The Accidental Empress (46 page)

“Fine, come with me. You’re rehired,” Sisi said, waving her hand. “All right, Sophie, I must go. I must finish packing for Budapest. The girls are going to be so adorable with their papa and me—I can hardly wait for the trip.”

XI.

Beside her, Franz looks composed. Even stiff. And yet, Sisi detects the weariness that lurks behind his calm mask. The human frailty that persists, even after all of his years of training and emotional mastery.

For a brief flash, she yearns to remove those coverings from him; to free him of his trappings so that he might once again resemble the man she knew, the man whose hopes were once so interwoven with her own that she had not distinguished between the two distinct threads.

But it is too late for that now. He has made his decisions, she has made hers. She cannot undo the past any more than she can retrace the course she has set for the future. She admits that to herself one final time, sadly, as if wishing him farewell. Wishing a version of herself farewell.

All around them now, the crowd packed into the cathedral jostles and applauds, a frenzied horde vying for a spot close enough to touch them.

“My Queen!”

“My Empress!”

“Long live Sisi!”

“Long live Franz Joseph!”

They love her, she sees, but will they forgive her for what she must do next?

Chapter Eleven

CASTLE HILL, BUDAPEST, HUNGARY

SPRING 1857

“Sit still, little
Sophie.” Sisi tried to sound stern, though she couldn’t help but chuckle as she looked into the eyes of her auburn-haired little girl—tugging on her skirt and begging to be lifted into her mother’s lap.

“Up, Mamma! Up!”

“I am holding Gisela, Sophie, my love. You must stand like a big girl. Here, Mamma will hold your hand.”

They had been positioned, the four of them, so that Sisi sat in the center, cradling Gisela while Sophie, just two years old, stood grumpily beside her mother. Franz stood behind Sisi, his hand placed proudly on her shoulder.

“Up! Up, Mamma!” Little Sophie stomped a chubby foot on the floor.

“Only a little bit longer, Sophie, my dear one.” Sisi longed more than anything to lift Sophie into her lap and smother her with kisses; it was practically impossible to resist her entreaties. “Herr Kriehuber is almost done with the sketch, is he not?” Sisi glanced at the artist.

“If the little princess might stand still just a bit longer,” Herr Kriehuber answered, a smile barely masking his frazzled countenance.

“You mind your elders, Sophie,” Franz admonished, and Sisi couldn’t help but smile at her husband’s failed attempt to sound stern with their daughter. “We want the portrait of our family to turn out well, don’t we?”

Sophie grumbled, kicking her thick little foot once more on the floor in protest, but she obeyed. She was, physically, her father’s daughter. Ringlets the color of cinnamon, clear blue eyes, and cream-colored skin. Gisela looked more like Sisi, with her chestnut curls and eyes of liquid honey. But it was Sophie who had the fire within; a temperament that had been evident to Sisi from her earliest days, and a temperament for which Franz took no credit.

“I was a timid, scared little thing, always clinging to Mother’s skirts. Sophie is all you, Elisa.” Franz had made this observation in the early days of their trip, when the two of them had enjoyed the process of getting to know their eldest daughter.

While Sisi adored both of her girls more than she had ever thought imaginable, something about little Sophie had captivated Sisi, while she suspected Gisela to be Franz’s special little pet. He had told his wife that he liked to imagine Sisi as a baby when he looked upon Gisela’s tiny features and darker curls.

“All right, I have what I need.” Herr Kriehuber emerged from behind his easel, clapping his hands with a proud flourish. “Your Imperial Majesties are free to go.”

Sisi could have sat like this—encircled by her family, playing the central role of mother—without ever growing restless. She would never have her fill of her little girls: the way Sophie’s dimpled little hand felt in hers, the powdery clean scent of Gisela’s blemishless skin, the new sounds and facial expressions she was witness to on a daily occasion. This time with her girls had only increased her all-consuming need to be with them, her yearning to breathe in their happy, giggly presence. The thought of returning to Vienna, to Sophie being so dominant in their lives, made Sisi feel ill. And for that reason, she never allowed herself to think of it.

Their trip to Hungary had started later than originally planned. The previous fall, little Sophie had fallen ill with a severe cold and had been too weak to travel. Refusing to leave without her girls, it had been Sisi who had suggested that they remain at the Hofburg for Christmas and the cold winter months, when it was risky to travel with a baby and a newly recovered toddler.

They arrived in Budapest in early spring, riding through town in a glass coach on their way up to the castle on Buda Hill. The crowds swarmed, lining the Danube and jostling to get a look at their empress, whose beauty they had heard of since before her wedding day. When they saw that she wore their national costume, a velvet bodice and wide-laced sleeves, they erupted in cheers.

“That was a brilliant idea, wearing the national costume,” Franz said, whispering to her as they both waved at the thick wall of cheering onlookers. Even without a translator, both Franz and Sisi knew that the cries were of a happy sort.

“How long have these people been ordered around by Vienna and yet ignored by Vienna’s ruling family? They just want your love and acknowledgment, Franz. Give it to them, and they shall love you.”

As they settled into the castle so long shunned by Habsburg rulers, Franz complained. He found it dank, less comfortable than his Viennese palaces with their brocaded walls and gold-gilt splendor. Sisi loved it. In its shabbiness, Budapest’s castle reminded her of Possi. She never tired of the view it afforded—an unobstructed look at the shimmering Danube River, with its newly erected Chain Bridge, and, beyond that, green plains that stretched all the way toward Russia.

The rhythm of life in Budapest agreed with Sisi much more than her tedious days back at court. She and the girls took slow carriage rides along the wide, sycamore-lined boulevards that hugged the Danube, waving to the fishermen and schoolchildren and colorfully dressed Gypsies who gawked at the imperial procession, so long unseen on these Hungarian streets.

They attended mass daily at the nearby Mátyás templom, the Cathedral of St. Matthew, sitting in their imperial box. They used the time after mass as an opportunity to ingratiate themselves with the local populace and clergy.

On clear afternoons when there was a blue sky and a determined sun, Sisi and Sophie would set out on foot, winding their way along Buda Hill until they reached the ancient lookout point of Halaszbastya, the Fisherman’s Bastion. It was a mazy, white stone complex that looked to Sisi as if it had been plucked from the pages of one of little Sophie’s fairy-tale books. There, amidst the arches, the ornately sculpted walls, and the winding staircases that skirted the riverside hill, they looked down over the Danube and imagined themselves like the heroines of Sophie’s books, ready to fight off a coming dragon or evil witch.

“In our case, we don’t have to pretend we are princesses.” Little Sophie looked up at her mother, her big blue eyes earnest and thoughtful. It was a chilly afternoon in early spring, and the crisp air had drawn to Sophie’s soft cheeks a bright, rose-colored glow. “I
am
a princess.”

“That’s right, you are, my love.” Sisi squeezed her daughter ever tighter, watching as the breeze that skipped off the Danube pulled on her loose auburn curls, setting them aflutter.

“And you are the queen. Except you’re not an evil queen, Mamma. You’re the good queen. Or, the beautiful queen.”

“Why, thank you, my dear little one.”

The words of her toddler overwhelmed Sisi, making her feel in that instant as though she had been dropped down into this life entirely haphazardly. She was the
queen.
Sometimes, in moments when Sisi allowed herself to slip wholly and unguardedly into carefree happiness—moments such as this one—she forgot that fact. She looked out over the majestic city, aglow in the last glorious light of a spring afternoon, and she found it dizzying to remind herself that this was her husband’s empire.

“Where is Grandmamma’s bedroom, Mamma?” Sophie tugged on her mother’s hand, interrupting her reverie.

“Hmm?” Sisi turned back toward her daughter. “What do you mean, my love?”

“If we are pretending that this is our palace and we live here together, then Grandmamma must be here, too. Where is her bedchamber going to be?”

“Grandmamma stays in her palace in Vienna. In this pretend world we are talking about, it shall be just you, and Gisela, and Mamma and Papa. How does that sound?”

“But I miss Grandmamma.”

Sisi hugged her daughter, wishing she could silence her with a kiss.

Sophie wriggled away, one more thought left to express. “I suppose it’s all right that Grandmamma isn’t here, since it is only pretend. She will be waiting for us once this game is over.”