The Accidental Empress Page 5

  “Mamma,” Sisi started, taken aback by the duchess’s recent irritability. Her mother sighed by way of reply, shutting her eyes once more. A tense silence rocked with them in the coach.

  Eventually, the duchess spoke. “I apologize, Sisi. It’s just that . . . well, I fear that . . .” She hesitated, then said, “I only wish for you two girls to succeed.”

  Sisi considered this. How different could court life be? They were, after all, the daughters of a duke. And besides, such obvious worrying on her mother’s part would not help Helene gain confidence before the important meeting with her groom. Speaking with more self-assurance than she felt, Sisi answered: “Don’t be nervous, Mamma. Of course we shall succeed.” She looked determinedly into her sister’s eyes as if to convince Helene of this statement’s inevitability. “Besides, as you said, we will have Aunt Sophie to help us.”

  The duchess now opened her eyes, and the equivocal look she gave her daughter did not offer any reassurance. “Let’s hope that we have Sophie’s backing,” was Ludovika’s response.

  Sisi felt for her mother, because she knew that it was on her two daughters’ behalf that the duchess worried so acutely. Ludovika’s initial joy following the invitation to court had been whittled down over the past month, replaced now by a sharp tongue and scrutinizing stare. Sisi’s and Helene’s previously permissible—even customary—behavior now seemed to elicit harsh chidings. Like when, on the road, Sisi had gotten out of the carriage to help the groom water the horses, and had unwittingly splashed her dress.

  “You do not water the horses like a stable boy!” It had been just the latest in a recent litany of unanticipated rebukes and censures.

  “You will not answer back when your Aunt Sophie speaks to you.”

  “You will not gallop down the hallways at court like a wild ruffian.”

  “You will not appear at dinner dirty, like a country peasant.”

  The duchess, usually so measured, seemed to wrestle with some undeniable fear when it came to her elder sister. Days before they’d set off from Possenhofen, Sisi had overheard her parents whispering in her father’s study.

  “But what if they inadvertently say something to offend him? Or worse, to offend Sophie? They know nothing of the stringency of court protocol.”

  “They aren’t farmhands, Ludovika, they are perfectly nice girls,” the duke had replied. “And of aristocratic birth, might I add.”

  “Yes, but they are so naïve, Max. Instead of language and dancing lessons, we let them ride horses through the fields and hook fish in the lake.” Ludovika, pacing the cramped study, had spoken with an urgency that Sisi had rarely heard in her mother’s authoritative voice. “They’ve hardly seen the world outside of Possenhofen. Sophie will have their game in less than half an hour.”

  “That’s precisely what your sister wants.” The duke shrugged, staring wearily into the fire. “Sophie wants a wife for her son whom she can control. She’ll see Helene’s naïveté as a positive—something she can use to her advantage.”

  Ludovika had considered this in a brooding silence. Eventually she sighed, saying: “Max, I’m beginning to think this is not the best fate for our daughter. Perhaps we thought too much of the opportunity, without considering what such a future meant for Helene. And Sisi.”

  Sisi’s spine stiffened at the mention of her name—at the fact that her mother’s voice now carried outright panic. She crouched closer to the study door. “I shudder to think how Sisi will appear at court. Why, she is just a child. And a wild, free-spirited one at that. Why, she can barely string five words together in French. And she’s never danced with anyone other than her tutor.”

  Sisi bit on her lip, irritated by this. She was young, yes. And what her mother was saying wasn’t inaccurate. But surely she wouldn’t prove such a disappointment. In fact, she decided right then to prove her mother’s fears wrong.

  “One does not say no when the Imperial Mother comes and asks for one’s daughter for marriage,” the duke reasoned. “They’ll be fine.”

  “Max. We have found so many faults with our own parents over the years. Putting us together in this . . . marriage. I know perfectly well that you were in love with another woman. And you know that I was terribly homesick, and cried every day. Aren’t we now doing the same thing?”

  Sisi couldn’t help but peek her head around the opened doorway now, eager to see her father’s response to such a raw, unguarded question. “What choice do we have?” The duke shrugged his shoulders, taking a long inhale from his pipe. “When you have daughters, and a title, that’s what you do.”

  Sisi had remained there, just outside the door, as the moments passed, her parents sitting in silence beside a dying fire. Eventually, her mother had said: “How I shall miss them. If only we could keep Sisi a few more years. She is just a child.”

  “I shall miss them, too,” the duke had sighed, and Sisi had been surprised—even touched—to hear the confession. “But it is what’s best for them. We must try to be happy with the opportunity.”

  The duchess, still perched on the arm of her husband’s leather chair, remained silent.

  “Helene will do better than you think, Ludovika. And Sisi will take care of her. That one is smart. Perhaps a little wild, you’re right. But Sophie will rein her in. Baptism by fire, that’s what I call it.”

  Word spread like a plague, as gossip tends to do in a small town, and the entire population had turned up to see them off. Some of the peasants and townspeople had smiled, some of them had wept, but all of them had blessed the Wittelsbach women with prayers, waving small miniatures of the blue and white Bavarian flag.

  Sisi, her trunks loaded in the second coach, embraced her father and her younger sisters, not knowing how long it would be before she saw them again.

  “You’re going to win them all over at court, Sisi.” The duke pulled his daughter into a hug, holding her longer than she’d ever known him to. Perhaps he had hugged her like this in her childhood, but not recently enough for her to remember it. Sisi, sensing the genuine warmth of his feelings, felt her body soften into his embrace. Suddenly, uncharacteristically, she hugged her papa back, wishing he would not let go.

  “I don’t know what I shall do without you around here, my wild girl,” he said, his voice cracking.

  “Oh, Papa.” With that, Sisi began to weep, burrowing her head into his shoulder. “Please take care of Bummerl for me, will you? And when she’s old enough to ride, Marie may have him as her own horse.”

  “That’s right, my girl.” The duke patted her long hair. For the first time in a long time, his eyes were glossy with tears, but not from drink. “You go show those Habsburgs how to ride the stallions they keep in the royal stables.”

  “I’ll miss you, Papa.” Sisi held on to his hand, looking up into the hazel eyes that she’d always been told she had inherited. “Will you please take care of yourself, Papa?”

  The duke lowered his eyes, nodding.

  “You promise, Papa?” She squeezed his hand.

  “I promise that I shall try.” When he looked at her again, he had regained his composure. “You just remember one thing. The House of Wittelsbach is a proud house. You’ve got nothing to feel inferior about in front of those Austrians, you hear me?”

  “Yes, Papa.” Sisi squeezed his hand tighter, reluctant to let it fall away. Finally, it was the duke who ended the farewell. “Go now, my girl. Go and make your old papa proud. I know that you will.”

  “Goodbye, little Max.” Sisi kissed the pudgy cheeks of her baby brother. “And you, Marie, and Mathilde, and Sophie-Charlotte.” She kissed each of the little children, running her fingers through their soft, downy hair. “When I see you all next, you might not even remember me.” She wiped a tear from her cheek, hoping that her sadness would not compound Helene’s dread.

  When Sisi approached Karl for a farewell, he pulled her into a hug. Startled by this gesture of fraternal affection, she put her arms around him. “Goodbye, Gackl,” she
said. “Take care of Papa while Mamma is with us.”

  He whispered into her ear: “I won’t have to take care of him for long. You’ll all be back before the farmers have cleared the autumn harvest.”

  That seemed more like the Karl she knew. Energized by this challenge, Sisi stiffened her posture and cocked her head to one side. “What makes you say that?”

  Karl’s glance slid sideways, toward Helene, before he looked back at Sisi. “The emperor is going to get one look at the homely, crying fiancée his mommy picked out for him and send you all back to Bavaria.”

  If anything, the taunt had only solidified Sisi’s determination to achieve success for herself and her sister. Karl would not have the satisfaction of gloating in their failure. No, they would not return to Possenhofen Castle—Sisi vowed to herself—unless it was in the royal coach, emblazoned with the imperial seal of the Habsburgs.

  “Girls, look! There’s the river.” The duchess pointed out the coach window through a canopy of leafy trees. The appearance of the Traun River signaled their approach to the outskirts of the Alpine city of Bad Ischl, where the imperial court was installed for the summer. The coach had begun its descent into the valley.

  “The waters in Bad Ischl are therapeutic.” The duchess studied the slow-moving current that now hugged the roadside. “That’s why Franz chose it for his summer retreat. Wouldn’t it be nice if we had time to take in some of the waters? We could all use a little refreshment right now.” She rubbed her forehead in a slow circular motion.

  The coach rattled onward in a determined course down the narrow mountain pass, sinking slowly into a valley framed on all sides by jagged green mountains. The panorama grew wider and more open as the coach carried them into the broad bowl of the populated valley below. Helene, who had not spoken since her very meager breakfast, looked out the window now. “We aren’t there yet, are we, Mamma?”

  “We’re close, darling. We are outside the town.” The duchess pointed farther down the road, where the outline of yellow limestone buildings sat nestled in the valley like a large cluster of edelweiss flowers.

  “That is Bad Ischl. The mountain town fit for an emperor,” the duchess mused, watching the village as they approached. Individual buildings now began to take shape, and Sisi spotted a church spire rising up above the other structures, piercing the blue skyline like a thin stone finger.

  Up ahead on the side of the road sat a modest limestone building, like a roadside tavern or café of sorts.

  “Stop the coach!” Ludovika called out the window above the rattle of the horses and wheels. The groom obeyed, and the carriage slowed to a halt. Now the faint sound of birdsong, mixed with the quiet hum of the Traun River, filled the silence around them.

  “We’ll change our clothes here at this tavern, girls, so we’re fresh when we arrive at the imperial retreat.”

  “I can’t wait to get out of this black,” Sisi admitted, already removing the dark cap she’d traveled in and shaking her curls loose. “Black is stifling in this heat. And so bland—I want to put on my most colorful dress.”

  “Don’t be immodest, Elisabeth.” The sharp look her mother shot in Sisi’s direction told her that she’d once more irritated the duchess.

  The carriage door opened and the groom extended his arm to assist the ladies out into the sunny afternoon.

  “Hans, where is the other coach?” The duchess exited first, looking from the groom to the empty mountain road. Nearby, a short man with a stocky build emerged from the tavern, intrigued by his new visitors.

  When Sisi stepped down onto the road beside her mother, she noted that the second coach, the one carrying Agata and the luggage, was not in sight.

  “If you please, my lady.” The groom, Hans, held Helene’s hand as she stepped tenuously down from the coach.

  “Well, Hans?” Ludovika looked at the groom. “The second coach?”

  Now Hans lowered his eyes. “Madame . . . we lost the others.”

  “You lost them? What do you mean, you lost them?” The duchess, in spite of her headache, appeared suddenly alert, as alert as Sisi had ever seen her. She threw a glance at the tavernkeeper before looking back to the driver. “What do you mean, Hans? How?”

  “We got separated, Duchess Ludovika.”

  “Tell me, Hans, how does one lose sight of a giant coach pulled by four horses?”

  The groom kept his gaze fixed on the muddy road as he answered: “You see, my lady, we stopped so many times on the road . . . on account of Your Excellency’s headaches, and such.” Hans stuffed both hands into his trouser pockets.

  “That doesn’t explain anything. Where are our dresses?”

  “We seem to have become separated a short while ago, my lady. During one of our unexpected stops.”

  The duchess cursed under her breath, pacing a small circle in front of the coach. When she looked once more at her daughters, their road-weary frames standing opposite her in their drab black clothes, her entire face seemed to sag.

  “Not to worry though, my lady,” the groom said. “I’m sure the dresses made it safely to the palace already.”

  “Yes, but we don’t need them to be safely at the palace, we need them to be on us when we enter the palace!” The duchess fumed, looking from the groom to her eldest daughter.

  “Helene, don’t cry. Oh please, don’t cry.” The duchess folded her daughter into a hug, looking to Sisi with eyes that did not mask her panic.

  “I’ve been in this dress for weeks, Mamma, I can’t wear this to meet him.”

  “You look lovely, Helene.”

  “Rubbish, Mamma.”

  “The emperor will commend you on the fact that you are so dutifully mourning a relative. And he will find you modest and humble. Isn’t that so, Sisi?” Ludovika, frantic, looked to her younger daughter.

  “That’s right.” Sisi nodded, picking up the line started by her mother. “Néné, it is my sister’s good and gentle spirit that I want Franz to see—not a head and neck full of jewels.”

  “Precisely,” the duchess concurred.

  But Helene was unconvinced. Her eyes fixed on the ground, she moaned: “Oh, why did I have to be born first?”

  “Helene.” The duchess, exasperated, gripped her daughter’s narrow shoulders. “You cannot change the order in which you were born any more than you can change the configuration of the stars. You must not lament such a thing.”

  “But it’s rotten luck, Mamma. I don’t want to be the empress.”

  “Helene, do you think I spent my life complaining that my elder sister got to marry a Habsburg and I had to . . .” Ludovika paused, looking to Sisi. “Well, never mind that. All I mean to say is that we must live the lives that are intended for us. And we must live them well.”

  “I’m ill suited for the life that was chosen for me,” Helene answered, chin jerking to the side. “I wish you could have just lied and said that Sisi was the elder.”

  Sisi exchanged a look with her mother over the top of Helene’s head. It was worse than just Helene’s pinched frowns and unflatteringly drab wardrobe; if her sister continued in this despondent mood, Sisi was certain that Franz’s eyes would look elsewhere.

  The church bell tower chimed three times as their carriage lurched and lumbered down the cobbled village streets, sounding the hour as if to welcome the duchess and her daughters to Bad Ischl.

  The town itself was a hive of activity, swollen with the influx of Austrians who had descended on it in the hopes of glimpsing the visiting emperor. It was certainly more crowded than the small, sleepy square in Possenhofen. Through the carriage window Sisi spotted rows of clean village shops painted in crisp shades of white and yellow. Hausfraus yelled to small children as they crossed the streets, arms burdened by cargo of crispy bread loaves, links of meat, and fresh fruit still warm from the summer sun. Small boys bearing red cheeks and short-cropped lederhosen britches weaved between passing carriages and horses, more preoccupied with the candy shop windows than the calls of th
eir mothers or the foot and horse traffic that swerved around them.

  “We’re close now.” The duchess observed the scene through the window, stitching her hands into a tight knot in her lap. “Helene, when we arrive, you must smile. Especially when you meet Franz, understood?”

  Helene nodded, once. An indecisive, noncommittal gesture.

  As the carriage turned off the main esplanade, the traffic thinned and the structures changed from commercial to residential. Modest homes lined the cobbled lane, their windows ajar and their light-colored walls trellised with climbing ropes of ivy. The afternoon sun still hung high in the sky, pouring down over the residents who sat perched on their stoops in front of overstuffed flower boxes and drawn curtains. They watched the modest carriage roll by with only moderate interest.

  A heavy wrought-iron gate waited at the end of the esplanade. If the townspeople hadn’t taken much note as Sisi’s coach had passed, the dozen armed imperial guards stationed at the gate appeared as if they surely would.

  The Kaiservilla, or Imperial Palace, was a sprawling complex set off from the main esplanade, just at the seam of where the village seeped into Alpine wilderness. The complex hugged the base of the stark, craggy mountains that framed the valley fields on one side before gently sloping down to the banks of the Traun River on the other side. The main structure of the Kaiservilla, a building of creamy-yellow limestone, had been a nobleman’s home, constructed in the popular neoclassical style.

  Sisi had been told by her mother that when the young emperor had first visited the thermal waters of this town, he had declared the spot to be “heaven on earth.” Hearing her son’s pronouncement, Sophie had swiftly bought the largest home in the area and had relocated the court there for the warmest months of the year, swapping thermal waters and clean mountain air for city stink and the threat of fever.

  “Here we are, girls.” The duchess barely breathed the words as the coach rolled to a halt outside the gate.

  Sisi studied the waiting guards in their white uniforms, starched to impossible stiffness and trimmed in red and gold silk. Imagine, she thought to herself, having a group of soldiers like this always stationed outside your gate. Must one answer to them every time one wished to leave or return home?