The empress of ice cream

Carlo

You must stir your sorbet with a fork as you freeze it, to soften the crystals and break up the ice.

The Book of Ices

A few days later I found myself walking in the rose garden, deep in thought. I was thinking about the king’s competition, and what I might devise for it, but I was also thinking about my future.

It seemed that my partnership with Audiger, for so long uneasy, was finally turning to rivalry, with the presidency of the guild as the prize. I regretted it - if Audiger had not rescued me from the Medici court, who knows how long I might have had to endure there - but one could not go on being grateful for ever. And, if I was honest, I was shocked that the Frenchman thought he could beat me at the creation of an ice. I had always assumed - no, knew - that when it came to this part of our work, my supremacy was clear.

Louis’s words to the Englishman had signalled that he only saw the need for one ice cream maker: I would simply have to make sure that it was me. There was no choice. I would win that competition, and Audiger would have to cede to me.

There was a place I sometimes went to be alone, when I wanted to escape the constant ebb and flow of people around the court: a small thicket of medlar trees where the low branches made a sort of hidden bench. I directed my footsteps there now, only to discover I was not alone after all. A woman was sitting, reading, in the exact same spot where I had intended to sit myself.

Only as I came nearer did I see who it was. It was the girl with the green eyes, the one who had tasted my ice. I was pleased: I

had not expected to have the opportunity to speak with her so soon.

‘Madame,’ I said, bowing. ‘Good day.’

‘Mademoiselle,’ she corrected, glancipg up briefly. ‘My name is Mademoiselle Louise de Keroualle.’

‘My apologies, mademoiselle. And I am—’

‘The Great Demirco, the maker of ices,’ she said laconically. ‘Yes, I know.’

I bowed again, and waited for her to say something else, but she had already returned to her reading.

‘I should thank you, mademoiselle, for tasting my ice the other day,’ I observed. ‘Had you not done so, I am sure that idiot doctor would have persuaded the king not to eat it.’

‘Well, I have not suffered any fits as yet,’ she said. She turned another page. ‘Although your confection did have certain unwelcome side effects.’

‘In what way?’

‘Only that the whole court has been talking of nothing but ices ever since. It has been quite impossible to get anything done. I have had to come out here to escape from you, and read my book in peace. And yet now here you are, in person.’

All this was said quite matter-of-factly, and for a moment I wondered if my presence really was unwelcome to her. But then I remembered the eagerness with which she had' devoured my strawberry ice, and resolved to proceed,

‘And what do you do here at court, mademoiselle? This is not usually a place in which people read books.’

‘If you must know, I am waiting,’ she said, after a moment’s pause.

‘For whom?’ '

‘For my husband.’

‘And have you been waiting long?’

‘Around three years. You see, I have no husband.’

Slightly baffled by this nonsense, I said, ‘I would have thought

that a young woman as beautiful as yourself would have no shortage of suitors.’

Nor did she react to this sally in either of the two ways I had been anticipating; that is to say, she did not blush prettily, as I might have expected her to do if she welcomed my interest; but neither did she turn up her nose, as she might have done to show that she was not receptive. Instead, she simply sighed, as if this were a conversation she had had too many times before.

‘Do you mean to flirt with me? Please do not, Signor Demirco. Did they not tell you? I am much too poor to be worth flirting with.’

‘Whatever do you mean?’

‘Just that no one told my parents the price of a good husband nowadays is, oh, almost a dozen sets of fine clothes, and a house in town, and a hunting estate, and your accounts with tradesmen settled, and your losses at cards made good.’ She spoke lightly, but it seemed to me that there was now a flash of anger in her eyes. ‘So they mortgaged their last remaining lands and bought their oldest daughter a place at court, in the hope that the excellence of her wit might cause some wealthy courtier to forget the poverty of her relations, never realising their error.’

‘I am sorry to hear it.’

‘Don’t pity me, signor. In any case, my time here is hardly wasted. While I am waiting, I can be Madame Henrietta’s lady-inwaiting.’

Unsure if this was more irony, I said nothing.

‘Oh, Madame is a great person,’ she said with sudden passion. ‘She’s not one of these simpering court beauties, content to sit around embroidering cushions and plotting assignations.’ She had closed her book, although I noticed that she left her thumb in it to keep her place. I glanced down, and got another surprise: it was not a romance she was reading, but Descartes’ Principles of Philosophy. ‘She is working for a great diplomatic prize - an alliance between her brother the king of England and her . . .’ she

hesitate^!. ‘Her protector, the king of France. As you yourself witnessed yesterday.’

I shook my'head. ‘I witnessed only some courtiers being idle, a game of paille maille, and some dancing.’

‘Dancing is diplomacy, in this court. And throwing dust in the

eyes of the English, although amusing, is not always as easy as

«

Madame makes it look.’

‘“Dust?”’

‘Forgive me,’ she said suddenly. ‘I am touching on matters I should not.’ She got to her feet. ‘You would do me the greatest service, signor, if you would forget that we ever had this conversation.’

‘Forget what?’ I said, puzzled. ‘You have said nothing - nothing of any consequence, that is.’

She was already walking away, but she paused. Once again the lazy eye seemed to rest on me a little longer than the other.

‘I’m glad you think so,’ she said, mockingly. ‘For my part, I thought I was exposing the very secrets of my soul.’

As she turned the corner into the rose garden, on an impulse I called after her, ‘Perhaps we’ll meet again.’

She did not stop, but her voice floated back to me. ‘If we both keep looking for places to be alone. Signor Demirco, you may be sure of it.’ ^

‘Forget this,’ she had said, but - rather to my surprise - I found that I could not. It was not her appearance, or not that alone. The French court was full of beautiful women; indeed, by their standards she hardly wus a beauty; that lazy eye, almost a squint, must surely count against her on that score; no, it was something else, something in her manner.

It Italian they have a word, stizzoso^ which means someone who is prickly, discontented, angry even; like a porcupine or hedgehog. Amongst those polished, languid court women of Versailles I had come across very few hedgehogs. But Louise de Keroualle was one.

‘Perhaps we will meet again’ - how clumsy I had been, but she had not rebuffed me altogether. ‘You may be sure of it. .

Well, I had been back to the medlar trees half a dozen times since then, but she had not been there.

Olympe waited until our lovemaking was done, and the two of us were lying head-to-toe on the big four-poster bed in her apartments, before saying, ‘You were distracted today’

I turned and kissed her plump calf. ‘Never.’

‘Who is she?’

‘What do you mean? There’s no one but you.’

‘Liar.’ Olympe kicked me away and sat up, propping herself on one arm. ‘Tell me. I much prefer intrigues to compliments, if the truth be known. Perhaps I can help you seduce her, whoever she is.’

‘There’s a girl . . .’ I said reluctandy.

‘Well, of course. Who? Come on, tell me.’

‘Louise de Kerouaile. I don’t know why, but I find her rather intriguing.’

‘Oh, her.' Olympe lay back down again. ‘Forget her. You can’t have her. Nobody can.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because she’s not married, of course.’ Seeing my look of incomprehension, she explained, ‘One can tolerate infidelity in a wife or a mistress - indeed, it’s to be expected, in a place like this. But a potential fiancee - particularly one as poverty-stricken as poor litde Louise de Kerouaile - has only her virginity to recommend her. Sadly, she’s much too poor for anyone at this court even to think of marrying her. And so she will remain a virgin for ever, unless her parents realise their mistake and place her in a less demanding marketplace.’

‘You make her sound like something for sale.’

‘Of course. We women are all for sale. It is simply that some of us prefer to handle the negotiations ourselves. Or to loan

ourselves out occasionally.’ She stretched luxuriously. ‘In any case, she’s quite wrong for you. She disapproves of anyone having fun.’

‘She disapproves of you, you mean?’

‘Can you imagine,’ Olympe said, not answering me directly, ‘what a persondike that would be like in bed? The only interest would be in seeing if you could get her there in the first place. After that -’ she made a dismissive shrug - ‘boredom.’

‘She probably thinks bed is for reading books.’

Olympe laughed. ‘I found a book I would quite like us to read,’ she said teasingly. ‘Aretino’s Postures. The court is going mad for it. It shows twenty-seven variations of position, and there are at least four we have not tried yet.’

I glanced at her naked body. ‘When shall I see you next?’

‘Like this? That rather depends on whether you intend to do anything about the de Keroualle girl.’

‘You said I couldn’t have her.’

‘You can’t.’ She swung her short, voluptuous legs off the bed and went towards the anteroom, where her bath was waiting. ‘But I don’t think that’s going to stop you from trying, is it?’

I did not see Louise de Keroualle again for almost a week. The days were even hotter now, and there was a constant stream of requests coming down from the ladies and gendemen of the court for iced cordials and cooling liquors, not to mention the king’s competition to think about... I did not see her, but I found my thoughts returning to her, and the king’s competition received less attention than it should have done as a result.

I was in the ice pantry, overseeing the making of a batch of sorbets, when a woman’s voice said, ‘Excuse me.’

It was her. She was wearing a simple short-sleeved dress of brown linen. But I saw the way the cold of the pantry had brought goose-skin to her forearms and the delicate flesh below her throat, and quite suddenly I could imagine just what it would

be like to step forward, to take those velvety forearms between my hands, and rub them until the bumps had gone . . .

‘Mademoiselle de Keroualle,’ I said. ‘To what do I owe this pleasure?’

Perhaps I spoke a little too enthusiastically: at any rate, it seemed to me tliat she eyed me somewhat warily.

‘If this is really a pleasure, signor, then perhaps you are too easily pleased.’

I was not to be dissuaded by the rattling of her quills. ‘If you dissect so innocent a pleasantry, perhaps you are too easily offended.’

‘Perhaps,’ she said with a sigh. ‘Anyway, Madame has sent me. She would like a glass of iced chicory water.’

‘Certainly - I will make it myself But it will take a few minutes.’

‘I can wait.’ She leaned against one of the stone shelves that ran against the wall, folding her arms across her chest to keep warm, as I began to assemble the things I would need. Occasionally I glanced at her, hoping that my smiles might encourage her to reciprocate, but she simply looked around, as if curious about her surroundings.

At the back of the pantry stood a great stack of ice blocks, ready to be crushed, carved, or smashed. ‘How beautiful they are,’ she said quietly.

‘Beautiful?’ I had not thought of them that way. To me they were simply bricks, raw materials waiting to be used, but they were beautiful in a way, I now saw, each slab as individual as porphyry or marble; some clear as crystal, some opaque, some containing within their centres suspended cores and whorls of frozen whiteness, like water that turns cloudy as it is stirred. The stack was as low and as wide as a table, and in the dim light of the pantry it gave off a land of cold, silvery glow.

‘So pure,’ she said. ‘And so remarkable, here in the middle of summer.’

‘Thes.e come by cart direct from the king’s own caves at Besan^on. There is no finer ice in Paris.’ I glanced at her arms, at the fine hairs that once again had risen along her forearms. ‘You’re cold. Here, let me rub—’

‘Thank you,’ she said quickly, moving away. ‘But there is no need, really. Like you, I am used to the cold.’

‘Oh? Why’s that?’ Pulling on a grating glove - a gauntlet of thick leather covered with a lattice of chainmail - I began to shave ice into a bowl with a hard, rhythmic motion.

‘Where I come from - the Bay of Brest - the winters are very severe.’ She was silent for a moment, as if remembering. ‘Even the sea fills with ice. Sometimes a fog comes in from the German Sea and freezes everything, every tree and blade of grass, and they become coated with tiny crystals, like a white fur.’

I nodded. ‘I have heard of such a thing, though I have never seen it.’

‘If you are warm, or rich, or young, it is rather wonderful,’ she said. Her eyes had a faraway look in them as they followed the rhythmic motion of my hand across the ice. ‘But if you are poor, or old, or hungry, it can be terrifying. Every year, when the earth could be dug again, we buried dozens of people killed by the bad weather. My family were better off than most, of course. We always had enough for a fire in the great hall - a fire, of wood, that is, not sea coal. But in the nursery, or the sleeping quarters - there we had no heat at all. We used to look forward to snow, because that was a sign the weather was getting warmer. If you woke up and the grate was full of snow, you would puU on your clothes and run outside to dance and make snowmen.’ Her eyes softened at a memory. ‘Or throw snowballs at your brothers, of course. But that was before I was sent to court.’

I had a sudden image of this proud young woman dancing in the snow, spinning with glee, her dark hair glistening with fat wet flakes which turned to sequins as they melted. <

‘In Florence, it rarely snowed,’ I said. ‘Once or twice a year.

perhaps.’ The ice was ready to use. I hesitated. T must ask you to turn your back now. This part of the process is secret.’

She raised her eyebrows. ‘You think I might steal your methods? And set up as a confectioner on my own account?’

‘Of course not. But unfortunately there can be no exceptions. The king himself insists on it.’

She shrugged and turned her back. I added a scoop of saltpetre to the ice, then took a long-necked flagon, a cantimplom, into which I poured the cordial water. Pushing the vessel deep into the ice mixture, I rotated it, cooling the contents to just this side of freezing.

‘I suppose the mystery is all part of the performance,’ she commented to the wall. ‘Like a conjuror, you have to make it seem more difficult than it really is.’

For a moment I allowed my eyes to rest unobserved on her back - the curve of her spine, the set of her hips, the way she stood; a little awkward, a colt rather than a horse. ‘On the contrary. We protect only what we must.’

I spooned the remainder of the ice into a goblet and poured the chilled cordial over it. It was a fine colour, I thought, holding it up to the light to admire it: pale brown, almost golden, the ice glinting in its depths. ‘You can turn round now.’

She did so. ‘Is there any more?’ she asked.

‘Is this not enough?’

‘She will want to know that I have tasted it.’

‘Why?’

‘She worries about poison.’

‘Poison!’

Once more her gaze lingered on my face, as if wondering how much to tell me. She said seriously, ‘You would not laugh if you knew the risks she takes. Her own husband . . .’ She shuddered. ‘Well, never mind. But she will certainly ask if I have tasted this.’

There was a little cordial left in the flagon, so I poured it into another glass. I said, handing it to her. A thought sud

denly occurred to me. ‘Was that why you ate her strawberry ice?

It wasn’t to please me, or to confound that idiot doctor, after all. You were making sure it wasn’t poisoned.’

She swallowed the cordial off in one draught, her eyes on mine, the slow one following the other. ‘Very good,’ she said, handing back the empty glass, and I could not be sure now if she was referring to the cordial or my reasoning. She picked up the other glass and placed it on a tray.

‘And when you said it was as delicious as a lover’s kiss on a warm summer’s day . . .’

She smiled. ‘That is the sort of nonsense the court likes to hear, don’t you find?’

I grunted.

‘Oh, don’t be offended,’ she said. ‘The ice was perfectly pleasant, as it happens. We both have our secrets, signor. It’s just that mine are a little more serious.’

‘How can a woman’s secrets be serious! The secrets of which dressmaker to use, or who has bested who at cards!’

‘I’m sure you are right.’ She carried the tray two-handed to the door, and stopped. ‘And now I find I am such a feeble example of my sex that I can’t even open this heavy door without the use of my hands.’

Sighing, I went and pulled the door open for her.

‘I am much obliged,’ she said with mock courdiness. ‘By the way, signor, it was a pleasure talking to you. And you should know that, unlike you, I am not so easily pleased.’ >

I could not talk to Audiger. So I went to see Olympe.

‘I know you told me not to come back until I was done with her,’ I said, striding into her apartment. ‘But I need your advice.’

As I told her what had happened I realised how ridiculous it sounded - a few glances, some spiky remarks, a conversation about a snow fight with her brothers. But Olympe heard me out, nodding from time to time.

‘Well, that «interesting,’ she said when I had finished.

‘You think she likes me, then?’ I said eagerly.

‘Oh, I didn’t mean your grand passion, amusing though that is. No, I meant Madame Henrietta d’Angleterre’s flirtation with grand politics. Which is, as Louise rightly observed, a very serious matter indeed.’

‘What are you talking about?’

She sighed. ‘The problem with you. Carlo, is that you think this entire court exists only to eat your ices. Actually, it is a war machine, the greatest in Europe, and a dropped handkerchief here can lead to the burning of whole cities in Spain or Flanders.’

‘But what does that have to do with Louise de Keroualle?’

‘The king wants the EngUsh to be his allies in a war against the Dutch,’ Olympe said, as if to an idiot. ‘The English themselves are of no great account, of course, but they have a great deal of coastline, and it must be denied to our enemies.’

‘I know all this. That’s why the English visitor is here. To draw up a treaty.’

Olympe shook her head. ‘The real treaty was signed in secret three weeks ago.’

‘I don’t understand. How?’

‘When Madame Henrietta went to visit Charles at Dover to celebrate his birthday, she took with her a treaty drawn up by her and signed by Louis - who also happens to be her lover,’ she explained. ‘Did he seduce her simply to enlist her help?’ Olympe’s shrug suggested that she thought it quite possible. ‘Anyway, the treaty says that Charles will commit England to war with the Dutch, in exchange for a pension from Louis - a pension so generous that Charles will no longer have to bow his knee to the English Parliament that restored him.’

‘That is hardly unreasonable, surely? A parliament should have no right to meddle in a king’s affairs.’

‘Of course. But I hear that the treaty also commits Charles to becoming a Catholic. And if the English king is Catholic, his country must be too. Effectively it is a treaty which, if it were

known about, commits Charles to a conflict with his own people. Hence the need to draw up another version, one more fit for public consumption, with no mention of pensions or religion.’

‘So the English duke—’

‘Is, much to Louis’s amusement, here to negotiate terms which have, in fact, already been settled. But of course, he must have no inkling of it - he must believe that he has, by dint of his own charm and hard bargaining, managed to secure exactly what he was ordered to hold out for. He will take the tmite simuU back to England; their Parliament will ratify it, and no one will be any the wiser. That is what Louise meant when she let slip that remark about throwing dust in the eyes of the English.’

I nodded, although it seemed extraordinary to me, the complex lies within lies that made up French diplomacy.

‘This plan, it is well known, has been Madame Henrietta’s great preoccupation ever since her brother regained his throne,’ Olympe went on. ‘But there have been numerous obstacles - not least from those here at court who oppose an alliance with Protestants and regicides. Madame has suffered unexplained fits before, and the doctors believe it was poison.’

‘I had no idea.’

‘Of course you didn’t. These are subtie, secret matters.’ Olympe leaned forward, her eyes shining. ‘But if little Louise de KerouaUe, at her tender age, has become Madame’s confidential agent, she must be rather more than the simple child I took her for.’

I thought back to that sardonic voice; the clever, lazy gaze. ‘She is certainly no simpleton.’

Olympe nodded. ‘Which, in turn, may a problem for me'

‘For you! Why.^’

‘Because I hope that the king will one day return to my own bed on a more permanent basis, of course,’ she said simply. ‘He took his present mistress from among Madame’s ladies-in-waiting; I must take care that he does not do it again. Perhaps it is time for pretty, clever Mademoiselle de Keroualle to go back to Brittany.’

Her gaze shifted back to me. ‘As for your little problem, that is easily settled.’

‘It is?’

Olympe got up and moved towards the bedroom. ‘I know I said we would not do this for the time being, but I find intrigues strangely arousing. Come; your cure awaits.’

Afterwards she said, ‘So . . . Do you think your litde virgin would really have been as much fun as that?’

I laughed. ‘You are quite right, as ever. She is much too dull for me. I shan’t give her another thought.’

‘Don’t be too hasty,’ she said.

Something in her tone alerted me. ‘Olympe, what are you scheming now?’

‘I have had an idea,’ she admitted. ‘Rather a delicious one - I have all my best ideas while making love. It’s very simple. Instead of seducing her, why don’t you marry her?’

‘Marry Louise!’

‘Yes. It’s perfect, isn’t it? After all, you have to marry sometime, and it should be to someone who advances your interests. You have money - new money, admittedly, but someone in her position can’t be too choosy, and time is running out; she must be at least twenty by now. But her family is a good one, and the king clearly likes her: by taking her as your wife, you would consolidate your own position.’

I was silent for a moment. ‘And afterwards?’

She shrugged. ‘As soon as she’s pregnant, you set her up in a house somewhere suitably removed. It needn’t affect your other arrangements.’ She put her hand on my arm, stroking it idly. ‘It might even make them easier. There are plenty of women who would rather have an affair with a married man than a single one. You would have the best of both worlds.’

‘And it suits your interests too, by removing Louise de Keroualle from court.’

‘Of course,’ she said simply. ‘I wouldn’t have suggested it otherwise.’

I thought about it. It was true that I should marry soon: true, too, that my wealth, and the royal warrant, meant that I could hope to marry someone with connections. I had already risen further than I had ever thought possible; but with the right sort of wife, and, I hoped, the presidency of the guild, there was no reason why I should not go even further.

‘Well, I will consider it,’ I said. Olympe only smiled enigmatically.