I can believe the queen is dying. She looks even more frail than Madame did in the months before her collapse, the streaks of grey in her hair suggesting that she has been suffering like this for years.
Lady Arlington’s curtsey is so perfunctory she might simply be ducking something thrown at her head.
‘Your Highness, may I present Louise de Keroualle. I believe at one point she was going to be a lady of your bedchamber,’ she drawls, with just a little emphasis on ‘your’. ‘Although the king has now been pleased to find another place for her at court.’
If the queen notices the insinuation, she does not show it. ‘The king is most considerate,’ she says to me. ‘I remember how kind he was when I first came to this country. If there is anything I want, I only have to ask him.’ She may sound weak, but the meaning is clear. Do not attempt to humiliate me, or I will have you removed.
There is an awkward silence. Fortunately, the ices arrive. ‘This
is the latest fashion in France, Your Flighness,’ I say as Lucy arranges them on a side table. ‘It means one does not have to interrupt one’s card playing. One simply eats the ices at the table, and carries on refreshed.’
She beams. -^That sounds very pleasant.’
The game itself presents a different problem. I know how to play her favourite game, basset - it is also popular in France - but I have no money with which to gamble.
‘I’ll lend you some,’ Lady Arlington says under her breath. ‘After all, you should soon have more than enough.’ In a louder voice she says, ‘Shall I shuffle. Your Highness? The queens are all together.’
There is little skill in basset; it is simply a game of nerve and luck. A winning card pays out whatever has been staked on it. But if, instead of taking the winnings, you leave your card on the table and it wins again, your winnings are seven times the stake; the time after that, fifteen, then thirty. It is possible to win a fortune, but the odds against doing so become increasingly slim. Within a quarter of an hour I have lost fifty guineas, most of it to Lady Arlington.
‘I’ll lend you some more,’ she says immediately.
‘No, thank you - I will sit out for a while, and watch.’
I see how Lady Arlington, having relinquished the bank, becomes flushed with excitement when she makes k quinze^ the fifteen-fold payout, only to lose it all on the next turn of the card. That tells me something about her, I think: not only a gambler, but a reckless one.
‘You do not play?’ a voice murmurs behind me.
I turn. The king has entered, unnoticed and without ceremony. The others start to get to their feet, but he cuts short the formalities with a wave of his hand. ‘Please, do not let me interrupt your game. I shall sit over here, and speak to Mademoiselle de Keroualle.’
The queen darts her husband an anxious look before returning obediently to her cards.
I8I
‘Tell me, why do you sit this out?’ he asks quietly. ‘I can’t flatter myself that it was on the off-chance I might come by.’
‘I do not care greatly for games of risk.’
He raises his eyebrows. ‘The plans my sister hatched were bold enough.’
‘I meant, risk for its own sake. In diplomacy, surely, one tries to make the gamble as small as possible. In basset it becomes the whole point of the game.’
He nods. ‘I myself prefer poque. It requires a certain talent for bluffing.’
‘In France poqm is known as the cheating game,’ I say, a little mischievously.
‘I flatter myself I have a certain talent in that direction also,’ he says, the ghost of a smile appearing deep in his eyes.
‘Sir, you keep Miss de Keroualle from the table,’ Lady Arlington calls. ‘And she needs to play, if she is to recoup her losses.’
He looks at me interrogatively. ‘I think she means to get me away from you,’ I explain under my breath. ‘She has some idea that the more you are held back, the more eagerly you will pursue my friendship.’
‘Then you had better go to her,’ he murmurs. ‘But while they are playing basset, we shall be playing poque .i
As I go to the table he follows. ‘How much does^she owe. Lady Arlington?’
‘Fifty guineas, sir.’
‘There is a hundred.’ Charles tosses a pouch onto the baize. ‘And if she accrues any other debts, I hope I am good for them.’
Lady Arlington’s eyes almost reach the top of her head.
‘Madam, I bid you good night,’ Charles says, bowing to the queen. ‘And you. Lady Arlington. Mademoiselle.’ He bows to me last of all, as protocol demands, but it is on me that his eyes remain, a glance of complicity travelling between the two of us.
Carlo
A
To make a pineapple sherbet: add two cups of sugar to two cups of buttermilk, or more if your pineapple be sharp. Stir in a spoon of fresh minced mint, and the juice of a lime, and stir it as you freeze. The principle is no different from any other fruit.
The Book of Ices
The next day, when I went to Whitehall to collect the empty goblets, I found Louise in her apartments. She seemed somehow adrift in the great space, lost, like someone wearing a ballgown several sizes too large.
I had no wish to speak to her, but I bowed anyway.
‘Don’t be Hke that,’ she said sharply.
‘Like what?’
‘Carlo . . .’
I waited.
‘I was truly grateful for your help last night,’ she said. ‘Were it not for your ices, it would have been a difficult situation. A more difficult situation, I should say.’
‘You and the queen? I can see how that might have been a little awkward.’
She shrugged. ‘That is the point of manners, isn’t it? To make awkward situations bearable. Besides, I suspect she has had to suffer worse, in this terrible country.’ She was silent a moment. ‘I mean it, signor. We find ourselves reluctant partners in this task, but I am grateful that Louis has sent someone who I know I can rely on.’
‘I will do my duty. No more, and no less. And then we will return to France, and there will be an end to our association.’
She seemed surprised. ^Tbu will return to France, you mean.’
‘You might stay here?’
She gave me a sharp glance then, as if wondering why I asked. ‘Possibly. We shall have to see.’
‘Your enthusiasm for your task is even greater than I imagined, then,’ I said dryly.
‘I have an opportunity. I would be a fool not to take it.’
‘Indeed.’ I bowed again. ‘Reluctant partners, then.’
As I closed the door of her apartment behind me, I saw a note fluttering on the wood. Someone had pinned it there with a fruit knife. Two lines of verse.
Within this pldce pl bed’s appointed For a French bitch and God’s anointed.
I went back and handed it to her. ‘You have been sent a billetdoux.’
She read it, her face ashen. ‘Barbarians. How could they?’
‘It is probably a man called Rochester. The king indulges such behaviour, I believe.’
‘They hate us. That is to say, they hate me. And they will only hate me more when—’ She shook her head. ‘It does not matter. It means nothing. If I could handle the French court, I can surely handle this.’
‘And this,’ I said, pointing at the note, ‘is exactly the sort of merriment that we are here to encourage, isn’t it? We will know we have been successful when Lord Rochester is as celebrated in England as Moliere or Racine are in France.’
Finally, my pineapple had arrived, and for a time I was able to put Louise de Keroualle from my mind.
For all that I had spoken casually of pineapples to Lord Arlington, I had never before been able to use one for an ice. Even at the court of Louis XIV, they were too precious for that.
So I was both curious, and a little excited, to get my hands on one now.
The pineapple came in its own coach-and-four, direct from Lord Devon’s pinery. The chest was carried into the Red Lion by two of his footmen, with a third standing guard with a pistol in case of robbers. A curious crowd, meanwhile, gathered in the coaching yard to watch its progress from coach to kitchen.