen at the window earlier, though he wouldn’t have guessed that she was the housekeeper and would struggle to believe it now if it wasn’t for the heavy silver chatelaine at her waist. All the housekeepers he’d known had been twice her age and had come in roughly two varieties: the maternal sort, who ran the servants’ basement like a nursery, and the sour, hard-faced ones, who clanked their keys like jailers. (He knew all too well about those.)