The Accidental Empress, page 44
It was late spring, shortly before the imperial court would relocate to Schönbrunn, and one of the final days before the afternoons grew unbearably warm and riding became unpleasant. Sisi had paused her afternoon ride, allowing her horse to rest. She was in a rural area, one hour’s ride outside Vienna and the palace. She lay on the cool earth beside the Danube, looking up at cloudless blue as her breathing slowed and her body cooled. She would have to bring Rudy to this spot for a picnic, she thought to herself, imagining how he would enjoy seeing the wildflowers that dotted the green fields.
And then, as it always happened, the thoughts of her children pulled her into sadness. An aching feeling somewhere deep inside, between her heart and her gut. Grief over how seldom she saw them, and how little say she had in their upbringing. Over the fact that, in just a couple of months, her sweet, sensitive little boy would be plucked from the nursery and stuffed into a military uniform and subjected to the first stages of drills and training at the hands of stern and unforgiving military tutors. It was no way to raise the gentle, free-spirited little boy. A little boy who shared her love for nature and animals and kisses and stories.
Sisi reached into her sack and retrieved her notebook. Her notebook, where she confessed her hurts and composed lines that spoke of her loneliness; it was the best salve she had. It was the only companion that did not fret, have its brow creased in worry, like Marie, when Sisi unburdened her lonely heart. It would never whisper and repeat her secrets, like an aide or attendant might. This afternoon, while the sun shone bright but her mood listed toward darkness, the words came easily.
She felt the vibration of the horse hooves, trembling in the ground beneath her, at the same time she heard their sound. She looked up from her notebook, shielding her eyes to gaze in the direction of the approaching rider. The horse slowed and the rider came into view. She smiled, in spite of her previous melancholy.
“Hello, Andrássy.”
“Empress Elisabeth, I’m so happy I’ve found you.” Andrássy halted his horse and hopped lightly from its saddle, tying it to a sapling beside Vándor. “Please, please, do not get up.” He walked toward her and took a seat on the grass beside her. “It’s a lovely day for a ride, is it not?”
“Indeed.” Sisi looked at Andrássy beside her. He wore lightweight suit pants, the matching jacket discarded, the top buttons of his white shirt undone and the collar open. She herself was in a cool riding habit of blue silk several shades lighter than the sky overhead, and she’d fashioned her hair in a loosely braided bun.
“I see you’ve slipped your imperial guard,” Andrássy noted, looking around at the empty fields surrounding them, his face flushed from the warm afternoon and the exertion of the ride. His hair was windblown and wild.
“Shortly after Vienna,” Sisi said, smiling. “It’s really shocking to me how slowly they move.”
“In the unfortunate event that our two peoples should ever go to war, I shall have to warn my fellow Hungarians that it is you they will have to look out for. We won’t even notice you approaching and then, all of a sudden, you’ll be on top of Buda Hill, claiming the castle and the lands of Buda and Pest.”
“Our two people?” Sisi cocked her head.
“The Austrians and the Hungarians.”
She half-grinned. “I’m not entirely certain that I wouldn’t fight on the side of the Hungarians.”
Andrássy leaned toward her. “Let’s hope you never have to make that decision.”
“Indeed, let’s hope that.”
“Have I interrupted you?” Andrássy looked down at her notebook, a recently started set of couplets scribbled across the top page.
“Oh, no.” Sisi put her hands over her work, self-conscious.
Andrássy began to recite a bit of poetry: “Every day one should at least hear one little song, read one good poem, see one fine painting and . . .”
“And if possible,” Sisi finished the line for him, “speak a few sensible words.”
Andrássy looked at her, impressed.
“I think you’re the only person at court who might know Goethe better than I do, Andrássy.”
Andrássy smiled, continuing: “I’m sorry to say you shall get no sensible words from me. But I see you writing a poem, and here”—he pointed at the river—“is beauty much greater than any painting.”
“All we lack is the music.”
“I won’t offer to sing,” he said, winking. “So, what have you written?”
Sisi looked at the notebook, fidgeting to conceal it. “Only a few lines of some very poor poetry.”
“May I?” Andrássy lifted his eyebrows.
“You really will not be impressed, I assure you.”
“I very much doubt that. I’m always impressed by you.”
Sisi hesitated. “All right.” She sighed. Andrássy took the notebook in his hands and read aloud what she had started:
“O’er thee, like thine own sea birds,
I’ll circle without rest.
For me earth holds no corner
To build a lasting nest.”
It was not until she heard the words spoken aloud that Sisi realized how deeply intimate they were. A glimpse into her lonely, unrooted soul. She felt her cheeks redden, embarrassed that Andrássy had seen these confessions on paper, and she took the notebook back in her hands. They sat beside one another, silent, for several moments.
Eventually, Andrássy looked up, his eyes serious. “You carry great sadness, Empress Elisabeth.”
She thought about it. There was no use lying to him, not after he’d read those words. She blinked, eyes lilting out over the river. “Yes, I suppose I do.”
Andrássy nodded. And then, with a thoughtful expression, he said, “Hungary.”
“Pardon?”
“Hungary is my . . . what did you call it? Lasting nest. Hungary is why I feel rooted.”
Sisi thought about this. Possenhofen was no longer where she felt roots. Helene was gone. Father’s health was failing. Mother had told her that she had no right to flee to Possenhofen any longer. No, that was Karl’s nest now, as she had always known it would someday be.
“But then, I suppose it’s different for men.” Andrássy looked out at the river, apparently skimming the thoughts right from her mind. “We are not forced to quit our homes, our families, to join a new clan.”
Sisi nodded, exhaling an audible sigh.
“And your clan is not exactly the most welcoming one, I can imagine.” He looked at her, an appraising, inquisitive look.
“I knew, though,” she replied, uncomfortable with his intuitive awareness, with his apparent ability to discern her most private thoughts. “I knew, when I married, what I was taking on.”
“Did you really? At—what was it—age fifteen? Could you really have known, Empress?” Andrássy seemed skeptical, and Sisi thought perhaps she had better let this conversation wither without a further reply.
“How about you, Andrássy?”
He cocked his head. “What about me?”
“How is the Countess Andrássy?”
He sat still, glancing out over the calm surface of the Danube. “Katinka is a good woman.” He offered nothing else.
“Come now, I bet you had ladies from Budapest to Paris offering you their hearts,” Sisi said. “Surely you must have loved her madly to marry her?”
His brows creased toward one another as he thought about this. “I hope God, and Katinka, forgive me someday.”
“Hmm?” She arched an eyebrow. “Come now, I’ve just confessed my private thoughts to you. What do you mean by that?”
Andrássy plucked a blade of grass, tossing it toward the river. “I should not have married her.”
“Why not?” Sisi asked.
Not meeting her eyes, he said: “I am not a good husband.”
“I am certain you must be,” Sisi reasoned. “You are away from home more often than she would like, perhaps.”
Andrássy shook his head, plucking more grass blades from the earth beneath him. “That doesn’t bother her. In fact, I think we both prefer to have the distance between us. I feel no longing to return to her. And she, it seems, feels no longing to welcome me home.”
After a thoughtful pause, he added: “My problem, with life as much as with women, is that I let the perfect be the enemy of the good.”
Sisi thought about this. “I see how, if it is perfection that you seek, you find that your wife is lacking. But you must remember, no one is perfect. Not even you.”
“There was one girl, years ago. Kati was her name. Perhaps that was why I married Katinka—she had the same name as this other girl. Either that, or because everyone told me that it was far past the time that I take a wife.”
Andrássy chewed on the side of his lip, his face heavy in thought. “Oh, but this was another lifetime, it seems,” Andrássy said, his voice almost wistful as he ran his hands over the tips of the sun-warmed grass blades. “I knew her when I was in Paris.”
That was years before she’d ever met him, Sisi knew, when Andrássy had been exiled by her own husband, Franz Joseph.
“I would have married Kati,” Andrássy continued. “I wanted to marry Kati, in fact, and I told her so.”
“What happened?” Sisi asked, not sure why she felt jealous of a faceless girl, all of a sudden.
“Kati did not want to marry me.”
Fool, Sisi thought, but she refrained from saying it aloud. Instead, she asked, “Did she offer any reason?”
“There was an older Hungarian prince back home. With more land and a more prestigious title. He owned most of Transylvania, and he was not dangerous. He had not been exiled from the empire.” Andrássy shook his head, grinning sadly.
“I bet she regrets her decision every time she reads about you in the papers. Or sees your likeness.”
Andrássy grinned. “I very much doubt it.”
“Have you been pining for her ever since?”
“Oh, perhaps.” Andrássy turned to Sisi, smiling. “No, no.” Now he shook his head. “I’m far too busy to pine.”
They sat beside one another in silence, watching a boat glide along the Danube, toward the east. Toward Hungary. After a while, Andrássy turned back to Sisi, shifting his body so that he leaned toward her. “There has been one other since Kati. One other woman whom I’ve seen and thought to myself: I could love her.”
“Not your wife?” Sisi asked. Andrássy shook his head.
The blond woman Sisi had seen him with in the gardens, perhaps? Without understanding why, Sisi felt jealous again. Yet she forced herself to smile and ask, politely: “And what is her story?”
Andrássy bit his lip, thinking before he answered. “Well, she is beautiful. And kind. And every time I speak with her I am left with my mind awhirl. She gives me much to think about.”
Sisi looked away, plucking a piece of grass from the earth, which she then released into the breeze. “She sounds lovely. Why did you not fall in love with her, in that case?”
“Because she was not free to be mine. Unfortunately, another man had gotten to her first.”
Sisi returned his gaze now, noticing how his brown eyes caught a glint of the golden sunlight overhead. “This is too sad, Andrássy.”
“I suppose it is quite sad.” He nodded.
“So what is her name—this perfect being, this unattainable lady you admire?”
“The name of the lady bears no relevance,” he said, looking away from Sisi, breaking the charge that had passed, a moment earlier, between their eyes. “As she will never be mine.”
Sisi nodded, words evading her. For a brief moment, her mind wandered back to the night in Budapest, years earlier. The night she had danced with him, Andrássy. She had done so in front of Franz and a roomful of others: a blameless action, devoid of any meaning or significance. And yet, here, on the grass beside Andrássy, she felt as if there was more meaning. Here, even though they didn’t touch. They sat, apart, only speaking. Speaking was a harmless action, was it not? And yet, for a reason she could not quite utter, Sisi would never have wanted Franz to witness this moment.
Finally, she blinked, clearing her mind of the fog that had collected. “It will be dark soon. We should return to the palace.”
“You should.” He nodded. “I am not going that way.”
“No? Where are you going?”
“I will rest in the next town this evening and await my servants. We are returning to Budapest for the summer.”
“Oh,” Sisi said. He had not told her about his departure until now. “To see your wife?”
Andrássy shook his head. “She will remain up north. She loathes my city in the summer as much as I loathe her isolated and secluded retreat.”
“Why must you go?” Sisi asked.
Andrássy sighed, running his fingers through his dark hair. “There is some discontent at home. It seems greater liberties and rights only go so far. They still resent the rule of a foreign emperor. Deák has demanded that I return and help him sort this out.”
Andrássy’s point of view made sense to Sisi in a way it had not, years earlier, when her husband had griped to her about Hungarian antagonism. “How long until they start to demand their independence again?”
“You must remember it is not ‘they’ to me, Empress. It is ‘we.’ ”
“Oh . . . yes, of course.”
Andrássy sighed. “I hope to quell the disruption, for now. To tell Deák to advocate for harmony, rather than discord. Though I do not know how long I can keep peace for your husband.”
Sisi thought about this. “I couldn’t bear to think of you as an enemy again. I hope you remain our friend.”
“As do I.”
“And I shall miss seeing you here.” It seemed a horribly selfish thing to say when he was returning to plead her family’s cause to an unhappy populace. And terribly bold.
He looked up at her, his eyes creasing in a faint smile. “May I write to you while I’m away?”
Writing in itself was harmless; she wrote to hundreds of people a week. Nevertheless, Sisi suspected that this was the point at which she ought to say no. Perhaps it was her last chance to say no. If Andrássy began to write to her, would she come to crave his correspondence? Here was her chance to halt that need for him before it took hold of her. Knowing this, she opened her mouth to answer. As she did so, she smiled and said: “I hope you will.”
XV.
Outside, sun pours down over a summer day in Budapest, the Danube shimmering its way around the base of the hillside. The new Széchenyi Lánchíd, the Chain Bridge, stretches across the river like cast iron lace.
They stand atop the hill. The crowds surround them, waving flags and dancing to the Gypsy bands that pop up in small clusters. The people clamor so loudly that Sisi swears she sees the buildings tremble around her. A crash of cannonfire sounds.
“ Éljen Erzsébet! Long live Elisabeth!”
One man approaches, his steps ushered through the hordes by a minister. He has long brown hair tinged with silver, parted in the middle to reveal a serious face. He alone in this entire multitude does not wear a smile.
“Empress.” The minister directs the man forward, but he appears bashful, too timid to step any closer. “Please, allow me to introduce you to our most beloved national composer, a man who—”
“Franz Liszt.” Sisi nods, finishing the sentence, beckoning the composer closer. “A man who needs no introduction. Why, Master Liszt, how can we thank you for composing our Coronation Mass?”
She stares into his eyes, momentarily struck by his presence. How she would love to shake his hand, to touch the fingers that play the piano with unparalleled virtuosity. But when he looks up, returns her gaze, she notices. Franz Liszt, the world’s most beloved musician, has tears in his eyes. His lips part, and he speaks quietly. In Hungarian, his native tongue. “ Éljen Erzsébet. Long live Elisabeth.”
Chapter Fifteen
BAD KISSINGEN SPA, BAVARIA
JUNE 1866
Sisi received two letters at breakfast that morning: one from her husband, the other from Andrássy.
Spring in Bad Kissingen had proven a difficult time for Sisi. She missed Rudy terribly. And yet the thought of returning to court filled her with anxiety, and, lately, skull-splitting headaches. Her mother-in-law, though often bedridden with coughs and aches these days, had tightened her grip over the education of the grandchildren, specifically the crown prince. Rather than being allowed to enjoy a longer childhood, as Sisi had advocated, and pursue a well-rounded education including languages, poetry, and arts, Rudy now spent long days studying history, military strategy, and Habsburg protocol. Already his tiny arms and legs were stuffed into the stiff uniform of the Austrian officer, as if he were playing dress-up in some game from which he would never escape.
Franz’s notes spoke of the boy’s “difficulties” adjusting to his new military tutor, an unforgiving general by the name of Leopold Gondrecourt. Sisi ached to hold and comfort her sensitive little boy. But, knowing that that was an impossibility whether she remained at court or traveled, Sisi had heeded Doctor Fischer’s advice and had agreed to spend the winter away from Vienna, in the resort town of Bad Kissingen.
Tucked away in the pristine Bavarian forest, at the base of the pine-and snow-capped Rhön Mountains, Bad Kissingen had been, at first, an ideal place for Sisi to recover her energy and lift her flagging spirits. The air was crisp and clear, the scenery wild, and her schedule free of the official appearances expected of her at court. Having left behind Herr Lobkowitz, Countess Frederika, and Lady Ilse in Vienna, Sisi spent her days now with just the companionship of Marie, Ida the new maid, and the hairdresser Franziska. There, away from the crowds and the protocol that worsened her anxiety and increased her discomfort, Sisi was allowed to rest and take in the mild, therapeutic waters of the nearby Franconian Saale River.
