The Accidental Empress (63 page)

Sisi rarely passed an afternoon without some form of rigorous activity outdoors, regardless of the weather. Her favorite activity was still riding, and the imperial guards assigned to her had had to improve their equestrian skills in order not to lose sight of her when she took off out of the palace walls. Finding that Diamant could no longer keep up with her stringent demands, Sisi had acquired a new, two-year-old Lippizaner whom she called
Vándor
, Hungarian for Wanderer.

Together, Sisi and her companion would wander for hours, racing along the Danube and through the Vienna Woods, oftentimes returning to the palace sweat-soaked and cloaked in the darkness of evening.

Doctor Fischer, whom Sisi had moved permanently to court in order to replace Sophy’s ally, Doctor Seeburger, warned her against such a schedule.

“Empress, with the amount of physical strain to which your body is regularly subjected, coupled with what I must call an inadequate diet, your body will be very unlikely to conceive. I think you are jeopardizing your ability to have another son.”

“Good,” Sisi would answer, unaffected. She did not bother to tell the physician that conception was already made impossible by the fact that she and Franz never shared a bed.

Sisi saw her husband in an official capacity: she stood beside him in the dazzling splendor of the crowded Spiegelsaal, in the frenzied environment of the Burgtheater, in the pious setting of the mass. When they were together, it was easy enough to be cordial. They had settled into an understanding, a way of coexisting in their marriage. She, more popular and beloved by the common people, would accompany Franz when he required her. In return, he ensured that she was given access to her children. Though she sometimes caught him looking at her with a gaze that spoke plainly of his desire for her, Franz had not revisited the topic of a physical rapprochement.

On the evenings when she had successfully evaded Franz’s tiresome state dinners, Sisi kept to her rooms. She combatted loneliness and melancholy with a never-ending list of hobbies and tasks, an agenda to keep both her and her household occupied. She kept the candles lit and her attendants busy dispatching her orders until she was ready to fall asleep. But still, insomnia kept its nightly vigil by her bed. The hours after midnight terrified her: lying alone with nothing to do but think proved worse than any nightmare. Oftentimes, struggling against the itch of restlessness, Sisi would pull her bell and summon Franziska or Marie well before dawn.

Herr Lobkowitz had delivered on his promise of finding Sisi the two quietest, most plain and discreet young maidens at the court to attend to the empress. Countess Frederika von Rothburg spoke so softly, and with a northern accent so thick, that Sisi oftentimes found her incomprehensible. And Lady Ilse von Bittel was so timid that Sisi was certain that the withdrawn, frail young girl didn’t have the capacity to be a gossip. Andrássy, too, had delivered on his promise and had found for Sisi a kind-faced woman by the name of Ida Ferenczy, a Hungarian, to act as the attendant in her apartments.

It was late spring, shortly before the imperial court would relocate to Schönbrunn, and one of the final days before the afternoons grew unbearably warm and riding became unpleasant. Sisi had paused her afternoon ride, allowing her horse to rest. She was in a rural area, one hour’s ride outside Vienna and the palace. She lay on the cool earth beside the Danube, looking up at cloudless blue as her breathing slowed and her body cooled. She would have to bring Rudy to this spot for a picnic, she thought to herself, imagining how he would enjoy seeing the wildflowers that dotted the green fields.

And then, as it always happened, the thoughts of her children pulled her into sadness. An aching feeling somewhere deep inside, between her heart and her gut. Grief over how seldom she saw them, and how little say she had in their upbringing. Over the fact that, in just a couple of months, her sweet, sensitive little boy would be plucked from the nursery and stuffed into a military uniform and subjected to the first stages of drills and training at the hands of stern and unforgiving military tutors. It was no way to raise the gentle, free-spirited little boy. A little boy who shared her love for nature and animals and kisses and stories.

Sisi reached into her sack and retrieved her notebook. Her notebook, where she confessed her hurts and composed lines that spoke of her loneliness; it was the best salve she had. It was the only companion that did not fret, have its brow creased in worry, like Marie, when Sisi unburdened her lonely heart. It would never whisper and repeat her secrets, like an aide or attendant might. This afternoon, while the sun shone bright but her mood listed toward darkness, the words came easily.

She felt the vibration of the horse hooves, trembling in the ground beneath her, at the same time she heard their sound. She looked up from her notebook, shielding her eyes to gaze in the direction of the approaching rider. The horse slowed and the rider came into view. She smiled, in spite of her previous melancholy.

“Hello, Andrássy.”

“Empress Elisabeth, I’m so happy I’ve found you.” Andrássy halted his horse and hopped lightly from its saddle, tying it to a sapling beside Vándor. “Please, please, do not get up.” He walked toward her and took a seat on the grass beside her. “It’s a lovely day for a ride, is it not?”

“Indeed.” Sisi looked at Andrássy beside her. He wore lightweight suit pants, the matching jacket discarded, the top buttons of his white shirt undone and the collar open. She herself was in a cool riding habit of blue silk several shades lighter than the sky overhead, and she’d fashioned her hair in a loosely braided bun.

“I see you’ve slipped your imperial guard,” Andrássy noted, looking around at the empty fields surrounding them, his face flushed from the warm afternoon and the exertion of the ride. His hair was windblown and wild.

“Shortly after Vienna,” Sisi said, smiling. “It’s really shocking to me how slowly they move.”

“In the unfortunate event that our two peoples should ever go to war, I shall have to warn my fellow Hungarians that it is
you
they will have to look out for. We won’t even notice you approaching and then, all of a sudden, you’ll be on top of Buda Hill, claiming the castle and the lands of Buda and Pest.”

“Our two people?” Sisi cocked her head.

“The Austrians and the Hungarians.”

She half-grinned. “I’m not entirely certain that I wouldn’t fight on the side of the Hungarians.”

Andrássy leaned toward her. “Let’s hope you never have to make that decision.”

“Indeed, let’s hope that.”

“Have I interrupted you?” Andrássy looked down at her notebook, a recently started set of couplets scribbled across the top page.

“Oh, no.” Sisi put her hands over her work, self-conscious.

Andrássy began to recite a bit of poetry:
“Every day one should at least hear one little song, read one good poem, see one fine painting and . . .”

“
And if possible,”
Sisi finished the line for him,
“speak a few sensible words.”

Andrássy looked at her, impressed.

“I think you’re the only person at court who might know Goethe better than I do, Andrássy.”

Andrássy smiled, continuing: “I’m sorry to say you shall get no sensible words from me. But I see you writing a poem, and here”—he pointed at the river—“is beauty much greater than any painting.”

“All we lack is the music.”

“I won’t offer to sing,” he said, winking. “So, what have you written?”

Sisi looked at the notebook, fidgeting to conceal it. “Only a few lines of some very poor poetry.”

“May I?” Andrássy lifted his eyebrows.

“You really will not be impressed, I assure you.”

“I very much doubt that. I’m always impressed by you.”

Sisi hesitated. “All right.” She sighed. Andrássy took the notebook in his hands and read aloud what she had started:

“O’er thee, like thine own sea birds,

I’ll circle without rest.

For me earth holds no corner

To build a lasting nest.”

It was not until she heard the words spoken aloud that Sisi realized how deeply intimate they were. A glimpse into her lonely, unrooted soul. She felt her cheeks redden, embarrassed that Andrássy had seen these confessions on paper, and she took the notebook back in her hands. They sat beside one another, silent, for several moments.

Eventually, Andrássy looked up, his eyes serious. “You carry great sadness, Empress Elisabeth.”

She thought about it. There was no use lying to him, not after he’d read those words. She blinked, eyes lilting out over the river. “Yes, I suppose I do.”

Andrássy nodded. And then, with a thoughtful expression, he said, “Hungary.”

“Pardon?”

“Hungary is my . . . what did you call it?
Lasting nest.
Hungary is why I feel rooted.”

Sisi thought about this. Possenhofen was no longer where she felt roots. Helene was gone. Father’s health was failing. Mother had told her that she had no right to flee to Possenhofen any longer. No, that was Karl’s nest now, as she had always known it would someday be.

“But then, I suppose it’s different for men.” Andrássy looked out at the river, apparently skimming the thoughts right from her mind. “We are not forced to quit our homes, our families, to join a new clan.”

Sisi nodded, exhaling an audible sigh.

“And your clan is not exactly the most welcoming one, I can imagine.” He looked at her, an appraising, inquisitive look.

“I knew, though,” she replied, uncomfortable with his intuitive awareness, with his apparent ability to discern her most private thoughts. “I knew, when I married, what I was taking on.”

“Did you really? At—what was it—age fifteen? Could you really have known, Empress?” Andrássy seemed skeptical, and Sisi thought perhaps she had better let this conversation wither without a further reply.

“How about you, Andrássy?”

He cocked his head. “What about me?”

“How is the Countess Andrássy?”

He sat still, glancing out over the calm surface of the Danube. “Katinka is a good woman.” He offered nothing else.

“Come now, I bet you had ladies from Budapest to Paris offering you their hearts,” Sisi said. “Surely you must have loved her madly to marry her?”

His brows creased toward one another as he thought about this. “I hope God, and Katinka, forgive me someday.”

“Hmm?” She arched an eyebrow. “Come now, I’ve just confessed my private thoughts to you. What do you mean by that?”

Andrássy plucked a blade of grass, tossing it toward the river. “I should not have married her.”

“Why not?” Sisi asked.

Not meeting her eyes, he said: “I am not a good husband.”

“I am certain you must be,” Sisi reasoned. “You are away from home more often than she would like, perhaps.”

Andrássy shook his head, plucking more grass blades from the earth beneath him. “That doesn’t bother her. In fact, I think we both prefer to have the distance between us. I feel no longing to return to her. And she, it seems, feels no longing to welcome me home.”

After a thoughtful pause, he added: “My problem, with life as much as with women, is that I let the perfect be the enemy of the good.”

Sisi thought about this. “I see how, if it is perfection that you seek, you find that your wife is lacking. But you must remember, no one is perfect. Not even you.”

“There was one girl, years ago. Kati was her name. Perhaps that was why I married Katinka—she had the same name as this other girl. Either that, or because everyone told me that it was far past the time that I take a wife.”

Andrássy chewed on the side of his lip, his face heavy in thought. “Oh, but this was another lifetime, it seems,” Andrássy said, his voice almost wistful as he ran his hands over the tips of the sun-warmed grass blades. “I knew her when I was in Paris.”

That was years before she’d ever met him, Sisi knew, when Andrássy had been exiled by her own husband, Franz Joseph.

“I would have married Kati,” Andrássy continued. “I wanted to marry Kati, in fact, and I told her so.”

“What happened?” Sisi asked, not sure why she felt jealous of a faceless girl, all of a sudden.

“Kati did not want to marry me.”

Fool
, Sisi thought, but she refrained from saying it aloud. Instead, she asked, “Did she offer any reason?”

“There was an older Hungarian prince back home. With more land and a more prestigious title. He owned most of Transylvania, and he was not dangerous.
He
had not been exiled from the empire.” Andrássy shook his head, grinning sadly.

“I bet she regrets her decision every time she reads about you in the papers. Or sees your likeness.”

Andrássy grinned. “I very much doubt it.”

“Have you been pining for her ever since?”

“Oh, perhaps.” Andrássy turned to Sisi, smiling. “No, no.” Now he shook his head. “I’m far too busy to pine.”

They sat beside one another in silence, watching a boat glide along the Danube, toward the east. Toward Hungary. After a while, Andrássy turned back to Sisi, shifting his body so that he leaned toward her. “There has been one other since Kati. One other woman whom I’ve seen and thought to myself: I could love her.”