The Accidental Empress (66 page)

Sisi turned to Beust and saw that he had more to say on the topic, but at last he refrained from doing so.

“What do you make of it all?” Sisi spoke to Andrássy in a hushed tone. She had left dinner with the emperor but they had parted ways. Offering a perfunctory excuse about meeting a minister, he had turned toward the courtyard and his waiting carriage, leaving Sisi to make her way back to her own suite. On her way, Sisi had been delighted to meet Andrássy.

The days were at their longest, and the faintest hint of lilac light still seeped in through the palace windows.

“Care to take a long route back?” Andrássy suggested, his head tilted sideways toward the doors that swung out into the gardens. “It’s a lovely evening.”

“I don’t see why not.” They stepped outdoors, following a pathway bordered by tight-clipped trees. The palace was quiet, the grounds succumbing to shadow, and Sisi directed them toward the conservatory, a grand building of glass and iron.

“I’m happy to have Beust here, even if your mother-in-law is not,” Andrássy said as they walked.

“He seemed quite brave at dinner, did he not?” Sisi asked.

“He is too new to court to realize the need for a censor.”

“That’s good,” Sisi said. “He’ll speak the truth, which is what Franz needs to hear.”

They paused, stopping outside the entrance to the conservatory. “After you,” Andrássy said, gesturing with an arm. She led them into the building. Inside the air hung warm, rich with the fragrance of dirt and plant life.

Andrássy walked behind her, saying: “What no one dared to acknowledge at dinner is how utterly abandoned we have been by our so-called allies.”

Sisi paused, turning to face him. She stood just inches from him now, their faces illuminated by the soft glow of moon, its first light piercing the conservatory windows.
“We need no one.”

Andrássy arched an eyebrow.

“Sophie’s motto. ‘
We need no one.’
We are the Habsburgs, after all. It’s what she has always told her son. After he lost the friendship of Russia, and then England. And then Prussia. And now, it appears, France.”

Andrássy thought about this, running his hand absentmindedly through his disheveled hair.

“But whom did Franz expect to side with us?” Sisi asked.

“Well, I don’t think we had any hope for Italy. Not after they’ve just fought Austria for their own independence. It makes perfect sense that they aligned with Prussia.”

“Is there any chance of France coming to our aid?”

Andrássy cocked his head, considering this. “I don’t share your husband’s optimism on that score.”

“Why not?”

“There are rumors.”

“What sort of rumors?” Sisi asked.

“I hear that Bismarck traveled to France specifically to meet with Napoleon.”

Sisi sighed.

“It seems that this Bismarck, whom your mother-in-law considers nothing but a belligerent warmonger, is in fact quite the diplomat. It’s as Beust said: Bismarck planned for war with Austria. He even hoped for it. I hate to say it, Sisi, but your mother-in-law is wrong.”

“No need to regret saying that,” Sisi said, crossing her arms. “So then, France will side with Prussia.” She now understood the gravity of Franz’s position, of Sophie’s miscalculations. “How does the emperor not know this?” she asked.

Andrássy smiled, a sad, regretful smile, and quoted to her a line she knew well,
“A person hears only what they understand.”

“Goethe,” Sisi said. “But how can the emperor have been blind to these events?”

“When you are the ruler of the most powerful state in Europe, how can you possibly understand the threat that a lesser German state might pose to you?” Andrássy leaned close now, his tone low and mocking. “What chance do better guns, more men, railroads, willing allies, and better diplomacy stand when you are the Habsburg king? God’s anointed heir to the Holy Roman Empire?”

“Quite a good chance, I would imagine.”

Andrássy nodded. They stood beside one another in silence for several moments, milky wisps of moonlight slipping into the otherwise darkened conservatory. All around them fern fronds and palm leaves caught the glint of moon, shimmering in a gentle breeze. Even with the mood as heavy as it was inside the palace, out here, in this evening, it was difficult to remain tense.

Eventually, Andrássy spoke. “Did you see the poetry book I left for you?”

“I did.” Sisi turned to him, sensing his closeness in the dark more so than actually seeing him.

“I thought of you when I saw it. I hope you enjoy it.”

“It’s written entirely in Hungarian.”

“You are up to it, Sisi.”

“Speaking, perhaps. But reading? You give me too much credit.”

“You always say that, but I give you precisely the amount of credit to which you are entitled.”

Sisi blushed at this, her breath becoming less even. Suddenly, she wished the room they stood in was not made of glass; that she could shut a door and close out the rest of the world. Even in the darkness she was intensely aware of his body beside hers. How she longed to kiss him.

“Well, Empress, it’s rather dark. I think I’d better see you safely back to your rooms before we are spied upon. I’d hate to be credited with ruining your reputation, wandering the grounds like this after dark.”

“Please, Andrássy.” She laughed, a hollow sound. “I stopped caring about my reputation at this court long ago.”

By early July, the sick and wounded had started to seep into the capital. Once they started coming, it seemed as if they’d never stop: like an inglorious parade without fanfare or trumpet notes. Bandaged men limped down Vienna’s stately, sycamore-lined boulevards, seeking out hospitals and monasteries, begging for food and bearing scars that turned Franz’s war from a topic of tense talk into a ghastly, inescapable reality.

Inside the palace, the air hung heavy, stifling and breezeless. Everyone in the halls and state rooms wore an irritable scowl slicked with a sheen of perspiration. After a series of inconsequential engagements, reports came back from the front via telegraph that both the Prussian and the Austrian forces had converged in Bohemia, near the ancient fortified city of Königgrätz. If decisive, this battle could end the war.

Sisi, feeling anxious inside her sweltering palace rooms, asked Franz what she could do to be of service. Sitting still was no longer possible for her.

“Visit the hospitals,” Franz said. He sat at his desk behind a pile of papers, maps, reports, and books. “Comfort the wounded and dying. Let them stare at their beautiful empress. You shall be a momentary balm to their misery.”

And so, on a humid afternoon in early July, Sisi called for her coach and set off on a tour of the hospitals. It was a day that sapped both her energy and her spirits, but she did her best not to show her horror as she met her wounded subjects, looking on their mangled faces, the gnarled knobs of flesh where limbs had once been.

At the last stop, exhausted, Sisi walked the line of beds in the sick bay. She was attempting to maintain her mask of composure against the stench of emptied stomachs and scorched flesh.

“Empress! Empress!” A nurse in a white starched uniform, sleeves rolled back, rushed toward her.

“Yes, what is it?”

“Please, come quick, if you would.”

Sisi was led into a surgery room, where a man lay on a cot, his body writhing in agony. Sisi looked on, horrified, as the blood pulsed from an open wound near his shoulder. He screamed. Then he screamed once more, this time louder.

“He’s Hungarian,” Sisi said, understanding his anguished words.

“He needs an amputation, Empress Elisabeth.” The nurse stood beside her, speaking in a hushed, urgent tone. “But he refuses to have it. You speak Hungarian, Your Majesty, do you not?” The nurse shifted, as if anticipating the look of disgust that would surely ripple across the empress’s face.

Instead, Sisi nodded, pushing the lace trim of her sleeves back. “Yes,” she said, answering in Hungarian. “Hello, sir.” She approached the bed, coming into the line of sight of the suffering man. “The doctor would like to help you. We must let him help you.”

“Empress Elisabeth?” The man’s eyes widened, his attention momentarily pulled from his pain. “Am I in heaven? I’ve died, haven’t I?”

“If this is heaven, I shudder to think what hell must look like,” Sisi answered, offering a comforting smile.

The man still looked at her, unbelieving.

“You are very much alive, sir.” Sisi took his hand in hers. “And there’s no reason that you should not stay that way, as long as we do what the doctor says.”

The man tried, and failed, to sit up in bed. “You’re even more beautiful than they say.”

Sisi flashed a sad smile, looking to the nurse. To the waiting doctor, the tools nearby and ready. “Please, won’t you let the doctor perform his surgery, so that you may begin to heal?”

The man looked to the surgeon, his eyes narrowing.

“Come now. It’ll be over quickly,” Sisi said, approaching the cot. “I’ll be with you. We can speak of Hungary together.”

“Oh . . .” The man looked once more, distrustfully, at the gleaming row of surgical tools. And then he nodded. “All right.” He leaned back on the bed. Sisi kept his right hand in her own while the doctor and nurse approached the left side, where the wound gaped.

“You must look at me,” Sisi said, fixing her gaze on the man’s bloodshot eyes. He hesitated, watching the doctor approach, the knife shimmering in his outreached hand.

“Never mind that,” Sisi said, her voice assured as she squeezed the man’s hand, her tone soothing yet authoritative—the way she would speak to Rudy. “Look at me. We shall have you better in no time. Now, why don’t you tell me about your home? From where in Hungary do you come?”

As the man wailed and writhed, biting down on a wooden block, the surgeon performed his bloody work.

Sisi, her attention so focused on the patient and the crushing grip of his hand, noticed only after it was all over that a crowd had assembled outside of the surgery. There, at the front of the crowd, stood Sophie. Her mother-in-law had watched the entire procedure, and now the archduchess stood, pale, a look of unadulterated horror on her face at the scene she had just witnessed.

As the man slipped off into sleep, Sisi rose, planting a kiss on his sweat-stained forehead before tiptoeing from the room.

“Sophie,” she said, nodding at her mother-in-law as she exited the surgery. “I didn’t realize you were here.” Side by side, the two women began to walk. Sisi felt, for the first time, just how utterly spent her body was.

“Franz told me he sent you down here. I thought I’d come meet you.” Sophie looked around the sick bay, her hands knit together in a tight bind, her features taut and ill at ease. “I thought perhaps I’d greet some of the poor fellows myself. Show a united front, for the empire, right?”

“Oh. Yes, yes, of course.” Sisi tugged on the lace trim of her sleeves, pulling them back into place. She noticed as she did so, too tired to react, that some of the man’s blood now covered the previously immaculate white.

Sophie was still staring around at the sick bay, her eyes darting listlessly over the rows of invalid bodies. Then she looked back at Sisi. “But you look exhausted.” Sophie unclasped her hands, lifted them to her breast. “We should get you home. Shall we ride back to the palace together?”

“Oh? But didn’t you say that you wanted to greet . . .” Sisi gestured toward the men, feeling too tired to finish her own sentence.

“I’ll come back,” Sophie shook her head, a flicker of her wrist. “Another day. For now, let’s get you home.” Sophie stared once more out over the sick ward, her face unnaturally pale.

“Well, all right,” Sisi said, her voice quiet with fatigue. She had put in a full day. “Let’s go.”

With that, Sophie took her skirt in her hands and sped for the exit.