The empress of ice cream

PART FOUR

Tt was universally reported that the fair lady was bedded one of these nights, and the stocking flung after the manner of a married bride; I acknowledge that she was for the most part in her undress ail day, and that there was fondness and toying with that young wanton; nay, it was said that I was at the former ceremony; but it is utterly false.’

Diary of Sir John Evelyn, September, 1671

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Louise

It is done. I lie in the royal bed, wet with the king’s seed. Anointed by the Lord’s anointed. My thighs bloody, streaked. My maidenhead mingled with the fluxions of his desire.

The blood of Louise, spilled so that Louis might have Dutch blood spilled in the Netherlands.

In a daze, in a bed, words spilling around my head. I am a burning fortress, a ransacked village, scorched earth.

‘Please, do not cry, my love,’ he croons. ‘My love, my dearest love.’

Please Louise.

I am done, dishonoured, fallen. I am Eve, Magdalene, the Whore of Babylon, the wanton Ludy lately come from France the pamphleteers have always said I was. My precious honour plundered, stained along with the bedsheets. I am, quite literally, shattered.

But mostly what I think is—

Really?

All that fuss, for this? Are you sure?

Oh, of course it hurt. I was expecting it to hurt. But the first time it was over so fast that I scarcely had time to tell myself that it was not as bad as I had been expecting.

But perhaps that is the nature of his famous skill as a lover? Is it like being a surgeon - if you can saw an arm off in under a minute, patients will beat a path to your door?

I lie here, unable to move, all my limbs sawn off, scattered around the room where he has thrown them. Charles the surgeon, wiping the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand.

Yes, he does take his wig off. Underneath, his stubble is turning grey. No, he does not kick out the lapdogs. Thank God the

three be has brought to Newmarket were too small to jump up into the bed. All night I heard them snuffling beyond the curtains.

Charles the surgeon was a lot slower with the second operation than the first. Perhaps he tires. His fingers on me, cold with seed, working between my legs. Why is he doing that, inside? Does it somehow prepare the way?

Sawing, sawing, sawing away.

I think of Aretino, all those pictures I studied so carefully in preparation for this night, trying to understand what would happen. I even made notes. But there is no chance whatsoever of me doing anything of that nature now. Nor, thankfully, does he seem to expect it. It is all I can do to lie here without sounding winded, much less squat or kneel or any of those other contortions.

‘My love, my love,’ he says, flopping into me again. And again. Squashing me. I think with sudden envy of the mechanism of a clock, cool and mechanical and clean.

With a groan he anoints me a second time. A sudden shuddering in his legs. The first time I thought it was some kind of fit, that I had killed the king. This time it is less alarming. But hardly less unpleasant.

Seven hundred years of loyal service to France. For this.

His thumb touches my cheek, stroking me. »

‘They are tears of joy,’ I whisper.

Satisfied, he sags over me, a dead weight. I feel his heart thudding against my breasts. Every bit of him is as hard and unyielding and solid as a statue. Except for the wet softness now where we are joined. Where the statue melts inside me.

The third time, dawn is breaking. I wake with him kneeling over me, his yard looming into my line of sight, thick and terrifying. The hair on his broad shoulders and belly is as dark as an ape’s.

I turn my head to the side and he plants a kiss on my cheek, slowly and deliberately, as he enters me.

Like a flag. I am his territory now. Conquered.

This time the sawing is slow and sonorous.

Afterwards he says, ‘How was it?’

He might bx asking my opinion of a play.

I consider. ‘Not quite what I expected.’

‘Oh? In what way?’

‘It was more like horse riding or tennis than poetry or music.’

A frown crosses his face, and I remember where I am. Who I am with. Why. ‘That is to say, it was wonderful. I was the happiest girl in the world; now I am the happiest woman.’

Mollified, he pulls back the bed curtain on his side. Instantly there are two valets there, one holding water, the other a cloth.

The one holding the bowl, the younger, stares straight ahead. Then, as if he cannot help it, his eyes flick down to where I lie, my breasts damp with the king’s sweat. Yesterday, I might have had him whipped for his temerity. Today, I am a fallen woman. Let him look.

Charles gets to his feet. I watch as the royal cock is sponged, the royal undergarments held out for him to step into. By now there is a quite a crowd around him, spraying and snipping and primping until, at last, it is no longer the man who stands there but the monarch, tugging at the lace cuffs of his frock coat.

Finally, the wig.

He takes a step forward, towards the door, which opens as if by magic.

Music. Applause.

On my side of the bed, the curtain is also pulled back. Two maids stand there, eyes downcast, waiting to do the same for me. I hear a buzz of conversation from the other room. A shout: ‘To Newmarket, Your Majesty? Or have you had enough riding for one day?’ The laughter erupts, male and hearty. It spurts into the room, thick and wet. There is a chant, singing, a dozen gruff voices roaring the refrain.

‘With a heigh-de-de-ho, old Rowley!’

I swing my own legs to the floor, stiff and a little sore. Lady Arlington is standing there, waiting.

‘There is work to be done,’ she says-simply.

I am to stay in my deshcibilU all morning, as a sign that I am wedded. My hair is brushed out, but not too much. A portrait has been commissioned of the two of us, a gift ftom the ambassador or rather two portraits: the proprieties must be observed. I will reach out with my right hand, Charles with his left, across the divide: we are not quite handclasped, but when the paintings are hung together, the symbolism will be clear. The painter will have litde luck making the king sit today, though. An hour at the most, and then he will be off to the races.

Lord Arlington appears at my side. ‘All well?’ he says quiedy.

‘All well.’

‘Ask him this morning. Before he does any other business.’

‘As you wish.’

I walk up to Charles. He turns to face me with a smile, the courtiers beside him melting into the background.

‘Lord Arlington wishes me to ask a favour.’

He raises his eyebrows.

‘The timing is also at his request.’ *

Charles nods, noting that I have understood - as Arlington has not - that this lack of subtlety is ill suited to the mood of the occasion.

‘He wishes to be Lord Chancellor.’

Charles looks genuinely shocked at the size of ArUngton’s demand. Then he says thoughtfully, ‘You pass on the request, Louise, without petitioning me to grant it.’

I shrug.

‘Arlington is a fool,’ he says quietly. ‘He should have had you ask me yesterday. Yesterday I would have given you anything you wanted.’

‘I know,’ I say. ‘That is why I did not ask you yesterday.’

Charles’s chuckle makes some of the courtiers look up. ‘You would not have me appoint a fool to the highest office in the land?’

‘I would noj:.’

‘He is my olde;st friend.’

‘And he has built your kingdom’s newest palace on the strength of it,’ I say, glancing pointedly at our surroundings.

‘If not him, then, who?’

‘For chancellor? Shaftesbury.’

‘Shaftesbury!’

‘If a Parliamentarian finds that even he cannot balance the books. Parliament will have no choice but to vote more funds. And it will be hard for Shaftesbury to oppose the war if you have put him in charge of it.’ Also, his appointment will annoy Lord Arlington more than anyone else I can think of.

He nods. ‘And I suppose you were thinking about this even while we were in bed?’

‘Of course not,’ I lie. ‘I was far too busy thinking about you, my dearest love.’

‘Well, I will attend to it. Now?’

I smile across the room, to where the Arlingtons are pretending to talk to each other. ‘Oh, I think we can keep Lord Arlington in suspense a little longer, don’t you? Today I want to go the races and meet this stallion I have heard so much about. After all, I have already become well acquainted with his namesake.’

•4

Carlo

t

Raspberry ice cream: make a quart of custard; wljen cold, pour it on a quart of ripe red raspberries, mash them in it, pass through a sieve, simmer and freeze. But do not oversweeten them: the taste of raspberries is all the better for being a little sharp.

The Book of Ices

She held out until September - a full year after she first arrived in England. I have heard it said that she always meant to be seduced; that her scruples were just play-acting, her coyness a stratagem. That does not account, surely, for the fact that it took the most determined men in Europe twelve months to get her into his bed.

I hardened my heart, and tried not to think what the two of them did there.

The political consequences, however, were immediate. A pretext was found for war: the little royal yacht passed by the Dutch fleet and was not saluted with all with the solemnities due to a great warship. The Dutch apologised for their oversight, but the English announced hostilities nevertheless. The government called a halt to its debt repayments so that money could be diverted to the war. And Charles personally drafted a bill he called the Declaration of Indulgence. All men and women were from now on to be free in their hearts. Free to worship as they pleased, free to think as they pleased, free to say what they pleased.

You would have thought he had announced that henceforth all English babies would be put to the sword and all English virgins raped. The country erupted. The apprentices rioted, and burnt down the brothels. The prostitutes marched, and burnt down the

shops. Shopkeepers boarded up their shops; bakers could not sell their bread; priests denounced their own king’s libertinism from their pulpits. It was said that the army was on the verge of rising; though for who, or what, was never very clear.

‘But this, surely, is exactly what you wanted,’ I said to Hannah in exasperation. ‘You are always talking about the rights of Englishmen. Now Charles has turned them into law.’

‘Don’t you see - that is the whole problem. We have those rights because we are born with them. It is not in Charles’s power to indulge them or take them away.’ She sighed. ‘Besides, everyone knows this Declaration is suspect not because of what it says, but what it does not say.’

‘Meaning.^’

‘It’s Catholics, not dissenters, whom the king actually means these freedoms to benefit. Then, when England is Catholic again, the Inquisition will return and torture the dissenters.’

I began to see people in the streets wearing green ribbons on their lapels. It was a sign, Cassell explained, that they were for Shaftesbury and the Parliamentarians.

‘They’re little better than Whigs, some of them,’ he said with a sniff.

‘Whigs?’

‘Gypsies. Tinkers.’ But he looked worried. ‘The situation is more serious than I have known it since the Restoration,’ he admitted. ‘With most of the army away to Erance, there is little to prevent an uprising at home. If that happens. Parliament will almost certainly side with the insurrection.’

‘What is the answer?’

‘I suspect the king will have to withdraw the Declaration. The question is, what else will Parliament demand? Once they have the upper hand, why should they stop at repealing just one unpopular law?’ He gave me a sideways look. ‘You must take precautions for your own safety, signor. I suspect that any Catholic could easily fall victim to the mob just now.’

Indeed, I had already done so. The roads around Whitehall were often blocked by disaffected crowds; hardly a day went by when I did not hear a stone hitting the woodwork of my carriage, and on more than one occasion I had to turn back altogether. I hired two burly servants to ride on the outside, but they were more for show than for safety. I knew that in a real confrontation they would be unlikely to save my life at the expense of their own.

You would have thought, therefore, that the atmosphere at court would be tense. But in fact the reverse was true. It was as if the Declaration had ushered in a new mood of pleasure and ease. Now that he finally had Louise, Charles was carefree; and just as she had succumbed to him, so the court now succumbed to her. Every lady of quality wore their hair au naturel^ parted in the middle; every dress was remade so that it was slit open at the side. More Frenchmen appeared in London. Le Notre came over from Versailles to remodel St James’s Park, and shuddered at the Dutch-style canal. A tailor called Sourceau arrived to dress the king. Monsieur de Pontac had charge of his wines, while Louise’s dresses were made by a milliner called Desborde. I even heard some of the younger ladies-in-waiting speaking with an affected drawl, as if - like Louise - English was not their native tongue. She was not liked by them; indeed, I believe that she was hated and resented in equal measure, but she had the king’s favour, and that was all that mattered.

And I was there. I moved amongst them, dispensing my cordials and my granite, almost as if I were back at Versailles. I was there at the balls, at the card parties, at the collations and the private performances and the masquerades. I was there - God help me - when the king and his new mistress cavorted: I was even there in her apartments when they lay together.

For the king was a physical man: exertion made him hot, and when he was hot he liked to call for refreshment. Every day I made the lovers cool cordials of elderberry, lavender, borage or gillyflower. I made them sweet infusions of mint-and-ginger.

poured over crushed handfuls of ice. I made them ice creams of lemon and apricot, of quince and apple, of blackberry and vanilla and fig. I made them goblets of lemonade freshly squeezed, sweetened with dandeUon honey and chilled with pressed snow. I carried my ices.-on silver platters into her bedchamber, with its carved French bed; behind the drawn curtains, into the bed itself, onto those tumbled sheets. I smelt him on her; I smelt her on him; I served them both, with an inscrutable smile, and she thanked me with a smile that was just as oblique.

Only once in those first weeks did I manage to talk to her alone. He had been called away - he refused, mostly, to listen to his ministers’ pleas for his attention to state matters, but if they were persistent enough he would go with ill humour to hurry through a pile of papers or join a council session, although he rarely stayed to the end. On this occasion he left her bed just as I arrived, snatching up a glass of iced peach juice from my tray and calling to her over his shoulder, ‘I’ll be back - stay there,’ barely bothering to button his clothes for his ministers.

For a moment we neither of us spoke.

‘So,’ I said at last. ‘Is it what you expected?’

‘This?’ She shrugged. ‘This would have been my duty in any case, whether I did it as a wife or a mistress. At least I do it now with someone for whom I am not just a duty. It makes it easier to pretend.’

‘Pretend? So that is all you do?’

I should not have asked - it was like touching a wound: you cannot help it, although you know no good can come of it.

‘Sometimes it is,’ she said softly, ‘and sometimes it isn’t.’

‘But do you love him now?’

‘I do not think of it as love, or pleasure,’ she said. ‘I only know that now I am in a position to achieve what I came here to do. Is that love? Is that pleasure? Whatever it is, I am grateful to him for that.’

*

My own position at court, of course, had once again risen along with hers. There was nothing more French than ice; and nothing was therefore now more fashionable. Since Newmarket, my services had become as indispensable to-a grand gathering as the presence of Louise de Keroualle herself.

And yet there was one dish I never provided. Cordials, sorbets and even milk ices I would serve; but unless the king was present, there would be no ice cream. Ice cream, as created by myself and the virtuosi^ was the royal dish; unless the king himself offered it to a guest, no one else could eat it.

There were many who tried. I lost count of the number of times I was asked to prepare some ‘as a curiosity’; my response was always to frown and say, ‘I am afraid that will not be possible.’ Some, of course, could not be shamed in this way. Lord Rochester strode into the Red Lion one morning and threw a purse onto the counter of the pantry where I was working.

‘I want to try the raspberry ice cream the king enjoyed last night.’

‘I am afraid that will not be possible.’

‘He said it was the finest thing he had ever tasted.’

‘Indeed.’

He gestured impatiently at the purse. ‘There are XwcnXY pistoles in there. Take as many as you wish.’ ;

I picked up the purse and handed it back to him. ‘I have already done so.’

He stared at me. His eyes, I might add, were hke the eyes of a lizard, utterly bereft of humanity, and even at that hour he stank of wine. ‘Do you defy me. Signor Dildo.>’ he whispered.

I stared back, quite calm. ‘I think perhaps that you defy the king.’

After a moment he nodded. ‘You think that because your French friend has the king’s ear, people like you are protected from people like me. And in a way, that is triie. But remember this: she has the king’s ear because she has the king’s cock. When

the cock tires, the other organ may too. And what will become of poor Signor Dildo then.>’

Others were more circumspect. I saw Chiffinch, the steward, lift a bowl in order to pass it to the king: there were some elaborate flourishes, the getting of napkins and so on, and by the time it was presented, moments later, the bowl contained significantiy less ice cream than it had done before, although Chiffinch’s face was as inscrutable as ever.

The infamous Barbara Villiers, Duchess of Cleveland, Charles’s former mistress, ordered me to her house - or rather, her palace, for Charles had given her Nonsuch, one of the finest of the royal residences, as a pay-off for her services. Ostensibly our meeting was to discuss the cordials I could provide for a ball; it soon became clear that she actually wanted ice cream, and that in return she intended to provide me with the same favours the king had once enjoyed. When I made it plain that I was not to be so easily bought, she flew into a rage -1 have never seen such fury; she was like a woman possessed, hurling any object that came to hand at me, her beautiful face contorted with anger.

It was this - the fact that only Charles and Louise ate my ice creams - that gave me an idea I should probably not have entertained.

I was working in my pantry during the late part of the afternoon, when no one else was about. I glanced into Hannah’s alcove next door, and observed that it was deserted.

I hesitated, then slipped inside and went to the shelf where she kept her books. I ran my fingers along the spines. The Cookes Guide: Or, Rare Receipts for Cookery . . . Physick, Beautifyinp and Cookery . . . Excellent ^ Approved Receipts . . .

The Compleat Herbal, by Nicholas Culpeper.

I drew it out, and began to turn the pages.

‘What are you doing?’

It was Hannah, entering the room behind me.

‘I mean no harm,’ I assured her. ‘I am simply looking for some information.’

{

‘Then you had better tell me what you need. I know that book from cover to cover, and it is not one that should be left out.’

‘The physick I need is not for me. It is for . . .’ I hesitated. ‘For one of my noble patrons. He wishes to avoid the passions of love.’

‘To avoid them?’

I nodded. ‘Most definitely. He is a busy man, with many important calls upon his time. He wishes not to be troubled by thoughts of a libertine nature.’

‘Well, that is certainly unusual,’ she said. ‘Since most people ask if there is a herb which can do exactly the reverse. But yes, as it happens there are several infusions which have the effect you require.’

‘That my patron requires,’ I corrected.

She made an impatient gesture, as to say it was all the same to her. ‘I take it we are talking about the desire, rather than the performance?’

‘Both, if possible.’

‘Well, let me see,’ she said, taking the book from me and rifling through the pages. ‘Yes . . . Chamomile is good for this, and, and elder flower when the moon is full. But the most effective treatment would be feap-berries.’ *

‘“Feap-berries?”’

She nodded and read aloud, '‘Sometimes called£joosebevries, these berries subdue the passions, particularly the passions of Venus whose dominion they are under. An infusion of the leaves will further cool the blood, and calm all forms of choler and immoderation.^

‘Do you have some?’

‘I can get you some preserved, in jars. But if you are going to use them for ice cream, you had better let me show you how to make a gooseberry fool. It is all too easy to try to mask the berries’ sharpness with too much sugar, and if you do that the ice cream will never freeze.’

Again I wondered at the knowledge she seemed to have of such matters, and caution made me hesitate. With the merest hint of impatience she said, ‘Do you really still think I am going to steal your secrets? In any case, showing you how to make a gooseberry fool is surely the^other way around.’

After a moment I nodded. ‘Thank you.’

And so she showed me the method of making this simple English dish: boiling the fruits in water, along with a couple of elderflower heads; then crushing, sieving and sweetening, and finally mixing the puree with custard and a little grated nutmeg. It was so easy, and so perfect for ice cream, that I marvelled my fellow confectioners in Europe had not yet discovered it.

As if guessing my thoughts she said, ‘Perhaps one day anyone will be able to freeze a mixture such as this.’

‘And destroy my livelihood, you mean?’

‘Are cooks paid for their secrets, or their skill? There is no secret to making pies, and yet mine are more sought after than any others in Vauxhall.’ It was said matter-of-factly; without false pride, but not meekly either.

I grunted. ‘Perhaps that is why there is no pie maker with the royal warrant.’

She shrugged. ‘Perhaps. Anyway, I will leave you. It is time I was about my other work. And I hope,’ she hesitated, ‘I hope that your friend finds some relief from his longings. If the gooseberries do not work, will you let me know? There are various other remedies he could try.’

I made my gooseberry ice creams, and sent them to the king. When I asked Louise a week later if his ardour was any lessened, she looked at me in a strange way and asked why I wanted to know. I tried to imply that I was simply concerned as to whether her obligations were still as onerous as before.

‘Well, he is a little slower than he was,’ she said. ‘It is better.

actually. Sometimes now he is actually concerned for my pleasure.’

That was an outcome I had not anticipated, and after that I sent no more gooseberries to the king.

Louise

He needs to be handled, and this I am learning to do. Business bores him - the process of government, the careful alignment of interests, building consensus. He is a man for bold strokes, sudden decisions. In that respect, we complement each other.

Problems he loathes. The finding of answers he leaves to others that is, to me. Louise, why couldn^t anyone else have thought of that'? To which the honest answer, if I were foolish enough to give it, would be: Because you did not give them a chance.

And then, if the problem was a large one, there will be some gift: a necklace, say, or a piece of silver. I have employed a steward, Hawton, to sell them off discreetly.

My own expenses are enormous. For the king, I have realised, does not want me only as a mistress. Nor am I quite a queen. Rather, I am to be a kind of princess, as Minette was - spendthrift, cultured, delightful, my rooms always full of art and amusement and good French food. He positively encourages me to order Gobelins tapestries, glass goblets, Parisian silks, perfumes from Grasse and wines from Champagne.

My apartments are the court he always dreamed of. When he is with me he is the king he always wanted to be - that is to say, not Charles of England, but Louis of France, all-powerful in his kingdom. He is no longer king by condition and the consent of Parliament: he is Carolus Rex, absolute and arbitrary, England’s emperor.

This is the final masquerade: to be able to pretend that things are not as they are. It explains, I think, his love of the theatre: he is a kind of actor himself, and as his fellow players our task is simply to keep the play in progress. The king does not want his illusions disturbed by unseemly reality.

*

And yet he is kind when I am discomfited by others. At a ball I find myself standing near to two women about my own age. One of them is Lady Sedburgh; another, Caroline de Vere. They are clever, at ease with court ways but not in thrall to them, speak four languages, play music, dance and write. In short, they are just the sort of women with whom I might have hoped to^be friends.

As I take a step towards them they turn away, pretending to be deep in conversation. I check, and make it look as if I am simply strolling past.

And think: once I would have done the same as them.

Charles asks me why I am distracted. Foolishly, I tell him: immediately he has the two of them summoned to his presence.

T have decided that you are to join Madam Carwell’s train,’ he tells them peremptorily. ‘From now on you will be among her ladies-in-waiting.’

I see the disdain on their faces and think: This is not the way. I smile approvingly, but my heart is sinking.

‘Do you have any objections.^’ he thunders.

Meekly, they shake their heads.

‘Those I lie with are fit company for the greatest ladies in the land,’ he says crossly. ‘You may go.’

As a result, of course, I am hated even more. It does not help that Arlington is openly calling me an ungrateful bitch. Ungrateful! Lady Arlington walks around courf in a diamond necklace reportedly worth six thousand, pounds. When I admire it she says simply, ‘Oh, it was a present from your king, for getting you into Charles’s bed.’

I smile back just as sweetly and say, ‘Then I must give you a present too, Elizabeth, for I cannot imagine being any happier than this.’ I will not give her anything, of course. A diamond necklace is more than enough recompense for being a bawd.

And then, in short order, everything changes again.