The Accidental Empress (37 page)

Agata’s face was a welcome sight when the maid appeared at the door with a breakfast tray later in the morning.

“The entire household is still asleep, my lady,” Agata explained, placing the tray on Sisi’s lap before moving to relight the fire. “Figured you’d be happy to take your breakfast in bed today, after all of yesterday’s activity.”

“Quite, thank you.” Sisi took a slow sip of the warm tea, the mug shaking in her hands. Two sleepless nights, and she could now feel their effects. She shut her eyes a moment, her nerves addled and her mind as jumpy as an unbroken horse. She exhaled, replacing the teacup and looking at the maid. “Did you have a nice Christmas, Agata?”

The maid turned from the hearth. “Oh, it was lovely, my lady. I’m afraid we were up all night in the servants’ quarters.” Agata giggled before turning back to the logs.

Sisi watched the maid, humming as she went about her morning activities: stoking the fire, emptying the chamber pot, collecting Sisi’s garments from the night before. How was it that Agata, whose life was so much less vibrant and exciting than Sisi’s, always managed to whistle and smile her way through the day’s tedious chores? Why was it so hard for Sisi to remember how to be cheerful like that—as she had once been?

“Did you get all sorts of lovely presents from the emperor?” Agata asked, her expression guileless, as eager as a child’s. Sisi frowned. But then a thought occurred to her. “Oh, Agata, forgive me! In the commotion of the past couple of days, I entirely missed my chance to give you your Christmas present.” She reached now into the drawer of her bedside table, retrieving the small parcel she had wrapped for her maid. “Merry Christmas.”

“For me?” The maid’s round eyes widened. “Oh goodness, my lady, I didn’t expect . . . why, I didn’t . . .”

“Don’t apologize, Aggie.” Sisi smiled, her first true smile in days. “I don’t want anything from you—you do enough for me as it is. I just want you to have this.”

“Too kind, my lady.”

“Open it.”

The maid tore the paper, finding a brooch inside.

“Miss Sisi. I mean, Your Majesty. Empress. How could I possibly?”

“Do you know what that jewel is, Agata?”

The maid shook her head, a bashful no.

“It’s a ruby.”

Agata gasped. “A ruby? But this is far too grand. What place does a ruby have in the servants’ quarters?”

Sisi put her hands over Agata’s—breaking protocol—and closed the maid’s chapped and rough fingers over the jewel. “Nonsense, Agata, I want you to have it. The ruby matches your beautiful rosy cheeks. The smile on them is sometimes the only smile I see all day.” Sisi’s voice tripped on the confession, and she resisted the urge to tear up in front of her maid. Nevertheless, Agata sensed something amiss with her mistress.

“Miss Sisi . . . I mean . . . Your Majesty, are you feeling all right this morning?”

“No, I’m not.”

“You’re ill? Shall I fetch Doctor Seeburger?”

“No, it’s all right, Agata. I’m not well right now. But I shall be. Just please, I beg you, don’t tell any of the other girls in the quarters that I’m sad. Promise?”

“Of course not, Majesty.” Agata took Sisi’s hand and sat beside her on the bed. Quietly, the maid began to sing Sisi’s favorite Bavarian Christmas carol: a simple melody about a father who could not afford the treats with which to fill his children’s shoes, but who managed to cut down the grandest pine in the Black Forest, which he decorated with cranberries and pinecones. Sisi allowed herself to be sung to, leaning back against the pillow.

“Thank you, Agata.” The maid’s simple kindness caused her heart to ache. “And thank you for your discretion in not mentioning it.”

“Mentioning what, Empress?”

“Oh, come now, Aggie. You’ve noticed just as well as I have that the emperor has not been in my room for two nights.”

With that, Sisi pushed her breakfast tray to the side and caught her head in her hands. With Agata beside her, Sisi wept.

Outside the sun was no more than a feeble disk of gray behind a wall of thick clouds. At midday, when still Franz had not come, Sisi could bear it no longer. She decided to dress and find him.

As Sisi had suspected, the hallways were still abandoned. That was a good thing, as she was not supposed to walk them without her retinue. “
That is not how things are done,
” Sophie had warned her on countless occasions, when Sisi had tried to slip out to the stables or the gardens. “
An empress does not scurry about, alone. People will talk.
”

As if people didn’t already talk, Sisi thought, swallowing a bitter groan as she walked the quiet corridor away from her apartments. On this morning, the hallways echoed her loneliness back to her with their own stone whispers. Oh, how she missed Possi at Christmastime! The smell of pine boughs and roasted apple skins. The cozy house teeming with family and servants and red-cheeked peasants, neighbors who had come to share in Duke Max’s ale and music. The merry crowd laughing as they bounced babies from hip to hip, singing and dancing with no attention paid to station or protocol.

Sisi had reached the conservatory, a high-ceilinged room with ferns and potted plants, where the courtiers had gathered the day earlier to hear Christmas carols. As she crossed the large room—now empty—and continued toward the drawing room, Sisi detected the sound of a pianoforte. Sighing, she recalled the nights that she and Franz had passed in their bedroom, singing along to his playing. She continued toward the sound of the notes.

It was Franz who played the piano, sitting on the far side of the drawing room. She paused, for the sight of him hunched over the piano momentarily startled her. He wore the same attire as he had to last night’s banquet but his hair was tousled and his collar was unbuttoned. He appeared absolutely absorbed in the action of playing this slow, melancholy song, oblivious of his audience.

Sisi hovered in the doorway, silent, following the strands of the haunting melody. The longer she listened to her husband play the song, the more overpowering the desperation that welled up inside of her became: a feeling like she might never be happy again.

Franz stopped playing. The hum of the last notes lingered a moment before fading out, and without turning toward her, he spoke. “Did you like it?”

So he had noticed her.

Caught off guard by the question, Sisi stammered: “It was exquisite, Franz.”

He nodded, still not turning to look at her.

“Yet painful,” she added.

He snorted out a laugh, short and bitter.

“What’s the name of it?”

“Piano Sonata Number 14, by Ludwig van Beethoven,” he answered, his eyes still fixed on the piano keys, which his fingers barely grazed. “The
Moonlight
Sonata.”

Sisi walked toward the piano, somewhat lifted by the fact that he was talking to her. “Speaking of moonlight . . . you didn’t come to me last night.”

“Something came up.”

It was a hurtful answer. Vague and riddled with troubling possibility. Had he spent the night with another woman? Paula? Karoline? Grünne’s brunette?

“What I like about sad songs”—Franz still looked down at the piano—“they are honest.”

“No more of this sad song, please.” She lowered herself onto the piano bench beside him. He stopped playing, but still he did not turn toward her. “Play ‘The Skater’s Waltz,’ ” she said. “Or better yet, play our new song. The one Master Strauss composed just for us.”

Franz didn’t begin to play, so she began to hum. All she remembered about her waltz was that it had been a blending of the Bavarian anthem and Austria’s anthem.

“All right, all right, I’ll play it.” Franz touched his fingers to the ivory keys, but paused. “I’ll play it, if you promise never to scold me like that again, Elisabeth.”

She leaned forward, resting a palm on his arm. “And I’ll promise never to scold you again, Franz, if you promise never to abandon me like that.”

“What, is my own wife giving me negotiating terms now?” Franz looked at her, sighing. She was struck by how handsome he was, by how powerful her love for him was. It scared her, because she guessed that her love might not be enough to pull him back to her.

But then his eyes softened, ever so slightly. Not enough to qualify as a smile, but the cool, distant aloofness of the past few days had gone, giving her a small slice of hope.

“You know, Elisa, sometimes I think that you forget that I’m the emperor.”

And you forget I’m a girl of seventeen. Here, alone, far from home, all because I love you.
Though she felt hurt by him, she reminded herself of the need to win him back, not alienate him further with arguing. “Oh, Franz, do you have any idea how much I love you?” She said it as a sigh, and she meant it. “But really”—she flashed a smile, her head leaning to the side—“even if I do often wish it otherwise, how could I ever forget you are emperor?” Pausing, she lifted a hand, waving at their surroundings. “With all of this?”

“You would wish for me to be something other than emperor?”

She bit her lower lip, reining in the eagerness in her reply. “Perhaps. At times.”

He angled his body toward her now, and she saw the fatigue pulling on his eyes, his unshaven cheeks.

“The emperor looks tired,” she whispered. She put a finger to his cheek, grazing his whiskered skin.

His hand rose to meet hers, and he brought her palm inside his. “How is it possible?”

“How is what possible?”

“I’ve won battles in Italy and Hungary. I’m the emperor, for God’s sake. And yet you would conquer me with a smile.”

She leaned close and whispered in his ear: “I love
you
, Franz, not because you are emperor. I love you because you are the man who snores beside me in bed, and plays the piano for me, and rides up into the mountains with me, and whispers my nickname with so much love in his voice that I never want to let him go.” She planted a kiss on the side of his neck, a square of skin usually concealed by his uniform collar, a place that belonged only to her. “Please, my darling, I cannot bear it when you are cross with me.”

He waited a moment before he breathed out a long, slow exhale. “And thus, I am won over.”

The cord around her heart slackened, allowing her to breathe easily once more, as he wrapped his arms around her, barely making it around her thick midsection.

“Do you still love me, Franz?”

“You know I do, Elisa.”

“And I adore you, Franz. But I don’t want your mother’s hairstylist.”

“If I kiss you, will you be silent?”

“Only one way to find out.”

He leaned toward her, and from the way he kissed her, Sisi allowed herself to hope that her husband had come back to her.

“Play me our song, Franz,” she asked after several moments.

He rested his fingers on the keys and played the waltz, both of them humming along to the familiar melodies, the two disparate tunes merging into one unique thread. After that, he played her favorite song, the tune from Bad Ischl called “The Skater’s Waltz.”

Sisi shut her eyes as she listened to the melody. “Franz, how about next Christmas we listen to this song while we ourselves go skating? How about it? We can allow the fountains outside the Hofburg to freeze over and have our own private rink.”

He laughed at the idea. “As long as you are not carrying another one of my babies.”

“Well, I’m not going to say that’s an impossibility. After all, we shall have a lot of missed time to make up for once this baby is born,” she answered, and they both laughed.

“Dance with me, Elisa.” Franz rose from the bench, continuing the song now through his humming, as he pulled her up.

“I’m too big to dance,” she protested.

“You’re perfect for dancing,” he insisted.

They held one another and swayed for several minutes, but Sisi could not entirely quash the question that persisted in her mind, its presence like a tight knot she couldn’t undo. “Franz, where were you last night?”

He looked at her, as if unwilling to answer. “Don’t concern yourself with that, Elisa. The past is the past.”

She stopped dancing, her hands dropping from his. He tried to take them up once more, but she yanked them free. “Franz, tell me.”

“Elisa, I’m not going to—”

“Where were you? I must know.” And just like that, an image from her past crept forth and pierced her mind: her father leaving their home. Leaving with no further explanation than to say he was
going into town
. And then, a memory far less distant. The circle of ladies the night before: Karoline, Paula, and the other one. Whispers exchanged, glances stolen here and there. Any one of them would willingly—
gladly
—welcome the emperor into her bed. Wasn’t that the highest aspiration for any ambitious young woman at court?—to bed the emperor? Was she, Sisi, destined for the same litany of lonely nights that her mother had known? She began to tremble, her frame closing in on itself as she sat back down on the piano bench. “Franz, were you with another woman?”

Franz put his arms on her shoulders, pressing his hands into her. She shrugged him off.

“No, I was not with another woman, Elisa. For God’s sake, must you always pick fights with me?” He lowered himself heavily onto the piano bench, sitting beside her.