The Accidental Empress, page 17
“Just that they’ve been arguing for days, since you arrived. It’s very unusual for them to argue so. But the emperor won’t drop his suit.” Agata turned to look over her shoulder nervously. Footsteps sounded from the carpeted hallway.
“Someone’s coming.” The maid ran toward the bed and retrieved the chamber pot, picking it up just in time. Countess Esterházy appeared at the open doorway. The tall, pinch-faced woman spied Agata and cast a skeptical look toward her, but let her pass with the chamber pot. Poor Agata would probably be scolded later for venturing upstairs when she was supposed to remain below in the kitchens.
The lady-in-waiting turned from the exiting Agata toward Sisi. “Excuse me, I’ve been sent to summon you, Duchess Elisabeth.”
Sisi nodded, walking toward the frowning matron. Helene rose to join her.
“No, I do apologize.” The countess lifted a hand before Helene, sounding very unapologetic. “Just the Duchess Elisabeth.”
To what fate was she being marched? Sisi descended the stairs behind her aunt’s ally, wishing she might walk faster. She was ushered into the large dining room.
“Please be seated, Duchess Elisabeth.” Countess Esterházy gestured a gloved hand toward a carved chair at the table.
“Thank you.” Sisi waited for what felt like an interminable length of time. She glanced often at the mantel: the hand of the marble clock marched evenly on, covering three-quarters of an hour. Restless, Sisi rose from her chair and began to pace the large space.
As she walked to the window, she noticed an unexpected figure in the courtyard. Franz! Mounting the saddled Sieger. Instinctively, she rapped on the window, trying to get his attention. But he didn’t hear her. He nudged the horse with his heel and they sped across the forecourt, past Sisi, past the guards at the front gate, and out of the complex.
Just like that, he was gone. Left the palace. Surely this did not bode well, Sisi thought, her heart aching. Franz had surrendered.
“Excuse me, Duchess Elisabeth?” Countess Esterházy reappeared. Did her features know how to fold in any way other than a look of perpetual disapproval?
“Yes?” Sisi still stood beside the window.
“I am to escort you back to your suite.”
“But . . . but I have seen no one,” Sisi protested. “What is happening?”
The lady-in-waiting shrugged, offering no scrap of additional information.
Sisi sighed and followed the countess out, marching back up to her bedchamber.
“Sisi!” Helene waited for her, pacing the room. “What news?”
“None at all.” Sisi dropped wearily onto a chair. She noticed, with considerable sadness, that Helene had packed up their trunks while she had been downstairs. “You’ve packed?”
“Just in case. Not because I think . . .”
“No, you were correct to guess at the outcome. I saw no one. But Franz has left the palace, that much I know.”
Midday came and passed but they were served no luncheon, nor were they informed what had happened to Sophie or Franz. In the early afternoon, when Sisi poked her head out the door, she noticed Countess Esterházy pacing the hallway like an indefatigable sentry. So that was why Mamma had not come to them.
Sophie must be relishing her victory. Once more, she was the devoted mother and advisor, willing to do whatever it took to protect her son. Not only had she saved her son from such an unfathomably ill-suited match, she’d also reasserted her power as the most powerful woman in his life. She’d proven, once more, why she was referred to, by many, as “the Empress.”
“Excuse me, Duchess Elisabeth.” This time, Herr Lobkowitz appeared at the door.
“Yes, what is it now?” Sisi grumbled, her patience long expired. If Franz had lost, then couldn’t she just be allowed to go home without further punishment?
“Would you accompany me, one more time, Duchess?” The aide touched the monocle, a nervous gesture, where it perched on the bridge of his nose.
“Oh, very well,” Sisi frowned, exchanging a look with her sister. “It’s not as though I have anything else to do.”
Again she was deposited in the large dining room, and again she was shut in, alone, with nothing but the sound of the clock to divert her thoughts.
The wait was shorter this time. The door opened without a knock and Sisi was stunned to stare into the face of her aunt.
“I shall dispense with all formalities, as you know very plainly how I feel.” Sophie swished into the room and sat herself at the opposite end of the table. It was the same slick oak table where they had dined together with such merriment the first night.
“The wedding will be in eight months.”
Sisi went numb, certain that she had misheard her aunt. Or at least misunderstood her meaning.
“Enough time to quiet the rumors that you have become . . . pregnant. Though that is hardly enough time for you to learn how to become empress.” Sophie stared at her niece with ill-concealed disapproval. “It takes a lifetime to prepare for this role. It was risky enough inviting Helene, knowing what sort of . . . upbringing you had in that household. Your father, behaving as he did. Your mother doing nothing to teach you any discipline.” Sophie twisted the rings on her fingers, catching the sunlight on the large stones.
“But Helene at least had the temperament for it. She was reserved, and dignified, and she knew her place. And she was more mature than a child. But you? You have exactly the wrong disposition.” Sophie’s voice was thick with annoyance, and her gaze slid away from Sisi toward the floor. The next words were spoken under her breath, a catalogue of the flaws she detected in the young girl opposite her. “Willful. Independent. Far too opinionated.” Sophie turned back toward Sisi now, addressing her once more. “And you did no favors for yourself by crossing me on your quest to steal my son’s heart.”
Sisi tried to answer, to defend herself. But before she could, Sophie lifted a hand, silencing her: “Let me finish. He seems determined to move forward with this”—Sophie paused, pursing her lips, as if the words tasted bitter—“match.” Sophie exhaled, a sigh. “You will be married in April. In Vienna, at Augustinerkirche. The church where all Habsburgs are wed.”
Sisi’s lips pulled apart in a stunned smile, while Sophie’s scowl made it clear that she was loath to bestow this honor on her niece. “If you aren’t a virgin on your wedding night, I will know, do you understand? And I will have a priest on hand to nullify the union before you’ve even sat down to breakfast the next day.”
Sophie kept talking, laying out a list of warnings to Sisi: her French must be flawless by the time of the wedding. Her dancing skills were glaringly insufficient. Her wardrobe was lacking. And she had better have her teeth straightened and whitened, or they would be the cause of endless ridicule in Vienna.
But Sisi had stopped listening. These insults and threats slid over her like slippery raindrops. There was only one bit of information in this barrage to which she clung—the announcement that she would marry Franz. And with that realization, happiness. Franz had won. She, Sisi, had won. She would be Franz’s wife! Relief and joy seeped through her until she was so recklessly glad that she couldn’t help but cry out in a peal of laughter.
“What is so funny, girl? This is no laughing matter.”
It wasn’t funny, but Sisi continued to laugh.
“Stop that this instant.” Sophie’s eyes widened, staring out from a pale, pinched face. “This is highly undignified.”
It was just such beautiful news—such unexpected, incomprehensible news: she was going to marry Franz. She, Sisi, was to be Empress of Austria.
Sophie still looked on disapprovingly. “Now, you had better go and change. We are to meet my son at church within the hour. We will go and pray. You will need God on your side against the court at Vienna.”
Part Two
VI.
I have awakened from a rapture.
—Empress Elisabeth “Sisi” of Austria, 1854
Chapter Six
POSSENHOFEN CASTLE, BAVARIA
SEPTEMBER 1853
Sisi had never imagined it possible to awake one day and look upon a life so entirely foreign. Unknown. As if, now that she was engaged to marry Emperor Franz Joseph, the first fifteen years of her existence had been nothing more than a dream. A memory belonging to another girl.
When Sisi returned that autumn from Bad Ischl to Possenhofen, it was to an unfamiliar way of life; her days were no longer her own. The fall, usually her favorite time of year for getting lost in the woods atop her horse, was not hers to enjoy. “There isn’t enough time!” became her mother’s daily, frantic refrain.
The imperial tutors descended on Possi first, with their heavy books, their impeccably glossy spectacles, and their stern, mustached lips. They were with Sisi from the moment she awoke until long after supper. Her Italian was deplorable, her Hungarian was nonexistent, and her French had to improve—on that score, everyone seemed to agree. Even her grasp of German, her native tongue, presented concerns; Sisi needed to know not simply how to speak, but how to converse. Additionally, she needed to become an expert, in a matter of months, on the topics of Austrian history, the Habsburg family, and life at court. On this last topic there existed voluminous pages of protocol to be learned, never-ending lists of nobles and courtiers with whom to become familiar, and scrolls on all of her various new homes, territories, and responsibilities.
Franz Joseph had been schooled and groomed for his role since his first days in the nursery; he had known no other companionship than that of royal relatives, fashionable courtiers, and attentive tutors. For Sisi, fifteen years of a relaxed, provincial upbringing now had to be unlearned and remedied in just a matter of months. Nobody around her seemed to believe it possible.
Sisi’s dancing skills, as Sophie had repeatedly pointed out, were also glaringly insufficient. Vienna had given the world the waltz; now Sisi would be expected to take her place at the fore of the imperial ballrooms opposite the emperor, a famously good dancer, and she must not embarrass the Habsburgs. So, rather than tiring her legs out on the lengthy rides and hikes through the Bavarian mountains that she had always relished, Sisi wore her feet raw that autumn with countless hours of practicing waltzes, polkas, and quadrilles. She heard violins keeping three-quarter time in her sleep.
Even Sisi’s body no longer seemed to be her own; she was poked and prodded and measured as she had never before been. Dentists were sent from Vienna to pull on and straighten the young bride’s teeth, and to apply a paste that her Aunt Sophie hoped would render them an appropriately pristine shade of white. Milliners and tailors and shoemakers and seamstresses from throughout Bavaria arrived at Possenhofen, stitching and sewing from sunrise to sunset. None of the snappish, harried craftspeople believed it possible to complete the imperial trousseau by the time of the bride’s departure for Vienna. Urgent word went out to all the neighboring nunneries throughout the region: the cloistered sisters must help their young duchess prepare a wardrobe worthy of an emperor’s wife. They must pray for Sisi, yes, but even more important, they must stitch for Sisi. Even God, it seemed, was enlisted to help this ill-prepared girl.
When Sisi wasn’t learning history, or practicing the art of speaking, or dancing, or nursing an aching tooth, she was sitting. She sat for countless hours as the imperial artists sketched and studied and re-created her likeness. The people were ravenous for a glimpse of the girl who had enchanted their emperor: a girl whose beauty was already being heralded by those who had been fortunate enough to meet this unknown duchess in Bad Ischl. Her face, the imperial artists told Sisi, would be the most recognized face in all of Vienna before she herself ever set foot in the capital.
All that fall and winter, the gifts came. At first it had excited Sisi immensely. She had loved reaching into the velvet pouch and retrieving a small portrait of her groom. She had gasped in surprise and delight at the diamond bracelet that had accompanied it, so that she might wear Franz Joseph’s likeness around her wrist at all times. He was doing the same with her miniature portrait, her smitten groom wrote her.
Sometimes, while opening these new packages, sharing their contents with her excited mother and her quiet elder sister, Sisi would catch a glimpse of something difficult to decipher on Helene’s face. Was it a look of envy? A look of longing? Noting the strange tug on Néné’s features, the quick way in which her sister found a reason to leave the room, Sisi decided that perhaps she had better not be quite so rapturous in her joy while her sister was present.
Each day it seemed that some new gift arrived. Franz sent a silver breakfast set emblazoned with her new initials. Franz sent a cape of plush blue velvet trimmed in ermine. He sent her a brooch of jewels in the shape of a rosebud, along with fresh roses, even though it was the dead of winter and roses were nowhere to be had. He sent her gloves of kid leather in every color, and ceremonial robes embroidered in gold trim, and winter gowns and summer gowns and hats decorated with apple blossoms and ostrich feathers. She received capes and purses and mantillas and satin slippers. Her favorite gift was the pet parrot Franz sent her, along with a note declaring how eager he was to show her his own private zoo at Schönbrunn Palace.
Franz wrote dutifully, gushing to Sisi about how his thoughts drifted from his government papers, wandering from Vienna back to their “divine sojourn” together in the mountains. He assured her of his mother’s excitement for the coming wedding. Perhaps in an effort to earn back her son’s good favor, or else to ingratiate herself with the young bride who would inevitably be moving into her home, Sophie’s demeanor had changed entirely. According to Franz, his mother now raved to anyone who would listen about the “divine little lady” her son had chosen. Sophie had even decided that the new wing on the Kaiservilla would be laid out in the shape of the letter E, in honor of her son’s bride.
For her sixteenth birthday, the night before Christmas, Sisi received a letter detailing her aunt’s efforts to prepare the imperial suite that the newlyweds would occupy after the wedding. Sisi’s opinion was not sought, but Sophie wrote that she was certain that the future empress would be perfectly delighted. Everything, Sophie assured her, was being done with Sisi’s comfort and pleasure in mind. Sophie had bought her niece a toiletry set of pure gold. The bed and windows were to be draped in pale-blue lyonnaise silk. Sophie had arranged for her niece to have Chinese porcelain, hand-stitched carpets, custom furniture, and portraits from the Habsburg family’s own collection.
Also for her birthday, Sisi was given a tiara inset with diamonds and opals—the same tiara Aunt Sophie had worn on her own wedding day. It came with matching earrings and a choker, as well as a note beseeching Sisi to take extreme care when transporting the collection to Vienna. The objects were some of the Habsburg family’s most treasured jewels, and the consequences of their loss or damage would be unfathomable. Sisi wept on receiving this gift, along with its officious warning; now, on top of everything else she had weighing on her, she had to ensure the safe passage of these priceless Habsburg crown jewels?
Sisi felt a great many things as the wedding day approached. Excitement. Fear. Gratitude. Exhaustion. But the emotion that remained with her at all times, never wavering even as the others ebbed and flowed, was incredulity. Had Franz really picked her? Were all of these people really working to help and prepare her for this role? Were all of these dresses of silk and brocade and tulle and satin for her? Were these mobs of villagers—lining the streets of Possenhofen on the day of her departure, waving the blue and white provincial flag and showering her in flowers—really there to bid her farewell?
It was a departure entirely unlike the previous one, when she had ridden in a humble carriage to Bad Ischl as the younger sister joining in on some fanciful adventure. Now she was the imperial bride, traveling in state to a capital city ravenous for a glimpse of its new empress.
Sisi was loaded, speechless and pale—along with her twenty-five trunks—onto the steamship Franz Joseph. The journey down the Danube took three days. They had the water to themselves, as all other river traffic had been expressly forbidden. The steamer glided deliberately forward, covered in garlands of fresh roses while the banks of the river swarmed with tens of thousands of onlookers. Everything they passed was now her land: the orchards blossoming with early spring fruit; the ancient ruins crumbling in the medieval towns; even the people who lined the river the entire way, the peasants picnicking and the impromptu bands serenading her in her national anthems, new and old. Bells clanged in every town, and the crowds waved the Austrian and Bavarian flags while Sisi waved back to them, fluttering her lace handkerchief the way her dance master had instructed her. She heard her name extolled from dawn until sunset, and she stood on the deck, performing her duties until her arms ached and her smiling cheeks quivered.
Always, she was performing. It grew so exhausting that at night, alone in her cabin, as Sisi peeled off the painful corset and slid her feet into her familiar red slippers, she wept. She wept from exhaustion. She wept for Possenhofen. She wept for her childhood bed and Néné’s comforting presence and the servants she had known since birth—servants she had been forbidden to bring with her. She wept for the carefree frivolity of a ride on her horse in a simple gown and dirty leather boots. She wept for the lenient, easy manner of her parents, a style entirely opposite of that expected by Aunt Sophie. She knew it was foolish to weep—she, the luckiest girl in all of Europe, had no right to weep. She, who had won the heart of the kindest, most handsome emperor, ought to feel only joy.
And so, each morning, she would dress once more, dutifully sliding into a too-tight corset and wobbly heels, reminding herself that all would be well. She was in love with Franz. Once she saw him, once she was reunited with her groom, all would be well.
The wedding day dawned clear and chilly, a perfect April morning, confirming to everyone in the capital—from the lowliest bar sweep to the emperor himself—that God smiled down on the imperial pair.
