make a list.
A minute or two later, Peel came in with a housemaid. The butler was the younger son of a farmer, and there was an outdoor look about his freckled face and salt-and-pepper hair, but he had been a servant at Ty Gwyn all his working life. “Mrs. Jevons have been took poorly, my lord,” he said. Fitz had long ago given up trying to correct the grammar of Welsh servants. “Stomach,” Peel added lugubriously.
“Spare me the details.” Fitz looked at the housemaid, a pretty girl of about twenty. Her face was vaguely familiar. “Who’s this?”
The girl spoke for herself. “Ethel Williams, my lord, I’m Mrs. Jevons’s assistant.” She had the lilting accent of the South Wales valleys.
“Well, Williams, you look too young to do a housekeeper’s job.”
“If your lordship pleases, Mrs. Jevons said you would probably bring down the housekeeper from Mayfair, but she hopes I might give satisfaction in the meantime.”
Was there a twinkle in her eye when she talked of giving satisfaction? Although she spoke with appropriate deference, she had a cheeky look. “Very well,” said Fitz.
Williams had a thick notebook in one hand and two pencils in the other. “I visited Mrs. Jevons in her room, and she was well enough to go through everything with me.”
“Why have you got two pencils?”
“In case one breaks,” she said, and she grinned.
Housemaids were not supposed to grin at the earl, but Fitz could not help smiling back. “All right,” he said. “Tell me what you’ve got written down in your book.”
“Three subjects,” she said. “Guests, staff, and supplies.”
“Very good.”
“From your lordship’s letter, we understand there will be twenty guests. Most will bring one or two personal staff, say an average of two, therefore an extra forty in servants’ accommodation. All arriving on the Saturday and leaving on the Monday.”
“Correct.” Fitz felt a mixture of pleasure and apprehension very like his emotions before making his first speech in the House of Lords: he was thrilled to be doing this and, at the same time, worried about doing it well.
Williams went on: “Obviously Their Majesties will be in the Egyptian Apartment.”
Fitz nodded. This was the largest suite of rooms. Its wallpaper had decorative motifs from Egyptian temples.
“Mrs. Jevons suggested which other rooms should be opened up, and I’ve wrote it down by here.”
The phrase “by here” was a local expression, pronounced like the Bayeux Tapestry. It was a redundancy, meaning exactly the same as “here.” Fitz said: “Show me.”
She came around the desk and placed her open book in front of him. House servants were obliged to bathe once a week, so she did not smell as bad as the working class generally did. In fact her warm body had a flowery fragrance. Perhaps she had been stealing Bea’s scented soap. He read her list. “Fine,” he said. “The princess can allocate guests to rooms-she may have strong opinions.”
Williams turned the page. “This is a list of extra staff needed: six girls in the kitchen, for peeling vegetables and washing up; two men with clean hands to help serve at table; three extra chambermaids; and three boys for boots and candles.”
“Do you know where we’re going to get them?”
“Oh, yes, my lord, I’ve got a list of local people who’ve worked here before, and if that’s not sufficient we’ll ask them to recommend others.”
“No socialists, mind,” Fitz said anxiously. “They might try to talk to the king about the evils of capitalism.” You never knew with the Welsh.
“Of course, my lord.”
“What about supplies?”
She turned another page. “This is what we need, based on previous house parties.”
Fitz looked at the list: a hundred loaves of bread, twenty dozen eggs, ten gallons of cream, a hundred pounds of bacon, fifty stone of potatoes… He began to feel bored. “Shouldn’t we leave this until the princess has decided the menus?”
“It’s all got to come up from Cardiff,” Williams replied. “The shops in Aberowen can’t cope with orders of this size. And even the Cardiff suppliers need notice, to be sure they have sufficient quantities on the day.”
She was right. He was glad she was in charge. She had the ability to plan ahead-a rare quality, he found. “I could do with someone like you in my regiment,” he said.
“I can’t wear khaki, it doesn’t suit my complexion,” she replied saucily.
The butler looked indignant. “Now, now, Williams, none of your cheek.”
“I beg your pardon, Mr. Peel.”
Fitz felt it was his own fault for speaking facetiously to her. Anyway, he did not mind her impudence. In fact he rather liked her.
Peel said: “Cook have come up with some suggestions for the menus, my lord.” He handed Fitz a slightly grubby sheet of paper covered with the cook’s careful, childish handwriting. “Unfortunately we’re too early for spring lamb, but we can get plenty of fresh fish sent up from Cardiff on ice.”
“This looks very like what we had at our shooting party in November,” Fitz said. “On the other hand, we don’t want to attempt anything new on this occasion-better to stick with tried and tested dishes.”
“Exactly, my lord.”
“Now, the wines.” He stood up. “Let’s go down to the cellar.”
Peel looked surprised. The earl did not often descend to the basement.
There was a thought at the back of Fitz’s mind that he did not want to acknowledge. He hesitated, then said: “Williams, you come as well, to take notes.”
The butler held the door, and Fitz left the library and went down the back stairs. The kitchen and servants’ hall were in a semibasement. Etiquette was different here, and the skivvies and boot boys curtsied or touched their forelocks as he passed.
The wine cellar was in a subbasement. Peel opened the door and said: “With your permission, I’ll lead the way.” Fitz nodded. Peel struck a match and lit a candle lamp on the wall, then went down the steps. At the bottom he lit another lamp.
Fitz had a modest cellar, about twelve thousand bottles, much of it laid down by his father and grandfather. Champagne, port, and hock predominated, with lesser quantities of claret and white burgundy. Fitz was not an aficionado of wine, but he loved the cellar because it reminded him of his father. “A wine cellar requires order, forethought, and good taste,” the old man used to say. “These are the virtues that made Britain great.”
Fitz would serve the very best to the king, of course, but that required a judgment. The champagne would be Perrier-Jouet, the most expensive, but which vintage? Mature champagne, twenty or thirty years old, was less fizzy and had more flavor, but there was something cheerfully delicious about younger vintages. He took a bottle from a rack at random. It was filthy with dust and cobwebs. He used the white linen handkerchief from the breast pocket of his jacket to wipe the label. He still could not see the date in the dim candlelight. He showed the bottle to Peel, who had put on a pair of glasses.
“Eighteen fifty-seven,” said the butler.
“My goodness, I remember this,” Fitz said. “The first vintage I ever tasted, and probably the greatest.” He felt conscious of the maid’s presence, leaning close to him and peering at the bottle that was many years older than she. To his consternation, her nearness made him slightly out of breath.
“I’m afraid the fifty-seven may be past its best,” said Peel. “May I suggest the eighteen ninety-two?”
Fitz looked at another bottle, hesitated, and made a decision. “I can’t read in this light,” he said. “Fetch me a magnifying glass, Peel, would you?”
Peel went up the stone steps.
Fitz looked at Williams. He was about to do something foolish, but he could not stop. “What a pretty girl you are,” he said.
“Thank you, my lord.”
She had dark curls escaping from under the maid’s cap. He touched her hair. He knew he would regret this. “Have you ever heard of droit du seigneur?” He heard the throaty tone in his own voice.
