The Accidental Empress, page 32
“I think Franz wants a son. In fact, I know he does.”
This point stung Sisi, because she also knew it to be true.
“That’s the only purpose of this note, Elisabeth. Someone thinks it necessary to remind you of your place here. And your purpose is to give Franz sons. Not to go gallivanting off to Hungary to ride horses.”
This last point took Sisi by surprise: someone in her room, having overheard her confessions of how eager she was to ride along the Hungarian plains, had reported it back to Sophie. Was everything she said reported?
Sisi threw her shoulders back, looking squarely into Sophie’s eyes. “I have had two of Franz’s children in two years.”
“Both girls.”
“I’m not barren—a son will come. I cannot be banished because it has yet to happen.”
“Worse things have happened to emperor’s wives before. You wouldn’t be the first to fall out of favor when she fails to deliver on her end of the arrangement.”
“I remember hearing that it took you . . . how long was it? Six years to conceive your first child?” Sisi snapped, indignant. The stunned look on Sophie’s face filled Sisi with momentary satisfaction.
“Well, this is hardly . . .” Sophie stammered, patting the folds of her skirt as her eyes fell to the floor. And then, after just a moment, she stood up tall, jutting her chin out. “No one in this court questioned my utter determination to have my husband’s children. I made it plain that that was my primary purpose. You could benefit from doing the same.”
“You would disband the union which Franz and I made before God? The union which has produced your two beloved granddaughters?”
“I will do nothing of the sort if you begin to show that you take seriously the business of having a son. But what I will say is that dashing off to Hungary to ride horses and meddle in discussions with the likes of Andrássy is the last thing you should be thinking about. You should be pregnant and you should stay here and rest.”
“Franz and I might be a lot happier, and a lot more likely to produce an heir, if you would stop meddling in our marriage. Did you think about that, Sophie?”
Sophie stammered, her face drained of color. Sisi was certain that the archduchess rarely—if ever—engaged in arguments this impassioned. No one would have dared.
“Don’t think for a minute, Elisabeth, that you are irreplaceable. My son might be smitten with you. But there are plenty of other young women in this court who would happily do your job. And unlike you, they would not spend their days complaining and quarreling.”
This latest point was too absurd, too painful, to warrant a response, and Sisi turned on her heels to leave the room. She felt more relieved than ever to be quitting this court for Budapest.
A state of perpetual pregnancy—that was what Sophie expected? And only boys within her womb, as if Sisi could control that? But a thought gave Sisi momentary pause, and she hovered in the doorway, standing tall with artificial confidence.
“Sophie, shall you be sacking this guard who allowed me into your chamber?”
Sophie stared at her daughter-in-law, considering this question. “Yes,” she stammered, after a pause. “Yes, I most certainly shall. You, man, you’re dismissed.” Sophie pointed a menacing finger at the guard.
“Fine, come with me. You’re rehired,” Sisi said, waving her hand. “All right, Sophie, I must go. I must finish packing for Budapest. The girls are going to be so adorable with their papa and me—I can hardly wait for the trip.”
XI.
Beside her, Franz looks composed. Even stiff. And yet, Sisi detects the weariness that lurks behind his calm mask. The human frailty that persists, even after all of his years of training and emotional mastery.
For a brief flash, she yearns to remove those coverings from him; to free him of his trappings so that he might once again resemble the man she knew, the man whose hopes were once so interwoven with her own that she had not distinguished between the two distinct threads.
But it is too late for that now. He has made his decisions, she has made hers. She cannot undo the past any more than she can retrace the course she has set for the future. She admits that to herself one final time, sadly, as if wishing him farewell. Wishing a version of herself farewell.
All around them now, the crowd packed into the cathedral jostles and applauds, a frenzied horde vying for a spot close enough to touch them.
“My Queen!”
“My Empress!”
“Long live Sisi!”
“Long live Franz Joseph!”
They love her, she sees, but will they forgive her for what she must do next?
Chapter Eleven
CASTLE HILL, BUDAPEST, HUNGARY
SPRING 1857
“Sit still, little Sophie.” Sisi tried to sound stern, though she couldn’t help but chuckle as she looked into the eyes of her auburn-haired little girl—tugging on her skirt and begging to be lifted into her mother’s lap.
“Up, Mamma! Up!”
“I am holding Gisela, Sophie, my love. You must stand like a big girl. Here, Mamma will hold your hand.”
They had been positioned, the four of them, so that Sisi sat in the center, cradling Gisela while Sophie, just two years old, stood grumpily beside her mother. Franz stood behind Sisi, his hand placed proudly on her shoulder.
“Up! Up, Mamma!” Little Sophie stomped a chubby foot on the floor.
“Only a little bit longer, Sophie, my dear one.” Sisi longed more than anything to lift Sophie into her lap and smother her with kisses; it was practically impossible to resist her entreaties. “Herr Kriehuber is almost done with the sketch, is he not?” Sisi glanced at the artist.
“If the little princess might stand still just a bit longer,” Herr Kriehuber answered, a smile barely masking his frazzled countenance.
“You mind your elders, Sophie,” Franz admonished, and Sisi couldn’t help but smile at her husband’s failed attempt to sound stern with their daughter. “We want the portrait of our family to turn out well, don’t we?”
Sophie grumbled, kicking her thick little foot once more on the floor in protest, but she obeyed. She was, physically, her father’s daughter. Ringlets the color of cinnamon, clear blue eyes, and cream-colored skin. Gisela looked more like Sisi, with her chestnut curls and eyes of liquid honey. But it was Sophie who had the fire within; a temperament that had been evident to Sisi from her earliest days, and a temperament for which Franz took no credit.
“I was a timid, scared little thing, always clinging to Mother’s skirts. Sophie is all you, Elisa.” Franz had made this observation in the early days of their trip, when the two of them had enjoyed the process of getting to know their eldest daughter.
While Sisi adored both of her girls more than she had ever thought imaginable, something about little Sophie had captivated Sisi, while she suspected Gisela to be Franz’s special little pet. He had told his wife that he liked to imagine Sisi as a baby when he looked upon Gisela’s tiny features and darker curls.
“All right, I have what I need.” Herr Kriehuber emerged from behind his easel, clapping his hands with a proud flourish. “Your Imperial Majesties are free to go.”
Sisi could have sat like this—encircled by her family, playing the central role of mother—without ever growing restless. She would never have her fill of her little girls: the way Sophie’s dimpled little hand felt in hers, the powdery clean scent of Gisela’s blemishless skin, the new sounds and facial expressions she was witness to on a daily occasion. This time with her girls had only increased her all-consuming need to be with them, her yearning to breathe in their happy, giggly presence. The thought of returning to Vienna, to Sophie being so dominant in their lives, made Sisi feel ill. And for that reason, she never allowed herself to think of it.
Their trip to Hungary had started later than originally planned. The previous fall, little Sophie had fallen ill with a severe cold and had been too weak to travel. Refusing to leave without her girls, it had been Sisi who had suggested that they remain at the Hofburg for Christmas and the cold winter months, when it was risky to travel with a baby and a newly recovered toddler.
They arrived in Budapest in early spring, riding through town in a glass coach on their way up to the castle on Buda Hill. The crowds swarmed, lining the Danube and jostling to get a look at their empress, whose beauty they had heard of since before her wedding day. When they saw that she wore their national costume, a velvet bodice and wide-laced sleeves, they erupted in cheers.
“That was a brilliant idea, wearing the national costume,” Franz said, whispering to her as they both waved at the thick wall of cheering onlookers. Even without a translator, both Franz and Sisi knew that the cries were of a happy sort.
“How long have these people been ordered around by Vienna and yet ignored by Vienna’s ruling family? They just want your love and acknowledgment, Franz. Give it to them, and they shall love you.”
As they settled into the castle so long shunned by Habsburg rulers, Franz complained. He found it dank, less comfortable than his Viennese palaces with their brocaded walls and gold-gilt splendor. Sisi loved it. In its shabbiness, Budapest’s castle reminded her of Possi. She never tired of the view it afforded—an unobstructed look at the shimmering Danube River, with its newly erected Chain Bridge, and, beyond that, green plains that stretched all the way toward Russia.
The rhythm of life in Budapest agreed with Sisi much more than her tedious days back at court. She and the girls took slow carriage rides along the wide, sycamore-lined boulevards that hugged the Danube, waving to the fishermen and schoolchildren and colorfully dressed Gypsies who gawked at the imperial procession, so long unseen on these Hungarian streets.
They attended mass daily at the nearby Mátyás templom, the Cathedral of St. Matthew, sitting in their imperial box. They used the time after mass as an opportunity to ingratiate themselves with the local populace and clergy.
On clear afternoons when there was a blue sky and a determined sun, Sisi and Sophie would set out on foot, winding their way along Buda Hill until they reached the ancient lookout point of Halaszbastya, the Fisherman’s Bastion. It was a mazy, white stone complex that looked to Sisi as if it had been plucked from the pages of one of little Sophie’s fairy-tale books. There, amidst the arches, the ornately sculpted walls, and the winding staircases that skirted the riverside hill, they looked down over the Danube and imagined themselves like the heroines of Sophie’s books, ready to fight off a coming dragon or evil witch.
“In our case, we don’t have to pretend we are princesses.” Little Sophie looked up at her mother, her big blue eyes earnest and thoughtful. It was a chilly afternoon in early spring, and the crisp air had drawn to Sophie’s soft cheeks a bright, rose-colored glow. “I am a princess.”
“That’s right, you are, my love.” Sisi squeezed her daughter ever tighter, watching as the breeze that skipped off the Danube pulled on her loose auburn curls, setting them aflutter.
“And you are the queen. Except you’re not an evil queen, Mamma. You’re the good queen. Or, the beautiful queen.”
“Why, thank you, my dear little one.”
The words of her toddler overwhelmed Sisi, making her feel in that instant as though she had been dropped down into this life entirely haphazardly. She was the queen. Sometimes, in moments when Sisi allowed herself to slip wholly and unguardedly into carefree happiness—moments such as this one—she forgot that fact. She looked out over the majestic city, aglow in the last glorious light of a spring afternoon, and she found it dizzying to remind herself that this was her husband’s empire.
“Where is Grandmamma’s bedroom, Mamma?” Sophie tugged on her mother’s hand, interrupting her reverie.
“Hmm?” Sisi turned back toward her daughter. “What do you mean, my love?”
“If we are pretending that this is our palace and we live here together, then Grandmamma must be here, too. Where is her bedchamber going to be?”
“Grandmamma stays in her palace in Vienna. In this pretend world we are talking about, it shall be just you, and Gisela, and Mamma and Papa. How does that sound?”
“But I miss Grandmamma.”
Sisi hugged her daughter, wishing she could silence her with a kiss.
Sophie wriggled away, one more thought left to express. “I suppose it’s all right that Grandmamma isn’t here, since it is only pretend. She will be waiting for us once this game is over.”
As spring bloomed across the city, the air ripening with the scent of acacia, Sisi saw firsthand why that season in Budapest had been memorialized in poetry, symphonies, and paintings. The mountains and plains along the river seemed to burst with new life, the buds appearing like a patchwork tapestry of green, red, and yellow against the blue of the Danube. Outdoor markets, florists, and fruit vendors popped up like new blooms. And the city’s wide, stately boulevards luxuriated under the dappled shade cast by leafy sycamore and chestnut trees. For the first time in years—for the first time since Possi, really—Sisi felt that she was truly free to enjoy the arrival and ripening of spring, in all its wonders.
For Sisi there was no better way to pay homage to the season and the signs of new life than to take off into the world around her on horseback. Franz was not up for riding these days; his hours were jammed with papers from Vienna and plans for a rapprochement with Hungary. But that did not stop Sisi, and, in fact, he encouraged her to ride.
It was during this particular moment, this soft and delicate period between early and late spring, a moment as fragile as the new buds and the newly warm sunlight, that Sisi told her husband that she was the happiest she had been since their wedding day. It was the truth.
She was enamored of her daughters, and she finally felt that they returned that same affection to her. She and her husband had enjoyed a reawakening of intimacy as invigorating to Sisi as the May sunshine. Franz had seemed somehow depleted when they arrived in Budapest, disarmed by his status—however unofficial as it was—as visitor and outsider in this land. A severe cold and the discomforts of the journey had seemed to humble him, while the instant love and support of the Hungarian people for his wife had only elevated her high spirits. They seemed to know, implicitly, that she felt like an outsider at a court full of Austrians. That she, like them, was foreign; she would never be a true Habsburg.
Word had spread in the cafés and restaurants that the empress favored her Hungarian lady’s maid above all others, that she had brought only Marie Festetics on the journey. They knew of the empress’s love for riding on Hungary’s plains; they heard of her fascination with Hungarian poetry and history; they smiled as she fumbled and struggled her way through the Hungarian language in public. And, perhaps best of all, they had caught whiffs—whispers and rumors, reports that seeped out of Vienna—of the discord that existed between their empress and their emperor’s mother. Sophie, the harshest critic of Hungarians during and since the punishing years of ’48–’49, and self-professed opponent to any expansion of Hungarian rights, was not welcome in Budapest. Which meant that Sisi, as her opponent at court, instantly was.
The way the Hungarian people embraced Sisi prompted Franz to look on his wife with a newfound admiration; she became his most important friend and ally. Sisi saw this shift in his behavior, however minor it may have appeared to others, as a miraculous gesture of marital commitment—a gesture that she had craved ever since their earliest days together. He saw her, and needed her. She was finally relevant.
Franz and Sisi became inseparable, close like they had not yet been in their marriage. No longer was Sisi forced to go entire days without seeing a trace of her husband. In Budapest, away from the ceaseless demands of the court and courtiers, they took all their meals together. The girls joined them. They discussed the politics of Hungary together, and Franz, after the period of distance required by two close pregnancies, returned to their marital bed. Sisi enjoyed coupling with her husband once more, not because it brought her any particular pleasure—she still did not understand how to make the act more satisfying for herself—but because it brought him close to her in the most intimate of ways.
Afterward, when they were still, he would lie beside her, his face just inches from hers on the pillow, and she’d enjoy the midnight companionship and conversation that she had cherished in the earliest days of their marriage. It seemed as though the physical distance they had put between themselves and his mother had allowed Franz to put the archduchess out of his mind as well—to focus on his wife as the most important woman in his life. At night, when they shared a bed, he was hers once more; he was open to her loving him and craving closeness. He responded in kind.
Perhaps it was all the time they were suddenly spending with their own children, but, at night, while the rest of the castle slept, Sisi and Franz would share stories of their own childhoods. Childhoods which, when compared, could not have been less similar. Sisi would tell Franz of the excursions her father had taken her on into the Bavarian Alps, where they would hike, and fish, and mingle with local farmers and herders. How, in the summer, her cousin Ludwig would come to stay with the family and they would spend the entire summer out of doors, seldom wearing shoes and often going weeks without formal school lessons.
Franz, by contrast, would tell Sisi of his earliest days in the imperial nursery. Of how, at the age of four, he had begun his formal schooling. Franz spoke of long days, drilling with stern-faced military tutors. Days that began with ice-cold baths before six in the morning. He told her, for the first time, about the void he had felt when the only paternal figure in his life, his grandfather, had died; a void that he had been taught not to dwell upon, for an excessive display of emotion would be very unsuitable. Especially for a future king.
“It’s odd, isn’t it?” It was the middle of the night in late May. Sisi lay beside Franz, staring at him through the glow of the last candle.
