The empress of ice cream

Carlo

Burnt ice cream; melt your sugar in a pan over the fire until it scorches: meanwhile, prepare a mix of six eggs, one gill of syrup and one pint of cream: stir all together, pass through a sieve, and freeze.

The Book of Ices

‘Pregnant? Are you sure?’

She nodded miserably. ‘I have been sick twice today already.’

‘Will this alter things?’

‘For me? I don’t know. The ambassador certainly thinks it is good news.’

‘But you’re not so certain?’

She shrugged. ‘Charles has had bastards before: there seem to be dozens of his children running around the place. I suspect it may mean that my position will be established, and therefore make it more difficult to change.’

I saw what she meant. ‘You still hope he might make you his queen.’

‘If Catherine dies, yes. Why not? It is my only way out of this now - the only way my position can become an honourable one. But somehow I think even the English might have a problem with a fat, pregnant Frenchwoman waddling up the aisle to claim their king.’

‘What does Charles say about the baby?’

‘Oh, he’s delighted. More, I think, because it proves his continued potency than because he really wants another child.’ She hesitated. ‘There’s something else. As I soon as I told him, his interest in me lessened.’

‘You think he has somehow been put off?’

She shook her head. ‘He still visits me - but to sit with me, or walk, or listen to conversation. You would not think anything different from his manner - he is still as attentive as ever - but when we lie together, it is only the once now that he covers me.’ I noted the matter-of-fact way she spoke:.there were no blushes these days; her copulations were matters of politics and strategy, to be analysed in the same way as any other court matter. ‘It is almost as if, having got me with child, he feels he has done his duty, just like any husband getting an heir on his wife.’

‘Perhaps that is the case. And it is only normal for a man’s desire to wane after the honeymoon.’ Perhaps, I thought, Culpeper’s gooseberries had had some effect too, after all. ‘After all, he will need to forego you completely once your belly is bigger. After a period of enforced abstinence, he will return to you with even more vigour.’

‘If abstinence is truly what he is experiencing,’ she said dryly.

‘You think he has other women.>’

‘I am sure he does,’ she said quietly. ‘And I can hardly mind, if it reduces his demands on me. But this is different. It is not merely Will Chiffinch showing some servant girl up the backstairs. He dines away from me.’ >

‘With the queen?’

She shook her head. ‘When he goes to her he does it publicly, so that it can be noted. I fear that Arlington has found someone with whom he intends to supplant me.’

Cassell was even more direct. ‘The king tires of her,’ he said bluntly. ‘I would not be surprised if he sends her back to France, to have her bastard there.’

‘So who does he favour instead?’

‘The word is that he has gone back to the actress.’

‘The actress! Why her?’

‘He always goes back to her in the end. She amuses him. His Majesty is not made for constancy.’

‘Then he may yet come back to Louise.’

‘It is possible, I suppose. Do not let them squabble over him, though. The king likes nothing better than ease, and we have had squabbling women before.’

‘Louise will not stoop to fighting. Least of all with a playactress.’

‘Oh, she will certainly have to fight,’ Cassell said. ‘I just meant that she must do it quietly. The actress has seen off rivals before, and your Madam Carwell would do well not to underestimate her.’

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