The Accidental Empress (16 page)

“And they shall love you, in return,” she answered. She was sure of it.

“Love is not my primary concern,” Franz answered matter-of-factly, looking out over the field. “Let them love their queen. Their crown princes and princesses. But the emperor must have their respect. That’s of the utmost importance.”

Sisi frowned at this curious statement. “But . . . surely you’d long for both? Their love
and
their respect?”

Franz turned to her now, speaking as if he were reciting an edict that he had memorized long ago, in his earliest days as a boy in the imperial nursery. “I rule by divine right. If they love God, then they love me. But to rule . . . to rule, a king needs respect.”

Sisi considered this, twisting the reins in her fingers. “Do you not believe that people are motivated primarily by their hearts . . . by their love . . . more so than by anything else?”

Franz turned now, staring at Sisi with an intensity that made her long to squirm in her saddle. But she forced herself to hold his blue eyes with her own. After what felt like an interminable silence, he looked away and said: “Perhaps you’re right, Cousin Elisabeth.”

But Sisi was not sure whether he actually believed that.

Franz shrugged his shoulders, assuming a lighter tone as he redirected the conversation. “Enough politics.” Gesturing out over the scenery before them, he observed: “The vistas are not bad, are they?”

Sisi stared across the wide fields and admired the miles of rolling, uninterrupted green. Past the fields, the craggy mountains rose toward the sky, and Sisi spotted a small farmhouse tucked into the very seam where the mountains split from the fields. Franz led them toward this spot now. As they approached the farmhouse, Sisi spotted several girls chasing a homemade kite while their mother stood nearby, hunched over a small vegetable garden.

“Hello,” Sisi waved at the girls as they passed. Oblivious of their imperial visitor, the little girls continued to pursue their kite as their mother looked up from her gardening.

“Your Majesty!” The woman gasped, allowing the vegetables collected in her apron to tumble to the ground. “Girls, stop! Bow to the emperor!” The girls caught the kite and stood still, dumbstruck, as Sisi and Franz rode by.

“Lovely day to fly a kite,” Franz called out, allowing a smile to soften the impact of his impossibly stiff posture.

Within several minutes they had crossed the field and began a slow ascent toward the nearby foothills. Sisi looked back, glancing once more over the meadow they had traversed, and noticed a cluster of horses trailing them. Uniformed men sitting with rigid uprightness atop thick-chested war horses. The group now passed the same farm at which Sisi and Franz had just been greeted.

“Your Maj—Franz.” Sisi studied the group, its formation like that of a small army. “I think we are being followed.”

“We most certainly are.” Franz glanced sideways at her, unfazed.

“Who are they?”

Franz leaned his head to the side. “The imperial guard.”

“Your bodyguards?” Sisi narrowed her eyes to gain a better look; there were about a dozen of them, all riding identical brown Hanoverians. She spotted the Habsburg-Lorraine crest on the side of each horse’s blanket. “Do they follow you everywhere?”

“Everywhere except the privy closet and the bedroom,” Franz answered, looking straight ahead. Sisi flushed.

“Let’s ride up a little. The view gets better the higher you climb.” Franz pressed his heels into Sieger’s side, picking up his speed and breaking stride with Sisi and Diamant.

“All right,” Sisi answered, spurring Diamant forward.

She caught up with him and they galloped uphill, side by side, for a while. When she did steal a view of her cousin, she noted to herself how good Franz looked atop his horse: his face was relaxed, his seat confident.

He turned to catch her staring at him, and he slowed the pace to a trot. Sisi matched him. “You ride well, Elisabeth.”

“Thank you,” she answered, her breath uneven. She remembered Aunt Sophie’s words from the night before:
Franz thinks there’s nothing more attractive than a young woman with a fine seat atop a horse.

Franz interrupted her thoughts: “It’s rare for a young woman to ride as skillfully as a man, is it not? Mother always tired long before the men in our riding parties.”

Sisi reddened, not sure whether his observation also carried with it a tinge of judgment, even disapproval. “My father was . . . well, less traditional, you might say.” She neglected to add that, at times, he had been so unconventional that he had encouraged his daughter to ride bareback, like the peasants with whom he mingled and caroused. “Papa cared very little for the conventions that restrict young girls. He thought there was nothing more ennobling for us than to spend time out of doors.”

“I had heard that. From Mother.”

He had heard that?
What did that mean? Perhaps he been
warned
about their unruly upbringing? Sisi wondered this to herself, remembering the disdain with which Sophie had spoken of her father the evening before, bristling at the thought.

“Your father encouraged you to ride often, then?” Franz continued.

Sisi felt the need to come to Papa’s defense now. “Papa did not believe all of the conventional wisdom that women are somehow the weaker sex,” Sisi answered. “My parents were perhaps more lax with our upbringing than others of their station are. But I am grateful of it.”

Franz looked at Sisi appraisingly, as if entertained by her defiance. “The girl they have raised can keep apace with the emperor himself. I suppose that’s perhaps the best piece of evidence yet that women should be allowed to exert themselves.”

So he was not disappointed with her after all, Sisi noted. In fact, he seemed appreciative of her strength.

“So there was to be no keeping you indoors with your needlepoint and dance lessons, Cousin Elisabeth?”

“You’ve seen my inadequacy when it comes to Latin.” Sisi grinned. “No, my favorite classroom was always the outdoors.” She thought back to Possi, to days spent in the woods with her father. Perhaps it was homesickness. Perhaps it was the exposure to Franz’s entirely different upbringing. But from this distance, the duke stood in Sisi’s mind as a glossier, more attractive version of himself. Less shaky, bloodshot, and erratic, and more of a free spirit, like herself. “Papa would take me hiking, and I would skip and hop about like a chamois as he taught me about the plants and wild animals. My history lessons were the tales he would tell me while we rode, side by side.”

Franz nodded, listening. “But your sister, Helene, she does not like to ride as you do?”

It was the first time that Helene’s name had been spoken between them, Sisi realized, noting the lump of guilt in her stomach. “I’m afraid not,” Sisi answered. “She had a bad fall once when we were younger. She’s never wanted to get on a horse since then.”

“Ah, so you were lucky. You escaped a similar trauma?”

“Oh no, I fell all the time. Scared Mamma nearly to death. But I refused to give it up. Papa liked to joke that, had we not been born noble, he and I would have been performers in the circus.”

Franz laughed at this and Sisi couldn’t help but smile. She was enjoying his company more than she had expected to. Below them, farther down the hill, the imperial guard continued to trail her and Franz.

Franz looked from his bodyguards to Sisi, a mischievous flicker in his pale-blue eyes. “Shall we give them some exercise?”

“Pardon?”

“Try to shake them off our trail?” Franz said, leaning his head to one side as he smiled at her.

Sisi sat up a bit straighter, excited by the challenge.

“If ever two riders could manage it, it’s us,” Franz said. “What do you say?”

Sisi nodded.

“Come on, Sieger, let’s ride!” Franz clapped the reins against the horse, and Sieger set off into a forceful, determined run that propelled his imperial cargo straight up the mountain.

“Diamant, let’s go!” Sisi followed suit, spurring the horse to the challenge. Diamant was as strong as a young horse in her prime could be, and her gait was smooth and sure. It was a thrill unlike anything Sisi had ever experienced, and she surrendered to the welcome rush of the pine-tinged breeze in her face, the thunderous pulse of the hooves beneath her. Her breath heaved in and out in labored, heavy panting, and before long she found her arms and legs aching, a feeling of fatigue that she found familiar and incredibly comforting. This was the feeling of exertion she had always sought in her rides, and her heart beat in a wild, carefree rhythm.

Eventually the trail flattened slightly and Franz slowed his horse’s pace. “Slower now, Sieger. We lost them. Good boy, good boy.”

Sisi reined in Diamant to keep Sieger’s pace. The horses, like their riders, were short of breath, and coated in a glossy sheen of perspiration. “I think they must be a mile behind us,” Sisi panted.

“There’s a stream here, let’s have some water.” Franz pulled Sieger to a full stop and dismounted. He tied Sieger and then reached for Sisi’s hand, helping her down from Diamant. Warm from the weather and the ride, Sisi unclipped her helmet and removed it, allowing her hair to fall freely around her shoulders.

“I hope that was not too strenuous.” Franz studied her, taking her arm and guiding her upstream from where the horses were drinking.

Sisi smiled. “Not at all.”

“I’m impressed, Cousin Elisabeth. You didn’t grow weary?”

“Just thirsty,” she answered.

“Well, we are in the right spot.”

The clearing was just wide enough to allow the slow stream to carve a narrow path through the pines and the mossy earth. The trees that bordered the clearing were amply stocked with birds, carefree creatures who now trilled out the arrival of these two new visitors. It was a lovely setting. Too lovely, in fact, and Sisi felt it once more: that troublesome lump of guilt in her gut. What must Helene be doing now, at the bottom of this hill?

Sisi pulled her eyes away from Franz and pointed at the spring, its waters collecting in a clear, shimmering pool before them. “So, is this some of the famous Bad Ischl water?” She asked it in what she hoped was a casual, lighthearted tone. The tone used between friends.

“Indeed. You said you were thirsty?”

Sisi nodded.

“I personally doubt all of the tales about this water being therapeutic, and having curative powers. But it certainly tastes good.” Franz knelt on the soft ground and bent forward toward the spring. “Mother claims it was this water that . . .” He paused suddenly.

“That what?” Sisi asked, noting with humor that her polite cousin’s cheeks were now flushed a deep crimson.

“That . . . er . . . allowed her to have me.”

“Then perhaps I had better not drink it, after all,” Sisi chirped, an impulsive response that struck her as far too forward the moment it slipped from her lips.

However, to her relief, Franz erupted in laughter. “I believe there were other variables involved.” He looked down, his cheeks growing even more deeply colored. Sisi averted her eyes, trying to suppress her own giddy, even girlish laughter.

“Anyhow”—Franz tossed his shoulders back, regaining his practiced composure—“you must try the waters, Cousin Elisabeth. I insist.” Dipping his fingers, Franz ruptured the calm glassiness of its surface, sending rippling rings through the water. When he lifted his cupped hands, he had captured enough to drink. Sisi did the same.

“Cheers.” Franz smiled at her.

“Cheers,” Sisi replied. “To your health, Cousin Franz.”

“No, to yours, Elisabeth.” They sipped the water, its cold sweetness sending a welcome chill through Sisi’s body. She dipped her hands back under the surface and helped herself to a second drink.

“You work up quite a thirst when riding in the middle of the summer heat. And an appetite. I should have thought to bring some wine and cheese.” Franz reached for a second sip.

“This water will do just fine for now,” Sisi answered, wiping her mouth before leaning forward to take another sip.

As she did so, she detected a noise in the distance. It was faint at first, two voices. Sitting upright, she looked deeper into the forest. Franz had heard it now, too, and he rose to his feet.

Just then two people emerged from the brush, arguing loudly.

“I told you, we’ll get a bit lower, the spring is too cold up ’ere!”

“I’m thirsty
now
, Marga.” The man appeared on the trail first, but not from the lower direction of the imperial guards. They were coming from above, descending the mountain from an even higher point.

“Well, pardon me, my fine gentleman and lady.” The gray-haired hiker paused, looking to his female companion. Sisi supposed them to be man and wife.

Their clothing betrayed that they did not belong in the court, nor did they belong in the village of Bad Ischl below. No, they looked like they came from some remote mountain chalet. The man wore simple black pants and a gray sackcloth shirt. The woman, sweaty and browned from the sun, wore a faded dress covered by a linen apron that looked as if it hadn’t been new for years.

Though their wrinkled skin and thinning hair spoke to their advanced age, they emerged on the trail with a spry nimbleness that indicated their familiarity and comfort in the hills. The woman held a basket, filled with what looked to Sisi like mushrooms, and the man carried a satchel across his back stacked with kindling wood.