The Accidental Empress, page 35
And the empress had become a sort of deity in the Hungarian imagination: approachable and familiar, yet without the human flaws with which mortals wrestled. The tales Marie repeated to her were so grand and exaggerated that Sisi could not help but laugh when she heard them.
Empress Sisi’s hair is so long that it reaches the floor when she walks.
Empress Sisi is the best horsewoman in all of Europe.
Empress Sisi never raises her voice at her daughters.
Empress Sisi bathes in olive oil and warm milk.
Her likeness was everywhere—the portrait that she had posed for just after her wedding had been re-created and dispersed throughout Hungary. In it she sat, hair pulled back in a loose bun that framed a face with bright hazel eyes and a coquettish, innocent grin. Miniatures of this portrait were sold in the merchants’ shops, hung over the hearths of the Hungarian housewives, adorned churches and schools and offices and train stations. By the end of May, Sisi had seen this portrait so often that she sometimes forgot that it was her own likeness when she came across it.
The love and loyalty she had felt emanating from the Hungarian people had restored her, given her a new joy in life, matched only by the renewed love she felt from her husband and daughters. But could it last?
Franz promised her that they would stay happy; that they could somehow bottle up these feelings of love and contentment and bring them back with them to Vienna at the end of their summer’s travels. And Sisi, finding the other alternative intolerable, forced herself to believe him. Even though Franz refused to give his word that he would keep his mother away from the girls. Even when he refused to explain how Sisi would retain control of their upbringing, she believed him. She had no choice, for the thought of returning to her previous misery was a burden too heavy for her to carry.
Sisi found the palace dark and eerily quiet when she returned home that afternoon. When the door closed behind her, shutting her into the empty front hall, she felt goose bumps pushing up beneath the skin of her arms, but she could not have said why. Something felt amiss, out of balance.
And then she noticed the curtains. They were drawn to shut out the soft light of the spring evening. As a morning dove cooed, a feeling of dread settled over Sisi’s body, sliding deep into her bones like the winter’s coldest, dampest chill.
Franz had been in his study, so she walked toward that room, calling out his name. “Franz?” But before she had reached it, she found Marie, her short, round frame doubled over as the lady wept. Sisi went numb.
“What has happened, Marie? Is it Franz? Is it the girls?” Sisi dropped the dozen tulips from her hand. “Speak, now! I beg you, Marie.”
Marie’s eyes were red-rimmed and puffy when she looked up at her mistress. “Empress.”
“Has something happened to Franz?”
Marie shook her head.
Sisi pulled a hand to her breast, barely managing a whisper. “The girls?”
All Marie offered as a reply was a fresh set of tears. Sisi took off at a sprint down the hallway, running toward the stairs. “Where are they?”
“In the nursery.” Marie followed behind, climbing the stairs with her.
Sisi burst into the nursery. The room was dark, the curtains drawn, and the sour odor that greeted her was an instant assault on the senses. She swallowed hard, pushing aside the urge to be sick.
In the corner of the room sat a heap of soiled sheets—the source of the intolerable stench in the room. Agata was on the further of the two beds, huddled over a small shape.
“Sophie.” Sisi ran toward the bed. “Agata, have you called for the doctor?”
“Yes, Your Majesty.” Agata rose from the bed, making room so that the mother could sit beside her unmoving daughter. Sisi took Sophie’s little hand in her own. It was as cold as death.
“Sophie, darling, can you hear me?” Sophie now turned her head slightly, tilting her eyes so that they rested momentarily on her mother before listing, wildly, in the other direction.
“It’s as though she doesn’t even see me.” Sisi pressed her hand to her daughter’s cold, clammy cheek.
“The fever is severe,” Agata said.
“Where is Gisela?” But Sisi knew, for when she turned, she spotted her baby girl in a similarly supine position, resting in the nearby cradle.
“What has happened, Agata?”
“I don’t know, Your Majesty. They woke up in good enough spirits from their naps, but just a bit ago Princess Sophie began to wail something horrible. When we tried to find the problem, the princess only wept more furiously.”
Sisi looked at the mess of soiled sheets.
“I put them both to bed, noticing the fever that gripped them. That was when they both began to be sick in their beds.” Agata’s face was terror-stricken.
“You poor little darling,” Sisi pressed her palm once more into Sophie’s colorless cheek.
“Empress, they’ve been very ill all afternoon, making a mess of the sheets even quicker than I have a chance to change them.”
“Open these windows, Marie, all of them, now. We can’t have them breathing in this sickness. It will make them worse.”
Marie obeyed, making quick work of the windows, but the rush of fresh air had little impact on the sickening stench hovering throughout the nursery.
“There, there, my little darling girls. All will be well, Mamma is here.” Sisi rose and moved to Gisela’s bed, looking on at her baby. “Agata, remove the mess of sheets.”
“Yes, Madame.”
Just as Agata was picking up the pile of sheets to run them to the laundress, Sophie was sick in her bed once more. Exhausted and uncomfortable and sitting in her own mess, Sophie began to cry.
Sisi rushed back to her elder daughter. “There, there, my darling girl, Mamma will clean you up.” Turning toward Agata, Sisi said: “I will change her nightgown, you take these soiled linens away from us. And why isn’t the doctor here? And where is Franz? Marie, run and fetch the emperor from his study immediately.”
The next few hours passed in an odd ebbing and flowing of time. Everything seemed to take an eternity—the wait for the doctor, the wait for Franz, the wait for the water to heat so that they might bathe the little princesses.
But then, before Sisi knew it, it was dark, and she had not noticed the vanishing of the sun, the descent into nighttime.
“What could it be?” Franz stared at the doctor, his hands clutching Gisela’s clammy palms.
The doctor was feeling Sophie’s cheeks. “The fever worries me. Princess Gisela’s seems to have abated somewhat, but I fear that Princess Sophie’s has not.”
“What can we do?” Sisi asked, her voice hoarse with exhaustion and worry. They had sat, awake, all night.
“I think that the best thing Your Majesties can do now is take care of yourselves. Have some breakfast, rest. You’ve been sitting in this sickroom for hours.”
“I’m not leaving,” Sisi replied, toneless.
The doctor persisted. “I must say that it poses a threat to Your Majesties’ health, being exposed to the illness.”
“Elisa, we ought to listen to the doctor. We can be of no help to the girls if we ourselves fall sick.”
“I don’t care! Let me be exposed—if they are sick, then I wish to suffer with them.” Sisi climbed into bed beside Sophie, cradling her daughter’s cold little body against her own in the hopes that her motherly touch might break the fever.
“My darling girl, my darling girl, Mamma is here.” Sisi rocked her daughter back and forth in her arms, ignoring the whispers passing between the doctor and her husband. Ignoring the distressed, fretful gaze of Marie, who was terrified at the thought of her queen being so exposed to the fever. Sisi’s eyes tuned out every figure in the room except for Sophie. The hours passed.
“My darling girl, my darling girl, Mamma is here.” She repeated the phrase, finding some small comfort in its rhythmic regularity. Night fell once more and Sisi ordered the candles lit, refusing when Marie encouraged her to eat some supper.
Sophie kept her eyes open, occasionally looking toward her mother, but the two glassy blue circles of her eyes did not seem to hold on to anything before her.
“My darling, I am here.” Sisi kissed her daughter’s damp forehead. Surely Sophie had to feel this, even if she didn’t respond.
As day broke once more, Gisela was removed to a separate bedroom, declared by the doctor to be on the mend. Inside the nursery, it seemed that the gulf separating Sophie from her mother widened. The fever was both overpowering and all-consuming—it would not allow its little victim to focus on anything, not on the hugs, the kisses, the tears that splashed her cheeks as they fell from her mother’s eyes.
The following night, with Franz sitting on the floor beside them, Sisi noticed that her daughter’s breathing had become labored, even slow.
“Doctor! Doctor, come here!” Sisi shifted away for the first time all night, allowing the doctor to get close to Sophie’s frame. “What’s the matter? Why is she having trouble breathing?”
The doctor’s hands roved along Sophie’s neck and chest, searching for an explanation. Sisi watched him, clutching her stomach as she waited to breathe. She would not breathe her next breath until her daughter did the same.
But when the doctor turned to Sisi, she saw instantly that his face had shifted from a tight knot of worry to a resigned, sagging sadness. No, Sisi thought, don’t say it. Do not say the words, that is an order. But her orders would fall powerless against a subject as determined as death itself, that much she knew.
The doctor spoke to his assistant first. “Mark the time. Location is Buda Castle, Budapest, Hungary.”
Then he turned to Sisi, her breath still suspended, her heart pumping cold blood through her veins. He shook his head. “I’m sorry, Your Majesty. The Princess is an angel now.”
XII.
I loved, I lived,
I wandered throughout the world;
But never reached what I strove for—
I deceived and was deceived.
—Empress Elisabeth “Sisi” of Austria
Chapter Twelve
SCHÖNBRUNN SUMMER PALACE, VIENNA
SUMMER 1857
“It’s as I said from the beginning,” Sophie whispered, wiping a tear from her cheek with her embroidered handkerchief. It was, Sisi noted to herself, her body numb, the first time she had ever seen the archduchess weep. “You never should have taken the little princesses on that trip. I knew nothing good would come of it.”
They were riding home to Schönbrunn Palace from the Kaisergruft, the imperial crypt beneath Vienna’s Capuchin Church, where little Sophie’s tiny body had been laid to rest beside her Habsburg predecessors. Given the cramped closeness of the carriage, Sisi could only suspect that she was intended to overhear Sophie’s remarks. She had braced for this—knowing that Sophie would act while Sisi was weakest, her confidence as a mother most ravaged. And Sisi, too heartbroken to speak, let alone argue, would let Sophie win. Because perhaps what Sophie was saying was true; perhaps it was her fault that her beloved daughter had died.
If the journey to Hungary had been the bright spot of her marriage and adult life, the return to Vienna was the darkest. Sisi wished, futilely, that the fever would return to finish its work, taking her along with her daughter. But, cruelly, she remained alive. Her body, in some vicious trick of nature, remained strong and healthy. And so all that she could do was stay in her apartments and mimic death. She kept the curtains perpetually drawn against the clear sun of the summer. The outside world only mocked Sisi’s misery, thumbed its nose at the broken woman inside with its sights of fresh flowers and fat bumblebees, and busy servants catering to a household that still ran in her absence. As if there was still life to be lived.
Franz stopped trying to console her. She refused to join him and his mother for family meals. She refused to grant entry to the courtiers who queued up outside her apartments, hoping to express their condolences and offer their prayers for the young princess. When Franz suggested that she begin riding again, and even offered to buy her a new horse, she laughed at him. A hollow, hoarse laugh that contained no drop of mirth.
Prayers and notes of grief poured in from across the empire, collecting on her desk, unopened and unanswered. Agata, Marie, and Herr Lobkowitz learned to go about their administrative duties without attempting to extract attention or interest from the empress, who spent most of her time in bed, eyes opened but expressionless. Her only outings were the daily coach rides to the imperial crypt, where, veiled in black, Sisi spent hours weeping before her daughter’s tomb. Once her tears were exhausted and her head ached, she’d return, black shades drawn around the coach, to the palace.
The only two visitors to whom Sisi granted entry were the painter from whom she’d commissioned her daughter’s portrait and the jeweler who carved the small pendant with the princess’s likeness. Sisi wore the charm on a chain around her wrist, kissing it often.
When summer finally melted away and the gray, dank chill of November settled over the city, they relocated to the Hofburg, where the palace walls felt cold to the touch and the brightest rooms only ever appeared partially lit. The days grew short, the nights stretched on, fierce and cold, and Sisi felt, at last, that the world was acknowledging the deep, frozen despair she felt within.
Sisi had little interest in eating, and flatly refused to dress. She protested when Agata tried to light a fire in the bedroom. Food, fine clothing, and the warmth of the fire were garish comforts, unwelcome imposters for a body that did not wish to be comforted. She wanted to be cold, hungry, to feel pain, so that she could momentarily redirect her thoughts to that discomfort and forget the much deeper, much more insidious, bottomless misery that throbbed from inside of her.
Even after the official period of court mourning ended, Franz indulged her behavior as that of an inconsolable mother, ravaged by her grief. He was too busy to argue with her, as the return to Vienna had brought with it fresh troubles from Prussia, Hungary, and now Italy. A stoic and unfailingly rational man, conditioned in the dogmas of forbearance and duty, he didn’t know how to pull his wife from the clutches of this darkness. And so, he avoided her entirely.
Sophie seemed to view Sisi’s secluded bereavement as a long-overdue acknowledgment of capitulation. Sophie took charge of Gisela without further challenge. She did not seek Sisi out, nor did Sisi mind the complete cessation in communications with her mother-in-law. Sisi’s ostracism was a just punishment. At last, Sisi and Sophie agreed.
During this time Sisi was, mercifully, excused from her social responsibilities. Franz attended state dinners, mass services, and balls alone. Perhaps not entirely alone. Sophie no doubt noticed the void left by her daughter-in-law’s absence, and Sisi suspected that her mother-in-law had happily taken Franz’s empty arm, willingly accompanying him to all events, once again held up as the most powerful woman at court.
New Year’s Day mass, however, was an occasion from which the empress could not be excused, even if she did feel as though God himself had turned his back on her. The people had been lined up in the frigid weather for hours, days, hoping to steal a glimpse of the empress as she passed through the brightly painted Swiss Gate. And so on the coldest day of the year, with the sun shining as pale and feeble as her wan, joyless expression, Sisi set off for church with her family—the dutiful wife standing beside her husband to pray for a blessed year for the empire. The crowds roared for her. They threw flowers at her passing sleigh, hollered out their wishes that she would produce an heir this year. She wept quietly as she rode, murmuring the words of Goethe’s tragic poem about a shooting star: “Once I blazed across the sky, leaving trails of flame. I fell to earth, and here I lie. Who’ll help me up again?”
Those who joined them at mass had a close enough view to truly see Sisi and the change that had occurred in her over the past months. They stared. Not how they used to stare, hungry to feast upon the splendor she had radiated. No, they looked now with—what was that look? Concern? Surprise? Gloating? Perhaps it was a little bit of all of it. She knew that her appearance must certainly elicit strong reactions from the courtiers who had seen her in the full glory of her bridal and maternal bloom. That previously soft frame was now shrunken, her chestnut hair pulled back in a tight bun so that her famous curls were in no way visible. And even as she left the church, bombarded by the hordes who jostled to spot her before she climbed back into the sleigh, her features could not form a smile, her cheeks could not manage a girlish blush.
“What did you pray for in the New Year at mass, my darling?” Franz offered his arm to escort her into the formal dinner at the Hofburg Palace following the church service. His tone was upbeat, even cheerful, which Sisi registered with indifference.
“There is nothing to pray for, nothing to hope for.”
Franz leaned closer to hear her speak, so low was her voice.
“One daughter is gone, the other now lost to me, the same as if she were dead.”
“Elisa.” Franz creased his brow, at a loss for how to respond to a declaration so utterly devoid of hope. He, who had mourned the loss of Sophie and then somehow—inexplicably—rallied. Returned to his life and his duties as emperor.
Sisi realized now how terrible she sounded, and she forced herself to rouse, even just a little bit. “What did you pray for, Franz?” She asked, failing to summon interest in his answer. But at least she had asked.
“I prayed for a Habsburg son, Elisa. As I’m sure the rest of the church did.”
“Oh. A son.” She repeated his wish, her tone indifferent. Did he really expect her to bear more children? she wondered, slightly amused at the thought. Life, for her, was over; did he not understand that? That included living life, enjoying life, and yes, producing life. The thought of carrying a new baby in her shriveled, wasted body was so absurd that she sputtered out a laugh. Poor Franz! How she pitied him! What a wife he had picked for himself; he, who could have had any girl in Europe!
