The Accidental Empress (24 page)

“I shall dispense with all formalities, as you know very plainly how I feel.” Sophie swished into the room and sat herself at the opposite end of the table. It was the same slick oak table where they had dined together with such merriment the first night.

“The wedding will be in eight months.”

Sisi went numb, certain that she had misheard her aunt. Or at least misunderstood her meaning.

“Enough time to quiet the rumors that you have become . . .
pregnant
. Though that is hardly enough time for you to learn how to become empress.” Sophie stared at her niece with ill-concealed disapproval. “It takes a lifetime to prepare for this role. It was risky enough inviting Helene, knowing what sort of . . .
upbringing
you had in that household. Your father, behaving as he did. Your mother doing nothing to teach you any discipline.” Sophie twisted the rings on her fingers, catching the sunlight on the large stones.

“But Helene at least had the temperament for it. She was reserved, and dignified, and she knew her place. And she was more mature than a
child.
But you? You have exactly the wrong disposition.” Sophie’s voice was thick with annoyance, and her gaze slid away from Sisi toward the floor. The next words were spoken under her breath, a catalogue of the flaws she detected in the young girl opposite her.
“Willful. Independent. Far too opinionated.”
Sophie turned back toward Sisi now, addressing her once more. “And you did no favors for yourself by crossing
me
on your quest to steal my son’s heart.”

Sisi tried to answer, to defend herself. But before she could, Sophie lifted a hand, silencing her: “Let me finish. He seems determined to move forward with this”—Sophie paused, pursing her lips, as if the words tasted bitter—“match.” Sophie exhaled, a sigh. “You will be married in April. In Vienna, at
Augustinerkirche
. The church where all Habsburgs are wed.”

Sisi’s lips pulled apart in a stunned smile, while Sophie’s scowl made it clear that she was loath to bestow this honor on her niece. “If you aren’t a virgin on your wedding night, I will know, do you understand? And I will have a priest on hand to nullify the union before you’ve even sat down to breakfast the next day.”

Sophie kept talking, laying out a list of warnings to Sisi: her French must be flawless by the time of the wedding. Her dancing skills were glaringly insufficient. Her wardrobe was lacking. And she had better have her teeth straightened and whitened, or they would be the cause of endless ridicule in Vienna.

But Sisi had stopped listening. These insults and threats slid over her like slippery raindrops. There was only one bit of information in this barrage to which she clung—the announcement that she would marry Franz. And with that realization, happiness. Franz had won. She, Sisi, had won. She would be Franz’s wife! Relief and joy seeped through her until she was so recklessly glad that she couldn’t help but cry out in a peal of laughter.

“What is so funny, girl? This is no laughing matter.”

It wasn’t funny, but Sisi continued to laugh.

“Stop that this instant.” Sophie’s eyes widened, staring out from a pale, pinched face. “This is highly undignified.”

It was just such beautiful news—such unexpected, incomprehensible news:
she
was going to marry Franz. She, Sisi, was to be Empress of Austria.

Sophie still looked on disapprovingly. “Now, you had better go and change. We are to meet my son at church within the hour. We will go and pray. You will need God on your side against the court at Vienna.”

Part Two

VI.

I have awakened from a rapture.

—Empress Elisabeth “Sisi” of Austria, 1854

Chapter Six

POSSENHOFEN CASTLE, BAVARIA

SEPTEMBER 1853

Sisi had never
imagined it possible to awake one day and look upon a life so entirely foreign. Unknown. As if, now that she was engaged to marry Emperor Franz Joseph, the first fifteen years of her existence had been nothing more than a dream. A memory belonging to another girl.

When Sisi returned that autumn from Bad Ischl to Possenhofen, it was to an unfamiliar way of life; her days were no longer her own. The fall, usually her favorite time of year for getting lost in the woods atop her horse, was not hers to enjoy. “There isn’t enough time!” became her mother’s daily, frantic refrain.

The imperial tutors descended on Possi first, with their heavy books, their impeccably glossy spectacles, and their stern, mustached lips. They were with Sisi from the moment she awoke until long after supper. Her Italian was deplorable, her Hungarian was nonexistent, and her French
had
to improve—on that score, everyone seemed to agree. Even her grasp of German, her native tongue, presented concerns; Sisi needed to know not simply how to
speak
, but how to
converse.
Additionally, she needed to become an expert, in a matter of months, on the topics of Austrian history, the Habsburg family, and life at court. On this last topic there existed voluminous pages of protocol to be learned, never-ending lists of nobles and courtiers with whom to become familiar, and scrolls on all of her various new homes, territories, and responsibilities.

Franz Joseph had been schooled and groomed for his role since his first days in the nursery; he had known no other companionship than that of royal relatives, fashionable courtiers, and attentive tutors. For Sisi, fifteen years of a relaxed, provincial upbringing now had to be unlearned and remedied in just a matter of months. Nobody around her seemed to believe it possible.

Sisi’s dancing skills, as Sophie had repeatedly pointed out, were also glaringly insufficient. Vienna had given the world the waltz; now Sisi would be expected to take her place at the fore of the imperial ballrooms opposite the emperor, a famously good dancer, and she must not embarrass the Habsburgs. So, rather than tiring her legs out on the lengthy rides and hikes through the Bavarian mountains that she had always relished, Sisi wore her feet raw that autumn with countless hours of practicing waltzes, polkas, and quadrilles. She heard violins keeping three-quarter time in her sleep.

Even Sisi’s body no longer seemed to be her own; she was poked and prodded and measured as she had never before been. Dentists were sent from Vienna to pull on and straighten the young bride’s teeth, and to apply a paste that her Aunt Sophie hoped would render them an appropriately pristine shade of white. Milliners and tailors and shoemakers and seamstresses from throughout Bavaria arrived at Possenhofen, stitching and sewing from sunrise to sunset. None of the snappish, harried craftspeople believed it possible to complete the imperial trousseau by the time of the bride’s departure for Vienna. Urgent word went out to all the neighboring nunneries throughout the region: the cloistered sisters
must
help their young duchess prepare a wardrobe worthy of an emperor’s wife. They must pray for Sisi, yes, but even more important, they must
stitch
for Sisi. Even God, it seemed, was enlisted to help this ill-prepared girl.

When Sisi wasn’t learning history, or practicing the art of speaking, or dancing, or nursing an aching tooth, she was sitting. She sat for countless hours as the imperial artists sketched and studied and re-created her likeness. The people were ravenous for a glimpse of the girl who had enchanted their emperor: a girl whose beauty was already being heralded by those who had been fortunate enough to meet this unknown duchess in Bad Ischl. Her face, the imperial artists told Sisi, would be the most recognized face in all of Vienna before she herself ever set foot in the capital.

All that fall and winter, the gifts came. At first it had excited Sisi immensely. She had loved reaching into the velvet pouch and retrieving a small portrait of her groom. She had gasped in surprise and delight at the diamond bracelet that had accompanied it, so that she might wear Franz Joseph’s likeness around her wrist at all times. He was doing the same with her miniature portrait, her smitten groom wrote her.

Sometimes, while opening these new packages, sharing their contents with her excited mother and her quiet elder sister, Sisi would catch a glimpse of something difficult to decipher on Helene’s face. Was it a look of envy? A look of longing? Noting the strange tug on Néné’s features, the quick way in which her sister found a reason to leave the room, Sisi decided that perhaps she had better not be quite so rapturous in her joy while her sister was present.

Each day it seemed that some new gift arrived. Franz sent a silver breakfast set emblazoned with her new initials. Franz sent a cape of plush blue velvet trimmed in ermine. He sent her a brooch of jewels in the shape of a rosebud, along with fresh roses, even though it was the dead of winter and roses were nowhere to be had. He sent her gloves of kid leather in every color, and ceremonial robes embroidered in gold trim, and winter gowns and summer gowns and hats decorated with apple blossoms and ostrich feathers. She received capes and purses and mantillas and satin slippers. Her favorite gift was the pet parrot Franz sent her, along with a note declaring how eager he was to show her his own private zoo at Schönbrunn Palace.

Franz wrote dutifully, gushing to Sisi about how his thoughts drifted from his government papers, wandering from Vienna back to their “divine sojourn” together in the mountains. He assured her of his mother’s excitement for the coming wedding. Perhaps in an effort to earn back her son’s good favor, or else to ingratiate herself with the young bride who would inevitably be moving into her home, Sophie’s demeanor had changed entirely. According to Franz, his mother now raved to anyone who would listen about the “divine little lady” her son had chosen. Sophie had even decided that the new wing on the Kaiservilla would be laid out in the shape of the letter
E
, in honor of her son’s bride.

For her sixteenth birthday, the night before Christmas, Sisi received a letter detailing her aunt’s efforts to prepare the imperial suite that the newlyweds would occupy after the wedding. Sisi’s opinion was not sought, but Sophie wrote that she was certain that the future empress would be perfectly delighted. Everything, Sophie assured her, was being done with Sisi’s comfort and pleasure in mind. Sophie had bought her niece a toiletry set of pure gold. The bed and windows were to be draped in pale-blue lyonnaise silk. Sophie had arranged for her niece to have Chinese porcelain, hand-stitched carpets, custom furniture, and portraits from the Habsburg family’s own collection.