The Accidental Empress (56 page)

“Blessings for the crown prince’s health, Empress Elisabeth!” A round-faced noblewoman whom Sisi vaguely remembered as being from Bohemia paused to speak with her.

“Thank you,” Sisi answered, and kept clipping down the hallway, her bodyguards struggling to keep their tail of her. Further behind her, Countess Esterházy was trotting to keep apace as well. Sisi didn’t even care. Let her trail me, she thought. Let the whole palace see me take my son back.

She halted, panting, only once she reached the outer doors to Sophie’s apartments. “Let me in.”

“The archduchess is out.” The guards stood outside of the always-closed doors of Sophie’s suite.

“Where are they?” Sisi demanded, breathless. She felt the quickness of her heartbeat, felt the blood pounding in her neck, surging with the instinctive need to fight. “Where are my children?”

“The Archduchess Sophie has taken their Imperial Majesties the Princess Gisela and the Crown Prince Rudolf for a carriage ride.”

Sisi stamped her feet, aware as several courtiers walked by that she was behaving precisely as Sophie had whispered throughout the palace—saying that her daughter-in-law was too young, too immature, too easily governed by unstable emotions to raise the prince and princess.

“You tell Sophie . . . the archduchess . . . the
instant
that she returns, that I am looking for her. In fact, you tell her that I
order
her to come to my apartments with my son and daughter. Do you understand?” Sisi raised a threatening finger at the guard.

“I shall deliver this message to the archduchess, Empress Elisabeth.” Whether or not Sophie obeyed was quite another thing, was his implication. And Sisi knew as well as this guard that that was not likely to happen.

Franz was similarly indisposed, his bodyguards thwarting Sisi outside the entrance to his state chambers. “Orders, Empress Elisabeth, no visits or petitions today.”

“I am his wife, not a pestering courtier with a petition. Now let me through!”

“They are in meetings with the Italian ambassador, Empress. We’ve been explicitly told that it is highly sensitive. No interruptions, Emperor’s orders.”

Sisi clenched her jaw and marched back to her suite, where she scrawled off a furious letter to her husband. She was back in familiar territory. Alone and powerless to find her children. All she could do was wait.

The fever spread through the city shortly after Franz departed for Italy, on his urgent, last-ditch attempt to stop the Italians from declaring independence. Whether her susceptibility to the fever was precipitated by her despair, Sisi did not know. There were enough reasons to despair: Franz had left Vienna with nothing more than a quick and distracted farewell, with no answer as to when he would return; her mother was gone; worst of all, her two children were once more completely absent from her life.

Her illness followed on the heels of these blows, and Sisi’s body seemed as powerless against the fever as she herself was against her miserable situation. Though she eventually beat the fever, a cough persisted; a painful cough, even in the thick heat of the summer.

The words of her mother rang in her ears, a warning and a lifeline: don’t let Sophie win. Don’t give up. Fight for your family.

Sisi was determined to get her children back, but she knew that as long as Doctor Seeburger still proclaimed her ill, she would never succeed in her suit. So she obeyed the doctor’s orders like the perfect patient. As summer cooled to fall and the days shortened, bringing with them the threat of cold, icy winter, Sisi remained in bed under piles of blankets, sweating through layers of silk and wool and cashmere, as the doctor commanded. She sipped bowl after bowl of broth and drank scalding hot tea—so hot that it temporarily thawed her clogged lungs. Yet still, the cough remained. She rested so much that she could not possibly force herself to sleep anymore, and yet she pretended to be asleep every time Doctor Seeburger entered her bedchamber.

“What more can I do?” It was a gray day at the start of winter. Sisi’s lungs burned with the lingering cough.

“Nothing, Empress. You are doing everything I advise. Yet I am sorry to say that this cough persists.” Doctor Seeburger tapped the tip of his chin, no longer attempting to mask his befuddlement, as he conducted his daily visit. “Your breathing is still too labored to make me think that your lungs are cleared.”

“But it’s been months now,” Sisi growled. Months, in the lives of an infant and a toddler, were an eternity—what important moments of theirs had she missed?

As the days shortened, her health deteriorated even further. While the cough continued, a new, more troubling symptom made itself known. Sisi watched in horror as—daily, it seemed—her wrists and knees swelled, throbbing like overripe fruit. Her body had been seized from her; her once beautiful, celebrated figure was now morphing and reshaping itself before her own petrified eyes.

“Empress, I must admit that this is beyond me.” Doctor Seeburger was in her bedchamber, pressing and prodding against the turgid flesh of her knees and wrists. Nothing could be done. Restricting fluids had not brought the swelling down. The daily massages he had ordered only caused Sisi excruciating pain. All the while her joints continued to expand, like skins of wine ready to burst with too much liquid.

“You
must
do something! I appear fit for the circus tents . . .” Sisi wept, avoiding his gaze. Avoiding the accidental glimpse of her disfigured appearance in the mirror. “I can’t leave the bedroom. I can’t see the emperor.”

“If Your Majesty grants me permission, I’d like to ask to bring in a lung specialist. I’ve worked with a certain Doctor Skoda before and I believe he might have more luck with the diagnosis and treatment.”

“Whatever you advise, Doctor Seeburger,” Sisi said, her voice frantic. “Just get me well again. I must have my children back.”

Doctor Skoda was a formal man, more stern even than Doctor Seeburger, and he set right to the business of listening to the empress’s lungs, and examining her swollen joints.

After his exam, Doctor Skoda retreated a distance from the bed to review his findings, and Sisi pretended to drift off into a peaceful sleep. Several minutes passed before she heard the faint sound of whispering—the barely audible conference of the two perplexed physicians.

“A rare condition, indeed.” Sisi heard Doctor Seeburger repeat his common refrain. “What could it be?”

Doctor Skoda’s response was too quiet for Sisi to hear, but the gasp that followed from Doctor Seeburger was not. Sisi’s heart raced in response, but she forced herself to keep her eyes closed.

“But how could she have fallen victim to it?” In his alarm Doctor Seeburger was being reckless with the volume of his voice, a fact for which Sisi was grateful.

“From him, of course.” Doctor Skoda answered matter-of-factly. Who was “
him
?” Sisi wondered. Rudolf? Perhaps it was some health complication resulting from the labor?

Doctor Seeburger challenged the theory, whatever it was. “But, Doctor Skoda, that’s a dangerous assertion, as I’m sure you understand. To venture such a guess is to imply that the emperor has been tainted, as well . . .”

Again, Doctor Skoda’s reaction was not loud enough for Sisi to hear it. Perhaps it was not even transmitted as a spoken response—perhaps it was a nod or a look of the eye—a message exchanged between the two doctors, the meaning of which only they could understand.

“Then why does
he
show no symptoms?”

“His body is stronger than hers—it is probably still fighting the disease off. But the empress? Well, she has had three babies in four years. She is weak and depleted. Her mental state, as you tell me, has not always been . . . well, there have been the bouts of deep melancholy and anxiety. Her diet is lacking, her appetite often nonexistent. In addition to the lung condition, I also find her severely anemic. Of course her body would succumb to the symptoms sooner.”

Now Sisi could barely keep up the charade of sleeping. She wanted to leap from the bed and demand to know what they were discussing—what dire illness was plaguing her?

“Fortunately, with the right treatment, it is not a life-threatening ailment. The empress faces no long-term risks,” Doctor Skoda explained.

“But how can we treat it, Skoda?”

“I will advise that the empress take a trip, somewhere to the south, to take in the warm air. She certainly should not remain in Vienna for the winter. I will advise a sojourn, somewhere by the sea. If she undergoes treatment, and rests, we may have every hope that Her Imperial Majesty shall make a full recovery.”

There was no way she was leaving court without her children, Sisi thought, already prepared to fight the doctor on this.

“But what if the emperor does not wish her to leave?” Seeburger seemed uncomfortable with the developments being discussed. “His Royal Highness is very attached to the empress.”

“He ought to do what is best for Her Royal Highness,” Skoda answered, his voice suddenly prickly. “He, after all, is the reason she suffers from this.”

“Shh! Come now, Skoda, watch yourself! You can’t talk like that in this palace. There is always someone listening.”

If he only knew
, Sisi thought to herself, her blood throbbing between her ears.

The two doctors stood silently awhile, and Sisi knew that they must have been looking at her—her peaceful sleeping figure. This poor empress, they must have thought, pitying her for this illness. But what was it? Sisi wondered. And would Franz suffer, too? How had Franz fallen ill?

Doctor Skoda’s next question to Doctor Seeburger confused Sisi. “Who?” he asked, his voice barely a whisper. “Who could it be?”

Sisi did not know what this meant. But she did hear the answer. It was as clear and loud in her ears as if Doctor Seeburger had shouted it to her. And understanding immediately crystallized in her mind, forcing her to open her eyes when she heard the reply.

“It could be any number of them.” Doctor Seeburger sighed, keeping his voice low. “But . . . ordinarily, Count Grünne ensures their hygiene—their health—beforehand. There is one, however. That actress, Frau Roll, do you know of her?”

“Yes,” Doctor Skoda said. “Go on.”

“I hate to place too much store on palace rumors and hearsay. But we’d be fools to shut our ears to the reports . . . the reports that she has the same condition.”

There was no confusion remaining. Only the rending apart of Sisi’s heart, the latest symptom to add to the list of her ailments.

“How could you not have told me?” Sisi glowered at Marie, her favorite lady-in-waiting, her most trusted and loyal ally. “I would have expected Countess Esterházy to keep it from me. And Paula and Karoline—even though they can seldom keep quiet on a piece of gossip. But you, Marie? How long have you known?”

Marie stared toward the bedroom door longingly, like a trapped animal looking at the door of its cage. “Majesty, I’m not sure I know what you speak of.”

“Marie, don’t you dare. I saw the way she looked at him at New Year’s, and I know that everyone knows about this, except me. When did it begin?”

Marie looked at her now, the breath catching in the back of her throat as though she might weep. Reluctantly, she said: “I first started hearing whispers of it right around the time you returned from Budapest. Last summer. When you were in mourning over Princess Soph . . .” But Marie did not finish the sentence before the tears welled in her eyes and she brought her hands to conceal her face.

“Save your tears, Marie, you have no right to imagine yourself a victim here.” Sisi’s voice was cold. “And she’s just the latest, from the sound of it. The doctor said there were others. Oh, Marie, why did you not tell me?”

“I’m so sorry, Empress.” Marie sobbed into her cupped hands.

“What a fool I am.” Sisi smacked the desk, rising to pace the room. “Of course, it all makes sense now. He’s been so willing to avoid our bedroom. In fact, even when I invite him, he declines. I thought the man had the patience and self-control of a monk. But no, it’s that he’s taken that scarlet-haired
actress
for a lover!”

Sisi fumed, her body bristling against the restricting confines of her corset as she huffed. “This man, who promised to be faithful, who promised to come to my bed each night.” She couldn’t cry, she was too angry for tears. “And you, Marie, I was betrayed by you as well. And Agata, too. Don’t even try to tell me you didn’t both know. This court is so ripe with gossip, I’m sure you all knew the first night it happened.”