Sisi, page 33
“Heavens! Have the guards broken out in fighting?” Sisi looked out over the courtyard. There, to her shock and horror, she didn’t spot a guard but Rudolf, standing before the bloodied carcass of what appeared to be a giant wildcat. “God help me, is that…?”
“The crown prince.” Marie stood beside Sisi at the window.
“And one of the wildcats from our imperial zoo?” Sisi asked, narrowing her eyes.
“Empress, I fear you are correct.”
Both ladies looked on as Rudolf held his gun over the cat. One final round of fire issued from the gun’s barrel, the sound ripping across the yard as the dead cat offered no further protest. Blood now seeped from the animal’s limp carcass, pooling on the cobblestones before its empty cage. Rudolf was shouting, laughing like a demon dancing over a bonfire as he swung his rifle over his head. Several guards looked on from their posts in the courtyard, their faces customarily stoic, but pale.
“I got him! I killed him!” Rudolf let out a whoop, his words muddled by what sounded like the effects of alcohol.
Sisi stared in horror as understanding took root: Rudolf had ordered one of the imperial zoo’s wildcats delivered to the palace just so that he could kill it in cold blood. But why? How was that an entertainment that Rudolf sought? She rode after foxes, and her husband liked to stalk game in the wild, yes, but this just seemed unnaturally cruel.
“Come away from there, Empress.” Marie put her arms around Sisi. “Why don’t you sit down?”
Sisi allowed herself to be guided to the plushly upholstered sofa, her mind spinning. Try as she did, she could make no sense of having witnessed her son’s irrational brutality. What had driven him to such an act? After several moments, her voice feeble, all she managed to say was: “He’s just…he’s just so unhappy. And marrying Stéphanie only sealed his fate.” Was she offering this as explanation to Marie—or to herself?
And could Rudolf’s odd—and, at times, seemingly sadistic—behavior be blamed on anyone, really, but himself? Clearly the marriage was an unhappy one, as unhappy as Sisi had feared it would be. The ink of their marriage proclamation had barely dried when Rudolf had fled the newlywed suite, moving back to his bachelor apartments in the Hofburg. Even the birth of their first child, a daughter named Elisabeth, had brought little happiness to the union. In fact, Rudolf had recently been sent away from court by the physicians to be treated for conditions labeled “bladder infection” and “rheumatism,” ailments that Sisi and everyone else knew had come from one of his many lovers and could more accurately be described as gonorrhea. There were so many lovers: actresses, duchesses, courtesans vulgar enough to petition the imperial secretaries for payment when Rudolf did not adequately compensate them for their hired services. Rudolf’s behavior had become so infamous that even Sisi, as removed as she was from court gossip, couldn’t help but catch whispers of what was being said about her son. Franz could barely look at his heir, and the two men had almost no daily interaction.
“Empress, perhaps you can speak to him?” Marie Festetics said now, her hesitant voice pulling Sisi from her troubled musing back to the room. Back to this place where, below her window, she heard Rudolf’s maniacal laughter as he stood over his kill.
Sisi looked at the other woman, dazed. “What did you say, Marie?”
“Rudy. The crown prince. Perhaps Your Majesty might speak to him?”
Sisi stared at her attendant, noticing for the first time how Marie’s face had lost all the glow of youth—how her skin had lost its elasticity, how her cheeks bulged and her eyes stared out from a border of careworn lines. Was there no limit to the cruelties imposed by time? Sisi sighed, even as Marie continued to speak.
“If the crown prince is so unhappy, perhaps you might provide some comfort to him, Empress. Serve as an ear into which he might confess. Offer advice that might help him find some peace. As his mother, you might be able to…”
“No,” Sisi said, shaking her head. “No, I won’t interfere in their lives, in their marriage. I made that vow the same day they made their marriage vows. I won’t do to Rudolf and Stéphanie what Sophie did to me.”
“Then don’t speak to Stéphanie,” Marie said, displaying uncharacteristic boldness in continuing with the matter. “Just speak to your son. I think he is a kind boy—man—a kind man. Perhaps he’s simply misunderstood. Perhaps he needs someone to guide him back to…well…” Marie’s eyes slid back to the opened window where, below, Rudolf was still laughing, gloating over the dead carcass of the cat. Sisi wondered if Marie was thinking the same thing she herself was—that, while he was still a young boy, Rudolf’s sadistic tutor had locked him in cages with those same wildcats, terrifying the boy. No wonder he longed to kill them now.
Sisi sighed. “The damage was done so long ago, Marie. He was so young, and I had no say. I blame Franz, and I blame his mother. I hope God will know that the fault does not rest on my shoulders.”
“But it’s not too late, Empress. Rudolf—think of him. Don’t you remember the sweet boy? Why, I remember, when you could draw a smile from him, it was like letting the sunshine into the room. He’s like you, Empress. He’s so very sensitive. He can be so very tender.”
“Oh, Marie, he is like me. Don’t you see? That’s the point. Rudolf is like me. He is meant to be free. Since that will never be an option, he will never be happy. There is nothing I can do. I learned that long ago.” Sisi knew Marie well enough after all of these years to know what she was thinking. The woman said it plainly enough with her sad frown, if not with any further words. The woman thought that she, Sisi, was being selfish. Selfish and removed. That she was using her own mother-in-law, using her old resentments and scars from so many years past to justify the fact that, in the present, she would not take up this struggle. That she lacked the energy for another battle against the Habsburgs and the court and their suffocating rules, against the way things are done. She was too mired in and crippled by her own unhappiness to intervene, to be a good mother to a son who was clearly as unhappy as she herself had ever been.
But who could blame her? Why, Rudolf wasn’t the only one who was miserable in this court. Rudolf wasn’t the only one who had vicious things whispered about him. Why, just recently she’d heard the latest bit of gossip the courtiers were bandying about her—that Nicky Esterházy was her lover. That he came to the capital and slipped into the palace for illicit visits with the empress, dressing himself like a priest to gain entry into her rooms for trysts and unholy communion.
“Even worse, Marie, they say you are complicit! They say that the love affair happens in your bedchamber, away from the rest of my servants, while you keep watch at the door.”
“It’s too vile for comprehension, Empress,” Marie had said when Sisi had reported the rumor to her. “Do not let it weigh on you.”
But of course it weighed on Sisi. That latest rumor, coupled with a new flood of health problems—soreness in her joints and back pain so severe she sometimes could not sleep at night—had convinced Sisi that she needed to get away from court. “Everything about this court makes me unwell. I must get away.”
But where could she go to find peace?
“Let’s get away to Hungary for a couple of months, my darling,” Sisi proposed to Valerie a week later. The days were long and hot, and Sisi was feeling the itch stronger than ever to be out of the capital city. “I long for Gödöllő. I long for its privacy, for its quiet, and its wild views.”
They sat at breakfast, just the two of them, but Valerie’s focus seemed to be on the bowl of coffee before her. “I do not wish to go to Hungary,” Valerie said eventually, her voice uncharacteristically firm.
Sisi sat up a bit straighter, staring at her daughter. “You don’t? But why not?”
“I hate Hungary.”
This caught Sisi entirely unaware. “You…do?”
Valerie nodded once, her features stern as she sipped her coffee, offering no further reply.
“Why? How could you hate Hungary? Gödöllő is the only place that has ever been our home.”
Valerie turned her eyes on her mother for the first time that morning. “Gödöllő is not my home. I am not Hungarian. Even though I know what they all say about me. What they say about him being my father.”
Sisi felt as if the blood in her veins had frozen. She knew perfectly well what Valerie was saying. Andrássy. The rumors that had existed since the time of Valerie’s birth, the nickname given to her: “the Hungarian child.” The statements throughout court that of course Sisi has decided to raise her child in Hungary, as the child is Hungarian by birth and paternity. They weren’t true. She and Andrássy and Franz all knew it. Why, look at Valerie! She had more of her Austrian father in her mannerisms and appearance than the other children combined. And yet, for Valerie to have heard such malicious reports—it roiled Sisi. She wished to cry out, to take her fists to whoever had been vile enough to pass this rumor along to the poor, innocent child. But who would have repeated such poisonous filth to a young girl?
Just then Marie Larisch swept into the room, humming a merry racing tune. “Hello, Empress! Hello, Valerie. Good morning.”
Sisi felt nauseous. Was it Larisch? Who else had close enough access to Valerie? Who else would have the chance to whisper such a lie? Who would have the audacity? The complete lack of shame? She’d grown ever more wary of Larisch as time had passed; she’d come to believe that Ida and Marie Festetics had been correct from the beginning about the girl, that she was duplicitous and self-serving. But still, Sisi feared letting her go. Larisch knew too much at this point. She had traveled with Sisi for years, including all of those trips with Bay. She knew Rudolf better than even his own parents. Perhaps she even knew things about Valerie, as she was so adept at coaxing secrets and observing private behaviors. Sisi couldn’t have this woman at large. No, the better option—the only option—was to keep her close while carefully edging her out. But it had to be done in such a way that Larisch didn’t take offense, didn’t see that it was happening and turn hostile toward her patroness. And most important of all, Sisi would make absolutely certain that Larisch had no further direct contact with Valerie, ever again.
“Hello, Larisch, darling,” Sisi said now, turning to her attendant, her tone sugary. “My daughter and I are just discussing a private matter. Do you mind giving us a moment?”
“Oh…well…” Larisch wavered momentarily, searching for words. “Yes, yes, of course.” Larisch curtsied and left the room. Sisi turned back to her daughter. Valerie, her coffee bowl poised between her fingers, showed her surprise. “But you never dismiss Larisch, Mamma.”
Sisi spoke low now so that only Valerie could hear, just in case Larisch was crouched outside the door. “I wish for time alone with you, my dear. We were in the middle of an important decision. Very well, we will not go to Hungary, then. I can’t ride anyway, with my back pain as severe as it is. The court physicians tell me it’s a condition called sciatica. With that and my rheumatism, I should go to a place where I can be treated. There’s this doctor they tell me about in the north, a Dutchman near Amsterdam called Dr. Metzger who treats patients with ailments like mine. Shall we go there?”
Valerie put her coffee down, pressing her palms together on the table before her. My, how she resembles her father when her brow knits in concentration, Sisi thought.
Eventually, Valerie looked up, clearly still weighing her mother’s proposition. “Leave here for Amsterdam? And abandon poor Papa once again?”
The words hit Sisi with a stab of guilt, but she forced that aside. Sighing, she answered: “Oh, darling, it’s the summer. Papa knows we like to get away in the summer.”
Sisi rented a villa outside of Amsterdam on the North Sea, near the village of Zandvoort. During the first few weeks there, she found her mood lifting, her nights becoming less interminable and sleepless. The wild seascape, weather-beaten and untamed, matched and spoke to her own restlessness. She saw Dr. Metzger for regular visits. Under his care, the pain in her back and inflamed joints began to lessen. She and Valerie took long walks along the rocky beach, listening to the shrill caws of the circling sea gulls and watching as large steamers glided toward the immeasurable horizon.
The sky was almost always moody, with a thick cover of bruised gray clouds that hovered, perpetually threatening rain, and there was always a chilly wind from the north. At night, Sisi sat by a blazing fire, curled up under a woolen blanket as she read aloud from the poetry of Heine, oftentimes taking up her own pen to play with a pair of verses of her own.
When Valerie declined to join her on walks, Sisi used the time for daydreaming and thinking, her feet marching determinedly down the strand of pebbly beach until she grew short of breath. She thought of Andrássy and what life must have been like for him now that he had retired from public life. She thought of Bay, wondering how he found married life with Charlotte. And she thought often of Franz. Tireless, dutiful Franz, back in Vienna, sitting at his heavy desk, hemmed in by papers, while she and Valerie had fled as far from court as was possible. Sisi found herself feeling increasingly guilty at the space she had put in between them. At the ease with which she so often left him to his never-ending duties. She’d never felt such pangs of guilt before. Not since they’d worked out, years earlier, that she was free to pursue her own happiness as repayment for the years in which she’d suffered. But now this guilt settled in and stayed with her, weighing her down like a bundle she’d be forced to carry, even on her most far-flung travels. It was in part, she was sure, because of Valerie’s repeated mentioning of him. I wonder what Papa is doing today. I hope Papa isn’t too terribly sad in our absence. Poor, dear Papa, he must be so lonely.
Valerie, as a young woman, was a conundrum to Sisi. Her whole life, the girl had been beside her mother—loved by her, protected by her, coddled by her. Yet she seemed to nurse some indelible affection for and loyalty to the father from whom she’d so often been absent. Perhaps that was the easiest way to love Franz, Sisi thought. Perhaps, from afar, he could not disappoint. Perhaps, in keeping her daughter from Franz, she had inadvertently instilled in Valerie a deep and idealistic love for the man who, in person, could be bureaucratic and cold. Whatever it was, the attachment between the girl and her father persisted. She spoke of him daily, mentioned her longing to return to him often. By the end of the summer, Valerie had convinced Sisi that they ought to go back to Vienna. The bargain was worked out, with Sisi’s urging and Valerie’s agreement, that they would return as long as they could travel home through Bavaria.
“I believe we owe Cousin Ludwig a visit,” Sisi said. Something about the desolate, wild environment of Zandvoort and the North Sea had prompted her to think often of Ludwig, too, throughout those summer months. Poor Ludwig. Wagner’s opera had debuted to unmitigated acclaim and popular enthusiasm, but it had finally bankrupted Bavaria’s coffers. How was Ludwig holding up against that reality? Sisi wondered. Had the recognition and accolades of the world, at last, been enough to sate his manic drive to build and spend and create?
Sisi and Valerie and the rest of her small traveling household arrived at Neuschwanstein in late summer, when just the hint of the coming snows tinged the pine-scented mountain air. A handsome groom waved their coach through the front gates, and Sisi fixed her eyes eagerly ahead. Though she had been to this place before, the first glimpse of the castle stole her breath anew, its beauty as majestic and imposing as she remembered it. Beside her, Valerie cried out in girlish delight. “Mamma, look!”
“I know.” Sisi nodded. “Breathtaking, is it not?”
Though the castle dazzled, the first look at Ludwig had the opposite effect, stirring within Sisi a deep and immediate discomfort. Ludwig greeted her and Valerie at the wide front door. She remembered her past visits when he had barely been able to contain his excitement at receiving her as a guest, how he had been positively giddy to show off his home. He greeted her now, however, with a drawn expression, his eyes listless and unsmiling. “Hello, Sisi. Come in.”
Overhead the sign still hung at the entrance of the castle—WELCOME WANDERERS! GENTLE LADIES! PUT YOUR CARES ASIDE! LET YOUR SOUL GIVE ITSELF OVER TO POETRY’S GAY MOOD!—but the lettering was chipped and faded, the plaque showing the signs of age and of the harsh winters atop this remote mountain.
“Ludwig, darling, it’s wonderful to see you.” Sisi forced a smile as she hugged her tall cousin, but she pulled away from the embrace as quickly as she could. An unpleasant trace of fear had clutched her. Was she afraid of Ludwig? Or afraid for Ludwig? She didn’t know. But, as she studied her cousin’s appearance—seeing how his teeth had begun to brown and decay from lack of proper care, noting how the once-fastidious dresser now appeared shabby in too-tight, threadbare clothing—she felt that everything about Ludwig was in a state of disorder and disrepair. She shivered, recalling how this man had nearly been her sister’s husband. Thank goodness Sophie-Charlotte had been spared! Imagine if Sophie-Charlotte had to live with this man every day atop this isolated peak? Sisi suddenly regretted bringing Valerie with her, even for this briefest of visits. She held Marie Festetics and Ida and Baron Nopcsa with her eyes, flashing an urgent look that she hoped they would understand: You are to stay at my side at all times.
“Come in.” Ludwig looked at her, unblinking. “I’ll have them tend to your horses, and I’ll see that your groom gets something in the kitchens.”
“Thank you, Ludwig.” Sisi followed as he led them into the castle. “They need not concern themselves with the coach, however—we can’t stay the night, unfortunately.”
Ludwig paused, turning his pale hazel eyes on her. “But you told me you would.”
Sisi fidgeted, looking around at the high ceilings. She saw how Valerie, beside her, was enchanted by the castle. She leaned toward her cousin now with an apologetic crease of her brow. “I’m sorry. I wish I could. But my time in Bavaria is limited. Franz wants me back to Vienna. And I promised Mother that I would spend the evening with her at Possi.”
