‘Enough of this,’ I said, suddenly fearful. ‘This is treason as well as heresy, woman. Guard your tofigue, and let us hear no more.’
Louise
One morning Charles brings me a gift. Another gift, I should say, for there have been several in recent weeks. But none like this.
A necklace. Rubies. Darker than currants, darker than blood. He fastens it around my neck himself, then turns me to a mirror.
I see him stroke the side of my neck with the back of his finger, so softly I can barely feel it, tracing a line from my ear down to where the necklace sits against my throat.
‘It wants earrings, in the French style,’ he says abruptly. ‘I’m a fool not to have thought of it. I’ll get you some.’
‘Your Majesty has been generous enough already. Really, there is no need for jewels.’
‘You are a great lady of France,’ he says ironically. ‘How else should I woo you, if not with jewels.^’
‘ly Your Majesty wooing me?’
A silence. In the mirror, his eyes meet mine. ‘I suppose I am.’
‘Then I cannot accept this, because I cannot keep my side of the bargain.’ I reach up to take the necklace off, but the clasp is stiff. ‘Would you help me, please?’
He reaches up as if to help, then puts one hand on my hands to keep them there. With his other he reaches around, placing it on my stomach.
And I feel - I feel . . .
I cannot write it down. What are the words for this, this blossoming of warmth and trepidation? I am aware of a sensation - a kind of silkiness - something unknown, unanticipated. Unguents dissolving inside me, as a candle softens underneath the flame.
His lips brush my neck - tentatively, as if he knows he should not, but cannot help himself.
My chin lifts. I feel my back arch, involuntarily.
He increases the pressure of his hand, pulling me against him, and I realise that he is aroused. Startled, I draw in my breath.
‘Keep the necklace,’ he says, releasing me. ‘There is no bargain to keep or break. It is a gift without conditions.’
Once he says: ‘Tell me this.’
‘What, Charles.^’
‘If it were not for your virtue - if the world were a different place, and you and I were free to do as we pleased - would I be the sort of man . . .’
This is unlike him, this hesitancy. I think: a woman was cruel to him once, and for all his charm he has never got over it.
‘Charles, you are a handsome man, and a kind one too. Any woman would be lucky to have you as a husband. But I cannot answer your question. My virtue is as much a part of me as my hands or my head. How can I imagine what I would be if I did not have it?’
Brusquely, he says, ‘Then keep your virtue. I love you too much to wish you any different.’
He turns away. But even I, with my court manners, cannot altogether contain my surprise at his first use of that word.
Carlo
Gather ice in winter, that you may have the pleasure of ices in the heat of summer.
The Book of Ices
‘A harvest’, I had called the gathering of ice in conversation with the king; and that is exactly what it was. Seeing the first frosts in St James’s Park was like spying the first small sprouting of a longawaited crop. Each day the shoots grew a little sturdier, a httle stronger, nourished by the dark and the increasing cold. Men hurried through the streets now wrapped up in furs. Dray horses stamped their hooves where they waited to unload, and blew trumpets of warm breath as they laboured over the uneven roads.
Then the snow came. If the frosts were the shoots, this was the blossom. Great, fat petals of snow, drifting over the city, turning roofs white; setthng a little longer, a Httle deeper, every time it fell.
The ice did not harden yet, though. The ice was winter’s fruit, ripening slowly. First a tiny brulee of clear toffee on the surface of a puddle. Then a disc of glass. And finally a thick, white plate of porcelain, crazed with cracks where children had tried to stamp it through and found they could not.
Tee,’ I told EHas, ‘even ice that seems frozen, needs time. It sets slowly, over the course of a week or so. And the harder the ice, the more slowly it will melt. We want iron, not porcelain.’
‘We wait.^’
‘We wait,’ I confirmed.
After a week, the ice rang hard and true as iron. It was time to move out to Hampton. Where, of course, aU was chaos. The steward had neglected our arrangement; the labourers were idle; the
barn I had ordered was being used by cattle. Only the ice was perfect, thick enough to ride a horse across, as hard and unyielding as the frozen ground itself.
I invoked the king’s name, and swore' volubly in Italian. Litde by litde, my harvest was gathered in.
One morning I awoke to find that the air itself had turned white. A freezing sea mist had come in from the east, bringing with it a cold so bitter that holly leaves could be snapped in two like biscuits, and every twig and branch was furry with ice.
I remembered Louise talking about Brest, and wondered what she was doing now. I tried to put her from my mind. But sometimes, through the frozen mists, I thought I glimpsed a figure in a threadbare gown, dancing in the snow.
Louise
Now the canals and lakes in St James’s Park are frozen. Charles and his brother James teach me to slide on the ice - ‘skating’ they call it, a Dutch word. They learned how to do it during their years in the Low Countries. James is the better of the two, something Charles is irked by, since in all other sports he far excels his younger brother.
Sometimes James skates beside me, holding me up: one hand pressed against my side to steady me, the other reached around me so that I do not fall, speeding me along in a great sweeping arc, the two of us propelled only by the swishing of his long legs, while I concentrate on keeping my own legs braced and steady so that I do not fall.
‘Od’s fish, he looks as if he’s about to tumble you into his arms,’ Charles grumbles.
He’s jealous. And not entirely without cause: James holds me a little harder than he needs to, his hands a little higher or a little further around than is strictly necessary.
He is a strange man. Physically, he looks like Charles - that is to say, handsome: yet somehow what in Charles has turned to charm, in James has become dourness. Questions of faith and policy trouble him. On his face there is a perpetual expression of anxiety or regret. Yet it is said that he is cleverer than his brother, and does much of the painstaking work of government when Charles loses patience with it.
His taste in mistresses is a Whitehall joke: it is said that as a kind of penance he makes sure they are always uglier than his wife.
Yet he is also Admiral of the Fleet. As such, no one is more important in advising Charles whether or not to go to war. It is also said that he secredy inclines to the True Faith. If so, he will not
have the same concerns about making war on a Protestant nation that some of the king’s ministers do. This war might even be seen as a test. Does he save his soul, or help his brother stay on the throne.^ It is a difficult dilemma for a man of devotion.
And who better to talk to him about such matters than a Catholic lady of great virtue, lately come from France.^
We spend long afternoons reading Lettres Provincmles^ and discussing Pascal on the soul.
Charles is not amused. ‘Why do you spend so much time reading with my brother
‘Your Majesty is most welcome to join us.’
‘I can’t think of anything more tedious than discussing religion with James. Even if there’s precious little else to occupy any of us at the moment. If the ground doesn’t unfreeze soon, the racing will be over this year before it’s even started.’
‘Take care you do not stretch this out too long,’ Lady Arlington warns. ‘The king is irritable when the weather is like this. It would be perfect time to spend in bed, in fact. A warm fire and a fiir coverlet, and his apartments would be the cosiest place in the kingdom.’