by Suzy Vitello
And even as my tears soaked my bedding, I knew I was behaving far too much like a child. The world of pranks and misbehavior was past. Soon, I would be slathering on the beauty potions, quenching my hair in oils, and saving my smiles for what my governess called “appropriate occasions for mirth”—a funny part in an opera. The antics of a young child. So, with resolve and determination, I pushed away from my pillows and wiped my eyes with a handkerchief, the embroidered “W” now dampened with my silly sorrow.
What I needed was a project of my own. Maybe I would write another poem. Perhaps, like Papa, an entire play. I ran over to my dressing table where, under a stack of cloths, next to my souvenir fox brush, I’d hidden my journal. I leafed through the pages. Such stupid verse. I’d felt so sorry for myself after the circus fiasco and the ensuing punishment. There it was. Evidence of my childishness:
Oh swallows, thy swift pinions lend me
And be my guide to lands afar
Happy to break the toils that bind me
And shatter every prison bar.
Upon rereading, it seemed clear that I was lamenting my lost girlhood too profusely. Ever since the summer trip to Tegernsee, my sister’s daydreams were filled with the next thing. Becoming empress. I tried to imagine a love interest of my own. A knight, or a dashing soldier. What might he look like? I began to sketch the possibility in my journal. Deep, dark eyes. Strong chin. Would he be taller than me? If so, the possibilities were limited, as now I was as tall as Mummi.
Instead of swallows, perhaps salvation lay in a baron, or a count? I closed my eyes and imagined riding on the back of a large gray stallion. A steed. My arms enveloping my beloved, some king, or prince or duke. Oddly, the faceless man remained a mystery, but the horse. Oh, the horse! Could love for a man ever approach that grand feeling of flying through the air on the back of a powerful mount? Perhaps it could indeed. Perhaps, loving a man and soaring over hedge and dale would occupy the very same chamber of my heart.
And then, just as I imagined clearing the biggest hedge in stride, my mind’s eye shifted and up rose the face of Lola Montez, her large blue eyes, porcelain skin, black hair. I became she, and she me—the two of us merging into one glorious sprite of a woman, the man we gripped, a faceless warrior. A Greek god. A man so powerful and strong just being in his presence, feeling his muscled body against my own, would take me to another world.
I dipped my nib into the ink and began to scratch a figure on the page. But it was of no use. My daydream rearranged itself with every line of ink. The man or Lola or both of them would evaporate, leaving me riding alone. Galloping over meadows, jumping the small streams surrounding my dear Possi. In my journal, I defaced the sketch of the half-fancied Greek god. I crossed out his eyes and drew his beard into parts: the tail of a devil, the claw of a raven.
In the end, I hurled my fountain pen to the window, where it plinked against the pane. My head throbbed from the crying. Why was I so confused? And now, just below my petticoat, there was a deep and twisted cramping. I fled to my bed and pulled out the chamber pot from underneath. I lifted my skirts and settled down, not even taking the time to move the pot behind the screen at the far end of the room.
There, as I pulled down my undergarments, was proof of the wretch I’d become. I was dying between my legs. A river of blood came from me and had clotted into a small pool all the way through to my stockings. Finally, my behavior had reached its natural endpoint. The devil himself had come to claim me.
When next my eyes sprang open, no fire, no devil, and once I got my bearings, I was glad of the fact that I had not died after all. The pit of hell, as it turned out, was not awaiting me. But close enough, because the smelling salts, the stinging slap, the rough absorption of the blood were all attended to by none other than Baroness Wilhelmine.
Her eyes, like two millet seeds, pried into me. The mole on her cheek had sprung hair since last I’d laid eyes on her. She barked, “What were you thinking, spread out like that?”
My head still swam, and through a haze I looked down to the mess beneath me. On the floor beside me lay wadded rags and a pail of pink water. I smelled lye and roses and tallow. There was a burning on my legs and my personal body. The baroness held a dripping candle—the harsh sort as used in stables, rather than the pleasantly fragrant beeswax of the house candles. She held this odiferous candle over my undergarments, allowing splashes of smelly stable wax to dot them. She reached for a folded cloth and pressed it against the hot waxy spots.
“Spread out?” I asked.
“Your Grace,” she muttered between grit teeth, “did you not know your woman’s time was at hand?”
I had no idea to what she referred. My stomach clenched, as though being housed in a young child’s corset.
Baroness Wilhelmine handed me my undergarments, which were now padded with the roll of cloth she’d melted onto them. I took the undergarments and appraised the bulk. The ridiculous lump of cloth. Had she confused me with the baby Sophie?
The baroness pointed to garments and my personal body. “You had better put those on with haste, Duchess, lest you ruin more petticoats.”
I wished the homely old goat would give me some privacy.
“What is wrong with you? You act befuddled. As if you have never before seen woman’s blood?”
“Your forgiveness, Baroness,” I said, clinging to an inkling of modesty while wiggling into the padded horror garment.
She stammered, “Has your nurse not prepared you? This cannot be your first time, Your Grace.”
“You mean this will happen again? This injury to my person? But why?”
Baroness crossed herself and raised her eyes to the ceiling as if summoning strength for heavy lifting. She said, “Wait here, Duchess. I shall fetch your mother.” Then, she gathered the leftover rags and water, blew out the tallow candle, and left the room. Before she was out of earshot, she muttered, “These Wittelsbachs, they live in a cave of their own creation.”
Now that I had privacy, I peeled back my garments to reveal the “woman’s blood,” which had already soiled the lumpy rag that pushed against the most unsightly part of me. I’d been fearful of the hair that had begun to sprout there, thinking that it might spread to my face and, like my governess, furry moles would pop out of my cheeks and chin. The tallow smell mixed with another odor, one I’d smelled occasionally on Mummi and her ladies-in-waiting. As a lady, there seemed no end to the cruel futures that awaited.
I gathered myself and smoothed the creases from my skirts, and lo and behold, discovered my little velvet-covered journal splayed open nearby. Had Baroness Wilhelmine seen this too? No amount of embarrassment would befall me then, for there were several disgracing entries plastered among those pages. I grabbed the incriminating diary, scooping it up and cramming it in my sash, vowing to be more careful with its placement, when Mummi arrived at the door, her spaniels in tow.
She was kneading some sort of cream into her hands, and in her eyes was alarm mixed with regret. She looked consumed with guilt. “Dear Lisi,” she crooned. She’d not called me by that pet name since I’d reached below her breastbone. She offered both her fragrant hands, and I took them, unsure whether this was an invitation to kiss them or simply allow her to hold mine. “I am remiss as a mother, I’m afraid,” she said, her eyes focused on my middle region. “So consumed with affairs of state, your father’s antics, my brother’s folly, that I have neglected my prime duty.”
Mummi’s hand cream smelled of lavender and the same lard and slug juice Nené had plastered on her face earlier in the day. The greasy, soft skin of my mother’s palms slipped around my own, like a newborn pup before the bitch licks it clean. She walked me to the dressing table, and we two sat side by each, like sisters, as she began to enumerate the long list of events, remedies and consequences that lay ahead.
Not only might I look forward to issuing blood from my personal body each cycle of the moon, but now I would need to clean
myself inside. And each day I must take a vial of calf’s blood with my midday meal. And rub a tincture of sticky jelly onto my hips. And, worst of all, sit still and do nothing for three days around this time of the blood. No riding. No running. No wandering. No playing. No swimming. And absolutely no circus tricks with Papa or anyone else. At all. Ever. I must be escorted by an older male member of the family on walks to the English Garden. I must veil my face or hide behind an Oriental fan. No longer could I laugh in public. At the balls now, I would be amongst the young ladies, not the children. And worse still, I must learn to play the piano.
Mummi continued to tick off the do’s and the do not’s, and the spaniels leapt up into her lap, weaving figure eights around one another before settling, finally, into her ample skirts. My stomach cramps continued, and Mummi registered the pain in my face and reached the dressing table bell, giving the five-peal ring for the governess to return.
“Your Graciousness,” said Baroness Wilhelmine once she reached us.
“The hot water bottle and more hygiene garments,” Mummi said. “And perhaps a compress of chamomile and hemlock.”
Baroness nodded. “The nurse is gathering these things now.” And then she smiled before saying, “Perhaps this would be a good time for the duchess to reengage with her needlepoint lessons?”
Needlepoint. If there was one thing more insufferable than piano, it was stitching little chickadees and bluebells onto handkerchiefs and pillowcases. If I were to be stuck in a room for three days, I would read Shakespeare. I would read Homer. I would write sonnets. No way would I deign to stick a pointy whalebone through cloth over and over again.
Baroness Wilhelmine turned to leave, but as an afterthought she spun round again, and from her black lace-covered pouch she extracted a missive and offered it to Mummi. The ink was full of flourishes, but even so, I could make out my name on the envelope. Mummi held it up to the sunlight and I could tell that the paper inside was very fine linen stationery. The Habsburg seal, it seemed.
“This must be a mistake,” said Mummi. “I am sure this was meant for your sister. It’s from Vienna.”
There was no mistaking the carefully crafted Elisabeth. Not even a blind man could calculate the misspelling of Helene to such a distortion. I tried to snatch it from Mummi’s hand and one of the dogs snapped my fingers. “Ouch.”
Mummi extracted a hatpin from the dressing table and pierced the glue, gliding the pin along the seam of the envelope. It made a stiff ripping sound. She pulled out the letter and read it aloud in one long gallop:
Dearest Elisabeth (Sisi),
I sincerely hope you do not find this note too forward. Ever since the summer Tegernsee holiday, I have thought of your vibrant grace each day. Please accept a gift of chocolate and a pretty little timepiece locket that has been in the Habsburg family for many a year. You will see that there is a wing built into its design (aged copper, which so reminded me of you and your green eyes), and I do pray that you will not be offended if I place my likeness opposite the time. As you are a lover of words (or so I have heard), you will indeed understand the metaphor: wings, time, myself. The gift should arrive by coach before the week is out.
Until another day.
Yours,
Karl Ludwig
Mummi folded the paper and tucked it back into the envelope. “Ah,” she said. “It’s the younger archduke. Little Karl. I was not aware you’d even had a conversation with him. Green eyes, however? Not very observant.”
Karl who? I had had no conversation with the young archduke, but when I searched my memory of the horrid visit, I’d seen, on the grounds, a boy clad in the military uniform befitting an Austrian royal. His skin, I recalled, was a mass of bumps and rash. “That boy with the pustule face? The archduchess’s younger son? He wrote to me? But why?”
Mummi sighed. “Evidently, my dear, he was quite bewitched by you. Charming. But certainly nothing to take seriously. He’s still so young. Has yet to do his time in the military. I wonder if my sister knows of this note?”
The note gave me pause. If the younger brother had been so bold as to write me, what of the future emperor? This, of course, was more important. “Has Nené heard from Archduke Franz Joseph?”
Mummi shook her head. “And it worries me. Between us, I hoped that he would have written of his intentions by now. But with the Revolution and all …”
“Karl,” I whispered to myself. Karl. Karl. Karl. In the journal in my head, I was already building verse:
I hasten to the realm of dreams, my Karl, there are you,
My soul, my heart, they jubilate, for you and only you.
I would amend the second you, certainly, once I was alone with my journal. Or possibly the first you would change. At any rate, Karl was destined (Oh, how I loved that word, destined) to be my first love, the first man to court me. And why not? Now that I was forbidden fun, freedom and fresh air, Karl would be the substitute. Certainly, his face was difficult to look upon, but, now that I was lady, such shallow thoughts must banish themselves. What was most important was the possibility of love. As if by some spell, suddenly, I could not wait until his gift arrived. My very first gift from a suitor! Beneath the corset-squeezing pains, the blood of this wretched affliction called womanhood, I would find a way to escape after all. As always.
There was plenty of opportunity to write, rewrite, and write some more with regard to my new obsession, the young archduke. Sitting on my throne of cloth while the three days of stillness leaked away, I composed my journal entries, sketched my daydreams and, more to the point, wrote Karl Ludwig a return note.
His gift of alpine chocolates arrived, though the under-governess and the scullery maid had pinched them “to ensure their safety,” they’d said, but I knew they couldn’t resist the sweets. Shortly thereafter, Gackl came bounding through the nursery with a wrapped box for me. Certainly my little brother was hoping for a ball or a rope or maybe even a set of building blocks. After unknotting the silk ribbon and ripping the rice paper, Gackl’s face deflated like a pin-stuck balloon. Instead of something that would appeal to a child, there lay tarnished copper feathers, which jutted from a rose-painted locket timepiece, all of which hung from a modest silver chain. “Your admirer sent you a pocket watch?”
It was lovely, with a snap hinge revealing the time on the front and a small photo of Karl, dressed in uniform, on the inside. I now wore it around my neck day and night, winding it every morning, happily hearing the tick, tick, and imagining that far off in Vienna, Karl’s heart made that same sound. In his photograph, I saw the man he would soon grow into. Perhaps he was still a boy, but barely a boy. I could love him. Certainly I could.
Dear Karl, I began. And then crumpled the paper. Again: Dearest Karl. No. Another try: My darling Karl. Karl, my dearest. That one I ripped to shreds.
Gackl was happily frolicking with his new assortment of friends, the four dark brown Nubian boys. New brothers, Papa had ventured. Mummi was none too happy with this addition, and the under-governesses were fit to be tied.
Baroness would not even participate. “This is not to be tolerated,” she’d let Mummi’s lady-in-waiting know, and Mummi had agreed.
“I can only beg your forgiveness, Wilhelmine, for the duke has, once again, seen fit to add myriad complexities to all of our lives.”
Karl, I wrote, leaving a space in front of his name. Imagine the joy in my heart upon receiving your missive. Crumple.
Meanwhile, Nené was preparing for our first autumn ball of the season. If a cotillion lay in her future, she must, according to the dance master, practice. Practice, practice, practice.
Life in Munich was quite busy, and even from my sequester, I watched out the window as carriages came and went. Papa had agreed that while the turmoil surrounded Uncle Ludwig’s palace, we would house some paintings in our halls, and four large men hauled in an enormous picture, one replete with angels and battles and swords and blood. There was th
e Messiah in the very middle of this painting, about to stab Himself with a dagger, and in the very corner, a suspicious character fleeing the scene. I had heard from the maids that the villain in the painting was a Jew, and it was best that while the revolutionaries marched on Uncle’s castle, we be the keepers of that one.
In all the mayhem, most pronounced was a renewed battle between my parents. Papa’s screams at Mummi echoed off our castle walls. “You were born an old lady, Ludovica.”
And Mummi: “You have made me that way, Duke.” She did not approve of the parties day and night in Papa’s beer hall. The peasant girls he danced with. The trick riding in the newly converted circus. “And if you get trampled in a drunken heap under your horse, what then?” she wanted to know.
Karl, my dearest apple, I wrote. My pumpkin. My strudel.
The odd turns of the heart were a curiosity, but in my newfound state of smitten, I vowed that my own heart would never grow cold. Once I loved, I promised, I would never unlove. As if in agreement, the locket-watch ticked against my breast.
Against the far wall of the nursery, Gackl was playing cards with the blackamoors. “A king beats a queen,” he said. “And there, that’s a one-eyed jack. If you see it first, you pound it with your fist, then take it.”
The boys nodded solemnly, periodically twisting their heads round to look over their shoulders. They did not sit cross-legged on the floor like my brother; they crouched on their haunches.
Beside me lay the heavy French history books Baroness Wilhelmine had deposited earlier. Thank goodness my bleeding time gave me a reprieve from the lesson desk. Next to the books were compresses and a vessel of herbs and boiled water to soothe my cramping. The books made a perfect lap desk for me, upon which I wrote: To Karl the handsome, and then, To Karl my cousin, and then, Your Grace, Your Most Eminent, My friend. Crumple, crumple. There were now no less than a dozen papers, all twisted into balls, scattered about the floor. Ink stained my fingers. I made thumbprints on the paper. Lip prints, too. Practice, Nené’s dance master had said. Well, one day I would kiss this archduke; I was sure of it, so why not practice that as well?