Tt is certain now,’ she said to me one day in early May. ‘Mazarin and he are lovers. Lady Anne has been sent off to the country, but Charles spends almost as much time in her apartments as he did before.’
‘Here, I have made you a cordial,’ I said, handing it to her. ‘It
is what the apothecaries call sambooch - distilled elderberries. It
%
is said to be reviving.’ •
‘Thank you.’ She drank a little, but I could tell she had barely tasted it.
‘Do you think he will come back to you.>’
She shrugged. ‘I have come to suspect that I am only a kind of symbol to him now. He does not actually want me; he simply wants everyone to think that he does. I am the French mistress, as necessary to him as a French tailor or a French chef, no more.’ ‘Then he is a fool,’ I said.
‘Oh, he will not be faithful to Mazarin either. He is no more capable of standing by a woman than he is of standing by a treaty.’
‘Then he is a double fool.’
‘I should not mind, really, should I? I have influence now without the need to lie in his bed for it. There was a time when that was all I wanted. Besides, it means,’ she hesitated. ‘It means that I am free in other ways, too.’
‘What do you mean?’
She did not answer me directly, but went to the window, looking down at the park. ‘Do you remember what I said, that time at Versailles when I told you I couldn’t marry you, and you asked why we couldn’t love each other even so?’
‘Of course. You said that you were not like my friend Olympe.’
‘Yes.’ She spoke calmly enough, but her remarks were still addressed to the window. ‘I was so proud in those days . . . But I am like Olympe, now, aren’t I? I am exactly like her. A cast-off lover of the king.’
I stared at her. ‘Are you saying—’
‘Now that I have no honour to protect, and no one to be faithful to, I can take a lover for myself. If I want to.’
‘And do you want to?’ I said quietly.
She had coloured a little. ‘I thought I might as well see what all the fiiss is about.’
‘Do you have anyone in particular in mind?’
‘I thought I might place an advertisement in the London Re^fister. ‘Whore of Babylon - most hated woman in the country - seeks lover. Must be able to make ice creams.’
‘There is only one person in this country who can do that.’
‘Then I will have to hope that it is him who responds to my advertisement.’
I said nothing, my heart suddenly too full.
‘If you still want me, that is,’ she added. ‘Everybody else seems to have decided that I am not worth the bother. I will quite understand if you have too.’
‘Oh, Louise,’ I said. ‘Louise . . .’ And then I had stepped towards her, and pulled her into my arms. ‘Are you sure?’
She was nodding and gasping and laughing all at once, but she had not forgotten the need for caution. ‘Wait,’ she protested. ‘Not here, someone will see us. But yes. I’m sure. I have never been surer of anything. We will have to be discreet—’
‘Of course. I would not risk your reputation.’
‘I have no reputation, you ninny. I would simply like to avoid being gossiped about yet again.’
‘When shall I come to you?’
‘Tonight. No one will be watching then.’
‘I’ll come,’ I promised. ‘But - why now? What changed your mind?’
She shrugged, and would not say, but I pressed her, and eventually she told me.
‘My parents are in England.’
‘Your parents! Where?’
‘They are staying with Sir Richard Browne, in Hampshire. An old friend of my father’s. They fought together against the Spanish.’
‘When do they come to court?’
‘They don’t.’
‘Why not?’ I said, puzzled.
‘They don’t answer my letters. But I have been told that they intend never to speak to me again.’
‘What! How dare they—’ •
‘No, it is all right. I understand: they think I have disgraced them. They have a rather old-fashioned view of what is honourable, you see. And they will never see that it was partly their own fault. They thought that dukes and lords should be queuing up to marry me because I bore their name. They couldn’t understand that without money, their precious name was worth nothing.’ She was crying: it made me realise that I had not seen her cry for many months. ‘Well, I am free of them now,’ she said angrily. ‘I did my duty, and look where it got mq. From now on I shall look out for myself’
Carlo
Strawberrfes and white pepper ice cream; blackberry and cream sorbet; chocolate and vanilla custard . . . No matter how many new combinations we invent, the greatest ices remain the simplest.
The Book of Ices
I walked through the darkened corridors of the palace, an ice chest in my arms. If anyone asked, I was taking an ice to the king’s cast-off mistress, to console her. Anyone who bothered to check would have found in the chest an ice cream of red strawberries and white pepper, nestling in a garland of strawberry leaves.
Nobody stopped me. Nobody asked. The king was elsewhere. Those left behind were of no account.
Her apartments, usually so crowded with courtiers and ministers, were empty. T’ve sent them away,’ she said, seeing me glance into the shadows. ‘We won’t be disturbed.’
She was wearing her hair loose, twisted in a kind of rope over one shoulder of her deshMlU. Her feet were bare, and she had removed the king’s jewels. But it was not that which was so different about her. She seemed somehow younger, as if some of the weariness had lifted from her shoulders along with the weight of the king’s rubies.
‘You’re happy,’ I said, wondering. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen you happy before.’
She stepped towards me. Without her court shoes, she was shorter than usual. I put my hands on her shoulders—
‘Wait,’ she said softly, kissing me and stepping back. ‘I want tonight to last for ever.’
‘We’ve waited long enough.’ And I picked her up and carried her bodily into the bedchamber.
t
Her white, white skin: the colour of candlewax, of white straw
«
berries, of ice cream.
I spooned a. shaving of strawberry ice onto her belly, and carried it to her lips with my mouth. We passed the sweetnessl^ack and forth between us, until it had melted away to nothing on our tongues.
She melted more slowly. The ice cream was soon all gone, but I kept licking it from her belly anyway. From her belly, and the soft downy dish at the top of each thigh, and her mouth, cold and creamy with kisses and ice.
I had waited all these years. I could wait a few minutes longer.
Until eventually, with a sigh, she pulled my head to hers, and kissed me with a sudden desperate passion, and I knew that she was ready to feel pleasure.
This was a new Louise. Her eagerness that night - her £[reed almost took me by surprise. It was as if she had been starved of sensations for so long that now she must feast on them without restraint.
And yet. And yet.
I did not tell her this, but as we lay together I sensed the presence of a third person in the room - or perhaps it as truer to say, I sensed his absence. When she turned her head, like so, it was because he kissed her just there, on the cheek: when she looked at me with those sleepy, smiling eyes, it was because he liked her to look at him that way. When she gasped, it was a gasp that he had heard a thousand times.
And when the paroxysm gripped her, all her muscles clenching as she strained for the moment of release, whispering imprecations in French too fast for me to catch, it was almost as if she had left us both, pleasure bearing her away to a place where neither could follow.
It is weU known, of course, that in the midst of love’s ecstasy one may experience a moment of unexpected sadness. I felt it that night. I had achieved my heart’s desire, and I was not disap-, pointed — far from it — but there was something missing, something I could not put my finger on, or name.