The Accidental Empress (52 page)

It was a new voice. Sisi looked up, her attention piqued for the first time all night—who was breaking protocol to speak directly to Franz without having first been addressed?

The woman had appeared over Franz’s shoulder. A striking woman. Attractive, if not necessarily beautiful. But she had a curvy figure, a sensual, pouty expression. She was older than Sisi and Franz. Sisi didn’t like the way this woman angled her chin down, allowing her gaze to rest squarely on her husband’s blue eyes. Or the way she had addressed him so directly, even interrupted him in another conversation.

“Who are you?” Sisi asked, looking up into this new face, heavily tinted with rouge and lipstick. Like a theater performer.

Franz put his fork down, wiping his mouth and sitting upright. “Oh, hello, yes. Please, meet the empress.” He shifted in his seat, looking toward the woman with an embarrassed expression.

“Whom do I have the pleasure of meeting?” Sisi repeated the question, her features expressionless as her eyes stayed fixed on this newcomer.

“Frau Roll.” The woman nodded, bowing to Sisi without waiting for the emperor’s introduction. “Pleasure to finally meet you, Empress. I’ve heard so much about you.”

“That’s funny, I’ve heard nothing about you.” Sisi cocked her head to one side. “When did you arrive at court,
Frau
Roll?” Sisi accentuated the name to remind all present that this woman did not bear a noble title. She knew she was being unacceptably rude, but she did not care.

“Elisa,” Franz whispered into his wife’s ear. “Frau Roll is not a member of the court.”

“Oh?” Sisi turned to her husband, eyebrows arching. “Then what is she doing here?”

Franz fiddled with his uniform coat, as if suddenly it felt too tight. “Frau Roll just arrived this autumn. She’s a very talented actress, currently onstage at the Court Theater.”

“Is that so?” Sisi turned her gaze back on this woman—this
very talented actress
. Frau Roll kept her eyes on Franz, her expression childish in her complete lack of self-consciousness.

“I really must take you to see her perform sometime, my darling.” Franz tapped his fork against his chocolate cake.

“And where do you live, Frau Roll?”

“Right here, in Vienna.” Frau Roll stared directly into Sisi’s eyes now, her expression almost defiant. She was indeed pretty, Sisi conceded. Yet everything about her physicality gave the impression that it had been painted on her in slippery, thick oil paint; from the fiery red hair curled around her face, to her heavily rouged cheeks, to the raspberry hue of her snug satin dress. Sensuality seemed to seep like honey from out of her too-tight clothing and too-red hair.

“And are you coming from a performance this evening, Frau Roll? You look as though you still have some of your stage makeup on.” Sisi was shocked at how bitter, how hateful she had suddenly become, but again, she did not care.

“No.” Frau Roll put a palm to her face, her cheeks flushing an even deeper red. “No, I’ve just come here for the evening. The emperor was kind enough to invite me to dinner.”

“He was, was he?” Sisi cocked her head to her husband.

“I invited all of this season’s cast,” Franz said, too quickly.

But only Frau Roll feels emboldened to come and address you, directly, in front of your hundreds of noble guests,
Sisi thought.

“Never been inside a palace before,” the woman said, looking around with her long-lashed eyes.

“Well, the pleasure is all mine, Frau Roll. I shall look forward to taking in one of your performances.” Sisi smiled, a forced smile, as she thought to herself:
I can be a talented actress as well.

“Happy New Year, Majesties.” Frau Roll spoke slowly, lazily, her berry-colored lips curling over the word “Majesties.” As she walked away, Sisi watched her leave. Frau Roll’s tight dress hugged her round bottom, so that each step presented a new opportunity to see the moving shape of her ample flesh.

No one spoke for several minutes after she’d gone.

Eventually, Franz exhaled, and it sounded as though he had been holding his breath. “Elisa, you really were terribly rude to that woman.”

“And you were perhaps too polite to her, Franz.”

Franz snorted, an exhale of laughter. “She’s an
actress.
I am an admirer of her work. And you would be, too, if you ever accompanied me to the theater.”

“I think I shall retire.”

“Elisabeth,” Franz leaned forward now, and when he spoke, his voice was uncharacteristically stern. “You have been . . .
indisposed
 . . . for a long time. But just because you have decided to forget your duties does not mean I am allowed to. I do not have that luxury.” He put a gloved hand on her arm now, angling her so that she was forced to look at him. “Someone must continue to stand at the helm of all of this. I’d very much appreciate it if you’d return to me.”

For reasons Sisi could not have explained, when her husband knocked on her bedroom door that evening, she had allowed him into her bed. Perhaps it was because she had lacked the energy to deny his desire. Or perhaps it was because of his words at dinner—his words about his duty, and hers, too. Or, perhaps it was because she had felt the stirrings of jealousy when she had seen the way Frau Roll had looked at him, reminding Sisi that there were women at court whose intentions were to replace her; if not supplant her entirely as empress, then they would at least settle for the role of Imperial Mistress.

As Franz slipped out of his dressing robe, lowering himself into bed beside her with the stiff and formal demeanor of a soldier, Sisi realized that Franz had waited seven months to ask for something that was his husbandly right. He spent every night now in the small room adjacent to his offices. The last time they had been together as husband and wife had been in Budapest. When they had been happy. When their family had been whole. Then they had made love, tenderly, hungrily, Franz showing more passion to his wife than he ever did during his daylight hours.

He was different now. He did not look her in the eye. Considering he had waited patiently for so many months, she expected him to have some urgency, some hunger, but the act was businesslike and not at all memorable. It was her fault, she knew. How could she arouse passion in anyone when she herself felt numb?

If she had known that allowing Franz into her bed once more would have led to her third pregnancy, Sisi would have rejected him. The thought of making a baby hadn’t crossed her mind, so ruined was her body and soul. She was as shocked as anyone else that that was how it happened.

“Yes, Majesty, you must be approximately three months along, if I had to guess. You are definitely with child. Congratulations!”

Sisi was barely able to wait until Doctor Seeburger quit her bedchamber to begin weeping. It was early spring, and the signs of the life developing within her were irrefutable: her dresses needed taking out, her breasts felt tender. There was a new baby inside her, growing with the same patient determination as the new buds forcing their way through the frozen earth, the first fragile harbingers of the coming season.

Countess Esterházy played her role as royal gossip, and soon, all around the palace, faces smiled and called out their congratulations. A new baby was just what she needed to overcome the loss of Princess Sophie, they told her. At last, they whispered, the empress would be herself again. How she had managed to conceive, they did not know, but they were thankful that Franz had been so loyal and patient—he really ought to be applauded, they conceded.

For Sisi, the news triggered an even deeper depression. Babies, for her, meant pain. No, not the physical pain of the actual delivery. That was inconsequential. What Sisi dreaded was the deep, intolerable, heart-rending pain that followed. She would have six more months with her baby, and then, when it left her womb, it would be lost to her forever, pulled into her mother-in-law’s grasp and henceforth hidden from sight. Knowing this inevitability, Sisi lacked the strength or the interest for anything other than remaining in bed.

If he was worried, Doctor Seeburger did not show it. Rather, he praised her prudence. “You are wise not to take any risks. You are not as strong as you were during the first two pregnancies. Rest is the best thing for you, Empress Elisabeth.”

Franz came and sat beside her bed once a day, holding her cold hand and chattering good-naturedly. He avoided discussing foreign policy with her, because the news abroad was not good, and he did not wish to trouble her. Italy was threatening to fight for independence, Sisi had heard, but Franz would not discuss it. Instead, he told her of Gisela’s progress in her dance lessons, and the plantings that were under way at the grounds of Schönbrunn, ready for the imperial family and the rest of the court to move shortly after Easter. He asked Sisi if she missed riding, if perhaps she would like to buy a new horse after her labor.

Did he not understand that she did not care? It seemed the only two people who understood the earnest desire on the part of the empress to self-destruct were Agata and Marie, the two women who spent the days quietly coaxing her, begging her to eat. When they spoke about the baby as if its arrival would make her happy, Sisi wept, asking them to leave her room.

The earth softened and the trees opened up, bringing color back into the gardens. A week before Easter, Sisi slipped into the fever. She felt it coming on and did not care to fight it. In fact, she found herself welcoming the weakness. Fever and sleep would mean a retreat for Sisi. So she slid, wraithlike, into dreams that were disorienting and confusing. But even the nightmares were less painful than her waking life.

Sisi most often found herself back at Possenhofen, a girl of twelve. That perfect age—that moment in which she’d first tasted independence, old enough to wander free, but not so old that she’d had to pretend she was a woman. She sat, high atop Bummerl. Bummerl galloping through the meadow, Bummerl skirting the shores of Lake Starnberg. Alone, always she was alone. Then she was atop Diamant, climbing the pine-covered hills of Bad Ischl. And then she was on a Hungarian Thoroughbred, racing across the plains of Pest, the loamy scent of the Danube all around her, the wind whipping her face and reddening her cheeks.

And then, unaware whether it was from Bummerl, Diamant, or the Hungarian stallion, she fell. She tumbled from the horse and met the hard, cold ground, a searing pain ripping across her stomach as she landed.

“Mamma!” Sisi cried out. “Mamma!” And she was not certain whether she was little Sophie dying of the fever, or she was herself, falling from a horse. All she knew was that she was terribly frightened, and in need of her mother.

“There, there, Mamma is here.”
The voice was soothing. A faceless sound filled with familiar warmth.

“Mamma!” Sisi cried out again, longing for that voice once more, and the soft touch to her forehead that accompanied it.

“Mamma is here, Sisi. Mamma is here.”

The voice seemed distinct from the dream, as if it were in a world apart from this field, with this heavy horse and the ruddy smell of damp dirt. Sisi opened her eyes, and she noticed that she had slid from one dream to the other, for now she was suddenly in a bed in Possenhofen, her mother sitting beside her. She blinked. No, it was not Possenhofen. It was someplace else. The Hofburg Palace. But her mother was still there beside her. Sisi blinked again.

“Look who finally woke up.” Ludovika leaned over the bed, her tired eyes surrounded by a web of fine lines, new since the last time Sisi had stared into those same eyes, years earlier.

“Hello, my darling girl.” Ludovika’s hand felt warm on Sisi’s cheek.

“Mamma?” Sisi tried to sit up, unsure of whether she was still dreaming. “Mamma, is it really you?”

Ludovika smiled now, a weary smile that spoke of both relief and concern. “Your fever seems to have broken, at last.”

“You are in Vienna, Mamma?”

“It would appear so.” Ludovika laughed now, a familiar, kind laugh. A comfort-bringing sound that ran through Sisi’s body like a cleansing rain.

“Mamma!” Sisi reached for her mother, pulling the strong, familiar arms close to hers in an embrace. Tears slid from her eyes. “Mamma!” Sisi held on to her, savoring the touch of her mother’s skin, petrified that if she let go, her mother might slip from her and leave her alone again.