The empress of ice cream

Carlo

t

White peaches, perfectly ripe, redolent of the final days of summer. Chocolate, thick and smooth and rich with cream. Truly, there is no more heavenly combination of ices in the world.

The Book of Ices

I

I threw myself into the preparations for the ice ball. Nothing was left to chance. I made a miniature of the skating pond, to make sure it worked, and a scale model of the ice palace, in which a paper Louise and a paper Charles sat on tiny thrones to welcome a line of paper guests. As for the ice creams, I experimented with some extraordinary flavours. I made an ice cream that was smoked, gently, by lighting a small pile of tobacco leaves under a perforated fri^idarium: as the leaves smouldered, the fragrant smoke seeped through the mixture, scenting it. I made an ice that was encased in a warm pie of meringue, and another that contained at its core a hot, spurting ball of caramel sauce. I even made an ice cream from apples that were just starting to rot: the taste was utterly decadent, rich with the juices of mortality, yet sweet as brandy wine.

But for the king, I created an ice that was both simple and extraordinary. Indeed, the idea was Wren’s, that day in Garraway’s when he had idly suggested that I turn the newly fashionable drink of chocolate into an ice. When I combined eggs, syrup and cream with cocoa powder and a dozen chocolate tablets, I made an ice cream so voluptuous, so thick and so smooth that nothing else could possibly be my centrepiece.

I remembered the board of pear sorbets I had made for Louis

XrV. How primitive those seemed now! But there was virtue, as Louis had said, in simplicity. I made a board of chocolate ices — first a plain chocolate ice cream; then one of chocolate scented with rosemary; another that combined chocolate with mint, then chocolate and orange, chocolate and raspberry, chocolate and cherries, and finally a dark, pungent ice based on the sctn^uinuccio of Florence, chocolate with blood and pine nuts.

Every few days, I went to see Louise, to show her what I had done. And under the guise of secrecy - ‘This part is to be a surprise: you must leave us now’ - the ladies-in-waiting and the ministers of state and the painters and the hangers-on were shooed out of her apartments, and we eagerly took my ices to her bed.

I made an ice cream of white peaches and musk - her taste and scented it with a drop or two of the rosewater perfume she wore.

When I looked at my model palace, there was something missing. I made a snowman, and placed him on a plinth in the foyer of the ice palace, just behind the king and his mistress. As the revellers entered the pavilion, tiny crystals of frozen scented snow would float and glitter about their heads, while the snowman smiled his inscrutable smile, and welcomed them to the dance.

Hannah came to see me.

‘I am giving notice,’ she said without preamble. ‘My ship leaves from Bristol in three weeks.’

I looked at her, surprised. ‘But what about the ice ball?’

‘I will miss it. And I am sorry about that, for it sounds as if it will be a memorable occasion. But if we do not take this boat we will lose our passage to America.’

I noted the plural. ‘Elias is going too?’

‘Yes. He will be quite sad to leave. He has enjoyed his time working for you.’

‘But this is most inconvenient,’ I said angrily. ‘We are busier

now than we have ever been. The king himself is relying on us—’

T am sorry for it,’ she said patiently. ‘But we have been planning this for years. You never asked how long we would be working for you, or I would have told you sooner.’

I heard myself say, ‘Then if you must go, leave the boy behind.’

‘Leave Elias! How could I possibly do that?’

‘I was younger than him when I left my parents. They let me go because . . .’ I paused. ‘Because they knew that I would have a better future. That I would become a man of the court. As Ehas will. I will teach him my secrets, Hannah, just as I was taught them by my own master. He will be a wealthy man. A favourite of kings and emperors. After this ball, our fame will spread even further, I am sure of it. I will take him to Paris, to Naples, to Spain—’

‘But that is not the future I choose for him,’ she said.

‘Why not? What more could you wish for?’

‘What more could I wish for?’ she repeated, a sad smile touching her eyes. ‘A kingdom without kings. A church without churches. A country where there are no bonds; not of property, nor privilege, nor birth. A place where no man is born with stirrups on his back, for other men to ride him. Where every man can choose his way of worship; yea, and every woman too, and the only laws to which we pay allegiance are written in our hearts.’

I sighed. ‘Your new country wHl be like a pack of^animals, then. Without laws or leaders, you will simply fight each other.’

‘If we need leaders, we will choose them. If we need laws, we will make them ourselves.’ She hesitated. ‘Perhaps you should come too.’

‘Come to America!’

‘Why not? There is ice a-plenty in winter, and they say the summers are hot. Perfect conditions for an ice-seller, it seems to me.’ She shrugged. ‘Ice creams and pies. They go together, almost, don’t they? Perhaps we could set up in business together, you and I.’

I stared at her. ‘My ice creams are bought by kings and cardinals. Neither of which, as I understand it, America is yet supphed with.’

‘Of course,’ she said quietly. ‘Forgive me. It was a stupid suggestion.’

Going rounS the pantry, she packed her things in silence for a while. Then, as she went to the door, she said, ‘This is my last chance to say this, so I will say it. What you have now, with Louise de Keroualle - that is enslavement, not love.’

I said stiffly, ‘That is none of your business.’

‘But it is,’ she said, a Utde sadly. ‘Oh, it is.’

‘Why?’

But she did not answer me directly. She said, ‘It seems to me there are two kinds of love - the love that happens to us, and the love that we invite. The love that happens to us uninvited is a physical thing, as a sickness is, and like a sickness it makes us weak. It is a love that must hurt us, because it based on the need to possess someone, rather than on affection or respect. But the love that we invite - that two people choose to have together - that grows, daily, from small beginnings. It is like a fire that can be kept just hot enough to cook on, and to warm the house, but is not allowed to rage until it has burnt, down the whole city, as the great fire of London did. But you cannot do it alone. It takes two.’

I said angrily, ‘What is this mad talk of fires and cooking? Go to America, woman, with your bastard. Go and be damned. You will end up a whore there, just as you have been a whore here in England.’

She said slowly, ‘You asked me once why I came to your room, that first time. I did not tell you the real reason. I did it because I liked you. And I thought that I could lift your melancholy. But I came to realise that no woman could do that.’

‘One can,’ I said shordy. ‘Indeed, she has.’

‘Then it is not love which makes you sad, for you are no less

melancholy than you were before,’ she said quietly. ‘It must be your secrets. Until you choose to give those up, I do not think you will ever be free.’

She stood looking at me, and then without another word she turned away.

The next day she left for Bristol, without saying goodbye.