The Empress Chronicles (15 page)

Day and night I fretted over the images that had appeared unbidden. Archduke Karl replaced by the rogue huntsman in my locket. And what to make of the sketch in my journal? At night I lay abed, holding my secrets so tight I felt I might be strangled by them. My thumb rubbing over the keepsake, clicking open the latch again and again to make sure my eyes did not deceive. If only I had someone with whom to share this bizarre discovery. Perhaps Nené, I ventured. But then dismissed it, as my dear sister was preoccupied as late with some joyous news. Joyous for her, anyway.

Mummi had received a missive from her sister, and her mirth could be heard from one hall to the next. “Princess Anna isn’t Catholic, and she won’t convert!”

And then Papa’s response: “And this is news to be shouting over?”

But it was Nené who knew exactly what this meant, and her squeal of excitement could be heard all the way to Vienna, it seemed. “I will resume my Italian lessons immediately,” she cried.

With Anna of Prussia out of the running, the Archduchess Sophie was, once again, entertaining Duchess Helene as a suitable match for her Franzl. Mummi read the note aloud, and we children were all assembled for the official reading, as though it were a last will and testament:

My darling Ludovica,

I hope this finds you and your family in good health. It has been a most unsettling few years, has it not? The Revolution, the Hungarians, the Italians, the Crimean problem. It is, as you know, of utmost importance that the Habsburg dynasty remains strong, and this is where I turn to you for
help
.

As this interval, Mummi raised her head and momentarily stopped reading. “Here is the part we have been waiting for.”

Nené clapped her hands. If her smile were any broader, her face might sever into two halves.

Mummi continued:

Our sister’s daughter, the Prussian princess, is already engaged and, because she is Protestant, a match with her is unacceptable regardless. My Franz is a strapping young man, as you are well aware, and his eye does rove. Lately, he has been courting a fanciful young baroness from Hungary. This is also, naturally, unacceptable.

So I beseech you, dear Ludovica, to make ready your Helene in time for an official meeting at the spa in Ischl. It is near enough to your castle, and perhaps Duke Max would accompany you and your daughter this summer, on the occasion of the emperor’s birthday. An engagement on his twenty-third birthday is appropriate, do you not agree?

Please give the matter some thought, dear sister, and do let me know if you are amenable.

Your devoted Sophie

Mummi gazed up at the ceiling where one might have thought a clock was painted, for she began ticking off the months, the hours, the tasks, the steps in order to ready her eldest daughter for the most prominent betrothal of the century.

We all rose, us children, and kissed Nené’s ring, as was custom for a promising. For her part, my sister was all too self-satisfied with this turn of events, but I could not blame her. To be seated next to the kaiser, the ruler of such a kingdom, was, perhaps, the highest accomplishment.

As for me, I was happy that the attention would be directed elsewhere. Satisfied to be left to my poems, my sketches. There was now, however, a growing excitement inside of me when I heard the count’s voice beyond my door, in the library down the hall, in the aviary beyond the classroom, for there had been a development on that front as well.

With Nené now as good as empress, it was felt we Wittelsbach duchesses needed more protection from the revolutionaries and evildoers throughout the Bavarian hills. Papa had quickly installed Count S. in our quarters, and each morning, as I took my constitutional about the castle, I was now accompanied by this tall, muscled fellow who’d found his way into the most personal of my places.

“Duchess, why do you scurry so?” the count asked as he kept a shadow’s distance behind me.

My cheeks grew warm as he beckoned. A most peculiar feeling took hold of me in his presence. All my senses were heightened. He smelled of cedar trees and linden. His deep sotto voice rang in my ears like a noonday church bell. I could not look him in the eye, nor could I respond with clarity and purpose. This man, my guard, my secret, was slowly turning me into an imbecile.

“Uh,” I stammered. Then curtseyed. “Beg your pardon, Your Courtship.”

“Courtship?” he asked.

Why was I such a fool?

Sun from the palace garden leaked in the side windows of the anteroom, and I was oddly desperate to hide from its spotlight. I longed to scurry into the cabinet and busy myself with women’s work. Needlepoint. Sketches. Anything to excuse myself from further embarrassment. Meanwhile, the count teased me unmercifully.

“Why do they call you Sisi?” he wanted to know.

“Surely, you of all people should not cast a stone in the name department,” I retorted, my tone changing from mortified to annoyed in one fell swoop.

“Fair enough.”

“What
is
your name, pray tell?”

“My name? Well, dear Duchess, I have many. Scoundrel? Sly fox?”

The count was a hoop skirt’s length from me. I could almost feel his warm breath upon my neck. “Count Ssssssssssss. Very mysterious.” I spun round. “Tell me. Do you live up to this mystery? How do I know that you are indeed my protector and not a Wittelsbach adversary?”

The count narrowed his eyes and lowered his gaze. In a cool, drawn-out baritone he offered, “You cannot know, Duchess Sisi. The same way you cannot know when your horse will shy at a particular stone or that lightning will strike a certain tree.”

He had eyes like a hound. Big, dark pools, but lit with a certain sparkle. I clutched my diary close. Those were the same eyes as the ones sketched in my book.

“In any event,” the count continued, “it seems that at least one of the Wittelsbachs is about to jump into the larger lake in the realm of potential adversaries.”

“Nené. Yes.” I circled a finger in the air, conjuring a parade, her gaiety of late. “Whoop, whoop. I will soon be sister to an empress. She will get all she desires.”

As soon as the word “desires” left my lips, I felt my cheeks once again warm with embarrassment.

“And what might they be? The desires?”

Of course I should have kept my all-too-eager lips closed and my tongue still, but alas, I did not. “She wishes to marry the most important imperial ruler of all time.”

“And I suppose she has a fair enough shot at it. His mother and your mother are sisters, are they not?”

“They are.”

The count chuckled. “It is the women who really rule, after all. Particularly your Aunt Sophie, the archduchess.”

I found his assumptions annoying, and yet the tenor of his voice was strangely engaging. My finger twirled a strand of my hair as I contemplated the count’s words.

“Do you think the emperor appealing yourself, Duchess?” he asked.

This caught me completely off guard. I did not know what to say, really, and the line of questioning was oddly out of place. I bit my lip to keep any other foolish thought from bouncing from brain to utterance, but no use, because out it came, all at once, like water rushing over rocks. “The emperor? Oh my, no. I prefer a more common fellow. Someone at home on a horse and willing to laugh. A man who would sooner use his weapon for sport than as a festoon in his belt. The emperor, what I know of him, is a serious man.”

The sketch in my journal that I did not remember drawing. The man of mystery in my locket. This flesh and blood rogue employed to guard us Wittelsbach girls. Far more interesting to my heart. This confession, the way it rolled off my tongue so unexpectedly, felt like a suddenly loosened corset. I looked up at the imprudent man and caught him in a self-satisfied chuckle. “Ah, sport. That vixen killing. A rather bloody event in which to subject a fair maiden of your breeding. Tell me, Duchess Elisabeth, did you enjoy it?”

I told the truth. “Ah, ’tis my downfall, I fear. Mischief, a good frolic. Adventure. But I did feel badly for the little fox. What if she had kits?”

What happened next was silence, interrupted by the murmur of my sister and her deportment instructor down the hall.

The count’s voice softened then and became almost melodious. He said, “Dearest Duchess, I would imagine that as time moves forward, you will have plenty of suitors offering you bits of their kill.”

Another odd turn of conversation. “Suitors?”

“I don’t think you realize, Sisi, how beautiful you are becoming,” Count S. said, his voice wistful, as though viewing something lovely.

My heart fluttered. No man had ever looked my way, and certainly I was not in the habit of receiving such a bold comment. Right then and there I wished to hold the minute. Freeze time as I stood in the pool of sunlight. But alas, Nené’s voice grew closer. She was reciting a litany of welcomes and dismissals. So many words for hello and good-bye when one was empress of Austria, apparently.

I moved away from my bodyguard then, but not too far to hear him whisper, “The name’s Sebastian. Count Sebastian of Katrin.”

As spring continued, Baroness Wilhelmine buzzed about like a mosquito ordering the under-governesses and maids to check Nené’s head daily, for a lice outbreak would be unthinkable.

Meanwhile, my feelings for my bodyguard grew stronger by the day.

Count Sebastian smiled when my governess harrumphed as he passed by, making his rounds, checking that any visitor—be it a dressmaker, portrait painter, or instructor—be patted down for daggers or pistols. She felt it was improper to have such a man in our apartments. But my dear count was ready with his reasoning. “When word leaks of this arrangement between the emperor and Duchess Helene, the threat of assassination will increase. Already Franz Joseph narrowly missed being fatally stabbed by a Hungarian. Only because he always wears that insufferable cord round his neck did he not fall dead on the spot.”

Baroness could not argue, but she was far from pleased.

While I spent most days playing at needlepoint and feigning interest in painting fruit so I might find excuses to be in a far-off room from the hubbub, and therefore alone with the count, I could not help but laugh at my bodyguard’s obvious disdain for Franz Joseph.

“And what, pray tell, could you possibly have against him, sir?” I inquired today.

“He is arrogant, Sisi. And he is a liar. He cares nothing for the people, because he does not know them. He is Viennese, after all.”

This particular day I was sitting at a reading table at the far end of the children’s apartments, nearest the cabinet at the end of the Herzog’s long main hall. The idiot book about why young ladies may not ride horses was open in front of me, but I could not bring myself to penetrate the ghastly assumptions declared therein. “You have been listening to Papa, I see,” I said. “He holds similar disdain for the emperor and his mother.”

He smirked and then winked at me. I found him increasingly charming and funny, in spite of my pledge toward virtue. Sometimes, lying in bed at night, I imagined the count bursting through the door and covering my slender body with his bulk. His lips would graze the tip of my nose. He would caress my forehead, my cheeks. He would remark on my graces. And then he would leave, but not before whispering, “Sweet dreams, Duchess,” into my ear.

“Duchess Sisi? Are you there?”

Count Sebastian had been talking to me, and I had not heard one word, so consumed was I with my indecent daydream. My hand jerked quickly to my throat and tangled with the chain from my keepsake. “Pardon,” I said, returning to the present moment.

He watched my fingers, narrowing his eyes as I fidgeted. “I asked if you knew anything of the Revolution. Why so many of your countrymen feel disdain for the oppressive government.”

I shook my head. I did not like to think of war and sword. Of blood and battle. The ugliness of it all. Why couldn’t people simply live in peace? I said that aloud, and Count Sebastian’s face grew shadowy, his mouth clenched in disapproval.

“You have never known hunger, Sisi. You have never had to choose between bread or shelter. Nobody has ever snatched what you hold dear from your grasp.”

His words sliced through my heart. He was calling me selfish. Spoiled. As if I’d had a choice! I thought of Papa’s words to me: “If we’d not been princely born …” He’d been talking about our circus riding abilities, but the lament in his voice—we did live in a prison of sorts.

“Perhaps,” I retorted snappily to the count. “However, I do know a thing or two about lack of choice.” I pointed out the window, to the infinite gardens beyond. “I cannot run or ride as I please. I mayn’t set out for breath of fresh air when the mood strikes. No. Instead, I must hole up in this dusty old castle with an impertinent beast following me about, lest I have my very throat slashed by some crazy revolutionary.”

The count gently placed his finger to my lips. “I had no idea you were so impassioned, Sisi.”

His finger there annoyed me and, at the same time, sent a jolt of heat up my spine. Was he trying to silence me? I grabbed the finger with my hand, squeezing it. I stared fully into his eyes, and there we lingered, not even the length of breakfast tray apart from each other. Our eyes locked in something between hate and desire that had no name.