The Secret Diary of a Princess a novel of Marie Antoinette (4 page)

Mozart is only a few months older than me and is now one of the most famous composers in all of the world. He seldom comes to Schönbrunn any more, as he always seems to be touring the courts of Europe with his parents and pretty sister, Nannerl but when he does he always has a wink and a smile for me and calls me his 'little
fiancée
' when no one can hear. He has been to Versailles and played for the King of France himself and all of his daughters. 'None of the French princesses are as pretty as the Austrian archduchesses,' he reported back with a grin. 'And as for Madame de Pompadour! She is pretty enough, if you fancy fat ladies with a turn for melodrama, but I quite took against her when she refused to give me a kiss.' He looked indignant. 'If the Empress herself took me on her knee and kissed me then you would think that a mere...' He giggled and clapped his hand over his mouth. 'Oops, I almost said too much.'

I wish I knew what he was going to say. People always clam up before they get to the interesting bits don't they?

Sunday, 18
th
August, I am supposed to be in bed.

It is unbearably hot. The Countess kindly gave Carolina and I permission to take our books outside and sit in the shade reading them but thanks to the heat and the incessant buzzing of the bees, I could hardly keep my eyes open and so ended up falling asleep with my head on the open page.

Consequently, I did not learn very much today.

Tuesday, 20
th
August.

Papa is dead.
 

It cannot be true.
 

No.

Thursday, 5
th
September, can't sleep.

It still doesn't feel real and I can't just can't accept that I will never see my Papa again. Not in this world anyway. It happened quite suddenly apparently, as he was leaving the Opera House in Innsbruck. He had been perfectly happy and healthy all evening; enjoying the music, laughing with Mama and teasing Leopold and his ugly new bride who were sitting in the box beside them. He had complained of a pain in his side when they left but no one thought anything of it and he himself dismissed it as indigestion after a particularly lavish dinner earlier that evening. 'It is too hot to eat partridge,' he joked with Leopold as he said goodnight. It was only when he was in his carriage that he had given a loud cry and then collapsed into Joseph's arms, dying almost instantly.

It was Joseph who rode all the way back from Innsbruck in the heat and dust to tell us the terrible news. He took each of us in his arms as we wept together and told us that we had lost the best father the world has ever known.
 
He looked dazed and entirely disbelieving and had black smudges under his eyes and a darkly stubbled chin. He is emperor now, of course, but seems to care nothing at all about this.

'I would gladly trade it all just to have Papa back with us again,' he said over and over. 'He died in my arms.' He looked down at his hands and we saw that he was crying again. 'He died in my arms.'

Mama is distraught of course. She came home with Papa's body but immediately locked herself away alone in her own rooms, shutting all of the heavy brocade curtains to keep out the light and admitting no one. We did not see her until his funeral, which was very grand and solemn and took place at the
Kapuzinergruft
(Imperial Crypt) in the Capuchins' church next to the Hofburg. We were all there, weeping loudly and dressed in black with black veils covering our pale faces. When the big black carriage bearing Papa's body reached the wooden gates of the
Kapuzinergruft
, the court herald knocked on the door and one of the Capuchin monks of the monastery came out to ask 'who demands entry?' The herald replied with Papa's name and a list of all of his titles (this took quite some time) to which the monk responded with 'I don't know this person' upon which the whole charade would be repeated again only with shorter titles being used this time and with the monk saying once again 'I do not know this person'. The herald then knocked for a third and final time and upon being asked 'who demands entry' replied simply with 'Franz Stefan, a sinful, mortal human being', at which point the gates swung open and Papa's carriage disappeared inside. It was very sad and incredibly humbling.

Mama came to visit Carolina and I a few days later in our schoolroom and we were both astonished by how different she looked – she looked many decades older, almost like an old woman in fact, and was dressed from head to toe in thick, unrelenting and miserable black and not her usual bright and glimmering silks, brocades and velvets. She had also cut off all of her thick, blonde hair, which Papa had loved so much and instead sported grizzled, short curls underneath a stiff and uncompromising black linen cap.

'You have lost the best Papa ever,' she said to us, echoing Joseph's words. 'I can hardly believe that he is gone.' Her eyes were red rimmed from weeping and we saw that still more tears were trembling on the edge of her long lashes. 'He loved you both very much and is still watching over you from Heaven. I hope that you will both strive to make him proud and to be worthy of him.' Even now there had to be a note of censure. She started sobbing and pulled a large black kerchief out of her expansive bosom.

'Yes, Mama,' we chorused, curtseying deeply and swallowing down our own sobs, as there is a selfishness to Mama's grief that made us instinctively know that any signs of our own misery must be kept well hidden. 'We will do our best to be worthy of him,' Carolina added, surreptitiously wiping her eyes with the back of her hand.
 

Mama nodded solemnly and then turned to me, taking my hand in her plump white one. 'I heard that he asked to see you again before he left,' she said, her voice cracking with emotion. 'I think that he loved you best out of all our children.' It sounded almost like an accusation and I stared dumbly at her, not knowing what to say. 'You are so very like your dear Papa, Maria Antonia,' she whispered after a long silence. 'You must work harder than ever to be worthy of him.' For a brief second she touched my cheek with her hand and then she stood up and was gone, releasing a cloud of lavender, thyme and rosemary perfume from her heavy black taffeta skirts as she moved. She smelt just like Papa and I realised that she must have been using his cologne in an attempt to remain close to him.

Carolina and I burst into tears when she had gone; the sight of Mama's suffering and the still lingering scent of Papa's cologne was just too much for us.

Sunday, 20
th
October, the Hofburg.

Winter is fast approaching and so the court have moved to the Hofburg, which is Mama's Winter palace in the very centre of Vienna. Everyone complains a great deal about having to move here, as it is so large and old fashioned and isn't as pretty or comfortable as Schönbrunn although it is certainly very warm thanks to the large wood burning stoves in every room. I am fond of the Hofburg though, as I was born here and the move here in the Autumn always signifies that it is almost my birthday and that I am another year older.

I am currently sitting at the little walnut wood
escritoire
in my pink and white paneled bedchamber. I am supposed to be working at my French but it is so very dull that it is making my head ache. I try very hard but the pages of my book are covered with crossings out and splodges of ink, where I have made mistakes and tried to correct them. I do not think that I will ever be very good at French although the Countess has said that with more practice I might do very well at it. When Mama asks to see my work, the Countess often resorts to writing the exercises out in pencil and then making me write over the top in ink so that it looks like I have done the work myself. I do not think that Mama will be deceived by this for very long.

The Hofburg is much noisier than Schönbrunn and right now I can hear Amalia and Josepha having a music lesson with Herr Gluck in their rooms further down the narrow, gloomy corridor which is lined with pencil drawings by Joseph and Leopold of scenes from Greek mythology. They are both singing and occasionally pausing to giggle over some private joke. Amalia has a cold and you can tell from her rasping singing that she has a sore throat as well. I can also hear my brothers Max and Ferdinand laughing as they plays with their dogs in their rooms downstairs and if I listen very carefully indeed I can hear the constant low rumble and hum of the thousands of Hofburg servants going about their daily business as they fetch and carry, light fires and open doors. It is the constant and reassuring background noise to our existence; the first thing I hear in the morning and the last thing I hear at night. If it were ever to stop then I would think that the world itself had ceased to exist as well. From outside my window I can hear the every day sounds of Vienna – the constant clatter and rumble of carriages rolling in and out of the cobbled courtyard and in the distance the sound of a hundred thousand voices laughing, singing, shouting and enjoying life, while the church bells ring out into the crisp, fresh air and all the while the slate blue Danube flows quickly past.
 

It is now over two months since my Papa died and things have changed a great deal here. Mama still wears nothing but black and is very serious and severe on the rare occasions that we see her. She still spends a lot of time alone in her rooms but is appearing more and more often in public. I overheard some of the court ladies whispering that Mama had considered abdicating the throne and entering a convent when Papa died but that the thought of Ferdinand, Carolina, Max and I prevented her as we are all too young to be without any parents at all.

Joseph is now emperor, which makes poor Josephina the empress, not that it makes any difference while Mama is still alive for everyone knows that she is the real ruler here. Josephina always looks faintly embarrassed when she is in company with Mama and gives way to her at all times, which is only right but she doesn't manage to do so gracefully so that Mama always looks cross when she is there and Joseph gets a tight lipped, impatient expression on his face when once again she doesn't step back quickly enough as we walk into dinner to let Mama go past first. I do not think he likes Josephina very much and there have been no pregnancies yet even though they have been married for almost a year now.

Joseph's little girl Theresia, his daughter by Isabella, is here with us of course. She is three now and is loved and petted by us all for she is so very pretty and looks just like her poor Mama with wide dark blue eyes and fair, curling hair. Josephina is very kind to her as well but this does nothing to soften Joseph's dislike and he always looks like he would prefer her not to touch his daughter and would like to snatch Theresia away when she makes her sit beside her. It is all very sad.

Tuesday, 22
nd
October, a chilly afternoon.

The whole palace is in uproar. Christina has informed Mama that she is madly in love with Prince Albert of Saxony, who is the youngest son of the King of Poland and who has lived in Vienna for several years now. It isn't a bad match really as his mother is an Austrian archduchess and one of Mama's cousins, also one of his sisters is the Maria Josepha who is married to the Dauphin of France and another one is Queen of Spain and mother to Maria Luisa who married Leopold last year. It seems though that Papa had intended Christina for one of his French nephews, the Duc de Chablais and Mama is loath to go against his wishes in this matter. Papa's last wish, being of course, sacrosanct as far as Mama is concerned.

The prince has asked Mama's permission to address our sister and Christina has publicly announced that she fully intends to accept him. It seems like a
fait accompli
(see, I have some French after all) but we are all in shock that she should have the courage to choose her own husband. It is entirely unheard of for an Austrian archduchess to do such a thing and we are all desperate to know what is to happen to them both.

'I hope Mama refuses to let her marry him,' Carolina muttered to me last night when we were supposed to be saying our bedtime prayers in the chilly Hofburg chapel with its ornate golden statues and gloomy paintings of martyred saints, who gaze down upon us with dark, sad eyes. 'It will totally go to Christina's head if she gets her own way and I do not think that I can bear to see it.' She winced and shifted her knees as the hard white marble floor of the chapel can get very cold at this time of year.

'But it is all so romantic,' I whispered back, my eyes still tightly closed in case the Countess happened to glance over at us. 'Also, if Christina is allowed to choose her own husband then maybe that means that we will be able to as well.'

Carolina was surprised into giving a loud laugh, that echoed alarmingly in the vaulted chapel. 'You idiot. Haven't you realised by now that Christina is Mama's special favourite and that even if she is allowed to marry her boring prince, it doesn't make a jot of difference to our own prospects.' She stands up and crosses herself, feigning a coughing fit to disguise her laughter. 'Only Christina will be allowed to choose for herself while we are all sent away to marry men that we have never even seen before.'

'Mimi,' I whisper to myself. Of course.

Sunday, 27
th
October, after dinner.