Sisi, page 9
Sisi frowned as she stepped through the doorway and left him behind. Whether she agreed with it or not, the Habsburg heir could not be permitted to take off with his mamma when she was called home to Bavaria on a family crisis.
And it certainly was a crisis that awaited her at home. All of Bavaria was in an uproar over the standoff between Duke Max and King Ludwig. The young king, once so popular and full of promise, had now postponed his wedding to Sisi’s youngest sister twice, each time with increased embarrassment and insult to the bride and her family, and with mounting exasperation from his subjects, who longed for a royal wedding and the feasts and heirs that would follow.
But it had gotten worse than just the postponements and rescheduling. Now Ludwig was flatly refusing to name a new date, offering the construction of his castle and the debts he had undertaken to finance Wagner’s latest work—an operatic trilogy of some sort, something about magical rings and an epic German saga—as his reasons.
Duke Max had fired back with an uncharacteristically stern ultimatum: the king could not keep humiliating his daughter like this. Either Ludwig must set a wedding date or Duke Max would withdraw his approval for the union entirely. Since that ultimatum, the two sides had reached an impasse, with neither party making a move.
Ludovika and Sophie-Charlotte, in a panic, had begged Sisi to return to Bavaria to serve as a mediator—a third party who might, because of her close relationship with her cousin, prevail upon the king to see reason. Franz Joseph, disapproving of the gossip and growing scandal that this cousins’ feud was generating, had heartily agreed that Sisi should go to Bavaria and try to help her family resolve this conflict.
As Sisi crossed the courtyard and stepped into the waiting imperial coach, Valerie in her arms and Marie and Ida on either side, she noticed the mixture of emotions she took with her from Vienna. She had left her secretary, Baron Nopcsa, in charge of her household and administrative duties in her absence. She had bid farewell to Franz and Gisela and Rudy. Ordinarily she would have felt a thrill, a sense of freedom, upon quitting the court for someplace else. But now, however, she did not feel that elation. She was not going toward Hungary, and Andrássy, and freedom, after all. Instead, as she rode toward Bavaria, a thickening sense of uneasiness settled within her, a disquiet over the task that awaited her.
The sights of her homeland, the oft-trodden views of her happy, carefree childhood, lifted Sisi’s spirits considerably. She arrived back at Possi at her favorite hour of the day, shortly before dusk. The diagonal light of the setting sun fell over the glassy surface of Lake Starnberg like dazzling strings of diamonds, and a gentle breeze blew the lake’s mist over the newly sown fields, cloaking the area in a delicate haze. The peasants and villagers waved as Sisi’s coach drove past, shouting out greetings of “Welcome home!” and “Long live Sisi!”
The castle itself was exactly as Sisi remembered it—squat and thick, with bits of its white paint chipped away, revealing the scarred and ancient stones beneath it. Shabby, was how Aunt Sophie always referred to Possenhofen Castle. A beggar’s household in total disrepair.
Sisi stepped out of the coach, looking out over the unruly fields and the tree-lined lake that stretched before her, their beauty unchanged since her last visit. Let Sophie disparage this place as much as she liked, but neither the Hofburg nor Schönbrunn was anything compared to the raw and untamed loveliness of Possi, Sisi thought. In that moment, amid her joy at seeing her childhood home once more, Sisi felt a sharp pang of longing, as she couldn’t help but think of Andrássy. How she would love to show him this place, to share it with him so that he could learn about this past piece of her. So that he could see where she had lived before it all, back when she had simply been Sisi.
Her mother stood before the house, her tall frame sentry-like and erect. As Sisi walked toward her, Ludovika’s well-trained stoicism seemed to waver ever so slightly, and she greeted her returning daughter with a weary hug and an anxious smile. “Sisi, you’ve made it.” Duchess Ludovika took her daughter’s shoulders in her hands so that she might gain a full view of Sisi’s appearance. “My, you look as healthy as I’ve ever seen you. Oh, thank God you are here.”
Ludovika ushered Sisi, Valerie, and their attendants directly into the drawing room. There sat Helene, whose own appearance presented the opposite of that impression of health and vigor. Her eyes, always serious and dark, were ringed in shadow. Her lean frame, cloaked entirely in widow’s black, had shrunk even further, and she appeared decades older than her age.
“Hi, Néné.” Sisi pulled her favorite sister into a long hug, wishing she could transfer some of her own strength through the embrace.
“Sisi, you’re here.” Néné didn’t wipe the tears that had pooled in her eyes. “Oh, how I have missed you.”
“And I’ve missed you, my darling big sister. No, please, do not get up.” Sisi knelt beside Helene, thrilled to be near her once more, even if she did look frail and careworn.
“Is she here yet? I saw the coach out front!” Sophie-Charlotte burst into the room, looking young and beautiful and positively vibrant in comparison. She was no longer a girl, and her figure had bloomed like the fertile fields outside the castle. Of all Sisi’s sisters, Sophie-Charlotte, the youngest, bore the greatest resemblance to Sisi; her hair was just a shade lighter, and she was not quite as tall, but she was a pretty girl and full of youthful vigor. It would be a hard-hearted person who found the young lady’s charms unappealing. And yet, it seemed that was the case with King Ludwig.
Once little Valerie had been passed from woman to woman, her cheeks sufficiently kissed and her flawlessness sufficiently proclaimed, Sisi dismissed Marie and Ida to take the little girl to the nursery for the evening. A fire was lit in the drawing room, and Sisi settled into an overstuffed chair beside her mother and her two sisters. Her brother Karl, she knew, was serving his military duty and living away from home.
“Where is Papa?” Sisi asked, looking around the room, noting the dust that clung to the wall hangings, the fraying seams that crept across the upholstery. Precisely as it had been during her childhood. A beggar’s household. And yet, the polished and gilded halls of the Hofburg could never feel so welcoming, so cozy.
“Your father…” The duchess exchanged a meaningful look with Helene before continuing. “Only God knows. He left on one of his…” Ludovika paused to order tea for the four of them. “Shortly following his harsh declaration to Ludwig, he took off, and we haven’t seen or heard from him since.”
Sisi nodded, disappointed but not surprised. She knew enough from her mother’s letters to understand that her father continued with his excessive drinking. She had already heard that the gossipers in town had named yet another illegitimate peasant child as her father’s offspring. Sisi sighed now at her father’s ongoing and habitual philandering, at all that her mother had to bear in the name of ducal and familial duty.
“All those who say that Ludwig is too eccentric for Sophie-Charlotte…” Ludovika waved a hand. “It does not get more eccentric than your father. And your father does not have the excuse of being king.”
Sisi looked from her mother to her younger sister. “So tell me—what is happening?”
Their mother answered first: “I make no allowances for Ludwig’s behavior to Sophie-Charlotte. And I do not excuse it. But…but I do not think these differences are irreparable. I would very much like to salvage the engagement, if at all possible. And I think it is possible.”
“Have you seen Ludwig?” Sisi asked, knowing that her cousin’s new castle, Neuschwanstein, was just southwest of Possi, an easy trip for a king who had the finest carriages and horses in all of Bavaria at his disposal. All three women shook their heads. Ludwig had not come.
“But have you heard from him at least? Has Ludwig offered any reply to Papa’s message?”
Again the women answered in the negative. Sisi sighed.
“It would not do to break it off, though,” Ludovika continued, her tone slightly defensive. “They have such a dear friendship. And Ludwig is a kind boy. Let the gossipers say what they want about him, but no one can deny his sweet and gentle nature. And it would be so nice to have Sophie-Charlotte always nearby.”
A servant brought in tea for the four of them, and Sisi took a warm cup in her hands. She felt a tug on her heart toward the nursery, a yearning to go and make sure her little girl was all right, but she forced herself to focus on the matter before her. “Well, now, Sophie-Charlotte.” Sisi turned to her younger sister. “What do you think? That’s what matters, after all.”
Sophie-Charlotte didn’t reach for the tea before her, but weighed her sister’s question. After a pause, she said, “I confess that I am quite confused by Ludwig’s behavior.”
Sisi nodded, letting her continue.
“Initially, he was so effusive and so generous with his praise and affection. I never would have thought him the type to abandon me, to simply vanish at a ball that he himself was hosting, and without telling me where he went.”
Sisi blew on her tea, listening to her sister.
“And why he keeps postponing our wedding, I could not tell you. I trust that he does not mean to hurt me. I know him to be kind. And good. And of course, he is so very handsome….”
“But do you think he could make you happy, as a husband?” Sisi asked.
“Could he make me happy?” Sophie-Charlotte cocked her head to the side, thinking the matter over for a few moments before replying. “Yes, I do believe he could make me happy. Or at the very least…content. Ludwig has a sharp mind and a gentle spirit. I believe he would make a perfectly sweet husband.”
Sophie-Charlotte knit her hands together in her lap, looking down as she continued. “And if my feelings no longer soar toward the rapture I initially felt…” She paused, and Sisi nodded, remembering that first giddy letter in which her sister had announced her engagement.
Sophie-Charlotte wore a chastened smile now, as if acknowledging her previous silliness. “Well, that is quite all right, isn’t it? All raptures must give way eventually, do they not? And then what does one hope for? What must remain is a friendship and respect. I believe that I would feel those things for Ludwig, if he were my husband.”
So very reasonable, Sisi thought. So the opposite of how she had approached her own marriage. In her case, the rapture had not worn off until after the wedding day, leaving her hopelessly lost and bitterly disappointed.
Perhaps it was better this way, Sisi reasoned. Perhaps it was better to know the flaws of one’s spouse, to take a more measured look at what marriage actually meant before cleaving one’s life to an imperfect individual. “Well”—Sisi leaned forward, taking her sister’s hands in her own—“you are far less naïve than I was as a bride, that’s for certain.”
“We just need someone to speak to Ludwig,” Ludovika declared, leaning toward Sisi. “To make him see reason! He’s shut up in that castle with nobody daring to challenge him or speak the truth to him. His parents are both deceased”—the duchess paused to make a sign of the cross before her face—“and he keeps no ministers with him. But surely someone need only make the case to him that, as king, he must marry. He must have heirs. And who could make him happier than our sweet girl?”
Sisi looked from her mother to her younger sister, their faces so heavy with concern. Staring at Sophie-Charlotte, she asked: “Is it what you want? Will it make you happy to be Ludwig’s bride?”
The younger sister nodded, biting her lower lip.
Sisi sighed. “If that is so, I am happy to make your case to Ludwig and to try to see what our fool of a cousin is thinking.”
Sophie-Charlotte’s face burst into a relieved smile. “You will do it?”
Sisi nodded, returning her sister’s smile but not feeling certain that they ought to be celebrating just yet. “My, but he would be mad to pass up the chance to marry you, Sophie-Charlotte.”
“You’ll tell him that?” The hope now lit Sophie-Charlotte’s delicate, young features. She really was quite pretty. Was that how sweet and fresh she herself had once looked? Sisi wondered. “Oh, thank you, Sisi!” Sophie-Charlotte leaned forward and squeezed her sister’s hands.
“I will dash off a note to him tonight telling him I am home in Bavaria and I wish to visit him tomorrow. Besides, don’t you think he’d like to meet little Valerie?”
Her younger sister smiled once more in girlish delight, and Ludovika’s sigh of relief was audible.
—
Later that night, after the servants had withdrawn and the household retired for bed, Sisi found her way to her childhood room, where she and Néné had shared a bed for all of their girlhood years. There was no discussion, no questioning; Néné simply smiled when she saw Sisi enter, bearing her flickering candle toward the bedside table.
“You’ll sleep in here tonight?” Ludovika appeared on the landing outside the chamber, peering in at Sisi and Néné as they settled into the oversized canopy bed.
“Yes,” Sisi said, pulling back the goose-down blanket and climbing into bed. Valerie was tucked happily into the Possi nursery with Ida sleeping nearby, and Sisi longed for nothing more than to be here, beside Néné. Here in this room where she’d slept the sleep of the innocent, where she’d dreamed without knowing that dreams didn’t actually come true.
“It’s like old days,” Ludovika said, her graying hair woven tight around her bedtime curling papers. “How nice to have my two girls together once more. I don’t doubt that you’ll stay up half the night whispering and giggling, as you always did.”
“Good night, Mamma,” Sisi said, suppressing a yawn.
“And don’t forget…” Ludovika said from the door.
“We know,” the sisters replied in unison. “We shall not forget to say our prayers.”
“Good girls.” With that, Ludovika shut the door, closing them into silence and the dim lighting of their two candles.
Sisi burrowed deeper into the bed. “Néné! Your feet are still cold.” She felt the icy shapes of her sister’s feet as Néné pushed them under Sisi’s legs, just as she’d always done as a girl.
Néné giggled. “Well, you’ll warm them up.”
“Just like old days, indeed,” Sisi said, not at all irritated.
“And let’s hope that you don’t still snore,” Néné answered.
“Snore?” Sisi gasped. “I never snored! I don’t snore.”
Néné cocked a dark eyebrow, a teasing smirk on her shadowed face.
“What? I don’t!” Sisi insisted. And then, after a pause, she asked: “Do I?”
“Franz never told you that you snore?” Helene burrowed into the pillow, her face opposite Sisi’s. Close enough to see Sisi’s features tighten at the question. No, Franz wouldn’t know that I snore, Sisi thought. Not when they hadn’t shared a bed in years.
Sisi looked around at the room, its furniture lumpy and sagging, its comforts so basic after the decadence of Vienna. Here, the bedside comb and mirror did not match, were not part of a flawlessly engraved ivory set. The mirror hung cracked and in need of dusting, where in Vienna, her mirrors were trimmed in gold leaf, her mantels carved from glossy marble. “Do you know,” Sisi said aloud, “that in the palace back in Vienna, even our chamber pots are engraved with the Habsburg imperial seal? The double-headed eagle of the House of Habsburg.”
“Ah,” Néné said, “lest you forget your divine-right status while nature calls.”
Both girls giggled, but Sisi wondered: Did Helene ever think of Franz? Of Sisi and the palace? Did she ever think about how her own life might have been so different had she been the one to marry Franz, as Archduchess Sophie had intended? Doubtful, Sisi reasoned. Néné had never wanted that life, the life beside the emperor. She’d never wanted the role that Sisi had so willingly—so naïvely—stepped into. And now here they both were, back home at Possi, with their lives as far apart as two lives could be.
Sisi’s eyes fell on the windows that opened over the darkened fields and black Bavarian night. In the distance, a lone owl droned its melancholy cry into the surrounding pines. How many evenings she had lain awake in this exact spot unable to find sleep, her restless mind wandering. Her imagination craving adventure, to travel someplace far. To find love and leave home and seek out whatever it was that she had thought she was missing. Why hadn’t she just enjoyed being here? Being home? Being safe and free.
She was about to confess these very thoughts to her sister, but Helene’s voice interrupted her reverie. “Sisi, I need to talk to you about something.”
Sisi turned back toward her sister, alarmed to see an intense flicker in Néné’s eyes where her black irises were illuminated by the dim candlelight.
“There’s something you should know,” Néné whispered, her tone suddenly low and serious.
“What is it?”
Helene exhaled. “It’s just that…I don’t think…well, I don’t think you should bring Valerie with you tomorrow when you visit Ludwig.”
Sisi shifted under the bedcovers, slightly relieved. That had hardly been what she had expected to hear from her sister. “To see Ludwig? Whyever not? I bring Valerie everywhere I go.”
“No.” Helene shook her head, an assertive movement, a very uncharacteristic gesture for the timid Néné. “Not tomorrow, not up to that mountaintop. It would be far too frightening for a child.”
“Frightening?” Sisi pushed back the blanket. “Néné, you are confusing me.”
Helene chewed on her lower lip, her black eyes catching the quiver of her candle’s flame, giving her an almost otherworldly look. Like some sort of conjurer beside a sorcerer’s fire. “You will find Ludwig quite changed,” Helene said, her expression grim.
From somewhere outside the castle walls, a wolf howled, sending its eerie dirge out into the dark Bavarian wilderness. It was a familiar sound from the nights of her childhood, and yet, at hearing it, Sisi felt her frame begin to shiver.
“Ludwig is not as you remember him,” Helene continued. “He’s not the golden boy of our youth. He’s become quite…”
