The empress of ice cream

Carlo

Alone among desserts, ices excite curiosity and Wonder in equal measure.

The Book of Ices

It might be thought as a result of my conversations with them regarding oaths, courtiers and so on, that the servants at the Red Lion were an unusually pious lot. But, in fact, I soon realised, the place was little better than a brothel.

On the Continent, a man knows that he is visiting a house of iU repute and, his business concluded, may close the door and forget all about the dealings he has conducted there. In England the demarcation between inn and stew, servant and trull, was rather less defined - indeed, they have a word, sluf which describes someone who occupies the lowest rank of domestic servant, but which also indicates that she is likely to be available for whatever else may be required of her. It soon became apparent that at the Red Lion there were several sluts who supplemented their wages in this way. These young women - Mary, Rose, and two or three others - openly worked the main dining rooms of an evening, going from patron to patron under the guise of bringing them ale, engaging them in flirtatious conversation and so on, before slipping upstairs with them to one of the attic bedrooms.

I was, initially, somewhat annoyed when I discovered what sort of place it was - not because I was bothered by the vice itself, but because in France or Italy, to base your business in a brothel would be grounds for an instant removal of the royal warrant. But in England, clearly, things were not so straightforward. Indeed, when I mentioned it to Robert Cassell, he seemed almost amused.

‘Well, of course,’ he said. ‘What did you expect? It’s a London tavern.’

‘The authorities don’t object?’

‘In theory, yes - but in practice, they have more pressing matters to deal with.’

London’s inns, he explained, had been hotbeds of dissent during the Commonwealth, often hosting informal parliaments of working men and women. Some had even had their own printing presses, and produced newspapers and revolutionary tracts which were eagerly devoured by the mob. After the purging that had necessarily taken place at the time of the Restoration, it had been decided that whoring was the lesser of the many evils that had to be dealt with.

‘There isn’t a tap-servant in London who can’t be had for a silver sixpence,’ he concluded.

‘But I thought the people here were Puritans, before the Restoration?’

‘Some were, but there were many sorts of dissenter, and they all had different views on what was or wasn’t acceptable. Diggers, Quakers, Ranters, Levellers, the Family of Love, Muggletonians, Fifth Monarchists . . . They’re ail banished now, but for a while England had almost as many crazed sects as it had counties. Some of them, like the Ranters or the Family of Love, were virtually indistinguishable from libertines, except that in their case they dressed it up with a lot of nonsense about Christ Within and communality and brethrenhood. But whatever the sect, what they all had in common was a complete refusal to accept any authority but their own.’

I thought about Hannah’s oddly defiant attitude to being thrown out of her pantry. In France or Italy a servant would have done as she was told without debate, but I could see how the people here, having tasted revolution, might find it a hard habit to break.

*

I had not actually considered, however, that Hannah herself might be among those servants who could, as Cassell put it, be had for a silver sixpence, and I was therefore surprised when I witnessed an altercation along those lines between her and one of her customers.. The two of them were tucked away behind one of the stout beams of blackened oak that supported the ceiling in the front dining room, and speaking, despite their evident anger, in low tones; I probably would not have glanced at them at all had I not been waiting for her to bring me my food. Then I noticed two things. The first was that the man was better dressed than most of the Lion’s other customers - almost as well dressed as I was myself The second was that he had her in a tight grip by the arm.

‘Don’t go speaking to your betters in that way,’ he was saying.

‘I call no man my better, nor woman neither,’ she retorted. ‘And what exactly makes you better than me, in any case? Last night I was prepared to take your money; you were prepared to offer it. The difference is. I’ll not make that mistake again.’

His reply was too low for me to catch most of it, but I could see that he was using the arm he had hold of to shake her roughly as he spoke, greatly jeopardising my pie, which almost slid from the plate she was holding onto the floor.

‘. . . have you arrested, you ranter whore. Don’t ithink I won’t.’

To this she made no answer, but I could see .she had gone white. He released her. ‘We’ll discuss this outside,’ he said roughly, and turned away.

She came over to serve my food, but as she put it down on the table her hand shook, and the plate rattled, although her voice, when she asked me if I needed more beer, was hard and flat. I said that I did not, and she left me without another word. I saw her go to the door the man had left by, which led to the yard where the empty kegs were stored.

I shrugged and turned my attention to the pie. I had enquired what it was before ordering; the reply that it was ‘cock-a-leekie’

had left me none the wiser, but now, as I punctured the crust with my knife, it released a spurt of fragrant heat, revealing several soft, steaming pieces of potato, some pale garters of leek, slivers of chicken in a creamy broth, a good scattering of thyme, and even a few pieces of a dark currant-like fruit which I soon discovered were preserved plums.

However, there was something spoiling my enjoyment, and that was the knowledge that all the time I was inside eating a cock-a-leekie pie, the woman who had made it was outside, giving herself to a man she had clearly wished to refuse. She might be at fault, but I had not liked the look of the fellow, or the way he had shaken her arm, and I suspected that he was probably being no more gentle with her now.

Sighing, I put my plate to one side, got to my feet, and went to the yard door. Outside, it was dark, but I heard a noise from behind a pile of kegs to my right. I shouted ‘Who’s there?’ A woman gasped, the sound instandy cut off, as if by a hand around the throat. I shouted, ‘Bring the watch here, ho! Here’s fornication in the streets!’ - a phrase which surprised even me, until I remembered that these were the words shouted by the night beadles as they toured the streets in the small hours, looking for any mischief. I must have heard them a dozen times beneath my own window as I slumbered.

From behind the kegs there was the jingling of a sword belt, a muffled oath, and then the unmistakeable sound of a hefty slap. Hannah cried out; footsteps ran off, and I went behind the kegs to investigate.

She was sprawled on the ground where she had been hurled by his blow. From the way her skirts were rucked indecently around her waist, I had been too late to prevent the act which both parties had gone there to carry out; but perhaps, at least, I had prevented her from coming to further harm.

‘Thank you,’ she said flatly.

I noticed the absence of a ‘sir’. But perhaps in the darkness she

did not recognise me. Then she held out her hand. That too surprised me: on* the Continent it would have been unthinkable for a servant to put out her hand to a gentleman. But she was clearly in need of it if she were to get to her feet, so I took hold of it and pulled her up..

‘Thank you,’ she said again when she was standing. She rubbed her cheek where the man had slapped it. I could see from the way she looked at me that she was wondering what I was now going to ask of her for helping her.

‘You owe me no thanks,’ I said. ‘Nor anything else for that matter.’ I turned to go.

‘Signor Demirco,’ she said.

I stopped.

‘If you tell Titus Clarke what you have heard tonight, I will be dismissed.’

That was all. There was no question asked, no request made. She simply stated a fact, and left it for me to decide what to do.

It was on the tip of my tongue to say, ‘You should have thought of that before.’

But I did not. I simply nodded, and went back inside. And when Titus brought me another pint of beer, I found that I had no inclination to tell him what had passed between Hannah and her beau. It was, I told myself, simply none,of my: business.