‘You never!’ said Patty. ‘Ow!’ In her astonishment, her knife had slipped and she had nicked the edge of her finger.
‘Run it under the tap, girl. Quickly,’ said Mrs Ruddle.
‘I really did. One day the circus came to Merthyr Tydfil. My mother and her friends walked over the mountain to see it. The next thing Mamgu – that’s what we called my grandma – the next thing Mamgu knew, my mother’s friends were telling her my mother had run off with the knife thrower. They got married, and I’m the youngest of their seven children. Only youngest by twenty minutes, mind you.’
‘And you lived in the circus?’ said Patty. She was still bleeding, but no longer seemed to care.
‘We did. We travelled all over the country. The lion tamer taught me to read. Whenever we were in a town big enough to have a library, I’d spend all day in there with the books. I didn’t care what it was, just so long as I had my face in a book.’
Mrs Ruddle laughed. ‘You ran away from a circus to read books,’ she said. ‘Now I’ve heard it all.’
‘Shush, Mrs R,’ said Patty. ‘I think it’s wonderful. Did you learn any tricks? I love the circus.’
‘My father taught me knife throwing,’ I said. ‘I can do a little tumbling, too. And if there’s ever an escaped circus lion on the estate, I know exactly what to do.’
‘Oh my goodness,’ said Patty. ‘What?’
‘Run like the clappers,’ I said.
‘You silly-billy,’ said Mrs Ruddle.
Betty arrived at exactly that moment.
‘What are we all laughing at?’ she asked innocently.
That set the cook and her kitchen maid off again.
‘Just sharing some of the secrets of the circus,’ I said.
‘The circus?’ said Betty. ‘That’s nothing. Why not tell them about the espionage?’
‘Espionage?’ said Mrs Ruddle. ‘Are you spinnin’ us a yarn, Miss Armstrong?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘The one follows the other. Mamgu was ill, so my mother went back to Aberdare, taking the three youngest children with her. My father and our four older brothers stayed with the circus, but Dai – he’s just two years older than me – my twin sister, Gwenith, and I went back to live in the valleys. I was twelve by then, I think. We went to the local school for a year while we all tried to settle into life in a mining village. Dai ended up down the pit like his grandfather before him, Gwenith took over Mamgu’s job in the grocer’s shop, and I . . . I left home again.’
‘To be a spy,’ said Mrs Ruddle suspiciously.
‘No, to be a scullery maid in Cardiff.’
‘And that’s where you met Lady Hardcastle?’ asked Patty.
‘No, I met her in London. I moved to a house in London after two years with the Williamses, and then two years after that, my new employers’ friend, Lady Hardcastle, offered me a job as her lady’s maid.’
‘How wonderful,’ said Patty.
‘At seventeen?’ said Mrs Ruddle. ‘Now I know you’re pitchin’ a tale. Weren’t never no seventeen-year-old ladies’ maids. You take no notice, Patty.’
‘No, Mrs Ruddle,’ said Betty. ‘That part’s true. Mrs Beddows told me that part of it. She doesn’t know anything about the circus, but Lady Hardcastle told them all about how she met Miss Armstrong. She told them about how she and Sir Roderick went to Shanghai and took Miss Armstrong with them. And about how Sir Roderick was murdered and they had to flee for their lives.’
‘Well I never,’ said Mrs Ruddle. ‘I beg your pardon, Miss Armstrong, I’m sure. I’ve never heard the like. Well, well, well.’
She and Patty resumed their chopping and stirring, each apparently too dumbfounded to say any more.
Betty, too, simply stood there, lost in thought.
‘Did you want me for anything, fach?’ I asked. ‘Or was it Mrs Ruddle?’
‘What?’ said Betty absently. ‘Oh, no, nothing special. I just came to . . . to . . .’
‘To get away from Mrs Beddows for a bit?’ I suggested.
She sighed. ‘You have no idea what it’s like,’ she said. ‘I swear she’s the most . . . the most . . .’
‘Always was, my dear,’ said Mrs Ruddle. ‘She’s always been the nasty one in their little gang. Lady Lavinia used to bring her little friends home in the school holidays. They was lovely girls, really. Always up to mischief, but usually nothin’ nasty. If there was ever an undercurrent of nastiness, though, it was always little Rosamund Birchett, as she was then, who was the ring leader. She could be right spiteful.’
‘What sort of things did she do?’ I asked.
‘It’s hard to recall specific things,’ she said. ‘There was always summat goin’ on. They loved to play little jokes and tricks on each other, and on the youngsters on the staff, too, sometimes. Good-natured things, for the most part. But if ever things turned ugly, it was always little Miss Birchett as was at the centre of it. They say something happened at their school once, too.’
‘I’m surprised at you, Mrs Ruddle!’ Mrs McLelland, the housekeeper, had appeared like the manifestation of an unquiet spirit. ‘You should be setting Patience a better example than this. You know better than to speak disparagingly about our guests. That’s not the way things are done at Codrington.’
Mrs Ruddle looked none too pleased at being told off in front of her kitchen maid, but, to her credit, she held her tongue.
‘And as for you, Miss Buffrey, I should have thought you would be standing up for your mistress, rather than joining in with this tittle-tattle.’
Betty blushed crimson.
I decided I ought to try to rescue the situation somehow. Ignoring Mrs McLelland, I said, ‘Are you expected back any time soon, Betty?’
‘What? No, she’s writing letters. I’ll have to get her dressed for tea. And then again for dinner. But I’ve got an hour or so to myself.’
‘Come on, then, fach,’ I said. ‘Let’s go and see what mischief we two can get up to on our own.’
As it turned out, Betty and I remained mischief-free. She was reluctant to give details about her most recent run-in with her employer, but it clearly had left her agitated and anxious. We walked in the kitchen garden for a short while, but conversation eluded us. I tried simply sitting on one of the low walls in companionable silence, but she couldn’t settle. Eventually, she apologized for her mood and returned to work.
There was nothing for it: I would have to return to mine.
‘Ah, there you are, Flo,’ said Lady Hardcastle as I entered her room. ‘I was about to ring down for you.’
‘Is there something the matter?’ I said.
‘No, dear, there’s rarely anything the matter. I was just thinking of having a bath.’
‘I shall draw one for you at once.’
‘You’re very kind, but that’s not why I was going to ring. I’ll need you for hair-fettling duties, obviously, but I actually wanted to talk about Kovacs. He’s very high on my list now.’
‘I can see why,’ I said as I went through to the bathroom to run her a bath. ‘And Mrs Beddows, too.’
‘Roz?’ she called. ‘Well, I—’
There was a knock at the door.
‘Come in,’ called Lady Hardcastle.