The Accidental Empress Read online

  “I understand, Mamma.”

  “Good girl.” Duchess Ludovika nodded, her stern expression softening into an approving smile. “No suitors for you. At least, not until you have helped your sister settle into her role.”

  Helene was excused from dinner and Sisi allowed to retire to the bedroom with her. They climbed the stairs in silence, both of them sorting through a tangle of thoughts and questions.

  The Habsburg Court! For Sisi, the news had quickened her curiosity and stirred her restless spirit. Her mind raced into the imaginary scenes she’d witness beside her sister, the empress—the high-ceilinged halls where the waltz had been invented, the banquets, the dances attended by women in skirts so wide they looked like the bells of a cathedral. And her, Sisi, experiencing it all at the age of only fifteen.

  “What a relief that you shall come with me.” Helene clutched her sister’s hand as they reached the top of the stairs and walked the candlelit hallway to their bedroom. Her sister’s thoughts, Sisi noticed, seemed of a much less enthusiastic variety.

  “Shall I call Agata for some wine?” Sisi pushed the heavy bedroom door, leaving it slightly ajar.

  “No, Sisi. Just sit with me for a moment.” Helene lowered herself onto the large mahogany bed that they shared. “I am in such a state of shock.”

  “I will be with you, Néné.” Sisi opened the curtains, allowing in the last delicate rays of summer sun. She stared out the window, looking over the quiet dusk that settled over Possenhofen. The woods beyond the meadow, skirting the border of Lake Starnberg, glowed an indigo blue under the descending veil of night. In the meadow, a farmer cut a slow path toward the village, pulling a tired horse beside him. The smoke of distant hearths coiled skyward in the background, issuing from the barely visible homes that dotted the wooded foothills of the Bavarian Alps. It was such a familiar tapestry; a beloved view, one Sisi could have re-created with her eyes shut. And tonight, knowing that she would be going far away, she savored it with a newfound affection. How many more times might she behold this view? Sisi wondered.

  “You’ll only be with me until you get a husband of your own. Then what happens?” Helene’s worry tugged Sisi from her twilight reverie, and she turned back to her sister and the darkening bedroom. “He’ll probably insist on taking you back to his own palace in Prussia or Saxony or Hungary. Then what shall I do?” Helene’s lip quivered with the threat of fresh tears.

  “You heard Mamma”—Sisi walked toward her sister—“I will be at court to attend to you. I promise, I won’t even think of marriage until you are settled and happy with at least half a dozen fat little Austrian crown princes and princesses.” This promise appeared to temporarily assuage Helene’s panic. But only for a moment.

  “Marriage does sound awful, doesn’t it?” Helene thought aloud, slipping out of her heavy dinner gown and allowing it to drop to the floor. Sisi couldn’t help but notice her sister’s figure, now exposed in just a thin shift and undergarments. It looked so pale and thin and fragile. And yet this would be the body that would be tasked with producing Austria’s next emperor.

  As if on cue, Karl appeared at the bedroom door, which Sisi chided herself for having left ajar.

  “So that’s the emperor’s view on the wedding night?” Sensing that the power dynamics had somehow shifted in the household, Karl appeared reluctant to too directly challenge his sisters, but rather hovered at the threshold of their bedchamber.

  “I heard you talking about your husband.” He grinned at the partially undressed Helene, who quickly retreated behind a dressing screen.

  “Go away, Gackl,” Sisi snapped, tossing Helene’s discarded shoe in his direction.

  Karl ducked the shoe but remained in his spot in the doorway. “No, not me. It’s you two who are going away. Helene is off to Vienna to get pricked by Franz Joseph’s Austrian wiener.” Karl sniggered. “Poor innocent little Helene will likely catch syphilis from one of Franz’s palace whores.”

  Sisi ignored her brother, speaking only to Helene. “And Gackl will probably never prick a single girl in his life. Who would ever want his pockmarked face and sour beer breath?”

  This insult only further enraged Karl, who struck back. “I wouldn’t look forward to my wedding night if I were you, Helene. Franz Joseph is the emperor, you know, and therefore he gets whatever he wants. How do you think you shall compare to one of his well-practiced courtesans?” The sight of Sisi wincing seemed to encourage Karl. “And Sisi, who knows who you’ll get plucked by? Neither one of you even knows what must happen, do you? Why do you think Mamma always talks about how she cried on her wedding night?”

  Cowed, but even more so infuriated, Sisi stood to her full height and crossed the bedroom toward Karl. When she spoke, it was with more authority than she actually felt. “And how do you suppose the emperor will look upon the brother who has tormented his beloved bride? I will be sure to tell him about our brother, named after a rooster, and deserving of a good pecking.”

  Surprised by the vehemence of her anger, by the command in her voice, Karl turned and left their room.

  “Who taught him to be so vile?” Sisi wondered aloud, slowly unclenhing her fists as Karl’s figure receded. She heard the sound of faint whimpering behind the dressing screen. “For goodness’ sake, Néné, come out from behind that screen.” Sisi flopped onto the bed, already exhausted in the role of supporting her sister. It would be a demanding position at court. “Do not take a word of that to heart—Karl is just jealous that we have an invitation from the emperor, while he’s stuck here with the babies.”

  Helene emerged from behind the dressing screen, her black eyes round with horror. “It does sound awful, though, doesn’t it?”

  “What does? Ruling an empire? Wearing the finest crowns and gowns in all of Europe? Dancing to the imperial violins all night?” Sisi ran her fingers through her hair, removing her braids and allowing her heavy waves to tumble loose around her shoulders.

  “No. What Karl said . . . the wedding night,” Helene whispered.

  “I don’t know.” Sisi paused. Their mother had only ever implied things, offering scanty scraps about what the ordeal of the wedding night actually entailed. Insinuations that both frightened and confused Sisi. Words such as “duty” and “submission.” Actions that required “forbearance,” that must be “endured for the sake of one’s husband and family.” But then the maid had given Sisi quite a different account. “Agata tells me that she’s heard that it can be . . . well, nice. That it’s not all bad.”

  “How did she hear that?” Helene asked, eyes widening.

  “Oh, they talk about that sort of stuff all the time in the kitchen. It’s only those of us in the front of the house who know nothing about it.” A ludicrous arrangement, Sisi thought, when it was the girls in the front of the house whose bodies were burdened with the important duties of dynasty-making.

  Helene thought about this. “Karl seems to know an awful lot.”

  Sisi tilted her head. “Not from experience, of that much we can be certain.”

  Helene allowed a pinched laugh before once more deflating. “Do you think, when I become Franz’s wife, that I will have to . . . you know . . . ?”

  “Yes, Helene,” Sisi said, toneless. “You will.”

  Helene appeared freshly demoralized. “I hope we have a very long engagement.”

  Sisi attempted a cheerful manner, speaking as she undressed for bed. “Don’t fret. You won’t have to do it much, Helene. Just until you give Franz some sons.”

  Helene considered this. “Think about our family—there’s me, you, Karl, Marie, Mathilde, Sophie-Charlotte, and baby Max. Can you believe that Mamma and Papa have done it seven times?” Helene asked.

  “No, that shocks me,” Sisi answered, shaking her head, and the two of them erupted in giggles.

  “Well, I’m glad to see you two girls in good spirits once more.” Duchess Ludovika appeared at the doorway with fresh candles for her daughters. “Hopefully you’ve resigned
yourself to the ghastly fate of marrying an emperor, Néné?”

  “Mamma!” Sisi waved their mother into the bedroom. The duchess deposited the candles on the nightstand and kissed each of her daughters on the forehead. “Don’t stay up too late, girls.” She made her way to the door, pulling its handle as she exited. “And don’t forget.”

  “We know, we know,” Sisi chimed in response. “Our prayers.”

  “Good night.” Ludovika smiled, her head disappearing behind the shutting door.

  Sisi climbed into bed and kicked the covers back, her body warm from the excitement of the evening and the balmy summer air. She sighed, watching her sister where she combed her dark hair before the streaked mirror.

  Sensing that Helene’s initial panic had dissipated a bit, that her spirits might even be lifting, Sisi broached the topic once more. “Really, Helene, the news is not that terrible. An emperor? You would have thought they had told you that you were betrothed to marry the local butcher, the way you responded to the news.”

  Helene thought about this as she replaced her ivory comb on the nightstand and joined Sisi in bed. “At least if I married the local butcher I could remain close to home. I could come home to Possi for dinner every Sunday.”

  “Yes, and you and your butcher-husband could bring the slaughtered animal for the dinner meal,” Sisi added.

  “And Karl would leave me alone, lest he fear that he might end up in the stew,” Helene added, reluctantly joining Sisi in a giggle.

  After several moments Sisi spoke, adjusting her long hair that fell around her on the pillow. “I will miss it here, though.”

  Helene nodded, her features knit in an anxious expression as they reflected the flickering of the candlelight.

  “I wonder what Franz is like,” Sisi mused, remembering the shy, cinnamon-haired boy of years ago. “It’s all so surreal.” Sisi envisioned the meeting—Helene and this cousin who had grown into the emperor. Meanwhile all of the jilted princesses, countesses, and marquesses of court would gather round, looking on, sniffing for any sign of weakness on Helene’s part, any opening through which to launch a counterassault. Would Helene summon the nerve to charm this young ruler—Europe’s most powerful, most desirable young bachelor? She’d have to. Helene had no other choice.

  “Just think about it,” Sisi thought aloud, “Helene, born as Duchess of Bavaria from the House of Wittelsbach, becomes Empress of Austria.”

  Helene offered no response to this, burrowing under the covers even though the night was a warm one.

  “Néné, you’re awfully quiet.” Sisi reached across the bed, snuggling into her sister’s frame. Oh, how she would miss her. But she swallowed that sadness. Wasn’t her job now to be strong for Néné? “Come now, talk to me. How are you feeling?”

  After a pause, her sister spoke. “I’m not feeling very . . . imperial.”

  “Oh, Néné. My shy, quiet sister. I won’t allow you such self-doubt. You don’t even realize how sweet you are. Or how lovely.” Sisi’s voice was jarringly loud compared to her sister’s as she declared, determinedly: “You shall be splendid. We shall present the emperor with a bride so lovely, he will say he has never seen her equal.”

  Later that night, after Helene had slipped off into a fretful sleep, Sisi rose from bed and stared out the window, enlivened by her thoughts and the low-hanging moon that cast a bright glow over the fields and hillsides. Sleep eluded her, as it often did. And on the other side of the window, the night waited, warm and serene, luring her out of the house.

  Sisi fumbled in the dark for her dressing gown, careful not to creak the wooden floorboards as she did so. She slid her feet into her favorite slippers, a pair of plush, red-velvet clogs. These tattered dressing shoes, a gift on her fifteenth birthday, carried her across the earth whenever she set out on these solitary midnight adventures. These slippers were stained by pieces of the Possenhofen earth, its grass and mud permanently stuck to the soles. Sisi decided, in that moment, that these red slippers would come with her to court. In that way, she laughed to herself, she might always be able to tread on her beloved Bavarian soil.

  Outside an owl droned its melancholy melody. The crickets in the fields serenaded one another, their bodies like small violins whose nocturnal waltzes had existed long before Johann Strauss had begun composing in Vienna. The frogs in nearby Lake Starnberg belched and blurted out their familiar amorous rhapsodies. Sisi spread her arms wide and looked up at the moon, laughing, reveling in and embracing everything about this night.

  Sisi’s parents had not raised her to be strictly religious. Spiritual, yes, but not dogmatic. Her father had even shown himself to be lenient when it came to the Reformers in the duchy, the Protestants who so brazenly flouted the Catholic Church and received punishment for doing so elsewhere.

  But they had imbued in Sisi an appreciation for the Almighty and His presence all around her. While God felt elusive and difficult to find in some of the dank old churches—His words garbled in impenetrable Latin—Sisi felt His undeniable presence in the majesty of the mountains, in the inevitability of sunrise and the softness of moonlight. God was the unseen power that set in motion the natural world; the seasons that ripened and shifted, each one beautiful in its own way; the chamois that leapt uphill without tiring or the stallion that outran the wind.

  Oh, how she would miss Possi!

  Sisi remained outside, tracing the perimeter of the squat white castle in silence for quite some time, when suddenly her musings were interrupted by a rustling noise. A sound decidedly different from the crickets and the owls. A human sound. She turned and saw him: a figure gliding across the meadow, in the direction of the village. It was dark, but Sisi knew immediately whose retreating shape she saw. “Papa,” she said. Quietly, so he wouldn’t hear her. Off, most likely, to see some female consort of his. Sisi sighed.

  “Please let Franz be more faithful to Helene than Papa has been to Mamma,” Sisi begged, sending the prayer out into the warm, still night.

  II.

  Once I was so young and rich

  In love of life and hope;

  I thought nothing could match my strength,

  The whole world was open to me.

  —Empress Elisabeth “Sisi” of Austria

  Chapter Two

  IMPERIAL RESORT AT BAD ISCHL, UPPER AUSTRIA

  AUGUST 1853

  Sisi found it hard not to grow disheartened when she watched her sister, sitting beside her in the coach and trembling like a frightened doe before the archer’s bow.

  “You’re going to be lovely, Néné. But you must smile!” The duchess seemed to be wrestling the same anxiety as she spoke to her elder daughter. Helene offered no reply.

  “Just a few more hours now, then we’ll be able to stop and freshen up. We’ll change our clothes before we arrive at the imperial resort.” The duchess managed an upbeat tone, but Sisi noticed that her mother did not attempt a smile. Did not mask the severity of the headache that had plagued her for most of the journey.

  Her mother had spent most of the long hours in the coach with her eyes fixed shut—wincing at each smack of wheel against the rutted dirt road, massaging her temples with weary fingers. When at last Mamma did open them, her eyes were uneasy, darting back and forth between her two daughters. Was Sisi imagining it, or was Ludovika studying them, as if comparing her two girls? Was that merely a jostle of the coach, or did Mamma shake her head ever so slightly, sighing, as her eyes moved from Sisi to Helene?

  Their resemblance had seemed to evaporate the instant they had set out from Possenhofen Castle. Sisi, invigorated by the journey and eager to meet her aunt and cousin, had grown more wide-eyed and merry throughout the weeks-long trip. The fresh air along the Alpine road agreed with her; her cheeks flushed a rosy hue, her honey-brown eyes shone alert and vibrant, and her voice was cheerful as she remarked on the fields and villages they passed.

  Beside her slouched Helene, who had been too nervous to either eat or sleep very well on the journe
y, and whose ashen skin appeared almost translucent against the drab black of her mourning clothes.

  “We’ll get out of these black mourning clothes first thing,” their mother said, repeating herself. As if a wardrobe change would somehow transform Helene into the imperial bride she needed to become.

  Sisi kept herself occupied in the nerve-fraught coach by staring out the windows and imagining what life must be like in each Alpine home she passed. While the farms appeared idyllic, the goat herders had it the best, she decided. For the goat herders were free to set out each morning from their cliffside chalets and march into the hills. Armed with a block of cheese, a loaf of bread, and a skin of wine, they could wander and explore the mountains and creeks with no one to answer to. Or they could find an open, sunlit field and lie down on the grass, passing away the hours under a sky so close that Sisi longed to reach up and pull some of its blueness down into her hands.

  “Bummerl would love these fields.” Sisi thought of the horse she’d left behind and felt a stab of longing for home. “We could get lost in them for hours.” Neither her mother nor her sister replied. “Mamma, will I be able to ride in Vienna?” Sisi asked.

  “I don’t know, Sisi.” The duchess answered dismissively, her head tilted back against the upholstered wall of the coach. “I would imagine that you will be much too preoccupied to be thinking about your own leisure activities. You will have an entire court to meet, and years’ worth of etiquette to learn. You think the Austrian aristocracy gives a fig about your riding? No. They expect to receive a well-mannered, well-spoken young lady. You and your sister must concern yourselves with learning the ways of the Habsburgs.”

  “I don’t know how I will bear it if I’m not able to ride,” Sisi mused aloud. But it was a mistake to say it, and she knew so immediately when she saw her mother’s eyes flash open.

  “You shall do whatever is expected of you,” her mother snapped.