The Accidental Empress (6 page)

“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 journey, 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.

“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.