The Empress Chronicles (13 page)

The last of the winter’s ice melted off and soon the earth gave way to blooms of several colors pushing up toward the sky. As winter lifted, the Revolution began to ease as well, and with this reprieve all the Wittelsbach palaces opened back up to the world. Mummi went out in the coach more often. In particular, to meet with King Ludwig, her brother, as well as her nephew Max, who were having the king’s
Schönheitengalerie
reassembled now that the protestors had sheathed their swords and retreated to the hills. Meanwhile, activity at Herzog was like the foxes and squirrels making ready for winter, even though blossoms had begun to bloom all around us.

At night, I too was restless, as thoughts of Lola haunted me. I took to fingering my locket, drawing thumb and pointer around the wing, sometimes even scratching open the skin there. I wasn’t sure what the sensation was, exactly. Pain, perhaps? It was hard to discern, for as soon as the sharp tingle begged me to withdraw my fingers, another satisfying feeling overtook. A sharp bolt in a space between pain and joy, in which the beautiful eyes of Lola Montez bore through. And when the urge to split my skin became too extreme, I sought Lola’s gloves and pulled them over my hands. I would cloak myself in virtue. I would separate myself from ill deed, even if just through the sheath of a glove.

Was she still in Munich, then? Clothed in her disguise, her veil, her faerie skirts?

I worried over this night after night, and at long last made a decision. I requested to accompany Mummi on one of her outings to Uncle Ludwig’s Nymphenburg Palace so I might see for myself. Through Baroness Wilhelmine, I made my plea. “In my study of people of import, I would so love to examine the portraits in my uncle’s
Schönheitengalerie
.”

My governess obliged, smiling even. “Why, Duchess, you finally understand that you must occupy your head with matters that befit a young lady of your station.”

And so it was that not quite a fortnight before the Easter holiday, I donned the Parisian pantalettes, a new pair of silk stockings, a fine modern corset fitted with baleen busks from the cold northern waters. Nurse pressed my skirts with the mangle, and I allowed my hair to be fashioned into a complicated braid the fuss of which forced me to sit in one place for half a day. Again, I stretched the delicate cloth of white gloves over my increasingly chapped and scabbed fingers. I kept hearing Lola’s voice:
If you find your virtue in jeopardy, you may toss one of the gloves from your bedroom window, and I will come
.

We were to arrive at Nymphenburg in time for tea. The spaniels, Mummi had decided, would stay in their apartment, for King Ludwig sneezed in the company of dogs—though often it was reported the king’s mistresses enjoyed the presence of a hound or a mastiff when seen in public with the monarch. Mummi, I imagine, was leery of being mistaken for a consort when unaccompanied by her husband, the duke.

“Mummi,” I begged once the coach rolled to a stop in front of the main hall of the Nymphenburg. “Might I sketch the portraits in my journal after we are received? I would so like to gaze once again at the splendor of all those magnificent ladies in the gallery.”

Mummi nodded her approval. Her eyes rolled from my new boots to the silk ribbon that pulled at my crown hairs. She pinched another layer of red into my cheeks before allowing the footman to help her down the carriage stairs, and as she descended, she turned her head round toward me, winking. “I understand young Karl may be joining us later. Perhaps you should do your sketching first. I’ve arranged for your cousins to join you in the hall.”

Her words plowed a swath of excitement through my chest, where my suitor’s very picture still lay closed up against my breast. “Karl,” I whispered into my gloves; a puff of breath bounced off my hands and curled up my nose. Thank goodness I had remembered to cleanse my mouth with parsley after the morning meal.

The
Schönheitengalerie
lay in the south pavilion of my uncle’s castle, and it was quite a long walk from the center residence. A small retinue escorted me to the edge of the apartment, where I was joined by my uncle’s mad daughter, Amalie, and his round-faced young grandson, Little Ludwig. Amalie dismissed the servants and, reluctantly, they bowed and exited.

Amalie and I curtseyed to one another, and Little Ludwig, velvet tails and all, performed his best bow, his pointy nose nearly touching the marble floor.

Amalie was a slight bit older than Nené, but already, rumor had determined she was unmarriable due to her fits of apoplexy and melancholia. This afternoon she was dressed all in white undergarments, as though for bed. She wore brocade slippers on her slender feet. “My father tells me you wish to see the paintings of his tarts?” she sang.

“Paintings of his tarts,” echoed Little Ludwig, much like one of my parrots.

I was not certain, even with the repetition, that I had heard correctly. “I beg your pardon, Your Grace?”

Amalie burst out in operatic tones then, singing the scales at top voice, the
do re mi
of her vocal chords echoing off the domed rotunda we now walked under.

“She swallowed a glass piano when she was small,” Little Ludwig informed me.

We Wittelsbachs were known for our eccentricities, but it had been many months since I had last taken the company of these cousins, and I’d all but forgotten how strange they were. Fortunately, they were not dawdlers, these two. I often found that my pace was much swifter than that of my escort, and it was so welcome to finally journey to a destination at the speed I required. Angels’ wings, as always, beneath my feet.

The south pavilion had fantastic light but, alas, the sun was at its least generous interval. Once inside the gallery the three of us scurried about to light candles so as to view the paintings under optimum conditions.

“She—” Amalie pointed to a far corner, where Aunt Sophie, the archduchess, hung upon the wall “—wears man’s britches under her skirt.”

I smiled, remembering my first hunt the spring before and my own secret britches.

Amalie, a candelabra in one hand, her finger like a lashing willow switch in the other, proceeded round the large room, pointing to portrait after portrait, singing out accusations as though an aria. “
She
, and
she
, and
she
have slept with the king.
She
refused to.
She
possibly did but then went off to the convent.
She
gave birth to two red-haired children, Wittelsbachs no doubt, but claimed otherwise.
She
was a shoemaker’s daughter. My father plucked
her
right out of the nursery, I would guess. But
she
died a virgin. And
she
and
she
and
she
were virtuous, I do believe. And that most beautiful one? In the corner?
She
was the tart no man could win.”

They were all enchanting and lovely, the women. Indeed, “the tart no man could win”
had astonishing flaxen hair, and in her eyes was the notion that she could have whomever she chose. But others of these beauties were equally engaging. Dozens of smiles, of bosoms, of jewels cast their number into the room. I pulled out my journal. Where to begin with my sketching and notes?

“Oh, Sisi, what a pretty notation book,” exclaimed Little Ludwig, clapping his chubby hands with glee.

I was prepared this time with a more modern pen, upon which I had fastened my fox brush lest I needed something to mop a mess. I also thought to bring along a closed bottle of ink with a cork stopper. I had peeled off my gloves and lashed them to my body through my silk sash, and was now scrambling to keep up with Amalie, her descriptions, jotting them fiercely in my book. Lady after lady. The scandal, the background, the tale’s end—never, it seemed, a happy one. And naturally, she’d saved the most enigmatic and most luxurious creature for last. Upon the wall nearest Aunt Sophie, the wild gaze of Lola Montez pulled me toward her.

But before Amalie launched into Lola, she offered, “And there, crammed in the far dark wall, is the portrait of me.” She sighed, looking down at her frilly garment. “I didn’t look so mad then, did I?”

I curtseyed, for that was what decorum dictated, and said, “Your Grace, not one bit mad. And in addition, you are the loveliest of them all.”

“Liar,” my cousin sang, her high-pitched yelp like a cat catching a canary. She set her candle on a big block table in the center of the room and then skipped round the table screeching, “Liar, liar, liar, liar, liar, liar.”

“Oh dear,” offered Little Ludwig, hands on his ears now. “That must have been a shard in her throat from the glass piano.”

Alas, I
had
lied. My cousin was the sort of mad where one forgot to comb one’s hair. Her eyes were wild and unfocused. The gentle, comely girl in the portrait was far off from the stick-thin girl who stood in her nightclothes before us now.

“If you please,” I ventured. “That one on the far wall. Lola Montez? Do you know her by chance?”

Little Ludwig by this time had sidled up next to me and began to stroke my fox brush as though it were a pet. “Why, she is the worst of them all,” he ventured. He grabbed my fox pen and pointed it like a saber at his aunt. “She put a spell on Amalie and turned her into that.”

I was taken aback. “A spell?”

Amalie twirled round, her footwear causing her legs to slip right out from under her, and she plopped on the shiny floor, feet in two directions.

Little Ludwig scrambled up to me and shushed me with my pen, pushing the bushy tail against my lips. He whispered loudly, “We must not speak of it, or she will return.”

Around the edges of the brush I said, “She?”

“Lola.”

“But she
has
returned,” I blurted. “I met her at the ball not four weeks past.”

Amalie rose up again and walked over to where I stood. She pulled the gloves from my sash. “She gave you these, did she not?”

I felt a shiver. How would Amalie know this?

“And did she tell you to toss them from your chambers if you need find her?”

I nodded, breathless and unable to speak.

“Well then,” Amalie sang. “You shall become as mad as me. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.”

I grabbed at my gloves, but Amalie was too quick and danced about the room, holding them out in front of her.

I began to panic. I could feel sweat gathering at my hairline. “What do you mean?”

“You do not know her,” sang Amalie. “Her boldness knows no bounds. She bared her breasts in this very castle when she did not get the attention she sought. Just ripped her clothes off of her own body and stood in front of my father, naked. And in doing so, she soon became Countess of Landsfeld. Her brand of madness worked. But mine, well, judge for yourself.” Amalie tossed the gloves back to me, turned on her heel, and marched toward the door. “Elisabeth Wittelsbach, you will see. You must have something that she desires. She will not stop until she takes it from you.” She turned back to me then and removed an invisible cap from her head as though she were a gentleman bidding me adieu, and disappeared with a shrill soprano cry down the long hall.

Little Ludwig and I found ourselves alone in the gallery amongst the beautiful ladies, their secrets, and their reputations. The portraits were of courtesans, nobility, beggar maids and faeries, side by side with no thought to rank or privilege. In court, all things proceeded in order of class. One’s station depended entirely on to whom one was issued, to whom one was married. Whether one was born male or female, and in which order of birth. But here, in my uncle’s gallery, all that mattered was beauty. And because the forms of beauty were somewhat vast and unrankable, it mattered not the clothing, the hairstyle or the age. It was delightful, really. And so different than anything in my recent experience. Indeed, the equality displayed upon the walls hearkened to my quickly evaporating childhood, the peasants and blackamoors with whom I played as a child, all of us running, laughing, climbing trees in the yard.

“Who do you wish to marry when you grow up?” asked my little cousin as I sketched and wrote in my journal.

Marry? I had not given one moment’s thought to the question, though lately Mummi had begun to ponder that very thing. My locket, buried beneath camisole, corset and yards of lace, caressed the picture of a possible suitor, though I’d not thought much beyond the kissing and riding and general frolicking. “Why, Ludwig, perhaps I shall never marry,” I ventured. “Perhaps, like Amalie, I shall spend my days as I please, running through palaces at will in whatever costume I prefer at the moment.”

Little Ludwig placed his chubby, well-scrubbed claw upon my own. “But do you not long for a fancy gown? An enormous castle? Ladies-in-waiting rubbing ointments into your hands?”

Embarrassed, I withdrew my uncared-for hand from my cousin’s and worried it into the glove. “Ludwig, what did Amalie mean when she mentioned Lola and taking something she desires? Was it merely madness?”

My cousin shrugged his small, round shoulders. He dashed to the section of wall where blue-eyed, dark-haired Lola looked over her shoulder at the other ladies. “She let me fire her pistol once,” he said. “But I didn’t much care for it.”