Becoming Marie Antoinette (6 page)

“Promise you will never forget me,” Josepha whispered, her words warm in my ear.

“Never,” I whimpered. I swallowed hard and blinked back a sob, forcing a brave note into my voice. “Never.”

Always dutiful, pious, and obedient, Josepha did as Maman
instructed. After my sister took leave of me that morning, she descended into the dank and drafty Kaisergruft and knelt before the tomb of Angel Josepha. Our sister Elisabeth and I saw her that afternoon and kissed her good-bye once more. Already Josepha complained of feeling ill. Her cheeks were flushed with color, though she insisted she was cold. By the time Maman summoned us to the Rössel Room where the imperial physician somberly disclosed the worst, I was no longer allowed to see her.

I fixed Josepha in my memory as she was on the last afternoon I saw her: a frightened girl in a gown of violet brocade, a good sister and an even better daughter—one who placed a higher value on her pledge to Maman than on her own brief life.

October 15 was the day on which Josepha should have climbed into a grand traveling coach in the courtyard of the Hofburg. It was the day she should have ventured forth, clattering over the cobbles toward the unknown, a new life, first as a bride and a queen, and then as a mother, in a kingdom where a hot sun warmed a sparkling sea. But instead of waving our handkerchiefs, wiping our tears, and wishing my sixteen-year-old sister, Archduchess Maria Josepha Gabriella Johanna Antonia Ana of Austria, a safe journey to Naples, we were bidding her a final farewell as she took the ultimate unknowable journey, on her way to heaven.

Josepha’s fears had been well founded, her terrified premonition correct. One of the Capuchins, his own face wet with tears, later admitted to Maman that in their haste to inter the corpse, Angel Josepha’s tomb had not been properly sealed, which is how my beautiful sister caught smallpox. More than ever I wished it were possible to turn back the hands of the clock, stopping them at a moment when the clergy or the doctors or
someone
would have noticed the—the literal graveness—of the error. But I could not trick Time. Now there were two Angel Josephas. I had been too hasty in naming the first.

W
INTER
1767–1768

I knew better than to listen at keyholes and spy on people. I would have to confess my sin after Mass on Sunday. But I also knew that Maman and Joseph were discussing my future, and I would defy any twelve-year-old girl to restrain her curiosity under the circumstances.

The pair of them were in Maman’s study, which she kept so chilly that the frosty air blew through the keyhole against my cheek. Outside in the Hofburg courtyard, the wind howled with alarming ferocity, swirling the late December snow in circular eddies. As I crouched beside the door and squinted into the room, I could see my eldest brother, tall and noble, known to the rest of the world as Franz Joseph of Austria, snap open his enameled snuffbox and place a pinch of tobacco in the crook between his right thumb and forefinger.

“You were saying, Maman?” he said before inhaling sharply.

Our mother scowled. “You know I think that’s an ugly habit.”

“You don’t approve of anything I do.” Joseph chuckled. “Snuff is all the rage among titled gentlemen. But whether it’s progress, reform, or snuff, you have neither patience nor tolerance for modernity.”

Maman sighed heavily, as if she knew her next sentence bore such import that it would require a massive exhalation to keep it hanging in the air. “I fear for the little one, Joseph.”

“Many girls are wed at twelve.”

Maman snorted. “Antonia at twelve looks ten. At her age, I had already begun to resemble a woman.”

Our mother’s expression was grave. I’d started to notice that ever since she announced my betrothal, the pouches beneath her eyelids had been growing darker with fatigue.

“You are aware, Joseph, that I am loath to admit an error in judgment. But it might have been a mistake to negotiate a treaty with the French when Antonia is so young. After all, the world—”

“You mean
France
, Maman,” my brother interrupted. He availed himself of another pinch of snuff.

“—cannot be expected to sit back and wait until Antonia grows taller and begins to develop,” our mother continued, as though Joseph hadn’t spoken a word. “Did you know that the very first thing Louis inquired of his ambassador to Vienna was whether Antonia had good breasts? I tried to offer him Charlotte, but she is older than the dauphin by two years and Louis wouldn’t hear of the match. Evidently the boy is as immature as Antonia. And as bashful as a violet. Louis feared that Charlotte would devour him.”

I wondered what Charlotte would have made of Maman’s characterization of her and debated whether I should tell her. After all, it had been her idea for me to eavesdrop. My sister had convinced me that there were occasions when politics took precedence over piety—such as when one’s fate is in the balance.

A footman approached and I straightened up, seized by the momentary fear that he might tell Maman. Then I remembered the vast differences between my rank and his. Still, I gave him a wink and touched my finger to my lips. He inclined his head respectfully.

I knelt beside the keyhole again. Maman was speaking. “Austria cannot afford to delay much longer while Prussia and Russia rattle their sabers in earnest, threatening to carve into our territories as if the Hapsburg Empire were an enormous roasted joint. We need allies. We once had Parma. Now it is lost to us, and Lombardy with it, thanks to the English. And while the French have hardly been our friends, a strategic alliance with them will strengthen both our kingdoms by checking the ambitions of our enemies.”

Joseph continued to pace anxiously. My eye began to twitch, and I drew away from the keyhole for a moment. “Then why not renegotiate the terms of the marriage treaty,” I heard him suggest. “Elisabeth is twenty-four; perhaps
she
should be offered to Louis—not for the young dauphin, of course, but for the king himself. His Most Christian Majesty is a widower, yet he remains a vibrant and most vital man with”—Joseph chuckled—“an immense … joie de vivre. He is still quite the
roué
, you know.”

“I know Louis has mistresses.” My mother sounded like she had been sucking on lemon pastilles. I adjusted my position to get a better view of her. She looked equally sour. “All sovereigns have paramours. And no matter their feelings, it is not for their wives to make scenes. Although she may have already lost his love, she risks losing something far worse if she berates him. She loses his esteem.”

Joseph spoke in a low rumble. “
Ça suffit
. Enough, Maman. Papa is more than two years dead.” He rubbed his arms in an effort to massage some warmth into them.

My torso was growing pinched from crouching so awkwardly
within the carapace of my corset.
Come to the point!
I thought impatiently. Enough talk about husbands and wives and mistresses. What about my wedding to the dauphin! Moments later, Maman resumed the conversation. But her voice sounded strained. I imagined her thick body tensing beneath her black damask bodice. “I have already considered dispatching Chancellor Kaunitz to speak with France’s Foreign Minister, the duc de Choiseul. Let the diplomats sort it out—our representative and Louis’s. But there is no getting around the fact that your sister is no longer the beauty she once was.”

A lump rose in my throat and I stifled a gasp.
Did Maman mean me? Have I somehow lost my looks? Is it because I still resemble a child?

“Look at Elisabeth through the eyes of a politician, Joseph, and not with those of a devoted brother.” My mother cleared her throat, endeavoring to suppress a telltale crackle in her voice. I knew that sound well; it was the harbinger of unwanted tears. “Elisabeth survived the smallpox, but her face is so ravaged with pockmarks that Louis would never have her. He might have done so once upon a time, but he prizes feminine beauty.” Maman sighed with tremendous resignation. “And your sister Amalia is also too disfigured to make an acceptable queen of France. No, it will have to be Antonia and the dauphin. What is done must never be permitted to be undone.”

She seemed to expect my brother to counterattack, but when he made no reply, she pressed on. “But at present, we have little more than badinage—empty words, an honorable promise—on which to pin the hopes of an empire. It is imperative that we hasten France’s formal commitment to Antonia’s marriage; for without a written assurance from Louis himself, the accord is too easily broken.”

I had heard enough.

They were becoming impatient.
I
was becoming impatient. I was not growing up fast enough, betrayed by my own body. And by now I knew full well that my body was my destiny. My future was at stake, but no one would tell me anything.

Throughout the first months of 1768 I gained a clearer understanding of what Maman had meant when she’d spoken of pressuring the French to finalize my marriage plans. Her efforts to keep the marquis de Durfort entertained knew no bounds. The ambassador was an honored guest of the empress at every winter ball, even when there was more than one given on the same night. As always, there was a hidden purpose behind Maman’s most innocent gestures. She knew how much I loved to dance, and if she was not especially proud of my academic efforts at least she could show the Frenchman my natural grace in all the formal court dances, from the stately pavanes to the lively polonaises.

Often, after supper, the imperial children would perform in concert. I would sit down at my harp and play for the marquis, accompanying myself in some pretty tune with a pastoral lyric, usually something rather silly in translation, praising the sunshine and the flowers. Privately, I fretted that the French ambassador might be growing weary of Maman’s increasingly transparent efforts to demonstrate that I was worthy of one day becoming their queen.

On one evening, at her special request, my youngest brothers and I re-created the dance we had performed during the celebrations for Joseph’s first marriage to the beautiful Isabella of Parma, she of the mild, sweet countenance and dark, shining eyes that death had closed too soon. Our original performance had been the divertissement in an opera written especially for the wedding by our court composer and royal music master, Herr Gluck.

Maman even insisted that the seamstresses make a copy of the
gown I had worn when, as a five-year-old girl, I first danced the divertissement. The bodice of deep blue satin was very tight, and my ivory-colored sleeves and skirt were adorned with festoons of roses, each one fashioned out of petal pink silk. Because the robe was so closely fitted, Maman thought it showed how well made my limbs were (a tacit implication that I would bear healthy children), and there were no furbelows on the sleeves to distract from the graceful movements of my arms. She was proud, too, of my long neck and the way I carried my head.

As the music filled my ears, stirring my soul, I obeyed my feet, letting them take me through the intricate steps of their own accord. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed Maman nodding and smiling, her deep blue eyes glimmering with hope and pride. And as the pavane drew to a close, she subtly poked the marquis with her elbow, as if to say, “See, won’t she make an enchanting dauphine of France!” In response, he raised his handkerchief, heavily scented with violet water, to his upper lip. I could not tell whether he was registering disapproval or ennui.

That January, during one of our winter festivals, my mother was somewhat more blunt, tact and diplomacy having yielded no stronger a reaction from the marquis than a series of wan smiles. One frosty afternoon Maman accorded him the honor of standing beside her on a balcony of the Hofburg to view a procession of twenty-two sleighs bearing the imperial family. Unbeknownst to her, that morning her youngest children had built a snow fort in the courtyard outside the Leopoldine wing of the palace, where we made our residence. Charlotte and I closed ranks against Ferdinand and Maxl, pelting them with snowballs from the safety of our frozen barricade. But when the boys retaliated, we squealed like piglets and pleaded our femininity as a defense, for we knew Maman would scold us most emphatically if we paraded before the French envoy with wet hair. Our brothers were quite miffed
that we had claimed victory without permitting them to fire a single volley.