Sisi, page 4
Sisi sat at her desk and tore the letter opener along the seam, her eyes landing on her daughter’s elegant, well-trained hand.
To my most esteemed and admirable mother, Her Blessed and Imperial Majesty the Empress Elisabeth of Austria, Apostolic Queen of Hungary:
Sisi could not help but sigh at the salutation; Gisela had always been like her father—dutiful in her formality, toeing Sophie’s line and heeding court protocol so that even a greeting to her own mother became unwieldy and unnatural. Unlike Rudy, Gisela had none of her mother’s sensitivity or imagination. Sisi read on.
Dear Madame,
I pray that this note finds you and my sister, the Archduchess Valerie, in good health. I must also begin with an apology: I wish that the circumstances of my writing were happier, but in fact, this letter carries distressing news.
Sisi’s frame stiffened. What distressing news could Gisela be reporting? She turned back to the paper.
As you may know, my brother, Rudolf, the crown prince of Austria-Hungary, has been for some time under the supervision and tutelage of the military officer Count Leopold Gondrecourt. The count is a stern and exacting man, but those qualities need not be considered negative traits in and of themselves. Be that as it may, not all is as it should be in the relationship between the count and my brother the crown prince.
I have watched for months now with a tortured heart, made ever heavier by what I see happening, but lacking any means with which to address the less-than-favorable situation to which I am witness. I did not know to whom I might confess my burden. Papa dismisses my concerns, and Grandmamma scolds me whenever I raise the topic. But, dear Madame, here it is: Count Gondrecourt subjects my darling younger brother to a whole host of agonies, all in the name of “education.”
I might label what Count Gondrecourt and Papa and Grandmamma call “education” as more akin to torture. And the toll is evident when I look at Rudy, who, the poor dear little soul, is diminishing before my very eyes. (Not that I get to see him often—so seldom is he free of his “lessons.” However, when I do see him, I am so saddened by his ongoing deterioration that I weep for hours.)
I know it is sinful to argue with a parent, and I mean no disrespect to my father, the All-Highest, the most esteemed Imperial and Royal Majesty. Nor to my beloved grandmamma, the admirable lady Archduchess Sophie, who is a paragon of excellence for us all. Be that as it may, I must confess my worries to you. What I see as the sensitivities and charms of Rudolf’s compassionate and gentle nature, my father and grandmamma and Count Gondrecourt view as stumbling blocks in the little boy’s ability to someday assume the role of emperor. The count believes that my brother, a boy of barely ten years, must therefore be subjected to the harshest of drills in order to rid him of what Grandmamma and Papa call his “delicate constitution.”
I’ve known the count to rip my little brother from bed in the middle of a winter’s night and force him to march, barefoot, around the frozen palace grounds. The count takes Rudy to our family’s private zoo, a place intended to delight, but then locks him in the same space as the lions, yelling that the boy must kill the beasts or be killed. He pulls him from bed each day before sunrise and submerges him in tubs of ice-filled water, sometimes convincing the boy that he will be drowned. He shoots pistols right before the crown prince, aiming near to the little boy’s trembling figure. If Rudy cries out in fear or retreats in panic, the count repeats the activity, aiming his weapon even closer.
Dear esteemed Madame, I always try to obey my blessed grandmamma and His Imperial Majesty the Emperor my father, but I am in agony as I watch this go on. I know that you avoid Vienna. I do not understand the reasons, and Papa frowns whenever I ask why you stay away, but I write now to beseech you: please, for the sake of your son, who grows paler and more shrunken every day, please return to Vienna and see for yourself. If you, like Grandmamma and Papa, reach the same conclusion that all of this “education” is an essential part of the process by which my brother—a darling, sensitive little soul—becomes a man fit to serve as emperor, then I will have no choice but to cease my protestations. I will understand that this is simply how things must be done, and I shall willingly submit to the superior wisdom of my elders.
But if you, like me, see these practices and determine that they are cruel and unnecessary, then perhaps you, at last, may be able to put an end to the little boy’s senseless suffering.
I am and shall remain Your Majesty’s most devoted and ever humble,
Gisela
Sisi lowered the letter to the desk, her frame trembling with a noxious mixture of fury and anguish. Each word had struck her anew, a fresh pain worse than the crack of a whip, and yet she forced herself to reread the note a second time and then a third and again until she had absorbed the ghastly words more than a dozen times. The message filled her with new horror with each pass. She dismissed her ladies abruptly, offering no answer to their concerned looks and questions, and she remained before her desk with the hated letter, weeping. She kept trying to find some logic to it, some explanation for these incomprehensible words—but there was none to be had. Imagine torturing a little boy with water cures and terror and physical deprivations!
Sisi pushed herself away from the desk. Still dressed in her formal dinner gown, she left the bedchamber and slipped down her private staircase, the passage that led directly from her suite out into the backyard by the stables.
Sisi knew that she would find him out there. They never met at night, alone, inside the house. He’d never dream of approaching her bedchamber. It was too risky in this house full of servants who might notice or whisper. Esterházy’s estate was just beyond the distant tree line, and another estate nestled beyond that one, and beyond that another, all the way to Budapest. Surely the servants of these country households knew one another, their news and gossip joining together like the links of a necklace until the chain reached the Hungarian capital. From there, it was an easy leap to Vienna.
But out here, under the expansive stretch of black sky, with no streetlamps or lights of any kind other than the brilliant scramble of stars overhead, Sisi knew of a secret space, removed from the household’s witnessing or judgment. It might look ordinary enough: an alley of red chestnut trees leading to a grove of dogwood saplings, their leafy boughs heavy and shimmering in the moonlight. They were tucked in behind the stables, close to where Sisi’s twenty-six hunting horses slept, and at a safe distance from the palace. Both she and he knew of this place as a refuge.
And now, on this night, she fled there, like some haunting apparition seeking the soul that might deliver her, might console her after the torture of the words she’d just read from Vienna.
She heard his voice before she detected the shadowed outline of his tall figure. “Sisi.”
Her whole body went slack as she exhaled. “Andrássy.” The sound of her own voice surprised her, how breathless and raspy it was—full of despair and desperation. His body was before hers, and he found her in the dark. She surrendered into his arms as he leaned forward to kiss her.
“Oh, my darling.” Taking her chin in his hands, he angled her gaze upward so that the faint glow of moon and starlight illuminated their faces. “What caused you to run away so quickly? What’s the matter?”
She didn’t answer, but rather slipped the letter into his hands. He pulled a match, usually used for his cigars, from the pocket of his trousers and read the note by its flickering glow. Sisi stood silently. A spear of moonlight slid back and forth across Andrássy’s face as the leaves overhead quivered in the soft breeze. Sisi watched his expression darken as the meaning of Gisela’s words took hold.
When he had finished reading, Andrássy lowered the paper and stood before her, wordless. Other than a stifled groan at the back of his throat, he made no noise, but simply began pacing, his long stride quickly crossing the small space lined by dogwood and red chestnut trees. His silence, Sisi suspected, indicated an ire more potent than had he railed and cursed. At last he paused and turned to her and spoke, his tone low and resolute. “You must go back.”
Sisi felt her throat and neck tighten, and she swallowed rather than reply. It was what she had expected him to say.
“You must return to Vienna.” He turned and punched his fist into the nearest sapling, and Sisi saw his frame go rigid with fury. “This can’t go on. Such treatment of the crown prince? A small boy? No.”
Sisi took the letter from his hand, her eyes falling on the ghastly words, and fresh tears hurled themselves from her eyes. She had barely stopped weeping since first reading her daughter’s account. She lowered the letter, shutting her eyes to its horrifying message. To the fact that she, as a mother, had utterly failed her son. She shifted from one foot to the other, her body overly warm and covered in a slick of perspiration even though the late-summer evening had turned cool. “But what can I do, once I’m back there?” She looked to Andrássy. “I tried and failed for years to stand up to Franz and his mother. I’ve never once succeeded. I have no influence at court.”
“That’s not true, Sisi.” Andrássy paced the small clearing again, his footsteps landing heavily on the soft earth.
The yard smelled fragrant with the aromas Sisi loved: the nearby horses, the damp earth, the grass and wildflowers, but tonight she found such ripeness overpowering and repulsive. She blinked, trying to make some order of her thoughts. “Gisela writes that she has tried to reason with them,” Sisi said. “How can I possibly hope to prevail where she has failed?”
“You are stronger than you think,” Andrássy said. “Why, look at you here. You are here because you stood up to them. You won the Hungarian nation for them and then claimed Valerie as your own.”
That final point made her head feel fuzzy, and Sisi steadied herself on a nearby sapling. Valerie! “What if I go back and she takes Valerie from me?” The words of her question quivered as they came out. “No, I can’t risk that. The only way to keep my child is to keep her away from Sophie.”
Andrássy shook his head. “You won’t let that happen. You are stronger now.”
“But how can I know that? How can I protect myself? I never could before—”
“Because you are stronger than you’ve ever been. Don’t you see that?”
“How can you say that, Andrássy?” She was only strong because she was far enough away to be invulnerable.
“You are stronger now because you have the one thing that the emperor wants more than anything else.” Andrássy paused his steps and ran his hands through his dark waves, setting them into further disarray. “You have the means to grant him or deny him his most sacred wish.”
Sisi looked at Andrássy, frowning in confusion.
“The one thing he wants most,” Andrássy said.
“What…what is that?”
Andrássy crossed his arms, sighing audibly before he answered. “You.” With that he collapsed into the tree opposite where Sisi stood, its trunk supporting the weight of his tall frame. “Franz Joseph wants you. The emperor wants his wife back. It’s a constant source of embarrassment for him that you’ve left him. But more than embarrassment, it causes him pain. He misses you, Sisi.”
Sisi considered these words, offering no reply.
“It is so plain for all to see,” Andrássy continued, his tone like that of a tortured confessor. “Your portrait hangs in every single room of his. It’s the first thing he sees over his bed each morning, the last thing he stares upon before shutting his eyes at night. And that one portrait you sat for, the one Herr Winterhalter painted of you a few years ago…” Andrássy’s words withered midsentence, as if it was too difficult for him to finish his thought.
Sisi’s cheeks flushed warm; she knew of which portrait Andrássy spoke. It was the most intimate, most alluring, most brazen portrait she had ever commissioned. She’d posed for it as a gift for her husband only a few years earlier, when she and Franz had become close again, briefly, while working together for the cause of Hungarian autonomy. In it she stood sideways, dark hair loose and tumbling over her shoulders in the free-flowing style in which only her husband had the right to behold it. Her body was covered in nothing but a delicate white dressing gown, the draped material just seconds away from slipping off her bare and glistening ivory shoulders. It was such a private view of her that the emperor had sat speechless when she’d first presented it to him. He’d then hung it in his private study, right over his desk, where only he might see it. Well, perhaps he saw it, and his most trusted advisors saw it as well, since Andrássy seemed to have glimpsed the portrait.
Andrássy continued now, pulling Sisi from the clutch of her agitated thoughts. “The way he stares at your image, it’s as if he wishes that, by his imperial will, he might replace the likeness with the real thing. You are the only subject he has ever had who has openly defied his royal wishes—and yet, he remains powerless before you. Franz Joseph would do anything you asked of him, Sisi, in order to get you back. Goodness, what man wouldn’t?” Andrássy’s words had a choked, tortured quality, but he pressed on. “He wants his wife; he wants to know his youngest daughter.”
Sisi considered this for a moment. Franz, still in love with her…Could Andrássy be correct? What he said now surely brought him no pleasure to admit. She leaned across the clearing, her hands reaching for his. He let her take them up, but he avoided her gaze. “Andrássy…you know that my heart is hopelessly and irreversibly yours.”
In the glint of moonlight, she saw how Andrássy’s features pulled tight across his dark, brooding face. He drew in a long breath, keeping her waiting several minutes before he responded. Finally, his eyes found hers, and he spoke: “When I think about all the reasons why you should not love me. About all of the reasons why I should not love you, Sisi…all of the reasons why it is so foolish—and dangerous—for me to love you. Why, about how jealous Esterházy is, clearly. And the rumors that are growing….” He pulled his hands from hers as if, even here, they weren’t safe.
She leaned forward to reach for him, but he denied her embrace. “Andrássy, what’s the point of torturing yourself like this?” she asked, pressing herself to him. “You know I love you. I’ve tried not to. We both have, but some things are simply greater than either of us.”
At last, he wavered, his resolve faltering as he grasped her, pulling her into his arms, and she willingly yielded to his kiss. Andrássy ran his fingers through her hair, pressing his weight into hers as they fell backward into the support of a nearby sapling. She heard her own breath, heavy, as it matched Andrássy’s. Their bodies, like their exhales, folded into each other, meeting in the dark in that most natural and necessary of unspoken languages. As Andrássy held her, Sisi looked up at the stars, a fire kindling within her to match theirs. But it was over almost as soon as it began.
“No,” he said, shaking his head as he stepped back. “What if we were ever discovered? How could we ever explain ourselves? To think that I might be the source of your ruination. Why…I’d never forgive…”
“But we are safe here,” she said, trying, and failing, to sound self-assured as she reached for him once more. “We are free here.”
“Free here? How can you say such a thing?” Andrássy dragged his hands through his hair. “Can we really delude ourselves so? Can we really allow ourselves to get lulled further into the supposition—the very false supposition—that we can get away with…” He waved his hands back and forth between them.
Sisi felt her heart hammer angrily inside her rib cage as she sensed the conviction hardening behind his words. When she spoke, her voice had a hollow sound to it: “Andrássy, you can’t possibly mean…”
“Sisi, all I have ever wanted to do is lift your burdens. To be your solace. To bring you joy, as you’ve done for me. And yet, don’t we both know that we are not free…not free to love each other?”
“Andrássy, my darling.” She stared up into his face, his features so twisted with anguish. She kissed him, her spirits crushed by the way he turned away, rebuffing her affection. “How can we help it, if we love each other?”
“Sisi, it’s as you just said: some things are simply greater than either of us. We both know that your place is in Vienna. With your family. With the crown prince, who needs you.”
She felt her body go limp, and she knew her words would feel the same, should she offer them in protest, because Andrássy was correct. She knew that. How could she remain here, knowing how her child suffered? How could she choose her own heart’s need for Andrássy over the all-powering need of her child? Hadn’t the whole plan been to come here to find peace? She’d never have peace here, not now, not when she knew what was happening back in Vienna. Even if she could put one thousand more miles between herself and the Imperial Court, the fragile wall of tranquility and freedom that she had labored so long to erect around her had now crumbled. She could have no peace; she could have no separation. The pull of her family and her capital and her duty was too strong. Stronger, even, than her desire to love and live freely.
Andrássy looked sideways at her now, endeavoring to sound more upbeat as he said, “I go to Vienna often. Why, you yourself say I go too often. Well, I’ll just have to go even more.”
She shook her head, struggling to wrangle the threads of her tormented thoughts into something she could understand and accept. Struggling to find a way that she could return to save Rudy while also keeping her freedom, keeping Andrássy. “You know it’s not the same. You and I…we couldn’t possibly live there as we can here. I’m not free there.”
His hand went to her cheek now, cupping her face in his palm. She nuzzled into it, craving his touch and feeling certain that she could never live without it. His expression had softened, the pinched strain of his features now replaced with sadness. Resignation. “My Sisi, was either of us ever free, really?” He sighed, his dark eyes holding hers, catching the glow of moonlight. “I don’t want to give you up—why, I’d sooner give up my own heart, if I could. Believe me. But these are things larger than ourselves. We can’t allow our love to make us selfish.”
