The empress of ice cream

Carlo

Strawberrfes and white pepper ice cream; blackberry and cream sorbet; chocolate and vanilla custard . . . No matter how many new combinations we invent, the greatest ices remain the simplest.

The Book of Ices

I walked through the darkened corridors of the palace, an ice chest in my arms. If anyone asked, I was taking an ice to the king’s cast-off mistress, to console her. Anyone who bothered to check would have found in the chest an ice cream of red strawberries and white pepper, nestling in a garland of strawberry leaves.

Nobody stopped me. Nobody asked. The king was elsewhere. Those left behind were of no account.

Her apartments, usually so crowded with courtiers and ministers, were empty. T’ve sent them away,’ she said, seeing me glance into the shadows. ‘We won’t be disturbed.’

She was wearing her hair loose, twisted in a kind of rope over one shoulder of her deshMlU. Her feet were bare, and she had removed the king’s jewels. But it was not that which was so different about her. She seemed somehow younger, as if some of the weariness had lifted from her shoulders along with the weight of the king’s rubies.

‘You’re happy,’ I said, wondering. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen you happy before.’

She stepped towards me. Without her court shoes, she was shorter than usual. I put my hands on her shoulders—

‘Wait,’ she said softly, kissing me and stepping back. ‘I want tonight to last for ever.’

‘We’ve waited long enough.’ And I picked her up and carried her bodily into the bedchamber.

t

Her white, white skin: the colour of candlewax, of white straw

«

berries, of ice cream.

I spooned a. shaving of strawberry ice onto her belly, and carried it to her lips with my mouth. We passed the sweetnessl^ack and forth between us, until it had melted away to nothing on our tongues.

She melted more slowly. The ice cream was soon all gone, but I kept licking it from her belly anyway. From her belly, and the soft downy dish at the top of each thigh, and her mouth, cold and creamy with kisses and ice.

I had waited all these years. I could wait a few minutes longer.

Until eventually, with a sigh, she pulled my head to hers, and kissed me with a sudden desperate passion, and I knew that she was ready to feel pleasure.

This was a new Louise. Her eagerness that night - her £[reed almost took me by surprise. It was as if she had been starved of sensations for so long that now she must feast on them without restraint.

And yet. And yet.

I did not tell her this, but as we lay together I sensed the presence of a third person in the room - or perhaps it as truer to say, I sensed his absence. When she turned her head, like so, it was because he kissed her just there, on the cheek: when she looked at me with those sleepy, smiling eyes, it was because he liked her to look at him that way. When she gasped, it was a gasp that he had heard a thousand times.

And when the paroxysm gripped her, all her muscles clenching as she strained for the moment of release, whispering imprecations in French too fast for me to catch, it was almost as if she had left us both, pleasure bearing her away to a place where neither could follow.

It is weU known, of course, that in the midst of love’s ecstasy one may experience a moment of unexpected sadness. I felt it that night. I had achieved my heart’s desire, and I was not disap-, pointed — far from it — but there was something missing, something I could not put my finger on, or name.