The Empress Chronicles (14 page)

“Her pistol?” I began to recall my mother’s months earlier warning. She’d called Lola a witch. A dark enchantress.

“But then your governess came in and the two began to quarrel.”

“Baroness?”

Little Ludwig demonstrated the scene from his memory, acting out his recollection on me. “She called Lola ‘sister’ and grabbed her by the shoulders. She slapped her hard. Then Lola took her leave and warned that sow, Wilhelmine. Told her she’d come to a bad end.”

Baroness Wilhelmine and Lola Montez, sisters? Why, that was even more improbable than Archduchess Sophie and Mummi sharing blood. I wished to know more, but at that very moment, in from the hall walked my beloved. My Karl, who had grown taller, thinner and more awkward than his likeness in my locket.

I curtseyed immediately, as did young Ludwig, apparently confused by the archduke’s sudden appearance.

He beamed. “Ah, at long last, I might speak with you in the flesh.”

“Yes,” I said, struck dumb about what next to say.

“We have been wondering what has been keeping you, Duchess,” Karl offered, saving me from embarrassment. “Tea is now served in the pavilion.”

“Your forgiveness, Your Grace,” I mumbled, feeling my cheeks grow hot as though ignited by coal.

“Not to worry, dear Sisi.” Karl laughed, his eyes crawling over me head to toe. “It is fitting that you would linger in the hall of beauties.” My face grew hotter yet, and I attempted to conceal my book and pen behind my back, causing my bodice to project as though I’d intended for Karl to look there, upon my bosom. It was most awkward. Most unappealing. However, that was exactly where the archduke’s eyes did land.

Little Ludwig interjected, “She is beautiful, is she not? Her tresses. Her carriage. Grace, elegance. Perhaps she will be queen one day.”

I needed to alter this line of thought, as it reflected most boastfully on my person, and the words tumbled out. “I am wearing the handsome locket Your Grace so sweetly bestowed upon me.”

Karl’s brows knit, and it was difficult to not look at the pustules that had grown larger yet upon his forehead since last we’d met. A cluster of angry red bumps, some festering tacky ooze. I hoped that he would not creep any closer. And yet, he did. He thrust his hand toward me, toward my bosom. “May I see it?”

“Jewels,” screeched Little Ludwig, clapping his hands. “I love jewels.”

I did not wish to reject the request, but modesty prevented my retrieval of the piece, which was nestled deep beneath layers of undergarments and tightly bound to me between busks.

I did not know what to do, and then Little Ludwig supplied the answer. “Perhaps the lovely Duchess Elisabeth wishes to refresh before tea? We have been here a long while, after all.”

“Of course.” Karl sighed, stepping backwards one, two, three times, but still, his eyes were pasted upon that part of me that ladies did not share.

Little Ludwig led the way, down the hall and through the passage, and I kept step, feeling it improper to walk beside the archduke, who, when I turned round, seemed quite pleased to be viewing my skirts from three paces back.

Once we arrived in the main apartment, I curtseyed and excused myself to attend to my needs in the ladies’ dressing room off of the main parlor. Behind the privacy screen, I felt warm, wet tears leak out my eyes. My heart had been emboldened with the promise of a beloved, the intoxication of romance, and now there was an emptiness. I was given to a new, cruel truth. I would not and could not love Archduke Karl. In his presence, I felt repulsion. Where my heart had kindled for a possible suitor—someone of royalty and good breeding, someone who bestowed gifts upon me—once that possibility loomed in the flesh, my heart felt flattened as if by mangle.

Papa had spoken of this on occasion, the sadness of falling out of love. And here it had happened to me. It had happened against my very vow: to never unlove once I had loved. Through the watery assault of pity, I constructed my lament on a fresh page of my diary, recalling Heine, in his sad poem “The Lorelei”:

I don’t know what it could mean,

Or why I am so sad: I find,

A fairytale, from times unseen,

Will not vanish from my mind.

The fairy tale of Karl. It
had
vanished. In an instant, no less, beneath the portraits of beauties. The hunger in his eyes as he’d painted his desire over me. How it had made me feel like a mere sketch of myself. Only to be gazed
upon
, never to gaze back. Only Lola’s portrait seemed different. Her eyes had intention, purpose, as they bore out into the room. The other ladies, even the powerful archduchess, were merely impressions, there for taking. I closed my journal and stood, waiting for a sign. Waited for the next thing to happen.

And then, it did happen. Lola’s words whispered like a flickering candle against my ear, the memory of her counsel:
Virtue
.
Vision
.
Voice
.

The gloves she had bestowed upon me covered my hands. In their whiteness, they bespoke the idea of virtue, but
inner wisdom
? Indeed, white gloves were someone’s idea of virtue, for they did nothing but make using my hands more of a hardship. Virtue, ha! I pulled them off and cast them to the floor.

But what of inner virtue? Of voice? My poems. My papa. The horses. The woods. These were the things I treasured beyond all else and felt ready to sing to world thereof. My personal chest of riches. I knew of these loves and felt bound to them, as though my heart’s desire could be satisfied just by being truly myself.

And, so, what of vision? The locket. Yes. I reached my hand into my fine garments and with fingers that could now work correctly, as they were no longer encumbered, I grabbed the winged edge of Karl’s locket and cut through the corset laces, from inside to out. I ruined my brand-new garment, and yet, a rush of joy was the only thing I felt as my body was released from its torture.

Once I was no longer constrained, I eased the locket and its chain over my head, where it tangled in my careful construct of ornament and braid. It had tarnished quite badly, perhaps rubbing against my scratched-up skin. I ripped the chain quite roughly through my hair and my scalp cried in pain, but I answered this like my mad cousin, Amalie. From the canary-song part of my throat I began to laugh. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. The more I heard my own laughter, the greater my desire for more. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Ha.

Oh, poor Archduke Karl, whom I no longer loved. Pity on him, my dear cousin rife with pustules and hope and sentiment and the leering gaze of a future royal. I reached for my locket now and wished to offer one final kiss to the boy whose likeness lay so long against my breast. Karl, dear Karl, I had forsaken thee as though I were the Lorelei of Heine’s lament. My eyes brimming with tears, I turned back to my journal. I scribed:

The mystery of love. Of beauty and of passion.

My fondest wish is that my heart won’t follow fashion.

Oh, why cannot I simply love a boy who loves me back?

Why must my yearning
heart
soul
personal body …

I could not conclude the poem. It was such a mystery, this movement to ladyhood. I moved my pen across the page, but as I did so, under my very hand was the strangest occurrence. A shrouded face appeared, as though I had sketched it myself. An odd peasant in a cape. But his eyes, his jaw. I knew these well. They were the features of Count S. How had my hand sketched this face without my commanding it?

The locket, nestled in my other hand, grew hot, its metal glowing like the warmed cannonballs we sometimes took to bed in winter. I sprung open the latch, meaning to free the likeness of Dear Karl, for whom I suddenly felt nothing. With remorse and confusion—for this day had been one mad occurrence after another—I set my lips to kiss my erstwhile suitor farewell, but when I opened the locket, where once his picture nestled there was now the image of my father’s huntsman, Count S.

Bare breasted, my lips still pursed in kiss shape, I stood holding the locket open in front of me.

Ah, but I had no time to ponder the curious situation, for at that very moment the door to the ladies’ dressing room creaked, revealing the unmistakable clomp of Mummi’s feet on the other side of the screen. More confused than ever, I stuffed the locket, chain and all into the spine of my diary, grabbed at my torn corset and bodice, and quickly covered myself back up as I heard, “Whatever are you up to now, Duchess? Archduke Karl is patiently awaiting your return and, once again, you have seen fit to disappear.”

When I come down for breakfast, Dad has my pills lined up next to a whopping glass of fresh-squeezed blood orange juice. Its red, pulpy liquid kisses the rim of a quart-sized mason jar. Willow has braided her wispy hair. She wears a gingham apron with little cherries embroidered on the sash. She’s in baking mode.

“The acid in that will kill my stomach,” I offer. “I do better with coffee.”

“The sooner we wean you off that nasty stuff, sweetie, the better,” Willow scolds in a Mary Poppins sort of tone.

Judging from the items on the counter, what’s in the oven contains cornmeal, berries, eggs. A crushed blue shell sits in a puddle of egg white. I squeeze my eyes semi-shut. Did she rinse the E. coli off the egg before cracking it into the batter?

I place my hands on either side of my pile of pills. The serotonin reuptake inhibitor, the anti-anxiety, the appetite stimulant: the football, the lifesaver, the tiny yellow button. “Then how about water?”

“Princess,” says Dad, “just give this a try.”

I slip the first of the pills into my mouth and chase it with some of the pulpy juice. The tractors start up outside; their rumble pierces the quiet air like the introduction of the ground bass in Pachelbel’s Canon. It’s a weird synchronicity: chemicals in my body, chemicals in the field. Willow winces at the sound, but to me, it’s a comforting purr. I close my eyes and drift into my happy place, the harmonic structure of violins and piano. And then, the ache of something else. The smell of cedar. Coyotes yipping in the quiet black. The memory of Cory, and last night, and our new secret.

Cory and I crept into the milk shed, two spies peering into the weak crank-up battery light for the telltale plastic baggie. It didn’t take long to find, and Cory pulled papers out of his pocket, reached into the bag for a pinch and rolled himself a pinner, tight and small.

“Put it back exactly the way it was,” I warned him, my arms folded up tight against my chest, the Sisi pages tucked neatly into the palm of my hand.

Cory saluted me, which ordinarily would have made me feel like a self-conscious loser girl, but he smiled that deep-dimple smile and placed Dad’s weed back in its rafter cubby, taking care to poke one corner down, just as we’d found it. Clearly, Cory was no slouch in the sneaky department. “Onward,” he said, the micro-glow of his joint leading the way to our next adventure at the edge of the crimson field.

Cory slim-jimmed our way into the deluxe cab of a tractor, which turned out to be more plush and comfortable than any seat in the farmhouse. Coyotes howled in the background; Cory sucked on his joint, the pages in front of him like he was reading a contract. His big brown eyes narrowed, that dimple back to the size of a comma. I held the little flashlight to the words, cranking it brighter every half minute or so. The cab of the tractor was like an office suite: big and fancy. Cory scanned the page, and his eyebrows did a seesaw thing.

He said, “This empress chick was hot.”

“Read it,” I said, my stomach knotted up. At any moment Dad could come running up. The skunky smell of marijuana filled the cab.

“Here goes. ‘Why must my yearning breasts call for his touch?’” he read.
“‘How is it now when I think of riding, I think of him? And how can a man inspire both anger and excitement? I dream of fleeing into the wood with him, leaving all that is familiar behind. At the same time, I wish him gone. He invades my mind so deeply. I cannot think the way I wish. I cannot do the things I must. My strength on horseback, always my pride, shrinks in his presence. I feel humbled, daft, a young child.’” Cory paused, put the pages down, sucked smoke in.

I cranked the flashlight, its
whrrrrr
piercing the big, fancy tractor room. I was impatient. “And?”

“She’s into him, sounds like,” Cory said when he got done holding smoke in his chest. “Whoever he is.”

“It doesn’t say a name anywhere?” I scanned the pages in Cory’s lap with the flashlight, looking for a telltale capital letter, but so many of the words had a capital letter. Stupid German.

Cory picked up one of the pages, the smearier of the two. “Here, I think he was an older dude. Says something about him being counsel to her father. ‘Privy’ is what they called it. A fancy way of saying a dude who knows your business.”

“Read it. Read what she says about him.”

Cory cleared his throat. “‘He and Papa have secrets. This I know. Baroness does not like that he has been appointed my …’”

“Go on.”

“I have no clue what this word is or means. It’s all smeared up. I’m guessing he was supposed to be her bodyguard or something. When was this, anyway? You said your shrink’s great-great-grandma was a servant then? Could have been during one of the rebellions. Lots of kings got their asses kicked then. Mid-eighteen hundreds.”

“She was empress of Austria, Cory. You know, the Habsburgs. The empire. But I think this was before that. Can you crack the window? I’m getting a contact high.”

“Be good for you Miss Brainiac. Loosen you up,” Cory said. “Besides, these are power windows. No can do.” Cory was staring at my hands, like people do. The red rawness of them. The nails, barely nails.

I tucked my hands inside of an arm fold, the flashlight buried in the crook of my elbow. It was so dark out, despite the glowing half-moon. Cory sucked in more weed and the end of his joint glowed a little circle near his mouth. He had the tiniest trace of stubble under his nose. His lips were full and smooshed together. Besides the pot, I could smell the faintest cedar scent still. The smell of boy and earth. And it didn’t make me cringe.

But now, in the light of morning, I have a headache, and Cory is still upstairs, asleep. Willow’s cherries are too red on her apron. Her braids too tight and her ever present bobby pins too metallic. Her smile too hopeful, her voice too sweet, and when she opens the door to the ancient oven and pulls out a pan of perfect, golden-brown muffins, the sweetness of it all sends me into a sort of sugar shock. They smell wonderful, but the image of that crushed shell, the bacteria, no way will I put one in my mouth. I begin to strategize.

“Do you have any Melba toast?” I ask. “My stomach is a little queasy.”

Willow’s mouth turns down, and I can see the faintest resemblance to Cory.

Dad says, “One bite, Liz. All we ask is that you have a taste.”

What am I, five? Are we going to go back to the
no-thank-you bite
of my preschool years? “Fine,” I say and wait for Willow to dig a steaming muffin out of the tin and onto the plate in front of me.

I blow on it, like it’s candles on a birthday cake, close my eyes and pinch the tiniest crumb from the top. The sweet buttery flavor bursts in my mouth, the cornmeal delicious sand between my teeth. My stomach rumbles for more, and I pinch another piece, and another, and another. My tongue goes numb from the slight burn, and my lips sting, but I can’t gobble the muffin up fast enough, and then, before I open my eyes I hear clapping: Dad and Willow, giving me an ovation for eating a stupid muffin. I feel the heat of embarrassment crawl into my cheeks.

And worse, there’s Cory, suddenly in the kitchen, witnessing me being treated like a baby. I jump up and push by him, and scramble out the screen door.