The Empress Chronicles (6 page)

She gives me a prying look. “Liz, you’re okay with this, right?”

“His name is Cory?” I say, feigning ignorance, buying time. I’m not sure I’m okay with any of it, but that doesn’t really matter. What would change if I complained?

“Well, it’s short for Coriander,” says The Girlfriend. “My parents are herbalists.”

Dad clears his throat, “So, Willow, I didn’t think this whole thing would happen so soon after Liz getting here. She’s barely had time to unpack.”

“Well,” she says, the intensity of her dazzling smile impossibly ramping up a notch, “we’d better catch her up. Cory will be on tomorrow afternoon’s train out of Eugene. How’s the hand, Liz?”

I tuck a section of bristly hair back into a bobby pin with my bandaged and gloved hand. I can’t help it; I have this tendency to imitate gestures of people who intimidate me. Dr. Greta actually said that was healthy—it meant I was thinking outside of myself. “Okay,” I mumble.

Since The Girlfriend’s appearance at the shed, a dozen goats lumbered up to the fence, and now a bunch of dark, wet muzzles are pushing me and Dad out of the way, vying to be closest to their mistress, the real star of the show. All creatures great and small apparently love her. Definitely a Betty.

“My baby brother is just back from two years abroad,” she says, patting all the floppy-eared heads in turn. “His friends down in Eugene, let’s just say they’re not the most positive influence.”

Dad slips into nervous chuckles. One of his least attractive qualities. “Well, sweetie,” he stammers, “he didn’t have any help drinking the pint of bourbon that got him the minor in possession. What’s the status on his probation?”

“My parents,” she continues, “they’re getting older. After five kids, they’re really over it. You know? I think Coriander would really benefit from some good old farm work.”

I try to picture the parents. What sorts of people name their boy Coriander? I conjure a crone of a woman with a long gray braid, her sagging flesh draped in a hemp muumuu. The dad, I’m sure, is one of those balding ponytail types with a potbelly and bulbous nose. Typical Eugene. Pranksters, stoners, yurt-dwellers. Maybe they have a microbus.

“Where is he going to sleep?” Dad asks.

“We’ll figure it out, Billy,” says The Girlfriend, slightly annoyed all of a sudden.

Billy
? My father has always gone by William. But with her being
Willow
, I can see the problem there. It makes me curious. I wonder about The Girlfriend’s other siblings. So far I know there’s a sister who just had a baby and a brother named Cory who has a drinking problem. “So, Willow, you have four siblings,” I say, trying for the first time to speak her name out loud.

“My parents weren’t Catholic or anything. Just careless.”

Her parents, I figure, might be like these very goats. Breeding, producing unchecked. I nod.

“Cory will be seventeen next month,” she says.

I envision a boy version of The Girlfriend. The pale, freckled Ivory Girl look wouldn’t lend itself well to a boy.

“I guess I can go clean out the granary. We can pick up a mattress at Goodwill,” Dad says, continuing the “where will he sleep?” conversation.

Dad’s girlfriend pouts. Her lips are pale and thin, and turned down they make her much less pretty. This is the opposite of Mom, who’s at her most gorgeous pissed off. “It’s summer,” she says. “The sleeping porch upstairs will do for now.”

“Right,” Dad says and then hustles his splashing pail of milk to the shed. Over his shoulder he calls, “Princess, can you help me with something?”

This is code for
I need some time alone with you
, and I smile. Our secret language, our kinship, is intact and strong as ever. I peel off my gloves and shove them in the pockets of my jeans, then follow my father, leaving The Girlfriend to tend to her goats.

I could barely compose myself when I saw Papa swaggering out the door to meet our carriage, a stein of ale in his hand, a huge smile on his handsome face. I handed Sophie to the baby nurse as my siblings scattered to reunite with their belongings. Papa opened his arms, and I leapt at him the way I did when I was small. Alas, I was no longer small and practically knocked him down.

“Sisi, you are a giant.” He laughed, taking steps backwards to keep from falling.

“You’ve returned.”

“Indeed,” he exclaimed. “And I have so many surprises for you children and your mother.”

Mummi lumbered up and muttered, “I cannot wait to see.” Her small dogs stayed close to the hem of her carriage coat and barked shrilly at Papa, as always.

Papa and I followed Mummi into the main hall, where fresh paint and polish greeted us. Vases crammed full of Michaelmas daisies sat on every surface, their blue-purple blooms like veins against the flesh-colored walls. “Ludi,” Papa crooned. “Where’s my hello?”

Mummi turned sharply, took in a breath like she did before barking an order, but one look at Papa’s playful face—ah, she never could quite resist it. After long weeks away, especially. We were the same that way.

With the spaniels snapping at Papa’s heels, he took my mother in a tight, long embrace until her cheeks reddened and she pulled away. “Duke,” she said, “the girl.”

“Very well,” said my father, and he winked at Mummi as though she were his new bride. The rare affection between my parents warmed me, but I knew it wouldn’t last, and before long they’d pass each other as strangers in the hall. Love, demonstrated to be
beside the point
.

“What surprises?” I wanted to know, hoping that whatever they were, they might please Mummi enough to keep her in good spirits.

“Come,” he said.

The front rooms of the palace were as we’d left them the preceding year. Drawing room, music room, parlor, library. Mummi appraised the drapes, the upholstery, the carpets. The palace was kept much better than Possi, since we often entertained dignitaries and royalty here.

Once we reached the far end of the front apartments, I could sense the surprises would soon follow. I heard sounds. A pipe organ, maybe? There were voices. A party of some sort.

“In the name of the Lord,” gasped Mummi as the hall opened into a room upon which was painted a floor-to-ceiling likeness of Marie Antoinette. Even with my limited studies, I could recognize the teased gray hair, the slate-blue dress finished in Spanish lace. The perfect pink rose in her hand. Petite filigree tables and chairs were scattered beneath Marie. A long bar, upon which pastries and decanters sat, split the room down the middle. On the other side of the bar was a beer garden, complete with peasant women and customers.

“I had this built while we were away,” said Papa, swilling from his stein and then handing it to a chubby beer girl to refill. “It’s Café Chantant and Bavaria Brauhaus, side by side. Isn’t that clever? Now we don’t need to hop the border for our éclairs.”

I was used to my eccentric father’s whims and his invitations to people we’d meet on the street to come visit. For cards. For dance. If Papa had written a new play and was in need of actors, off he’d ride, into the streets of Munich, returning with a merry band of willing peasants. When Papa was home, our evenings were filled with balls, parties, poetry readings. “Even for you, Maxi,” sighed Mummi as the red-faced maiden handed my father his refilled stein, “this is over the top.”

The converted room once housed a collection of chalices, all in glass and gold cabinets, and it certainly seemed more interesting changed to a café and beer garden. There was ivy trained up lattice and over an arbor. Enormous windows cut into the side, where light from the courtyard poured through. I marveled at brightly colored parasols hanging from the ceiling. Just then, a dwarf popped out of a half door and began playing a miniature dulcimer. A drunken woman with a large bosom commenced in a quick polka. Mummi clutched the brooch at her throat. The dogs barked and barked.

“But I have more to show,” bellowed Papa, now dancing a jig himself, locking elbows with the polka woman for one go-round before summoning us to follow him out into the courtyard and across it, to where two grand stable-sized doors graced the far end of the Herzog Palace, doors that had not been there previously.

Mummi made the sign of the cross. I hid my eyes behind my hands.

I heard Papa open both doors. “May I present,” he began, “Cirque du Max.”

When I dared move the fingers away from my eyes, I didn’t know where to look first. A trapeze and high wire installed in one corner, a pony ring smattered with several small jumps, a stadium of seating, a large cage in which slept a striped cat of some type. Colorful balls and hoops were stacked one atop the other. Cones and wires and ribbons dotted the cavernous space. And on one side of the arena, equipped with rakes and brooms and outfitted in short yellow pants, were four shirtless boys, about Gackl’s size but with ebony skin.

“What happened to the Wittelsbach ballroom?” gasped my mother. “You’ve had it gutted and turned into a … a …”

“Circus, Ludi. Where Sisi and I can practice our bareback tricks and we can entertain the bored people of Munich, who are lacking for entertainment now that they’ve sent Lola on her way.”

And then it happened. The turning point I knew was coming, the way it always came between Mummi and Papa. Mummi slapped Papa hard across the face and turned heel, marching back out to the courtyard, her dogs at her skirts.

Papa held the sting spot, which left a big, fat crimson mark on his cheek, and said, “Oh, dear. That didn’t go at all as I’d planned.”

My heart sunk. Again, there would be a wall between my parents. Oh, why couldn’t Mummi love Papa for his big heart, his wild imagination?

The four ebony children clambered up to Papa, and he patted their fuzzy black heads. “And this is the best surprise of them all, Sisi. These blackamoors, I found them in Cairo. They were bound for short lives as ship slaves. I’ve had them christened, and once we teach them a few things, we’ll set them to live as free men. But for now, they may join you and the others in the nursery.”

I adored my father and was normally eager to join in the make-believe, the folly, the fun he provided during his home stays, though even I could see how he’d stretched the limits this time. Papa loved children. All children. But it often seemed as if his own children were no more or less important to him than any others. Sometimes less so, in fact, as he often took his noon dinner with two of his favorite bastard daughters in his private apartment, and woe to any of us Wittelsbach offspring should we interrupt his routine by barging in uninvited. Perhaps Mummi felt this too? Being less important than Papa’s schemes and ideas?

Papa’s eyes were wild, and the green of them swam now in a sea of drink as he introduced me to the latest addition to our ever-growing brood. Watching Papa smile at his newly adopted children, I did feel less special, but what could I do? I took two of the boys in either hand and away I skipped, toward the welcome smells of fresh hay, sawdust and our very own circus. As I did so, from the corner of my eye, I saw a very strange thing. It was Count S., that rogue, and he stood in a far corner, watching and clutching his own stein. He smiled when I turned my face toward him, and he nodded, the way one does when greeting a friend.

I dropped the hands of the young fellows and watched them scurry back to their cluster, and then I stood still in front of this man who seemed so cocksure and at ease with himself. Like Papa, the count was in his cups, and it was most noticeable in the ruddiness of his cheeks. Sunlight streaming in from high windows caught his whiskers; they were a scant chestnut color like my mare, Psyche. “You there,” I said sharply, practicing the haughtiness my sister seemed to think was necessary of us duchesses. “I can smell your ale from here. Had a few, yes?”

The ruddy-faced count then winked at me, and before I could speak, Papa appeared next to him, tossing his arm round his shoulder. “This fine young man is a hero, Sisi. A god made flesh. He rescued your father from near death during our climb of the Great Pyramid.”

“What is the Great Pyramid?” I queried before I could stop myself from proving, once again, my ignorance.

At my question, the drunken duo began a little backslapping and chuckling, and their joy in each other made me feel stupider yet. Where was
my
friend with whom I could savor such a moment? Whereas men enjoyed one another’s company in a complete and thorough hedonism, ladies were confined to corset-breaths and snickers behind fans.

“To make the duke feel at home,” Count S. began between convulsing guffaws, “I enlisted a chorus of yodelers, so he might believe he were scaling the Alps rather than a man-made precipice in the desert—”

Papa interrupted. “And naturally, with all the commotion and singing, I did not pay close enough attention. And then, an unusual occurrence—”

“Rain in Egypt.”

“A downpour.”

“A deluge.”

“A flood.”

Papa extended a foot. “Pyramids, it turns out, are quite slippery when wet.”

“Not to mention the potency of their wine,” said the count.

“Ah, the quick reflexes of the young,” added Papa, gazing at Count S. with admiration.

This would not do. “I am certain I could have saved you, too, Papa, had I been there,” I suggested.

“I have no doubt that you would have, Duchess Elisabeth,” said the count.

I could not help myself from pushing through my point. “In fact, I would venture that my reflexes are, perhaps, superior.”

The two men spread all manner of amusement across their faces, and this infuriated me to such a degree that I raced over to the far end of the new circus floor, where a sisal rope hung down, leading up to a trapeze bar and, before they could wipe the smirks off their faces, I had scaled up that very rope.

I would show them. Both of them.

“Elisabeth, what in heaven’s name do you think you are doing?” called Papa as I reached for the high bar.

“Circus tricks,” I called down, tucking my skirts under my knees and hoisting my legs up and over the trapeze.

My suddenly sober Papa, worry in his voice, yelled, “Come down this instant, Sisi. We have not yet rigged the proper knots and hooks.”

How dare they cavort so happily, delighting in the adventures in which I was not permitted to partake? “Look at me, Papa. Do I not have the strength of a man? The grace of a bird?” I sang, swinging back and forth over the circus floor. Now I was far above their heads and gaining momentum as I swung to and fro. Why, this was nearly as fantastic as riding over fences or chasing a fox.

Below, Papa continued to beg me to stop, but I paid him no mind. I would be an actor, a trapeze artist in the Cirque du Max. I would not be left out of the fun yet again.

I loved the feel of my head upside down, my hair spilling beneath me like a waterfall. My arms stuck out like a hawk’s, and I flapped them to gain more force in my swing. How marvelous was this feeling? How freeing and lovely!

Higher and higher my swing went, the arc faster and longer, and just when I thought I might reach the very ceiling, I heard a clunk from somewhere above, and then the trapeze swing loosed itself from its anchor and, lo and behold, the swing began to drop like a rock, me along with it.

“Papa!” I yelled, certain that my end was imminent. It was drowning in the Tegernsee all over again. How quickly I had reversed my promise to be prudent and good and more like a lady. I would surely die this time. Die and go straight to hell. All my misdeeds danced behind my eyes. Every last one. I squeezed my eyes shut, accepting my fate, and just when I did, felt the scooping arms of a sturdy body underneath me, catching me and cupping me like a tongue does a snowflake. It was Count S. who’d come to my rescue. Count S., Papa’s hero—his god made flesh.