‘Do you think we will ever get back to France?’ I asked Louise one day, when I took her an ice of jonquilles and lemons.
I don’t know,’ she said wearily. ‘In any case, it is different for me now. Who would marry me and take on a royal bastard as well? It is one thing to turn a blind eye to a scandalous past, quite another to have that past growing up in your household.’
I said, ‘Perhaps you will marry someone of lowly birth, who will love you and love your son as well. Perhaps you will be happy together without titles, or wealth.’
She looked at me and smiled. ‘Do you know of such a man?’
‘I have heard rumours that some such do exist.’
She said gently, ‘You are too loyal. Carlo. I have done nothing to be worthy of this adoration.’
‘On the contrary. I don’t adore you in the least. I find you maddeningly practical; hard-headed, haughty, proud—’
‘Thank you. I was not actually inviting a catalogue of my failings.’
I shrugged. ‘Better to admire someone whose failings you are aware of, than a stranger.’
‘And the king?’
‘What about him?’
‘The fact that that I am his mistress. Does that not change how you feel?’
‘Why should it?’ I busied myself with some glasses. ‘I know you do not do it for love.’
She was silent a moment. ‘I used to think love was only a fancy. But now I realise that it is a force almost as strong as an army.’
‘Charles loves you.’
She shook her head. ‘He likes me, and he desires me, and he likes to see me happy. He loves me in the same way he loves Windsor, or tennis - I am necessary to his well being, and his sense of being a king. And I am useful, too, in that I give him good advice. He loves Nell Gwynne far more than me.’
‘Nell!’
‘Certainly. At any rate, she is the one woman he can never give up, even though he knows that Louis or any other king would be appalled at the notion of keeping a common whore as a mistress. So yes, I think he does love her.’
‘While she,'presumably, is only after his money.
‘Oh no - that is to misunderstand her. She may be an actress and a whore, but she genuinely delights in their connection.’
‘And you,’ I said, ‘who are neither actress nor whore . . .’
‘Must play a part, and lie with a man I do not love. Yes, that irony had occurred to me as well.’
‘Can you beat her?’
‘Perhaps. But there is so much else to do. We must find a way to make him keep fighting this war. Parliament must be prevented from forcing him to sue for peace. James must be married before he changes his mind. More money. More battles.’
I went back to the Red Lion that day feeling a little melancholy. Hannah was in the pantry, making pastry for her pies.
‘What are you looking at?’ she asked.
‘Nothing.’
She measured out a jar of flour, broke two eggs into it, and began to mix it all together. After a while she turned to face me. ‘I really cannot work with you staring at me hke that.’
‘I was not staring,’ I explained. ‘Or., at least, not at you. You happened to be standing in the general direction of my gaze, that is all.’
She sighed, and turned back to her pastry.
‘But since you ask,’ I added, ‘we could go to my rooms, later.’
Her voice when she answered was flat. ‘You have been at court today, I take it?’ • >
‘Yes.’
‘With Madam Carwell?’
‘What does that have to do with it?’
Only that I have noticed it is after you have been with her that you are most likely to invite me to your rooms.’
I shrugged, but since she was not looking at me she could not see it. I invite you to my rooms because the arrangement suits both of us. You gan come or not, as you choose. It is up to you.’
It seemed to me that she was struggling to decide whether to say something. ‘Tell me,’ she said. ‘When you first came here, how did you know what I wasi* That I would go with you for money?’
‘An acquaintance told me what English inn servants were hke. And then I found you with that man. He knew what you were.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘He called me a ranter whore. But that was a figure of speech. He was referring to the fact that I was a dissenter.’
‘He threatened you with arrest.’
‘He was a spy. He was trying to coerce me into spying on you.’
‘On me!’ I said, bemused.
‘I was meant to find out how you made your ice creams. But I had already given you my word that I wouldn’t tell anyone, so I didn’t.’
‘But . . .’ I said, perplexed. ‘When I told you to come to my room, that first time, you came. You took my money’
‘Yes.’
‘So Cassell was right. You are what he said you are.’
She addressed the pastry. ‘Perhaps. But I have decided that in future, signor, I would be obliged if you would ask Mary or Rose instead.’
‘Why?’
She did not answer me for a long time, only working her fingers into the mound of dough. Eventually she said, ‘It would not be fair on Elias, if he were to discover what we do.’
‘Oh. I see.’
‘He admires you. He might. . . misunderstand our association. He might read into it more than there actually is.’
‘Well, in that case I will make sure that I do not ask you again.’
‘Thank you.’
‘I will ask Mary. Or Rose, as the case may be.’
‘Exactly’ She took her rolling pin and banged her mound of pastry, so hard that a cloud of flour jumped into the air.
Louise
A
It is an open secret that Parliament will insist on peace as soon as it assembles. Every night Charles sits in meetings, debating with his ministers what to do. His objective is to buy time: a policy which his brother, in a rare flash of wit, has described as being indistinguishable from wasting it.
The only solution is for Parliament to be prorogued - that is to say, suspended by the king’s authority. But to defy in this way the very Parliament to which he owes his restoration might trigger armed rebellion. His ministers - with one eye on their own popularity with the mob - urge caution.
They do not know him as I do. Reckless gestures appeal to him. He prefers the bold course, the high-stakes gamble. And his loathing of Parliament runs very deep. Publicly, he has to appear grateful that they restored him to his throne. Privately, he does not forget that the throne was only vacant in the first place because they murdered his father.
I think there is a way. But first I must match him boldness for boldness.
I throw a party, a supper in my apartments for the king and forty of his closest friends. I even invite some of the wits, those frivolous libertines whose influence over the king is stronger than he likes to admit.
A feast of French food, French wines, French ices, French thoughts expressed in the French tongue. Only the wine flows in a way that is not quite French, and the talk quickly reverts to English and descends - as it always does in this country - from the flirtatious to the bawdy. Soon the courtiers and court ladies
stumbk off into dark corners for assignations, unbuttonings. Debauchery becomes the order of the night,
t
But not, of course, for Charles or me. He casts glances into the shadows, and I sense that on another occasion he might have liked to have joined them, but he cannot be seen to leave my side for such a purpose at my own party.
By dawn, exhausted or ashamed, they have all crept away: all except for my own ladies-in-waiting, the Honourable Lucy Williamson and Lady Anne Berowne. The king yawns, and says he must go as well. That is when I suggest a last round of Questions and Commands. But no one has any money.
When the king asks what the stakes will be, I say, ‘Our clothes.’ The girls look uncertain, but do not dare protest.