by C. M. Mayo
“Ma’am?” Señora Plowes de Pacheco leans forward from the opposite bench.
Carlota swivels her head to the sound of the voice. She tries, when she feels unmoored, to pretend she is Eugénie. Serene, beloved, wise. She must be as impervious to pain as Joan of Arc. She must have the rectitude of Queen Victoria. The courage of Mary Queen of Scots. Cleopatra . . . done in by the venom of an asp! Marie-Louise de Bourbon, queen of Carlos II, last of the Spanish Habsburgs, ten years without child, all of a sudden lost her fingernails. Cholera, they said it was, but her body did not decompose. Tlapatl, so much better than arsenic, it erases the appetite while it deranges the mind. Mixitl constricts the throat and causes the tongue to crack. Nanacatl in a spoon of honey promotes one to fly—off a cliff. There are myriad ways to get rid of a queen.
“Ma’am, are you not well?”
Through the blur in her eyes and her veil, Her Majesty regards her lady’s face, its forehead creased with worry.
She studies the brooch at her lady’s throat. It is Her Majesty’s own portrait, ringed with silver rosettes.
On the seat, cookie crumbs bounce.
“Ma’am?” Señora Plowes de Pacheco says again.
And does not the Reglamento y ceremonial de la Corte make it abundantly clear, that it is a gross breach of etiquette to initiate communication with a sovereign?
Her Majesty’s voice is polished marble. “It feels stuffy in here. Be so good as to open a window.”
In the last and meanest of the dozen passenger carriages of Her Majesty’s convoy, her wardrobe maid, Mathilde Doblinger, worries, can Charlotte be warm enough in the mink-trimmed shawl? Every now and again, depending on the curve the road takes, above the pines, there appears the hump of shining snow. Mathilde herself wears only a boiled wool jacket over her chemise, but she’s plenty warm, squeezed in with these seven of the Mexican chambermaids. Mathilde thinks sourly, Frau von Kuhacsevich said it, these people sound like parrots crazed on coffee, Yakita-yakita-yakita. Her chin on her knuckles, Mathilde looks out at the dust churned up by the other carriages. To the rear follow some fifteen luggage wagons, all piled precariously high and covered with canvas. Mathilde had supervised the loading of Charlotte’s wardrobe trunks. It is but one of the snags in her daily work, having to treat with these brick-headed Mexicans who cannot understand, a wardrobe trunk must be loaded upright. The Triestini, Mathilde had given up for hopeless, but these hateful, tobacco-spitting, chili-chomping numskulls! She’d lost her Spanish along with her patience and shouted at the foreman, Aufre-cht! Aufrecht! Upright! And this never-ending thundering of hooves: forty French Zouaves are escorting Her Majesty’s party, but Mathilde could believe they were a hundred or more. Each carriage has a pair of soldiers sitting up on the box with the driver; at least a dozen ride in brisk file along either side of the imperial carriage, and uncounted numbers more ride two abreast along the edges of the highway—if these rutted tracks can properly be called that.
At a turn, the highway opens into a broad, marshy meadow skirted by pine forest, and the Zouaves up front, at a full gallop, fan out. Three, then five break off, their scarlet trousers billowing back over their horses’ flanks, and their weapons, rifles, sabers, bandoliers, flash with sun—until they are swallowed into the trees. They are forever reconnoitering.
Mathilde has kept a sharp eye out for bandits, but all she has seen are goats, and a few Indians trudging along, bent double under the loads strapped to their foreheads. Up top, a luggage strap has broken loose; it begins slapping against the window, with each jolt, like a snake. Slap, slap. Dust coats the front of her apron, however often she brushes it away with the little clothes brush she keeps handy in her pocket. To protect her lungs, Mathilde presses the sleeve of her jacket to her mouth. Enough with this dust-filled window; already she has seen more of this country than the Devil could shake his tail at. Or have a notion to.
Mathilde Doblinger’s people are Germans, and that is that. A big-boned woman with mouse brown hair, she has the forgettable features of a clerk one might find behind a counter in a provincial shop. Mathilde is not a friendly person, but she has become closer to the other Germans on the staff than she would have in Europe, where the differences in rank would have put an uncrossable gulf between them. In Vienna, the likes of a Mistress of the Imperial Household would never have deigned to sit at the same dining table with a wardrobe maid! Here they are lonely, they want to speak German and complain. The one thing Mathilde will not miss this month is Frau von Kuhacse-vich’s nonstop blather about food.
“Ach, Matty . . .” Frau von Kuhacsevich’s shoulders sagged the other day in the staff dining room when they were served arroz con leche, Mexican-style rice pudding. “At home, it is still the season for plum tarts . . . Do you remember, Matty, in the Obersalzberg, the Reisauflauf with whipped cream and cherry syrup?”
Mathilde could feel Frau von Kuhacsevich’s yearning eyes upon her as she tucked into the arroz con leche with her spoon. It was watery with raw egg white. As far as Mathilde was concerned, food was fuel, and if it did not make her sick, she was glad to have it.
“Tell me, Matty, what do you miss the most?”
Mathilde hated that Frau von Kuhacsevich called her that. She answered: “Beer.”
“Yes, the beer . . . Oktoberfest . . .”
As Frau von Kuhacsevich would have it, in Austria, the veal was more tender; in Austria, the carrots sweeter; in Austria, the sauces milder yet more flavorful. Oh, the Backhendle and Schnitten and Guglhupf! Frau von Kuhacsevich was always complaining about Mexican food, but this did not stop her from eating it. In a month’s time, Mathilde thinks, Frau von Kuhacsevich will have to have yet another wardrobe made for herself. And with the seamstresses here? Good luck!
With the carriage now running downhill, the springs make ear-splitting squeaks and squeals. A bottle rolls up the floor; one of the chambermaids kicks it, another kicks it back, and they giggle. Every one of these underbred girls wears the dangling earrings Frau von Kuhacsevich has expressly forbidden. Brazen they are! Mathilde cannot follow the thread of their chatter. She could care a cruller why they laugh when they do. Planchar, iron; botones, buttons; tijeras, scissors—Mathilde has learned the Spanish she needs, and not a word more. Her father was valet to an archduke of the House of Habsburg. What this meant, such as these could not begin to understand.
She feels as if she has endured ten lifetimes in Mexico but, in fact, it has been only a year and five months. She had arrived on the Novara, with the rest of the imperial retinue. From Veracruz, they had traveled to Mexico City on this same stagecoach highway, and so, she has already seen and suffered every inch of it. But she does not remember the pine forest being so black. It reminds her of the Vienna Woods. Scattered along the roadside are the little flowers that might be edelweiss, but their leaves are longer, tapering, like daggers. She should like to ask the names of these flowers, but the girls have begun singing and clapping. It’s enough to make one stuff wool into one’s ears. Lago-lon-drin-a!(clap clap) Lago-lon-drin-a! And then, the road slopes, the carriage tilts—another eruption of giggling—and that luggage strap starts slap-slapping at the window again.
It is strange to be headed so far as Yucatan, and on the way, be traveling back to the beginning, to Veracruz. With a shiver, Mathilde remembers those last days of May 1864, when they got their first sight of that fetid port. As they approached it from the Gulf, for some time they had seen the Pico de Orizaba—it floated, a chunk of soap upon the sea. Gradually, it rose into the sky until it appeared to be a snow cloud. The horizon was sand, and then, slowly emerging, buildings that appeared to be blackened along their roof-lines. On shore, sand swirled into ghost-like clouds. Frau von Kuhacsevich’s bonnet flew off and was lost in the wake. In a sudden gust, Charlotte’s parasol flipped inside out. The mechanism had jammed; Mathilde hurried inside for another parasol, and when she came back onto the deck, they had all been set upon by biting flies. From the fortress, the guns had begun to boom; the Novara
had been recognized. Smoke drifted over the water. Tüdos, the Hungarian chef, even as he slapped away flies, began sketching like mad. Soon, with the air still shuddering from the cannons, they were cruising near the fortress’ ramparts, blackened blocks of coral, rising sheer out of the harbor, astreak with slime. From the battlements, soldiers shouted “Viva!” and threw down bouquets, most of which fell on the water. Metal gray harbor water swirled by, and ropes of kelp, an apothecary bottle, and a dead seal, its bloated belly glinting. Waves peeled back over shattered hulls, splintered boards. By this time in her service to Charlotte, Mathilde had seen many harbors—Trieste, Ancona, Civitavecchia, Funchal, Fort-de-France. Not a one was such a ship’s graveyard as this horrid Veracruz. And what was that blackness atop the buildings? Another, louder church bell began to clang, and the blackness peeled up like a strip of felt. Rising into the sky, it became a flock of huge black birds. Their metallic-sounding cries chilled Mathilde to the bottom of her soul.
Charlotte asked, “What is the name of those birds?”
Professor Bilimek was about to answer, but he deferred to Maximilian, who said, lowering his field glasses, “Zopilotes.” He slapped a mosquito on the side of his neck. “Turkey buzzards.”
Those filthy, gruesome birds, they took the starch out of her! And to see her expression, Maximilian laughed!
Now, November, past the height of the yellow fever, they say the hospitals in Veracruz are still filled. The boys die of it right off the troopships. And they are carried in from the fields shivering and delirious with malaria. They die of gut-worms, gangrene. No one in their right mind would set foot in that pesthole unless it be to board a ship and depart at full steam—which they will, for Yucatan. As for that province, Mathilde imagines a Hades-like jungle crawling with vipers, scorpions, leeches, and as Professor Bilimek told Frau von Kuhacsevich, a species of salamander that can grow to the size of a cat.
Why does Maximilian send Charlotte to these places when he did not allow her to accompany him to Brazil? It was no place for a white woman, he told his new bride, and left her alone for months on Madeira. But the rules have changed. Maximilian snaps his fingers!
Frau von Kuhacsevich says the reason Charlotte has to go to Yucatan is that Maximilian cannot risk leaving Mexico City, and if the expedition were to be canceled, Yucatan could break away from the empire. Do not believe it, said Tüdos, the Hungarian chef. No, Frau von Kuhacsevich said, it is not true, it is a total lie that Maximilian is planning to abdicate. “That’s right, Matty,” Frau von Kuhacsevich said, “the rumors that Bombelles is going to Vienna to renegotiate the Family Pact with the Kaiser, so that Maximilian will have a position when he returns? Mischievous slander! You don’t believe that tripe, do you?”
“Didn’t say I did.”
Frau von Kuhacsevich had helped herself to a second piece of flan. She balanced the jiggling wedge upon her knife blade then let it fall, plop, to the plate. “You can be sure, Matty, such stories are concocted in the headquarters of General Bazaine.” Now she eyed the bowl of whipped cream. “Ach, I shouldn’t . . .” Frau von Kuhacsevich took a heaping spoonful. “But you know . . .” Frau von Kuhacsevich looked up and down the kitchen. They were alone. “You know . . .” She leaned forward and lowered her voice, “General Bazaine is a thief.”
Mathilde sat on her hands and studied her own scraped plate. It would be unwise to say anything; but less wise to say nothing.
“Well, he’s French.”
“Right as rain you are,” Frau von Kuhacsevich said, the French are jealous, and this and that and blah, blah, blah. Did this woman ever give that tongue a rest?
It is not a wardrobe maid’s place to question, never mind getting into discussions of matters above her station—but this, too, worries her. What will happen in Mexico City where, for more than a month, Maximilian will be alone? With Charlotte away, Mathilde wonders, by protocol, won’t Princess Iturbide be the highest-ranking female personage and so take Charlotte’s place at the imperial dinner table? Princess Iturbide will have every opportunity to weave a dangerous swath of influence. Mathilde imagines, for a pucker-lipped moment, Princess Iturbide stuffed into her fish-scale moiré, standing by Maximilian’s side, receiving ambassadors.
Maximilian’s valet, Grill, heard it from his coachman, and he told Tüdos, who told Frau von Kuhacsevich, that the Iturbide brat’s mother, a half-mad American, had changed her mind, she wanted her boy back, and so she went to General Bazaine to stir up an intrigue. Maximilian had no choice, Frau von Kuhacsevich explained; he’d had to have the woman detained. If that story is true, Mathilde thinks, then, it is strange Maximilian keeps the little boy—unless, Maximilian really does mean to make him his heir. But Tüdos said that, the way he heard it, making the child a prince and bringing him into the residence was not what it might look like, that it was “five birds and a stone.”
“I do not understand,” Mathilde had said.
Tüdos had shrugged. “I wouldn’t try to make soup out of it.”
A palace is a hive; a worker bee must do her work and take care not to fall into the delusion that she is in on the half of what is really going on. Nonetheless! Mathilde Doblinger does not have to eat the whole pig to know that it’s pork. For Maximilian to bring that Iturbide infant into the Imperial Residence is an insult to Charlotte’s womanhood.
It is strange that Maximilian keeps his distance from his wife, Mathilde has always thought so. Charlotte is so fetching, and he, clearly (anyone can see the way she looks at him from across a room), is the all in her life. There is some seam between those two that has not been properly stitched together. There is something off in the cut of the fabric of their matrimony; it does not hang right. Charlotte has not been eating. Last week, Mathilde began moving the buttons and hooks on her dresses, a lot of work, especially as she has no one to help her—that is, no Mexican she could expect to do the job to her standards.
But worse: Charlotte has been pinching herself again. The other morning, when Charlotte lifted her arms so that Mathilde could lace her corset, on the tenderest part of her inner arm, there were two livid bruises. She makes these where her clothing can disguise them. But when Charlotte realized Mathilde had seen the bruises; she tensed and pulled her elbows in. She lifted her chin, regarding herself in the mirror—no, not herself. It was something behind her. Mathilde turned around. There was nothing there but the closed door.
Mathilde has heard the news that arrived last night on the Manhattan; Frau von Kuhacsevich tattled about King Leopold’s illness to everyone. Here, on the other side of the sea, Charlotte is so far from those who truly love her and might console her. And warn her: it is courting danger to so overwork herself, the charity works, the teas, tertulias, dinners, tours—and now, this expedition to Yucatan! It will be killing.
Maximilian expects too much of his young wife. He does not see the appalling strain he puts her under. No one will tell him the truth, except, perhaps, Father Fischer. Father Fischer is the one person on earth whom Mathilde would confide in, but he has not yet returned from Rome. Early this morning, in the hallway, before leaving, Mathilde found herself alone in the vestibule with Frau von Kuhacsevich, and in her anguish for Charlotte, Mathilde very nearly said something. But she reminded herself, the von Kuhacseviches are not Charlotte’s, but Maximilian’s people. Mathilde Doblinger is no Judas. She keeps her eyes keen, her ears pricked, and her lips buttoned.
The road disappears beneath a swollen river, then it reemerges, dangerously soft with sand. The Zouaves lay down planks. The mules, dripping water, creep forward, straining under the whips.
In the afternoon, one of the empress’s luggage wagons overturns, but is righted.
Later, nearing Río Frío, a stag leaps between two carriages. From his mount a Zouave takes a rifle shot; the bullet chips a cypress.
In the gentlemen’s carriage, the Belgian ambassador observes, “C’est maigre. It’s thin.”
“Ni valióla bala. It wasn’t worth the bullet,” says t
he Marquis de la Rivera, the Spanish ambassador, and thus, like the expert horseman he is, reins the conversation back into Spanish.
The one member of their party who cannot converse in Spanish is Monsieur Eloin, the empress’s Belgian advisor. Sandwiched between the two ambassadors, his silver cane across his paunch, massive head bent forward, Eloin goes on napping. Facing this trio, his back in the direction of their progress, is Mexico’s foreign minister, Fernando Ramírez, who is glad indeed that Eloin has nodded off, for, though Ramírez speaks passable French, having to converse in it leaves him a wrung-out rag. And for General Uraga, seated to his right (wooden leg stowed beneath the bench) French is an even greater mountain to climb.
It is a relief to Ramírez to dispense with at least some of the diplomatic formalities en route—court dress, for example (how the collar of that uniform cuts into his neck, and he can never get his hat’s ostrich plume to stay up). Eloin had made fun of him and the Belgian ambassador for showing up this morning in identical hounds-tooth and thick-soled boots. The marquis, who sports English riding boots, had brought a sack of oranges. The peels litter the floor and their scent sweetens the air made chokingly acrid with cigar smoke. They’ve launched into debating again.