Later, the musicians strum their guitars. ‘Are we to dance?’ he asks.
‘I could not dance to this tune, sir,’ I answer. ‘It is too rough and wild for dancing.’
He turns to those behind us. ‘Is there anyone who will dance?’
‘I will,’ calls a voice, and Hortense Mancini steps forward, into the space between the musicians and our chairs. Without a trace of self-consciousness she adopts a position: one leg cocked, her arms above her head.
I am reminded of the way she crouched en ^cirde: supple, poised, waiting.
Then the music starts - fast and giddy. She spins and stamps and snaps her fingers - there is a part of me that wants to say. Oh look, Charles, she dances like a 'Neapolitangypsy, but the words stick in my throat. The dance is nakedly sensual, pagan. But she does not dance for him alone: it is me, too, at whom she directs her flashing gaze, her glittering eyes. I can hardly breathe. I glance sideways at the king. He is staring at her, fixated.
When she has finished, bowing insouciandy to the applauding court, it is us, not her, who are short of breath.
Carlo
Chocolate ice cream: this is not an easy ice to make, but it repays the effort. Mix together half a cup of chocolate powder and half a cup of sugar. Add enough cold milk to make a paste, then two cups of hot milk. Simmer very gently, stirring all the while, for eight minutes. Then remove from the heat and stir in six one-ounce tablets of chocolate, chopped very fine. In a separate bowl, beat together six egg yolks and half a cup of sugar and beat until pale. Pour in the chocolate mixture, beating vigorously. Heat, but do not boil; add half a cup of sugar syrup; cool in a cold-water bath, and finally beat in two cups of heavy cream before you freeze.
The Book of Ices
The king had asked for an ice, his first in many months. I made an ice of chocolate and raisins, and took it to his apartments.
‘He is in his laboratory,’ the footman told me. ‘You are to go straight in.’ !
I found the laboratory full of a stinking smoke, and the king coughing. ‘Ah, signor,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Never mix sulphur and magnesia.’
‘Indeed, sir.’
There was a large glass prism beside the window. It had been arranged in such a way that it caught the sunlight, scattering it into a rainbow of colours. I could not help wondering how it was done, for the glass itself appeared to be completely plain, with nothing inside it.
Seeing me looking, the king nodded. ‘You can pick it up.’
I picked it up and peered inside the prism, but the colours instantly vanished. It was only when it was placed in the sun again that the rainbow reappeared.
‘One of my virtuosi fashioned it,’ he said. ‘It shows what light is made of.’
‘Light, surely, comes from God?’
‘So we were taught. But this man has dared to look inside God’s light, and now finds that like any other substance it has its composition and its quantities. And so another of our childish illusions is pricked by the cold scepticism of science.’ He was silent a moment. ‘How fares the Duchess of Portsmouth’s ball? She has everything she needs?’
‘Yes, thank you, sir.’
‘I am very fond of the duchess, signor.’
‘Of course,’ I said, not entirely certain how else I should respond.
‘That is to say, I would not want her to be without anything that she requires for her entertainment.’ He turned back to his bench. ‘Or, indeed, her comfort.’
I nodded, unable to speak, for I saw now what this conversation was really about.
‘I have been unable to attend Her Grace recently as much as I would have wished. The pressure of business. . .’
He looked at the chocolate ice cream where it sat on the table. One of his lapdogs clambered onto the stool, put his head on one side, and eased his tongue into the bowl. A few licks later, and the ice cream was gone.
‘I am not, by nature, a jealous man,’ he said softly. ‘Take care that you are not either, signor, and we shall do very well.’ He touched the glass prism, spinning it so that the rainbow whirled around the room. ‘Sometimes it does not do to enquire too closely into the nature of things. Sometimes there can be altogether too much light.’
*
I walked through the streets of London, thinking. I walked for several hours, until it was dark.
Then I turned back towards Whitehall.
I went to Louise’s apartments. But although it was by now very late, my way was blocked by two unfamiliar footmen.
‘You can’t go in,’ one of them said.
‘Tell her it is—’
‘No one enters. Including us.’
I stepped back. ‘I am her confectioner.’ I realised how feeble it sounded. But just then the door opened and the French ambassador came out. He cast me a shifty look before scuttling off.
I waited. A few minutes later Thomas Osborne came out - or Lord Danby, as we were to call him since he had become Lord Treasurer. He, too, glanced at me quickly and then turned away.
Assuming that whatever the meeting was, it was over, I once again stepped towards the door - only to find my way still barred. ‘His Majesty does not wish to be disturbed.’
‘His Majesty!’ I stared at the door, trying to imagine what was happening behind it. ‘I will wait until he comes out.’
The footman shrugged, as if to say it was all the same to them.
I went to a nearby window seat and waited. Dawn was breaking when at last the door opened and a familiar figure Pepped out.
I did not move, but the light from the window must have caught my face, because he came to st^d at the window. Down below us, in St James’s Park, a small group of deer moved silendy through the early morning mist.
‘Another fine day, signor,’ he said, looking out. Then he was gone, the long stride echoing down the corridor, the footmen marching at his heels.
Her apartments were grown so large that just to reach her bedchamber took an age. Every surface was covered with paintings
and tapestries: every corner contained some ornate French cabinet or priceless vase. Candles burned low in great glass chandeliers above my head, chandeliers shivered and chimed softly as I passed below them.
She too was standing by a window, wrapped only in a long woollen chemise, her hair tumbled over one shoulder, looking down at the mist where it wreathed on the surface of the lake.
As I entered she turned. She did not seem particularly surprised that I was there.
‘I came to warn you,’ I said. ‘To tell you that the king knows about us. It seems I was too late.’
She nodded.
‘What’s going on?’ I asked.
‘Last night, in these rooms, he signed a new treaty with France.’
‘A secret one, I take it?’
‘Yes. It replaces the Treaty of Dover. In return for a new pension from Louis, Charles will prorogue Parliament and commit England to another war with the Dutch.’
‘Another! The blood is hardly dry from the last one.’
‘He gets four m il lion gold crowns. Enough to pay for aU the mistresses he could ever want. Enough to rebuild Windsor Castle. Enough to live like a king.’
‘'Like a king?’
She shrugged. ‘From now on, France will make all decisions affecting England’s foreign policy. What Charles does at home, of course, is of no concern.’
‘And his conversion? The conversion of his country? All Madame’s hopes for his soul?’
‘Madame was not pragmatic in these matters. In my treaty, Charles simply promises never to set aside the queen. His heir will thus be his brother James, who is already a Catholic. England will become Catholic after Charles is dead.’
‘But your own hopes of becoming queen—’
‘Were impractical as well,’ she interrupted. ‘I should have
accepted that sooner. I have my work cut out just being what I am.’
‘And what is that?’ I demanded - poindessly, for the tumbled bedsheets already told me.