The empress of ice cream

Louise

In St James’s Park I walk up to a knot of courtiers, thinking the king is amongst them, but instead I find the actress marching up and down with her nose in the air, talking gobbledegook in a French accent and calling herself‘Madam Squintabella’. Some of them manage to stop laughing when I approach, but the actress turns to me without breaking a stride.

‘Oui? Bonioo!*’ she enquires. More laughter. I notice that she is holding her head off to one side, one eye half-closed, as if squinting through a telescope. Mocking my lazy eye.

‘I was looking for the king,’ I say calmly. ‘But I see he is not here. I will seek him elsewhere.’

‘Oh, Flis Majesty is quite well,’ she says, reverting to her normal voice. ‘In fact, I never knew him on better form than he was with me last night.’

‘Thank you,’ I say icily. As I leave the group I hear them applauding her performance. ‘Merci, merci,’ she thanks them, curtseying prettily. ‘But Madam Squintabella prefer jewels to applause.’

It seems astonishing that she is allowed at court, given how coarse she is. But he has installed her in a house at the back of St James’s, with a gate connecting her garden to the park.

I remember those ladies-in-waiting. Was Charles’s rebuke to them also a coded warning to me.> Those I lie with are fit company for the highest in the land. Must I expect not only to have to share his favour, but to have the fact of it thrown in my face?

There is only one course of action open to me: ignore her, and hope that this will pass when my pregnancy is over.

It is another of the ways in which I must behave like a queen, it seems.

Meanwhile there is Jemmy Monmouth, the king’s first bastard, to deal with — back from his all-too-brief exile, and eager to make trouble.

He comes to the king while I am with him, and abrupdy asks if they might speak alone.

‘Jemmy,’ Charles protests, ‘I have no secrets from Louise.’

‘Nevertheless, I will leave you,’ I say graciously. And, to rub it in a little, added, ‘Perhaps, though, I will see you again in a little while, Charles?’

‘A very little while, I hope.’

Monmouth’s furious gaze follows me out of the room.

Of course, Charles tells me afterwards what he wanted. Now that the army is fighting, Monmouth wants to be given command of it.

‘I tried to dissuade him,’ Charles says. ‘But like all young men, he wishes to prove himself in the dangers of battle.’

More likely, I think, he wishes to prove that he is worthy of the Crown. Aloud I say, ‘I suppose from his point of view it is only fair. After all, your brother has command of the navy. Why should your son not have the army?’

Charles’s face darkens. ‘It is very different. My brother is the legitimate son of a king, and my heir.’

‘You think it might give the wrong impression if Jemmy were to command the army?’ I say thoughtfully. ‘Yes, that had not occurred to me.’

‘It had not occurred to me either, until you and I began to talk it through. I am clear now - he should not go.’

This is good - but it could be better. ‘Perhaps there is a middle way,’ I suggest. ‘Let him go to Holland and fight, but only in an honorary capacity. Then he can prove his courage, without you suggesting that he is anything more than one of your loyal subjects. It

would be a kindness, I think, to let him redeem himself for those terrible things he did last year.’

‘You are very good to him, Louise.’

‘If I am good to him, it is only because I know how much he matters to you,’ I say with a smile.

The dcin^efs of battle. I like the sound of that: a most satisfactory place for the king’s eldest bastard to be.

Buckingham, too, is angling for the position.

‘I am inclined to give it to him,’ Charles muses. ‘Even tliough it will put Jemmy’s nose out of joint.’

I have not forgotten Buckingham’s insult to me in Dieppe. Tou’ve been sent to ensnare him. As it happens, he was right, but the man’s casual assumption that he could tumble me into his own bed still rankles.

‘Buckingham? Is he reliable?’

‘George is reckless, certainly, and somewhat vainglorious, but these are qualities which are useful in a soldier. No, I think he should have it.’

He speaks as if the decision is already taken. I think quickly.

‘He’s a Protestant, isn’t he?’

‘Yes.’ Charles shrugs. ‘As am I myself’

‘For the time being,’ I point out. ‘But a Protestant leading the army against the Dutch . . . will Louis think it a sign that you intend to delay your own conversion?’. ’

‘That is not my intention.’ Charles looks uneasy. He is always vague on the subject of exactly when he will convert. He has already written to Louis suggesting that he wishes first to discuss certain matters that may arise from it with the Pope: sadly, the Pope is too ill to travel just now.

‘If Buckingham leaves England, half the ladies in the court will have their hearts broken,’ I add teasingly. ‘Not least poor Lady Shrewsbury.’ This lady’s infatuation for him is legendary, despite or possibly because of- the fact that he killed her husband in a duel. .

Charles looks relieved. ‘Very well. I will tell him that the ladies of England cannot spare him.’

Buckingham is furious, and goes so far as to accuse the king in my hearing of being^swayed by me: the king, equally angry, tells him that the decision was his alone.

This is how it works, I am discovering: you do not tell a man what to think, you simply tell him what he himself is thinking. Nine times out of ten, he realises that he agrees.

So if I can deal with Monmouth, and Buckingham and Arlington, why not Nell Gwynne.> She claims never to have read a book, much less a play - she learns her lines by having them read aloud to her; her voice is shrill and common, although when she chooses to mimic one of the grand ladies of court she is uncannily accurate. When I hear her speaking in the voice of Elizabeth Arlington - ‘No, Bennet, we absolutely must build another house by Christmas, or we shall have to stay in the same palace two months running!’ - there is something about the mannerisms, the timing, that is both Elizabeth and yet, somehow, funnier than Elizabeth. I suppose her imitation of me must be equally accurate: I cannot see it myself.

But if she can speak like a lady when she chooses, why on earth does she not choose to all the time?

I have not cried for many months. Not for her, or for myself. But now, with the baby coming, I cry.

My honour is an invisible thing, and besides, it is sometimes possible to forget that I am dishonoured. But a baby - a child - is something tangible. Will he be known forever as a mistress’s bastard? Or will he be the son of England’s queen?

The ambassador calls on me, and in my confusion I allow myself to cry over him. The prissy fool immediately takes it upon himself to issue a rebuke.

‘It is not seemly,’ Colbert opines, ‘to speculate on the health of

Her Highness. Particularly as there is good news in that respect. It seems that her physician might have been too hasty. Dr Frazer now considers that it is not consumption she suffers from after all, but rather an over-susceptibility to pleasure.’

I cannot believe what I am hearing. ‘An over-susceptibility?’

He nods. ‘As you will be aware, the king is blessed with the means to give ladies exceptional satisfaction. It seems that the queen suffered such paroxysms of happiness when the king was with her that she bled. Now that she is relieved of the necessity of lying with him, her health is much improved.’

‘But you said—’

‘Medicine is not an exact science. Happily, in this instance.’

‘Then she is not going to die,’ I say numbly. ‘The queen is not going to die.’

‘We are aU going to die,’ he says piously. ‘But the queen can, by all accounts, look forward to many years of better health.’

‘You lied to me. You and Arlington. You told me she would die.’

He frowns. ‘I think I said at the time that it was irrelevant, since you are hardly the cloth from which queens are cut. My point is that it does not behove you to speculate any further—’

‘Behove? Behove?’ My tears have given way to rage. ‘You have done little else but speculate about such matters for years. Don’t you dare tell me what does or does not behove. My family were courtiers when yours were tilling the fields like beasts.’ A little unfair, perhaps, but I simply want to wound.

‘I will leave you,’ he says with a stiff bow. ‘I can see you are upset, and it is well known that ladies in your condition need to remain calm, for the good of the child. His Most Christian Majesty, incidentally, authorises me to pass on his personal congratulations at your great good fortune.’

Colbert. I am more determined than ever to have him recalled, but not yet: one enemy at a time.

*

I try a different approach: making friends with her. The king is away, inspecting the fleet at Portsmouth, so the court is quiet. Walking in the park amongst the other ladies, I see Nell is wearing a new dress.

I say pleasantly, ‘Why, that dress is very fine. Miss Gwynne.’

It isn’t true, of course: she has no taste or restraint; she can’t see an expensive ribbon or a piece of silver thread but jackdawlike, she must have yards of it.

She smiles back. ‘Fine enough to be a lady’s, you mean?’

‘I was wondering who your dressmaker is. You must give me her name.’

‘Why? You already look perfectly fine enough to be a whore.’ Even for the English court, this is strong talk; there are some indrawn breaths, but those around us are transfixed. Nell looks around. ‘If she is a lady of such quality, why does she demean herself to be a jade?’ she demands insouciantiy. ‘She ought to die for shame. As for me, it is my profession; I do not pretend to be anything better. And yet the king loves me as well as he does her.’

I feel a little faint, but I manage to say, ‘And such nice shoes. Your English shoemakers are the best in Europe, I think.’

I have this small victory: that whatever she says, whatever I now am, she cannot provoke me to a fight, like common fishwives. That is what my honour, my breeding, consists of these days. While I still have my manners, I am not what she is.

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