The empress of ice cream

Louise

It seems all London is talking about my rivalry with Nell. And not just London: the ambassador lets slip that Paris, too, watches agog.

Men can duel with swords, or tennis racquets, or compete for honours on the battlefield. But I must battle Nell Gwynne with nothing more than smiles and words.

Words, unfortunately, are her forte. Even in my native tongue I do not have her wit. The latest story to do the rounds is that she found out her house on Pall Mall, given to her by Charles, was only leasehold - and the lease no more than twenty years. The implication is obvious: while the king shares her bed she will be kept in state, but when the affair is ended, she goes back to the gutter. For some reason the people of London have adopted this cause as their own, and the Matter of Nell’s Freehold is being reported in all the newspapers and scandal-sheets.

Nell, it is said, informed the king that she gave herself to him freehold, not leasehold, and she expects the same courtesy in return. Charles was apparently so amused by this that he gave way. To celebrate, she is having a salle des miroirs built - in her bedroom, along with a carved silver bed, engraved with busts of the king and her, and their initials entwined! Surely Charles, whose own taste is impeccable, must shrink from such gaudy show?

I tell him that I am going to have my apartments rebuilt so that they more closely resemble Minette’s rooms at Versailles. Of course he agrees. More tapestries, more carpets, more silverware, but all of the highest quality - that is to say, French. When he finally has to choose, it must be clear what he is choosing between: brashness and breeding, coarseness and refinement.

Apparently Nell found her footman fighting in the street: when she asked him why he was brawling, he said he was fighting a man who had called her a whore.

‘Then you must find another reason,’ she said. ‘For I am.’

Flow does ope combat someone who is not ashamed of what she is?

If she has a weakness, it is that she does not see the difference between us. To her, whore and mistress are the same thing; orange girl and lady-in-waiting only different in degree.

For all her shamelessness, she has pretensions to a title, and that, surely, will be her undoing. If Charles makes her a duchess, every noble family in England will believe themselves demeaned.

My strategy, then, is to remind Charles of my birth. An opportunity comes up when a distant relative of mine, the Chevalier de Rohan, dies. Admittedly, he has been executed by Louis for plotting with the Dutch, but he can be mourned all the same, and he is descended from the old kings of Brittany, which means he is a distant relative of Charles’s as well.

Charles sees me in black, and asks me in fi'ont of the court what is wrong.

‘I am mourning our cousin, the Prince of Rohan,’ I explain.

I intend to wear black for a week, no more - the length of time appropriate for so distant a connection. But when I go to court the next day, Nell is in black as well. As the king talks to some of his advisors, the sound of muted sobbing comes from her direction. Eventually he calls out, ‘Why, Nell, how now! Has your mother died?’

‘No,’ she says. ‘It is not her.’

‘Who, then?’

‘The Cham of Tartary,’ she weeps. ‘He’s dead. Dear Lord, he is dead.’

‘But what relation is this Cham of Tartary to you?’ he says, mystified.

‘Exactly the same,’ she snivels, ‘as the Chevalier de Rohan is to Louise; that is to say, none at all.’

There is a moment’s silence, and then a guffaw of laughter rolls around the court. Like a dog escaped .from the kitchens with a string of sausages in its mouth, it scampers from corner to corner, from group to group, and although I chase it furiously with my eyes I cannot pin it down.

‘Well then,’ the king says, wiping his eyes, ‘Perhaps, Nell, you and Louise had better divide the world between you, for between Tartary and Rohan there will be an awful lot of strangers to be mourned.’

‘We have already done so,’ she replies matter-of-factly. ‘The only thing not settled is which of us shall have England.’

They are laughing openly now. I am ashamed: I had not realised my approach was so obvious. But what she does not understand is that every time she makes one of these outrageous displays, she plays to my strengths. They may laugh with her, but they see even more clearly that she is not one of them: sooner or later they must close ranks on her, and I shall be triumphant.