The Accidental Empress (2 page)

Heeding his mother’s advice, Franz Joseph sends an invitation to Bavaria, where his pretty young cousin, a girl named Helene, is cowed and flattered to receive such a summons. When Helene’s younger sister, a spirited young girl of fifteen named Sisi, joins her elder sister, no one involved knows how deeply their lives—and indeed the world—are about to change. . . .

Prologue

BUDAPEST, HUNGARY

JUNE 8, 1867

“Empress, we are ready for you.”

She turns, a small nod and a flourish of her hand. “Time to assume the role.” She slips her arms through the sleeves.The silken fabric, expertly stitched and tailored, molds around her curves. My, but she has never quite grown accustomed to how heavy these things are. Heavier, it seems, than her own tired frame.

All around her, nervous footmen and chattering attendants fuss, bickering like frantic bees in the hive that encircles their all-important leader.

“Fluff her skirt!”

“Mind the trim!”

“Time to go!”

“Can’t be time already, can it?”

“Ready, Empress Elisabeth?” The imperial hairdresser stands before her, the ancient crown poised between two fingers, its diamonds catching a glint of candlelight. As delicate as the wisps of a spiderweb. And yet, durable enough to have survived the centuries, to have persisted longer than the royal heads on which it has rested. Heads now embalmed, hairs now gray and fallen out.

“Ready.” She nods, lowering her chin so that the diadem can be nestled into her chestnut curls—curls that have been named the most valuable crown jewels in all of the Habsburg collection. The curls, they say, that won her the emperor’s heart.

The crown in place, she glides forward and glances at herself in the full-length mirror. She does make an arresting vision; even she has to admit it.

The gown is of white and silver brocade, laced with rows of diamonds and stitched to hug her narrow figure. A long cape of white satin drapes over her shoulders before tumbling to the ground. But it’s her face that they always want to see, more so than any imperial stitching or ancient tiara. They’ve all heard of her slanting, honey-colored eyes. Her smoothly sculpted cheekbones. Her lips, the lips that the emperor once declared as “fresh as strawberries.” The emperor. Her heart lurches clumsily in her breast. God, but she is tired. Will she have the energy to survive this day?

A knock, and her heart trips once more. She glances up, her eyes darting to the heavy oaken door. Which one of them will it be on the other side? Will it be the emperor? Or will it be . . . him? Her cheeks grow warm at the thought, and she chides herself. Even after everything she has been through, she still reddens like a girl of sixteen at the thought of him, the mention of his name. Her own husband doesn’t pull such a scarlet blush to her cheeks.

The door lumbers open, groaning like a sluggish guard woken from his midnight watch after too much ale. In an instant, she sees him, and he sees her. He takes her in. She can tell from his face that she has succeeded in beating the breath from his gut; he wears the look of a stunned animal.

“Sisi,” is all he manages to say. He throws his arms up, wide, as if to pull her into him. But he checks himself, takes note of the servants bustling about.

“Your Majesty.” He clears his throat. “Are you ready?”

She inhales, considering the question. Is she ready? No. She never really was ready, she supposes. That was the problem, wasn’t it? But she lifts her chin, throwing her shoulders back.

“I am,” she answers, one quick nod. She glides forward. The dress drags—its splendor too heavy for her exhausted body. But she sighs and continues across the room.

She can already hear them on the other side of the walls. Not so much the individual cheers and cries, but a dull, persistent throb. Constant. Like the crush of the sea waves on the earth: unyielding, unceasing.

He offers his arm and she slides her own through it, her soft flesh pressing into his heavily starched uniform. The doors open wider now. She blinks, longing to pull a gloved hand upward. To shield herself, to hide her face from all of those direct, inquisitive eyes. . . . Eyes that will study her and take her in, as if she is theirs for consuming. She seethes with that instinctive, familiar desire to flee, to escape. But she checks her impulse. Stands a bit taller.

And then she hears it. “Sisi!”

A breath inward. A moment to fortify herself as she turns to him. “It is time.” And it was. At last, it was time.

Part One

Chapter One

POSSENHOFEN CASTLE, BAVARIA

JULY 1853

Sisi crouched low,
peering over the wall of brush. Her gaze was alert, her legs ready to spring to action, her heart pumping blood throughout her veins with a speed that only the hunted can sustain.

“Come out, you cowards!”

Just then Sisi spotted the figure crossing the meadow, a dark silhouette piercing the backdrop of the crenellated white castle and deep-blue sky, and she ducked once more out of sight. Her brother Karl had not yet found her, and he yanked on his horse in frustration, as if to remind the beast of the authority his sisters so brazenly flouted.

Sisi watched Karl, her contempt thickening as she discerned his thoughts: clutching the reins, he imagined himself a Germanic warrior atop a stallion, ready to ride on the Hungarians or the Poles and seize glory from the battlefield.

“Karl the Beneficent, Duke of Bavaria, demands that you come meet your lord and surrender!” He scoured the woods, his words finding Sisi even as his eyes failed to locate her. “Kiss the ring and I shall show you mercy—more mercy than you deserve. But if you continue to run and hide like rodents, I shall have to flush you out. And when I do, you shall wish you had surrendered!” The horse pawed at the ground, agitated under Karl’s grip.

Sisi was fed up with being the prey. The odds were not just; if she had had the chance to mount her own horse, Bummerl, she would chase Karl all the way to the Bavarian border, and he knew that. But she hadn’t expected to have to fend off her brother when she had wandered toward the wooded lake shore with her sister, Helene, to pick wildflowers.

“We should surrender, Sisi.” Helene crouched beside her, worry pulling on her sharp, dark features. “You heard him. Otherwise, he will make trouble for us.”

“Nonsense, Helene.”

Two years younger than Sisi, her brother was nearly twice her size, his thirteen-year-old body robust from adolescence, beer, and bratwurst. But though she lacked his girth, Sisi knew she could best Karl with wit.

“We’ll show Karl the Beneficent what a formidable foe he really is.” Sisi nodded at her sister, picking up a cool, smooth stone. Helene responded with a whimpering sound.

“So be it,” Karl hollered from outside the woodline, on the far side of the meadow. “You have chosen your own fate. And that fate is—
pain
!” Karl dug his leather boots into the sides of his horse. The beast whinnied in response, and then Sisi felt the earth begin to vibrate beneath her.

“Now we’re really in for it, Sisi.” Helene paced in their hiding spot like a wounded animal as the sound of hoofbeats grew louder.

“Hush, Néné.” Sisi quieted her elder sister. Oh, how she longed to be atop Bummerl! “Helene, when I say ‘run’—you run. Understand?”

“Run where? Right into the lake?”

“No.” Sisi shook her head. “In the other direction. Across the meadow, toward home.”

“Toward
Karl
?”

“Trust me, Néné, all right?” After a pause, Helene nodded her reluctant assent. Sisi poked her head out once more from behind the brush and saw that her brother had almost cleared the entirety of the meadow. He rode toward the woods where they hid, his eyes narrowed to two slits as he scoured the brushline. But he had not yet discovered their hiding spot. Sisi took aim, raising her hand and the rock in it. The hoofbeats were like cannon blasts now as Karl barreled toward them. She waited, patiently, allowing him to come still closer. When he was within striking distance, Sisi released the rock, hurling it with as much precision as she could manage.

“Ouch!” Karl yelped in pain, halting his horse and sliding out of the saddle before collapsing into a heap on the ground. From the stream of blood curling downward from his nose, Sisi knew she had hit her mark.

They had to seize their opening. “Helene,
run
!” Sisi ordered, pushing off from her crouched position. She charged toward home on the other side of the field.

“Why, you little witch!” Karl yelled at Sisi’s passing figure, but he remained prostrate on the ground, stunned by her assault.

Heart flying in the heady moment of victory, Sisi raced across the meadow toward the large house. Her own legs might not carry her as swiftly as Bummerl’s could, but they were strong, agile from years of skipping up the mountains, swimming in the lake, hopping across the fields in search of plants and small animals. They would be enough to deliver her to safety.

Glancing over her shoulder to ensure that Helene followed, Sisi cried: “Hurry up, Helene!” She grabbed her older sister’s arm, forcing her to keep apace. They shared the same parents, but little else. Helene thrived indoors: studying languages, reading philosophy, knitting, or writing quietly in a shadowy corner by a fire. Sisi always took charge when they were out of doors.

A few more steps and, hands linked, they cleared the meadow. Panting, Sisi rushed past a startled footman and flew into the front hall of the castle, Helene following behind her. Through the latticed window she saw that her brother had regained his mount and now trotted away from the lake toward home.

“Papa,” Sisi cried, running into the large drawing room. “Oh, thank goodness you’re here, Papa!”

Duke Maximilian’s inanimate frame occupied a large, overstuffed chair in the corner of the dark room. At his feet, beside his mud-licked boots, reclined two snoring hounds, their own paws caked in dirt. They lifted their heavy heads in a perfunctory greeting as the girls ran in, but the duke continued to snore. A lit pipe sent up a curl of smoke where it burned in Duke Max’s lap, forgotten.

“Papa, wake up.” Sisi removed the hot pipe before it singed a hole in his woolen pants, and placed it on the side table. “Wake up!” The duke choked out one last snore before he emerged from his deep slumber, his breath overripe with the sour stench of beer.

“Papa, Karl is chasing Néné and me. Please, wake up.”

“What’s that?” The duke rubbed his eyes, bloodshot and droopy-lidded.

Sisi heard her brother barking a question at the startled servants outside: “Which way did they go?” The front door opened and she heard Karl step into the great hall, his boots landing heavily on the stone floor.

“Ah, Sisi.” Now Duke Maximilian shifted in his armchair, staring at her through glassy eyes, the same honey color as Sisi’s, though not lucid this afternoon. “You’ve arrived just in time. I was just learning a new tavern song.” The duke looked at his favorite daughter with a drowsy grin, lifting an index finger as he began to sound out a bouncy, peasant tune. “But have the others left? Gone home, already?” Duke Max looked around, his gaze listless.

Sisi’s frame sagged as she heard Karl’s footsteps outside the drawing room. “Papa, please—”

“You little wretch, you’ll get it this time.” Just then, her brother appeared in the doorway. His nose seemed to have stopped bleeding, but a sheen of crimson had caked into a muddy line between his nose and lips. “You hit me in the face with that rock.”

Sisi straightened up, turning from her father to face her brother. “You deserved it.”

Helene began to simper. “Papa, please.” But their father stared into the sputtering flames of the fireplace, his empty beer mug tipped toward his lips in an effort to sponge any last drop.