Sisi, page 22
The way they held hands, their bodies facing each other, it was almost as if they were making sacred vows. Affirming that, because they loved each other, they would spend their lives together. But, instead, they were doing the opposite. When Andrássy spoke next, his words confirmed that. “Sisi, in ending it now, you, to me, shall remain perfect.”
She lowered her eyes, feeling the tears that slid down her cheeks, salting her lips. Lips that had no words with which to reply.
“I will always love you,” he said, whispering the words. Was it a good thing for her to know all of this, or would it have been better had he never said it? She blinked, ever more tears slipping from her eyes and cutting warm lines down her wind-chapped cheeks. His words, shattering as they were, did not come as a surprise. In fact, he echoed precisely what she herself had come to know—what she had spent the past months in Gödöllő preparing herself for. Her return to Vienna and their immediate quarrel had only made it all the more apparent. They could not go on like this, she had finally admitted that to herself. There could be no more of her seeking her fulfillment or freedom or happiness in this man—this good, wonderful man who, in spite of his goodness, could not help but fall short, as the two of them were battered by so many needs larger than the yearnings of their own two human hearts. This man, whose love had been just the latest idol she had grown disappointed in and disillusioned by. It wasn’t fair for him. And it wasn’t good for her.
Sisi drew in a long, fortifying breath, slipping her hands from Andrássy’s, noticing that they were no longer cold. She turned back to the window. There, her breath fogging up the panes of glass, she looked out over the frozen yard. Beyond that grew the dense, snow-covered pines, and farther still, the naked hills shivered beneath a threatening winter sky. Studying this vast, desolate view, so lonely and forbidding that it made her want to weep anew, Sisi thought: life has to return at some point. Spring would come eventually, even to this bleak and barren landscape. It had to; it was ordained by a divine plan more steadfast and inevitable than anything she herself could understand. “I’m going to leave,” she said after a while, turning to look back at Andrássy. “For the winter. Valerie has been sick for months. The doctor has told me to seek out a different climate. I shall heed his advice.”
Andrássy nodded, not surprised. He knew her well enough to know that she followed every grief or disappointment with a flight. She weathered heartache by fleeing the court, where she was not allowed to mourn. “Where will you go?” he asked.
Sisi sighed, her breath coming out as a visible mist even inside the lodge.
“To Possenhofen?”
She shook her head. “Not to Bavaria…it’s too difficult to be there. What with Father drinking himself to death. And my sisters Marie and Helene both so upset all the time. And Ludwig…oh, poor Ludwig. He is more besieged by the day.”
“Then to Gödöllő?”
“No.” She stared at him. How could she tell him that she couldn’t stand to be there now, in that place where she had once been her happiest? That he, Andrássy, was all over Gödöllő, and yet he would never be there again. Not as he had been. “No, not to Gödöllő, either. I must go somewhere far, far away. Someplace where they don’t know me, and I don’t know them. Someplace where everything shall be new. New and untouched by memory.”
“Does such a place exist?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” she answered, her eyes meeting his one last time. “But if it does, I shall find it.”
VII
“The bright star of Europe” her kingdom has left,
And Austria mourns of its Empress bereft.
Firm seat in the saddle: light hands on the reins,
As e’er guided steed over Hungary’s plains:
She has come—with her beauty, grace, courage, and skill—
To ride, with our hounds, from old Shuckburgh Hill.
—ENGLISH POEM WRITTEN ABOUT EMPRESS SISI
CHAPTER 7
Easton Neston House, Northamptonshire, England
Spring 1876
“If he insists on saying such spiteful things against me, then I shall have to insist on proving him wrong.”
It was a clear morning in early spring, bright and mild, and the scene outside Sisi’s bedroom was a lush English tapestry of newly budded leaves and thick hedgerows. The estate she had rented for the hunting season, a grand old home in Northamptonshire, seemed to grow a more vibrant hue of green as the morning sun climbed higher from the horizon, drying up the slick sheen of dew that glistened across the landscape like a scattering of emeralds and diamonds.
“But I can’t stay cross, even upon hearing this unpleasant gossip.” Sisi sighed, gazing out the window at the gardens, bordered by unruly myrtle and populated by lively birds that darted from bush to hedge to branch, filling the yard with their songs. Beyond the gardens stood the estate’s vast stables, where her horses were being put through their morning steps, and farther away was the private woodland park. It was nothing like the view from her imperial rooms in Vienna, and Sisi had the entire day to explore this pastoral playground atop her horse.
“These English are fortunate in their landscapes, are they not?” Sisi posed the question aloud to her busy bedchamber, the large space bustling with the members of the empress’s household who had traveled with her from Austria. She had with her Baron Nopcsa, dispatching his duties as master of the imperial household, and Countess Marie Festetics and Ida Ferenczy to attend to her daily needs, and Franziska Feifalik, of course, to style her hair. Valerie traveled with the imperial retinue as well, and she and her governess were completing the morning lessons in their nearby room.
The newcomer to Sisi’s household, a pretty young countess named Marie Larisch, who had been hired recently, was the woman who had supplied Sisi with the gossip that she now considered. Countess Larisch had been Sisi’s pick when the empress had declared the need for a fresh addition to her suite. At the time, Ida and Marie had hardly welcomed the news of another attendant joining the empress’s household—Sisi had deduced that from their scowls—but they had submitted to her wishes with their pliable and self-restrained acquiescence. “Come now, ladies,” Sisi had added, a note of finality to her tone, “we need at least one among us who will keep our blood young.”
Sisi’s selection had come from her homeland of Bavaria. Countess Marie Larisch was indeed young, the same age as Rudolf in fact, and in the full bloom of her eighteen years. As the reluctant bride of a stern, pockmarked German, a lieutenant by the name of Count Georg Larisch, the pretty little countess had been all too happy—even giddy with gratitude—to accept the invitation to join Empress Sisi’s household and attend the empress on her travels abroad. Anything to get her away from her dull husband and his dilapidated, lonely castle—a need for escape that Sisi could understand and even sympathize with. Countess Larisch seemed to view each trip as an audition for a role she was determined to win, and she’d immediately set about charming Sisi with her quick wit, her fresh and vivacious laughter, and her morsels of salacious gossip.
The hiring of Marie Larisch had caused a minor scandal in Vienna. The court had quickly gleaned that Countess Larisch was related by her father to the empress but that Marie’s mother was lowborn—an actress, of all things. Sisi laughed to think what her mother-in-law would have made of it—the hiring of such an entirely unsuitable woman as an attendant in the empress’s household.
Sisi liked that Countess Larisch wasn’t of pure blue blood and a pristinely noble pedigree; it would ensure that the lively young brunette remained loyal and close to the empress. Marie knew from where her patronage and protection came. Plus, perhaps it was Countess Larisch’s questionable parentage that made her so fun and enjoyable to have around. She could sing, dance, and offer retorts as quick and entertaining as a Shakespearean comedienne. In her time in her post, Countess Larisch had filled Sisi’s rooms with laughter, music, and plenty of delicious chatter.
“Now, Countess Larisch, come sit by me.” Sisi patted the empty seat beside her. She was having her hair styled, the last step of her toilette before she was to be sewn into the day’s riding habit. “And tell me everything you heard about this Captain Middleton. How does he already know so much about me when I’ve only just arrived to England?”
In fact, it was Sisi’s third full day in Northamptonshire, the imperial party having arrived on Sunday to the pealing of church bells and a cheering village square. Though she was traveling incognita—or trying to—word seemed to have spread throughout the region that Austria-Hungary’s famed Empress Elisabeth had come to try her equestrian skills in the legendary English hunting season. As she waved bashfully to the curious, smiling onlookers who lined the entirety of the country lane to the estate, Sisi had realized that she would be as pursued and stalked here as she was everywhere else.
On Monday, her first full day, Sisi had ridden around the private acres of her rented estate. Heeding the warnings of Nicky Esterházy and all who had ridden the English countryside before, Sisi worked to familiarize herself with the brambly, thawing terrain, its features entirely foreign and, as she had been warned, much more challenging than the flat plains of Hungary. “I don’t see what can be so difficult,” she had declared when she had returned home at the end of that first day. “Spring thaws the plains of Hungary just as it does the meadows and fields of England.” Ida and Marie had pressed their lips together and lowered their eyes, allowing their rumpled brows to speak their concerns plainly enough.
On Tuesday Sisi accepted an invitation to lunch at Althorp palace, the nearby estate of Lord and Lady John Spencer. Lord Spencer, an earl from one of England’s elite families, was the resident Northamptonshire aristocrat and Sisi’s official host for the hunting season. His Lordship had been the one to recommend and secure the lodgings at Easton Neston for the imperial party. An energetic man with an obliging smile and abundant fiery-red facial hair, just barely tinged by the gray of middle age, Earl Spencer had clearly decided to take his duties as the empress’s host quite seriously.
Luncheon at Althorp was a lavish spread paired with claret wine and a detailed discussion of the English countryside—the unique obstacles presented by the shire landscapes and the special skills required of the horses that would carry the empress across them. Once more, Sisi was warned what a formidable challenge it would be to traverse the spring terrain of Northamptonshire in pursuit of the fox and stag.
It was also during this lunch at Althorp that Sisi met Captain Bay Middleton. Sisi had first noticed Captain Middleton when she arrived at the earl’s palace. He stood somewhat removed from the rest of the guests, a thick-shouldered, unsmiling man in the English officer’s uniform. Captain Middleton looked to be about ten years younger than she. Lord Spencer formally introduced them before the luncheon began. “We know, Empress, of your skill atop a hunter, and so I’ve selected Captain Bay Middleton to pilot you on tomorrow’s hunt. He served in my cavalry unit back in Ireland, and I tell you, there’s no better rider in Her Majesty’s kingdom than Middleton here.”
Captain Middleton barely acknowledged either these flattering words from his merry host or the imperial guest to whom he was being introduced. He simply looked about the room as if this luncheon and Sisi’s presence were an imposition on what might otherwise have been a pleasant day.
Sisi cast quick, furtive glances toward this rude officer throughout the meal. A man of middle height—he was nowhere near Andrássy’s stature—Captain Middleton nevertheless presented an imposing figure. He was sturdily built with a thick, broad chest and a haughty, square-jawed face. His hair, a coppery brown, was neatly clipped and matched by a tidy mustache under which his lips remained closed and unsmiling. Sisi groaned inwardly as she completed her survey of Middleton, discouraged that such a bad-mannered, arrogant man would be her companion on what was supposed to have been such a pleasant, enjoyable occasion. She disliked Captain Middleton immediately, and that was before she had even heard the vicious things he had said about her.
—
And now it was Wednesday, her third full day. Sisi had the morning to get ready before she was expected to take her place in Lord Spencer’s hunting party, riding behind his hounds across the fields and forests of Northamptonshire with Captain Bay Middleton scowling beside her.
“Tell me once more, Countess Larisch.” Sisi was sitting before the mirror as Franziska Feifalik wove her hair into a series of loose plaits that would be tamed and tucked under her riding cap.
“Are you certain you wish to hear such gossip, Empress?” Marie Festetics interjected from her spot by the bed where she was brushing down Sisi’s riding habit, a skirt and jacket of royal blue etched with golden trim.
“Hush, Marie.” Sisi raised her hand. “My experience with being gossiped about is that it’s better to know what’s being said than to be caught unaware.” With that, Sisi nodded at her young confidante, once again patting the chair beside her.
Countess Larisch took the empty seat offered to her and threw a self-satisfied smirk at Marie Festetics before leaning toward Sisi. “Well, Empress, he’s a cavalry captain by the name of George, but his friends know him simply as ‘Bay.’ ”
“And how old is this Bay?”
“Thirty years old, Madame.”
“And a bachelor?” Sisi asked, feeling the weight at the back of her neck grow heavier as Franziska wove more and more of her thick chestnut locks into an upswept hairstyle.
“A bachelor, but apparently a well-known favorite of the ladies.” Countess Larisch giggled as Marie and Ida sighed audibly from the other side of the bedroom.
Sisi ignored her disgruntled attendants. “Is that so?”
“Yes.” Countess Larisch nodded. “Apparently he’s just concluded quite the scandalous affair with a noblewoman. A married noblewoman.”
Sisi put a hand to her lips, concealing the undignified smile that tugged on them. She knew it was vile to gossip so, but Countess Larisch made it so delicious!
The young woman continued in a low voice, leaning in so that only Sisi might hear: “But now he’s got to be on his best behavior because he’s recently engaged.”
“To whom?” Sisi asked, wondering who would willingly attach herself to such an infamous seducer, and an unpleasant one from the look and sound of it.
“A young lady by the name of Miss Charlotte Baird. A great beauty and an heiress to a vast coal and iron fortune up north. It’s her father who has bought the last of the Middleton lands. It seems that this Bay, though skilled in riding all sorts of…thoroughbreds”—Larisch paused for effect, allowing Sisi to gasp out a scandalized laugh—“has very little cash to his name. A situation he will rectify when he marries the twenty-two-year-old heiress, Miss Charlotte Baird.”
“Oh, the poor little Charlotte Baird. This is too scandalous!” Sisi tossed her head back, stifling a giggle.
“Empress, please! Be still!”
“Sorry, Franziska.” Sisi sat back up, her mind still abuzz with Larisch’s report. Suddenly Bay Middleton’s arrogance struck her as confounding but far less unnerving. He was without land and penniless—what right did he have to show such conceit toward her, Empress Elisabeth of Austria-Hungary? And how had that surly man from the previous day’s luncheon succeeded in seducing so many different women? But perhaps most perplexing of all—how had the news of Middleton’s reputation and adventures already reached her young attendant’s ears? Sisi narrowed her eyes, focusing back on the countess. “Larisch, how do you know all of this?”
Now Countess Larisch cocked her head to the side, flashing a dazzling, big-eyed smile at once both charmingly innocent and dangerously coy, and Sisi was certain that any man on the receiving end of that smile would have no choice but to fall in love with the young lady. “I have my ways, Empress.”
“Never mind, I’m not certain I even wish to know. But now to the most important point, Larisch.” Sisi reached over and took the young lady’s hand in her own. She could practically feel Marie’s and Ida’s watchful, simmering disapproval from the other side of the room, but she ignored them. “Tell me once more, what vile words has this Bay Middleton said about me?”
Marie Larisch paused, angling her long-lashed eyes to the floor as if it pained her to repeat this next part. “He said”—she cleared her throat—“when told by Lord Spencer that he would be Your Majesty’s pilot for the riding season: ‘What is an empress to me? She’ll only hold me back.’ ”
Though Sisi had already heard Captain Middleton’s insults once, the night before from Larisch, hearing these words anew only quickened her indignation and caused her heart to speed up, defiant, in her breast. She knew that Bay Middleton wasn’t alone in his skepticism of the empress’s oft-lauded skills in the saddle. Many others had warned her of the difficulties of riding the English shires. Both Franz and Andrássy had begged her to be careful when she had departed the court in Vienna. Rudolf had looked as if he might cry when he had heard of his mother’s decision to join an English hunt for the season. Even Franziska, unflappable Franziska, had suggested a hairdo that might provide cushioning to the back of Sisi’s head, just in case the empress was launched from her mount and hurled to the earth.
