‘A thousand!’
The king nodded. ‘Every noble-born man and woman in my kingdom. I am going to have Windsor Castle rebuilt especially. There will be a new Great Hall, as big as anything at Versailles, where the feast will be held. And it will all be modern - that is to say, French. No griffons or songbirds or dried-out rosbif for us, signor. I will have ice - great beds of the stuff. Chilling my crayfish, my strawberries and asparagus; ice tubs cooling my champagne . . . Perhaps even some of those clockwork ice fountains I have been hearing about.’
‘I could not—’ I began, then stopped. One did not say no, direcdy, to a king. ‘It would take a great deal of ice, sir - more than has ever been used in this country- before.’
‘And, signor, I want you to create a dish for the occasion,’ he continued as if I had not spoken. ‘Something even more splendid than the ices you created for the Sun King.’
‘Would this be in honour of a particular guest, sir?’
‘Indeed it would.’ He paused, but I already knew what he was going to say. ‘It is for Mademoiselle de Keroualle. I want you to make something for her.’
‘And this will be served to everyone?’
The king shook his head. ‘To the royal table alone. It will be
like sturgeon, or porpoise, or swan - a dish reserved for me, and those whom I favour. For her and me, and no one else.’
I saw, then, what he was about. For every banquet, whether it is stated or not,-has a theme. Every meal expresses its host’s vision of himself and his place in the world. From the head of the household carving his family’s Sunday fowl, to a silent circle of puritans blessing their daily bread, every meal, humble or ornate, speaks a language of ceremony to those who can decode it.
What better way for Charles to express his allegiance to the fashions, the policies and the pleasures of France, than through an extravagant display of the finest, most fashionable French foodstuff of all?
And what better way to symbolise his own status than by serving as the meal’s centrepiece a dish his own guests were forbidden to eat?
He was not simply displaying his Continental tastes. He was making a political statement. By dedicating the dish to Louise, he was saying that he did not care what anyone else thought about him openly favouring France. Just as Louis XFV was the undisputed, autocratic ruler of France, so Charles’s dish of ice cream would say that this was the course he intended to take in England - as its absolute, arbitrary monarch.
It was everything Parliament had made him renounce, when they restored him to his throne. And it would be my job to provide it.
I bowed again. ‘I will endeavour to create something worthy of the occasion, sir.’
‘I am sure you will, signor,’ he said, with that charming smile. ‘I want this feast to show the world what we are capable of, you and I. I know you will not let me down.’
‘It’s a good thing,’ Lord Arlington said immediately. ‘He can’t afford it.’
‘He will have to rein in his plans?’
Arlington shook his head. ‘He considers economies beneath him. No - if he commits himself to rebuilding Windsor and holding a feast for a thousand guests, he’ll have no choice but to go to war. Without Louis’s pension, he’ll be bankrupt within six months. Do as he bids you, Demirco. And make sure no expense is spared.’
The water in London was notoriously foul, and the Thames black with ordure. Well before the rivers were frozen, I started scouting for a source of good fresh ice.
Beyond Hampton Court I found it. A series of lakes fed by their own spring. Flat ground, easily reached by cart, and already in the king’s ownership. I explained to the bemused steward what I would need.
‘You want to cut the ice? And store it?’
‘Exactly. It will require labourers - a large quantity of them. And special tools that will have to be made up by a blacksmith. I will draw you some sketches.’
I ordered the construction of a barn, in which to store the ice as it came off the lake, and he point-blank refused rne.
‘There’s no money for building. The king hasn’t paid his own household for three months.’ j
‘He will pay for this,’ I said confidently. ‘It is necessary, if he wants his ice.’
I told Elias we would be spending the winter out at Hampton, and his face fell.
‘What,is it, boy?’
He said hesitandy, ‘It is just that we will miss Christmas.’
‘Elias!’ his mother said, overhearing. ‘Christmas! What is this I hear?’
He hung his head in shame. ‘Some of the other children are saying that it will be a holiday.’
Without asking my permission, she whisked him off into a corner. I thought she must be scolding him over his lack of enthusiasm for his work, until I realised that her objection was a different one. She was trying to speak quietly, but anger made her voice carry.
‘. . . bad enough that you work for a papist. But I will not have you celebrating papist festivals as well. Now be off with you, and let us have no more talk of Christmas.’
I waited until the boy had gone, and Hannah was angrily clashing pans together, before I spoke. To tell the truth, I was amused: it had not occurred to me that, while I was worried about the propriety of employing a whore’s bastard, the whore in question was worried about the propriety of him working for me.
‘You don’t celebrate Christmas, I take it.>’ I said neutrally.
‘We do not.’
‘May I ask the reason?’
‘Under the Protector, it was seen that there was no need for it.’
‘Whereas the Protector’s own birthday, no doubt, was a public holiday?’
She glared at me. ‘Show me where in the Gospels it says that December the twenty-fifth is Christ’s birthday, and we will celebrate it. Until then the Sabbath is enough Lord’s Day for us.’
‘Indeed,’ I said. ‘It seems to be more than enough. Since I’ve been here. I’ve not seen any of this inn’s servants go to church, even on a Sabbath.’
Her voice when she replied was flat. ‘We go when we have to. That is how it is in England now. You must go to church when and where you are told to, or you will be listed as a dissenter.’
‘Then it seems to me that you need more festivals, not fewer.’
‘Why?’ she said angrily. ‘So that we can be preached at by men in holy dresses who claim that they alone know the word of Christ? Who mumble prayers as if they were spells, and talk about the Holy Ghost as if God were some kind of invisible sorcerer?’
‘And it also seems to me,’ I said mildly, ‘that while your bish
ops would no doubt call me a deluded papist, they would not be much happier with you.’
‘Bishops!’ she said in disgust.
‘You cannot have a church without them.’
For a moment she seemed to be struggling to keep silent. Then she said, ‘But we did. For a while at least, we did.’
‘What - no Christmas, and no bishops either?’
‘We were building God’s kingdom,’ she said with a kind of strange, defiant pride. ‘A holy experiment. That was what we were told. And we could see the truth of it - could feel it, when the Spirit moved in our own breasts. A kingdom without kings. A church without churches. A country where there were no bonds: not of property, nor privilege, nor birth. A place where no man was born with stirrups on his back, for other men to ride him. Where every man could choose his way of worship; yea, and every woman too, and the only laws to which we paid allegiance were written in our hearts.’ She spoke all this in a kind of sing-song, as if it were a litany she had spoken many times before, and knew she should not be speaking now. She looked at me levelly. ‘And I still believe that one day it will happen here again, whether I live to see it or not. King Charles will leave us, and in his place King Jesus will sit on the throne. We will kneel to no man, and we will all be free.’ !