Sisi, page 23
Everyone seemed to agree that English riders were unrivaled in their skills at following hounds in the hunt and that the English countryside presented the most uniquely challenging of all hunting terrains. These were not the plowed, flat fields of Hungary. The shires presented mile after mile of untamed pasture, wild grazing land for fat livestock portioned off by hedgerows and formidable stone and wooden fences. In addition to that, the land was littered with what the locals reverentially referred to as “Pytchley bottoms,” unmarked ditches and gulleys carved out of the earth for irrigation. At these points the earth yawned wide and deep, swallowing not only water, but also galloping horses and the riders unlucky enough to sit atop them as they tumbled in. These hidden ravines could be ten feet deep and more than six feet wide, and were usually bordered by fences that obscured their presence and presented further jumping obstacles.
The hounds leading English hunters had been bred to outpace the wind. They knew this terrain instinctively and did not break for prudence or addled nerves as they raced across it. The horses, trained for centuries to keep up with the hounds, showed the same disregard for caution. Falls from these hunters happened at breakneck speed and often proved fatal. If the falling rider happened to be a lady, she faced the additional disadvantage of wearing an elaborate skirt whose folds of fabric often became entangled in the saddle or stirrups and caused her to suffer any number of grisly disfigurements and harrowing ends on her way to the ground.
For all of these reasons, Sisi knew that Captain Middleton’s skepticism was not entirely unfounded, even if he was incredibly rude to voice it so unabashedly. He was probably not alone in wondering whether this empress was up to an English fox hunt. Ida and Marie had not stopped frowning since their arrival to England.
And yet, since her earliest days, Sisi had always been at her most comfortable and confident atop the saddle of a horse. Rather than deter her, the fears and doubts of others now stirred her inner fire and quickened her drive to succeed. That morning, facing the concerns of her attendants and the disparaging words of Bay Middleton, she resolved that this hunting season would be a success. She would prove herself not only worthy of her reputation as the best horsewoman in Europe, but the equal of Bay Middleton himself.
Sisi fidgeted throughout the remainder of her morning toilette, moving on to dress once her hairstyle was in place. In order to be light and unencumbered, she decided to discard her petticoat, prompting quite scandalized looks on her ladies’ faces. She was sewn directly into her habit, a matching blue cap set atop her thick chestnut hair. As she surveyed herself, adjusting the row of golden buttons down the front of her jacket, their luster matching the golden trim on her cuffs and neck, she nodded approvingly.
“Well, Empress,” Ida Ferenczy said, as all in the room stared at her tight, statuesque figure. “You certainly look the part.”
“Not yet,” Sisi said, glancing sideways at the flawless line of her silhouette. “I’ll look the part when I am seated happily in my saddle.”
The hunting party assembled shortly after noon at Lord Spencer’s Althorp estate. On spotting her, the host hurried to Sisi’s side. “Empress Elisabeth, allow me to be the first to welcome you to the Pytchley fields.” The nobleman bowed deeply, his long, fiery beard catching glints of the spring sunshine.
“Thank you, Lord Spencer,” Sisi said, surveying the scene around them. A huge crowd had gathered, both fellow riders and onlookers on foot. Townspeople had turned out in droves to gain a glimpse of the famous empress, and many of them now cheered as she walked out to join the horses.
Sisi spotted Bay Middleton, who turned upon hearing her name called out, his face still unsmiling. He excused himself from the conversation in which he was already involved, turning to walk toward the empress. Sisi steeled herself, standing tall as she studied his approaching figure. For someone who was purported to be without an inheritance, Bay Middleton certainly dressed well, looking like the consummate country gentleman. He wore a scarlet coat and tails, his tight-fitting breeches hugging thick, strong legs, his leather boots climbing up his calves. His hair was combed back neatly, his top hat in his gloved hands.
“Empress Elisabeth.” He offered half a bow as he paused before her, barely enough to be polite.
“Good day, Captain Middleton.”
From across the field, several bugles began to sound, their upbeat notes ringing across the bright, sunlit scene. Cries of “To saddles! Take your mounts!” now joined the bugle notes.
Without speaking, Bay extended his arms to help Sisi into her saddle. Sisi submitted to his assistance, aware that so many eyes watched and not wanting to fuel the rumors that were surely circulating about her and his doubts of her. He lifted her easily, his strong arms making her feel featherlight as he hoisted her onto her mount.
The crowds began to roar all around her, cheering and waving and clapping. Sisi was accustomed to this; her appearances in public always caused an uproar. But, as she listened, she noticed, to her astonishment, that it was not her name that they yelled.
“Bay!” “Brave Bay!” “Bay Middleton!”
Sisi stole a furtive glance toward Bay where he stood beside her, his hands guiding her leather heels into the stirrups. Was he some sort of local hero? A celebrity, even? Bay Middleton looked up at her now, his eyes seeming to voice once more his lack of faith in her, even his mockery. She shifted in her saddle, tossing her chin forward as she straightened up to her full height. “You know, Captain Middleton, I’ve told—”
“Call me Bay.”
Sisi stopped short, stunned to speechlessness at having been interrupted. And by him, a nonnoble, penniless cavalry officer! She twisted the reins in her gloved hands, pausing a moment before continuing. “Fine, Bay….I’ve told Lord Spencer that under no circumstances are you to go easy on me.”
Bay stared directly up at her now, his light blue eyes flickering as they caught a flash of afternoon sunlight. After a pause, he cracked the first smile she had ever seen on his face. “If you say so, Empress Elisabeth.”
Sisi settled into her seat atop the chestnut hunter as Bay mounted his own horse and joined her. They were in a hunting party of about three hundred people, from the look of it. Sisi studied her company, aware from the previous day’s conversation that these assemblies, numbering in the hundreds at the outset, usually ended with only four to six riders making it through the entire hunt. Everyone around her would fall, be thrown, be thwarted by an obstacle, or give up from fatigue or fear before the day’s ride was over. She clutched tight to the reins, adjusting her leather gloves and offering a silent prayer that she might be one of the few to last the day.
As Sisi shifted in her saddle, the horse beneath her began to respond to her nerves with its own twitchy pacing, and so she reminded herself to remain calm. She had grown up in a saddle; this was where she was most comfortable. She shut her eyes and took in a deep breath, allowing herself to tune in to her horse’s mood and movements. Her senses slipped into a familiar state of hyperalertness, her body cleaving to and communing with the saddle and the horse beneath it, preparing the animal to move with her as one. As an extension of her own frame, an executor of her determined will.
Lord Spencer took his mount now, and the crowds cheered ever louder as the horses shifted and paced to the front of the field, a large throng of anxious and anticipatory energy pulsing from human and horse alike. The bugles played out the call once more, and the hounds were brought out, braying and barking and pulling on their leashes. The dogs’ agitation seemed to make the horses—and the riders—even more feverish, and Sisi fought her horse’s attempts to fidget beneath her.
The hounds were unleashed, and several of them caught a first whiff of fox, and before Sisi was aware of what was happening, they were off, barking and howling as if they would outrun the riders of the Apocalypse. Without a word to her, Bay took off, urging his horse to follow right behind the hounds, and Sisi propelled her hunter forward, determined to keep close to him.
They flew across the first field at the front of the pack, the wind whipping her face as she heard the thunder of hooves and the blood-lusting howls of the hounds all around her. The first fence was upon them before she knew it, and she felt her entire body tighten in anticipation, every muscle within her alert and engaged. It was a stake-and-binder fence, not too high. She had cleared these before, she reminded herself, holding tight to her reins as she matched her body to the rhythm of the horse. Bay took the fence a few paces before her. She watched him out of the corner of her eye and then prepared for her own jump, throwing her weight forward to join the horse in the thrust. She cleared it effortlessly and couldn’t help but laugh out in delight as she and the horse felt solid ground beneath them once more.
She noticed how Bay peered over his shoulder, making sure that she had landed, and she met his gaze with a defiant smile, her eyebrows gliding upward as if to ask: Did you expect anything less?
What was the expression on Bay’s face in that moment? Sisi wondered. Approval? Surprise? Whatever it was, Sisi pressed her legs into her horse and urged it to speed up, no longer content to be a few paces behind Bay.
Already the crowd around them had thinned as some of the riders had sought a way around the first fence while others had fallen back to take the field and its fences at a slower pace. Sisi felt the full intoxicating effects of adrenaline coursing through her veins now, and she breathed happily and quickly, turning to glance at Bay beside her.
They crossed another field side by side, taking a small brook at a gallop and easily overcoming several rows of thick hedges. By the end of the first half hour, they were out front alone, the only riders still clipping at the same pace as the hounds. Sisi took the next fence, a stone barrier, right beside Bay.
“Good,” he shouted, his voice loud enough to surmount the roar of their horses’ hooves and his and Sisi’s panting. A wide, unobstructed field stretched out before them now, and Sisi’s heart soared at the pleasure of it all: the green countryside; the crisp, clean air; the welcome ache of exertion in her muscles. Even Bay’s skepticism was visibly diminishing as he kept glancing at her, his rigid facial expression thawing into what almost resembled a smile. Regardless of whether she finished the day’s hunt apace with the hounds, Sisi would consider it a success. She had at least ridden well enough not to have embarrassed herself or compromised her good reputation.
“You have it already, Empress.” Bay panted beside her, and Sisi noticed, with delight, that his breathing seemed even more labored than her own. “Your Majesty thinks, and the beast intuits. You have your horse in communion with your desires and commands.”
Sisi tilted her head to the side, stunned at Bay’s words of approval. “Would that it were so easy with the other men in my life,” she said. Her heart leapt with delight when she saw how Bay smiled at this.
At the end of the field, Sisi’s spirits still soared, but though she was tireless, she felt the troubling signs of fatigue in her horse. She’d had him at a run for most of the past hour, and his steps were landing with increased heaviness. His breath seemed to come louder and more labored with each pace.
Sisi and Bay entered a dense, damp woodland. “There will be ruts up ahead,” Bay cried over his shoulder, his body assuming a position of readiness as the world around them fell under the shadow of thick, leafy branches.
Sisi clutched her reins tighter and narrowed her eyes, trying to scan the soggy earth for the signs of upcoming trouble. The first obstacle was a small hedge. The horse cleared it, but not with the same agility as earlier in the day. Sisi began to worry, wishing she could transfer some of her seemingly inexhaustible energy to her horse.
She was falling behind Bay now, her horse struggling to keep up. She was lucky for this, because he reached the next gulley several paces before her, giving her time to prepare for it. “Ditch!” Bay yelled, glancing back to warn her once he was safely on the other side. “Take it full on!”
Sisi leaned forward, readying herself as she urged her horse onward. She kicked to speed him up, but his legs were spent, and he failed to summon enough spring before leaping across the deep rut. Before Sisi knew what was happening, she felt her horse falter on his landing, his body pitching forward at a downward angle. Sisi flew forward now, too, her body’s inertia launching her over the head of the tumbling horse. It all happened quickly, and her body reacted with instinct more than reason or purpose. She didn’t have time to think much of anything—in fact, the only thought that even vaguely crossed her mind in that instant was a fleeting image of Valerie. She couldn’t die—she couldn’t leave Valerie.
Sisi tightened every muscle in her frame, drawing herself into a ball and rolling as her body met the ground. She shut her eyes, begging God to keep the horse from landing on her. What an awful way to die, horse hooves shattering one’s skull, she thought. She noticed with a detached sense of relief, her mind whipping about, how soft the earth felt beneath her as she tumbled across grass and mud. Perhaps this made it less likely that she would snap her neck.
The horse had stumbled a few feet away, miraculously not landing on her, and he was quickly righted to his feet. Sisi stopped rolling and lay motionless on the ground, blinking up at the patches of sky that filtered in through the leafy branches, her mind and body in a state of dazed and foggy inertness. She was alive, she realized; but was she paralyzed? she wondered. And then her mind leapt to the next logical question: would it be preferable to be paralyzed or dead?
Bay was off his horse and standing over her, his face twisted tight in concern. “Empress!” He crouched down beside her, his eyes just inches from hers. She noticed, absently, that she had not lost consciousness. And her lungs, temporarily stunned from the impact of the fall, now gasped for air. She inhaled, tasting dirt and grass on her lips. She could breathe; a promising sign, she thought.
“Empress, it was not your fault!” Bay hunched over her supine figure, speaking to her with an uncharacteristic softness. “Are you hurt?” Kneeling beside her, he removed his gloves and then wrung his hands, apparently unsure of the protocol for touching his imperial companion to check for signs of injury. “May…may I?”
“Yes.”
As Bay’s hands reached tentatively toward her, pressing gently into her legs, Sisi performed her own scan of her body. “Can…can you feel that?” Bay asked, tapping gently on her knees.
“Yes,” Sisi answered.
“Does it hurt terribly?”
“In fact…no.” She realized, to her utter relief, that nothing ached.
“And what of your arms?”
As Sisi moved her fingers and then her arms and wrists, she marveled that she might actually have escaped the fall completely uninjured. She hadn’t broken her neck; she hadn’t even broken a finger.
“Not your fault at all, Empress!” Bay was less assured of her well-being, still in a state of visible distress beside her. “No rider could have stayed in the saddle through such a fall. The horse was spent. I’m sure no one could have taken it better than you thus far.”
Sisi absorbed the meaning of Bay’s complimentary words as, simultaneously, she realized that she was entirely unhurt. She was so happy at these two realizations—and so ecstatic that Bay was clearly disabused of his skepticism of her—that she broke out into laughter, reaching for Bay’s arm and pulling herself up to a seated position. “Thank you, Bay!” she exclaimed, still giddy with relief and the great fortune of having survived, both her body and her ego intact. “Oh, thank you, thank you!”
“But…Empress…are you…are you hurt?”
“Entirely unhurt!” With Bay’s help she rose to a standing position. She looked over her body once more. Her hat had fallen off, her hair had been shaken loose and now fell in disheveled waves about her face, but other than that, everything was as it should be. Even more astounding, she and Bay stood entirely alone in the copse, their lead ahead of the pack having been so substantial that they remained a few minutes’ ride, still, in front of the others.
Bay leaned over, retrieving her hat from the ground a few paces away. He held it out to her. “Again, I say, not your fault at all.”
“I know,” Sisi said, putting her hand to his arm, losing herself for a moment in her joy. Bay’s eyes flew to her hand where it rested on him, and she withdrew it quickly, remembering herself. She took the hat he held out to her. “Thank you.” She replaced the cap on her hair and stood up straight, patting down her skirt. Just then she heard a bark in the not-too-distant field beyond the small wood. “Bay, I think we can still do it; we can still catch the hounds.”
He looked at her now, his features making plain that he was impressed, perhaps even a bit incredulous. He had a slick of perspiration across his brow, and his chest still heaved in uneven, labored breath. “Really, Empress? You’re ready for it—getting back on your mount?”
Sisi nodded, striding toward her hunter and taking the reins in her hands. “I am.”
“If…if you think so…But I don’t wish to overtax—”
“What did I tell you, Bay? You are not to go easy on me.”
He smiled now, his features spreading in an expression of open approval. Staring at him, Sisi noted how his cheeks shone rosy from the exertion, how his tousled, rust-colored hair fell around his strong-featured face, and she caught a glimpse of just why Bay Middleton had the reputation he had. Why the townspeople cheered when they spotted him, why women found it impossible to resist his unique brand of virile and haughty charm.
Bay, meanwhile, extended his hands, taking Sisi’s waist in his still-ungloved grip as he lifted her effortlessly once more into the saddle. After she was up, easily seated, his hands lingered just a moment longer around her waist, his body pressed close to her legs as he looked up into her eyes. And then, flashing his relaxed smile, he said, “I’m beginning to think, Empress, that perhaps I had better ask you to go easy on me.”
