The empress of ice cream

Louise

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Of course you hate me. Why would you not?

It is certain that I am now the most hated woman in England. Now that English boys have once again been dying with Dutch musket balls in their chests, and drowning with Dutch cannon ringing in their ears. Now that Hortense Mancini, tiring both of Charles’s attentions and his vacillations, has skipped off to Europe with the Prince of Monaco, taking all the king’s presents with her.

It is rumoured that Thomas Osborne, Lord Dan by, shares my affections with the king these days. It is not true - he has a shrewish wife, and it seemed politic to charm the man - but many believe it, including the king.

Danby and I have something much more interesting in common. We divide between us the sale of the minor offices of state. No one cares greatly whether this squire or that one gets appointed Sheriff of Hampshire or Keeper of the Royal Ducks, so we decide according to the emoluments we are offered. Who can object? Every Member of Parliament is taking bribes. If any of them cause trouble, I simply ask the French Embassy to provide me with the receipts.

And yet the irony is that aU this corruption has turned out to be a waste of France’s gold. The wars against Holland which almost bankrupted her have not been won — and such territories as France has managed to acquire belonged to Spain, not the Dutch. It is the English who have somehow ended up with the greatest prize: New Amsterdam, now to be renamed New York.

It is the Dutch war, too, which has alerted the English to the extraordinary abilities of Charles’s nephew, William of Orange. If he can defend Holland against the French, peopleYhink, could he do the same for England? And so Danby has arranged a secret

marriage between William and Anne, the Duke of York’s oldest daughter, a betrothal which I have long known all about, but which - for reasons of my own - I did not bring to the attention of my masters in France.

Hedging my bets, you see.

But even that alliance has not brought peace. Buckingham and Arlington may be finished, but Lord Shaftesbury is still machinating in their place. His Whigs are stirring up fantastical plots: I have lost track of the chapbooks, ballads, satires, and pamphlets that have been pushed under my door, the pornographic engravings that purport to show the Whore of Brittany being pleasured by her regiment of papist lovers.

Nell Gwynne likes to tell the story of how she was attacked by a mob while out driving in her carriage. Realising from their shouts that they had mistaken her coach for mine, she leaned out of the window and shouted, ‘No, good people - I am the Protestant whore!’ Whereupon they gave her three cheers, and an escort home.

If it had been me, as she smugly observes, there might have been one less Catholic in England by nightfall.

But if you hate me, ask yourself this: what else should I have done?

I could have married gentry, and produced a string of heirs. I could have entered a convent, and become -1 suppose - a Mother Superior. I could have been the companion to some great lady, helping her with her sewing and her household accounts.

I could have married an ice-cream maker whom I did not love, and lived a comfortable bourgeois life in the shadow of a court, surrounded by our children.

As it is, there are queens who do not wield the influence I do, and ministers who do not have my reach. Whatever happens in this strange, barbarous little country - whatever shifting allegiances may crack and splinter beneath my feet - I will keep moving forward, and I will thrive.

Read on for an historical note from the author and reading group questions for The Empress of Ice Cream.

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