The empress of ice cream

Louise

I inform the ambassador of my decision. He looks pained, but does not actually order me onto the next boat back to France. For the moment, at least, it seems I am their best hope.

‘And how do you mean to achieve this?’ he wants to know. ‘Through reason and learned debate?’

‘Partly. And partly by invoking his late sister’s wishes.’

‘It is not merely a matter of persuading King Charles of the need for war. He will have to defy his own Parliament. That will involve considerable risk to his own position.’

‘Parliaments can be dissolved.’

""Mon Dieu - have a care,’ he says faintly. ‘That was how his father lost his head.’

‘Bribed, then. From what I have seen of England so far, they all have their price.’

‘All this bribery, just to spare your honour, mademoiselle?’ he says laconically.

‘All this bribery to achieve our objective. After all, I do not think my honour alone would have persuaded Parliament of the need for war, do you?’

When he has gone I go to the window, calming myself

This is something new: to meet with an ambassador, and bend his will to mine. And, what is more, to reframe a suggestion almost a command - from my own king. I have not defied Louis, exactly - that would be a most foolhardy thing to do - but I am making it clear that I, a mere woman, am going to go about this in my own way.

At best, I will be allowed to try. If I fail, the consequences might be even more unwelcome than being shut up in a convent.

Something else I consider: Madame would not have spoken to an ambassador like this. Madame’s way was always to trust people, to believe in their goodness, fixing them with the radiance of her gaze until the person she was speaking to became caught up by the force of her conviction.

But that, I am starting to realise, is not my way. *

I go back to the harpsichord. The seat doubles as a chest, for storing sheet music. I lift up the cushioned lid and feel at the bottom of the pile, then draw something out.

Aretino’s Postures: bein^ u true Account of the lewd Methods und divers Positions employed by u so-culled Lady, lately come from France.

Pornography, slipped under my door. They have not even attempted to make it look like me, but that is the suggestion.

Why, I wonder, flicking through the pages, is there so much fiiss about which way one lies to be coupled? What can it possibly matter if one is on the right or the left, or standing up, or sitting? And what could convince any woman that squatting over a man as if over a pot is a decorous way to behave? I shudder. As for the later pictures, the ones with more than one woman, or more than one man . . .

Yet, somehow, I have not been able to throw it in the fire. There is something about the etchings, for all their crudeness, a kind of vulgar relish, that both repels and fascinates.

And there is instruction here, of a kind.

I hear Lady Arlington’s voice in my head. The kin£f is an accomplished lover. Perhaps coupling is quite like tennis after all; a game which must be learned like any other, initially baffling, but simple enough when you master the rules.

And I have never yet come across a game I cannot win at.

I think: do I really want to marry - to become some nobleman’s brood mare, obliged to do this for him whenever he wants when I could be the confidante of a king instead?

And at the thought of how the stakes in this game are rising

how the abyss on each side is deepening -1 am surprised, and not a little curious, to find that what I feel is not so much fear, or disgust, but excitement: the thrill of someone who walks onto a' tennis court, and feels a racquet in her hand.