The empress of ice cream

Louise

It is Nell who ^rst alerts me, appearing at court one day dressed all in black. Expecting a repeat of the Cham of Tartary hilarity, at first I take no notice.

‘Why are you in mourning, Nell?’ someone says at last, feeding her the line.

‘Not for any person,’ she says in that peculiar nasal accent of hers. ‘I am in mourning for Madam Carwell’s ambitions, which are dead and buried now the Duchess of Mazarin is here.’

My ears do prick up at that - not at the nonsense, but at the title. Mazarin ... I have heard it somewhere before, some shver of gossip from my days in France.

And then it comes to me. Something Madame once said, discussing her brother.

He fell in love with dn Itdlidn beauty called Hortense Mancini, but those were the days of his exile, and her uncle the cardinal thought him too poor a prospect. So now he is married to Catherine of Braganza, and Hortense is scandalising all Europe as the Duchess Mazarin . . .

A love he could not attain. An old flame. ThaCs clever, I think. I wonder which of my enemies has brought her to England. I am willing to bet all my not-inconsiderable pensions it has not happened by chance.

Of course I am right. A few discreet enquiries by my people, and it soon becomes apparent what is really going on.

Mazarin has left her husband and squandered all her money. She has been living off various wealthy lovers - of both sexes, they say - in different parts of Europe ever since; now, having been told by Montagu that there may be a vacancy in England

for the position of king’s mistress, she has been shipped over here at his expense. She has a great hatred of France: she feels Louis should have forced her husband to return her dowry.

All this I learn before I meet her. I am prepared for someone cunning - knowing that she is the sister of Olympe de Soissons, I suppose I am expecting some plump, pretty, malicious little thing.

Lord, how mistaken can one be.>

I see her first walking across St James’s Park at dawn, with Annie Fitzroy, the fifteen-year-old Countess of Sussex, trotting by her side. She wears a man’s clothes, half undone: two swords are tucked casually under her arm, and in her other hand she carries leather fencing masks. As she comes closer I see her properly and almost stop dead.

She is beautiful. Utterly, utterly beautiful.

There is an unadorned clarity to her face, an intelligence, that makes me immediately want to like her. She is tall, slender, as long-legged as a man, but in her stride there is a rolling gracefulness, a suppleness, that is entirely feminine.

Seeing me stop she stops too, waiting to be introduced. I feel a pounding in my ears. ‘Hello, Annie,’ I say to the girl beside her.

‘Hello,’ she replies. There is a brief pause. ‘May I present the Duchess Mazarin,’ she adds, a little sulky at having to share this woman whom she clearly idolises.

Hortense and I exchange amused curtsies, in the French manner. ‘I see you have been fencing,’ I say to break the ice, but all I want to do is to feast my eyes on her, on the unadorned freshness of her face.

Her eyes light up, and suddenly she is even more beautiful. ‘Do you fence.

‘Alas,' no—’

‘We have been fighting for my honour,’ Lady Anne interjects.

‘Goodness. That sounds dangerous.’

I am teaching her to defend herself,’ Hortense says with a smile. ‘You never know when it will come in useful.’

The girl takes one of the swords and makes some passes in the air. Instantly Hortense drops into the en ^arde posi^ion^ graceful as a cat, and parries Anne’s amateurish lunges with three casual flicks of her blade.

T myself have never learned to fence,’ I say weakly.

T will teach you too, if you like,’ Hortense says eagerly, without taking her eyes off Annie’s sword. ‘Then we can fight a duel. That would be fun, wouldn’t it?’

Perhaps she is trying to disarm me, but I have no sense of ill will from her; I am simply an obstacle that stands in her way. Perhaps not even that. She must be used to the fact that every man she meets falls in love with her. Women, too. Other women - wives, mistresses, lovers - are not really rivals. She has the luxury of not needing to try, of not having to fight for what she wants.

Of course Charles will succumb. Of course he will tell himself that he must have this extraordinary woman, just as he once told himself he must have me. The cure for his impotence is courtship: in the battle to possess her, he will rediscover his lost vigour.

All I can do is be patient, and hope that afterwards he will return to my bed, rather than be impotent in hers.

I have my strategy. A waiting game. It is the correct approach, I am sure of it. And yet, these mornings, as I pull myself from my bed and sit before my mirror to begin the necessary work on my face, I feel a great weariness, as if I have barely slept at all. As if the effort of putting on my gorgeous gowns, my jewels, my ropes of pearls and my sapphire brooches, is almost more than I can bear.

But still I do it. I would not be beaten by the common, loathsome Nell Gwynne, and I will not be beaten by the well-bred, lovely Hortense Mancini.

And so I paint on my face, primp my hair, line my eyes. For what? The king rarely comes to me these days. When the court moves.

as usual, to Newmarket for the spring races, his steward does not even allocate me lodgings. When I ask Charles, with a smile, whether he has forgotten me, he says, genuinely surprised, ‘I thought you would rather stay in London, dearest Pubs, and run the country for me while I am gone.’

I have become a sort of second wife, as forgotten as the queen. I stay in London and run the country. Word comes back that at Newmarket, Hortense Mancini is up early every morning, riding the fastest, most dangerous horses over the gallops.

No one seems certain whether she and the king are lovers yet. Anne Sussex has the use of an apartment above the king’s, where Hortense visits her; it is said the king visits too, but as for what goes on there, no one knows. The ambassador believes that the duchess is having an affair with Lady Arme, and the king holds back for that reason alone. Others think it is all a game, to inflame him.

I carry on planning my ball. Perhaps by then she will have gone.

Another poem, pushed under my door.

Methinks I see you, newly risen From your embroidered bed und pissing;

With studied mien und much^rimuce Present yourself before your glass To vanish and smooth o’er those graces'

j

Tou rubbed off in your night embraces.

Rochester, of course; back at court, loathsome as ever. It is said that while he was banished he wrote a play called Sodom that surpasses in vileness anything that even the Romans wrote. There are scenes involving six men and six women, dildoes, buggery, and the rest. A private performance was staged for Charles and a select group of his wits. A gift to titillate the waning virility of a king.

*

‘The fact is,’ the ambassador says, ‘we are entering a delicate phase.’

I drag my attention back to him. Courtin, his name is. Small, dapper, discreet. Ruvigny, it seems, asked to be withdrawn. ‘A damn filthy traffic,’ was how he summed it up, this court of England.

The sight of the French handing out bribes, they say, disgusted him even more than the sight of the English accepting them.

‘Why is it delicate .>’

‘His Most Christian Majesty is inclined to sue for peace. As a temporary measure, you understand. A tactical withdrawal. His negotiators are assembling at Nimeguen even as we speak.’

‘What has that to do with Hortense Mancini?’

‘His Majesty’s greatest bargaining tool is still the alliance with England. If it were known abroad that Charles had cast you out, and taken an enemy of France into his bed instead . . .’

‘He will not cast me out,’ I say. ‘My position is more secure than ever. Soon all Europe will be talking of my ball. My ice palace. My birthday party for the king.’

He smiles, thin-lipped. We both know that it is now much more than a birthday party.