by Juliet Grey
I brought the snifter to my nostrils and inhaled the fruity, slightly astringent aroma: brandy. “But I don’t like spirits,” I protested.
“Then think of it as medicine,” my sister replied.
So I swallowed the brandy in a single searing gulp. But Charlotte still looked unsatisfied. “What?” was all I needed to say before I saw her lip begin to quiver.
“Maman announced something at dinner. I wanted to tell you myself before you heard it from anyone else.”
We seated ourselves side by side on my bed as we had when we were younger, swinging our legs and letting our bare feet graze the floor.
My sister clasped one of my hands in hers. Several moments elapsed before she could speak. “I suppose it was inevitable,” she said, choking on a sob.
I grabbed her other hand. “What was?” My stomach tumbled over like an acrobat losing his balance on the wire.
“My portrait—the one Monsieur Ducreux is completing. It is being sent to Naples. To the king.” Her voice broke. “To Ferdinand the … Ferdinand the idiot. It’s been settled between Maman and his father, the king of Spain—I am to replace Josepha as his bride.”
The room began to spin. “No, it cannot be so! Not you, too!” I threw my arms about Charlotte’s neck and pressed my head against her bosom. Without stays she had become soft and round. Although she would not turn sixteen until August, she had grown into a woman. Fertile. And therefore ripe to become a queen.
I searched for an argument against the match. “But you do not even speak his language!”
“There is no need,” Charlotte replied dolefully. “Court, Parliament—like everywhere else, business is conducted in French; it is the common language of diplomacy. And I will have an entourage of good German maids to converse with in our native tongue. Even His Sicilian Majesty does not speak the language of Dante and Petrarch. We have been informed that he knows only the local Neapolitan dialect.” She wrinkled her nose as though she smelled week-old fish. “It is the patois spoken by the peasants.”
Charlotte apologized to me then, sorry to have teased me in front of the duc de Choiseul on the evening of his arrival at the Hofburg. Despite Maman’s kind words about her talents and abilities, Charlotte admitted that she had felt a bit envious of my destiny, astute enough to realize that Monsieur Ducreux had come to Vienna on my account and that painting her portrait as well had at first been no more than a subterfuge, intended to deflect attention from the import of my role in Austria’s future. Yes, Charlotte acknowledged, someday we would all become queens of somewhere—but I, the baby of the family (except for Maxl, of course), the girl everyone viewed as the silly goose, would eventually preside over the most elegant court in Europe, while her own fate would be far less glorious.
“So now I am being dispatched to a noisy backwater in order to shore up Maman’s ties with the Spanish Bourbons, just as you will one day bring the support of the French branch of the house to our Hapsburg family tree.” Never one to control her temper, my sister’s tirade began to gain both volume and speed. “Do you know that when King Ferdinand learned of Josepha’s death, the ninny staged a mock funeral procession through his palace in Naples? He dressed one of his footmen as a woman and stippled the man’s face and arms with chocolate to mimic the ravages of the pox!” At my aghast expression, Charlotte paused for breath. “Oh, ma petite,” she sobbed, “you cannot begin to imagine how miserable I will be.”
“What sort of monster is this king? How can Maman let you go?” But I already knew the answer. We were expected to hold our heads proudly, roses in full bloom on the stems of our swanlike necks, and submit to whatever destiny Maman arranged for us. But it didn’t begin to lessen the pain of parting. I was still grieving over the death of our sister Josepha. And we both knew that once Charlotte reached Naples it was entirely possible, if not probable, that we might never see each other again. “I can’t bear to lose you, too,” I told my sister, clutching her shoulders as if I might keep her there, at the edge of my bed, with the sheer power of my embrace. Oh, if only it were so! “It will be very grim here, after you’ve gone. And you must write to me every day.” I managed a faint laugh. “You must promise to tell me what it is like to be a married woman.”
We sat on the bed facing each other with our bare legs tucked beneath us. Charlotte reached over and touched an errant curl that had escaped my nightcap. She twined it about her finger, drawing closer. “I will also confess that I don’t envy that lion’s cage in your mouth!” she said, endeavoring to inject some levity into the bleakest moment of our lives.
I hunted about for a handkerchief and wiped a wayward tear from the tip of my nose. “And there is so much more to come,” I said. “One day you might not recognize me! Now Maman intends to engage two French actors performing at the Burgtheater to teach me proper diction and elocution.”
I mimicked what I imagined I might sound like after the players finished with me, enunciating every syllable and elongating each vowel with comical precision. “Bon-joooour, Vo-tre Maaa-jes-téeeeee; je suuuuuuiiiis l’ar-chiiii-duuuuu-chesse Maria Antonia d’Au-triiiiiche.”
I saw that my silliness cheered Charlotte, so I continued to regale her with our mother’s elaborate system for turning an ill-educated caterpillar named Maria Antonia of Austria into a dazzling butterfly. Un papillon. “Monsieur Noverre, the great ballet master, has been invited to forsake the duke of Württemburg’s court at Stuttgart and come to Vienna to improve my dancing. Not only that, the sister of the duc de Choiseul is dispatching her own friseur to alter my hairline somehow. At least you,” I said to Charlotte, squeezing her hand, “have been judged perfection.”
“Perfection for an ugly and indolent idiot who entertains ambassadors in the commode,” Charlotte replied bitterly. “A hideous and stupid indolent idiot.” A ponderous sigh escaped her lips. “Oh, meine kleine Schwester—my dear little sister—if I cannot find happiness in marriage, I hope at the least to learn that your union with the dauphin of France will be filled with radiant joy and many, many babies.”
I nodded vehemently. “I love babies.”
She glanced at my favorite doll. “Then may your rooms be filled with the joyous babble of real ones.” Charlotte cradled Poupée in her arms. “Her face is dirty,” she observed, then licked her finger before using it to remove a black smudge from the poppet’s wooden cheek, a gesture Madame von Brandeiss had employed on my own face with a handkerchief a hundred times a year. Charlotte straightened the doll’s yellow dress and fluffed her white fichu and cap.
I gazed lovingly at Poupée as if she were the child I would someday hold and coddle, whose every gurgle would send me into raptures. “I want sixteen of them. Just like Maman had.”
My sister blushed. “Me too. Sixteen. So I have many others to love instead of my husband. And every one of them will be fat, healthy, and boisterous. With big pink cheeks and chubby limbs.”
From that minute, and for the next few weeks until Charlotte’s proxy wedding on the seventh of April, the pair of us treasured every moment we were able to share. Monsieur Ducreux had yet to complete my sister’s portrait, which would be sent to Naples in advance of her scheduled arrival there on the twelfth of May. Meanwhile, I had to endure the constant discomfort of the bandeaux and the wires that encircled my teeth like a golden fence; there was no thought of the painter commencing his portrait of me until the braces were removed. Once a week, Monsieur Laveran would inspect my progress, often tightening the tiny screws that held the wires until I was sure I felt my teeth shift, despite his repeated assurances that the process was not nearly as immediate as I imagined it.
While the plans for Charlotte’s wedding proceeded with undue speed I was being put through my paces like one of the white stallions at the Spanish Riding School. One morning after breakfast we were joined by a fragile, plain-looking woman in a deep blue gown whose powdered hair set off an equally chalky complexion, relieved only by a pair of narrow, dark brows. Her colorless face also appeared
barren of any humor.
Maman made the introduction. “Antonia, this is the Countess von Lerchenfeld. She will be superintending your studies from now on.”
What? My mother might just as well have placed her hands about my narrow waist and squeezed all the air out of me. The past several weeks had brought me nothing but sorrow. First I discovered that I would lose my precious Charlotte to a world over the mountains and a man-child not fit to reign over a stable; and now my beloved governess was being replaced—the one constant I had counted on. “I don’t understand, Maman.” My eyes filled with tears, and I fought to blink them back. Maman had begun to chide me for childish displays of emotion that, on the brink of womanhood, she deemed me too old to indulge. In truth, Maman disdained excessive sentiment at any age.
Stubbornly, I stood my ground. “Madame von Brandeiss was so kind.” I wanted to add, “I love her,” but I didn’t dare.
“Indeed,” said Maman, ignoring my trembling lip. “She is kind. And her kindness, as well as her general deficiency in the subjects of history, science, and the classics are, I would hazard, two of the reasons your head remains so empty at the age of twelve. You will not find the Countess von Lerchenfeld quite so lenient.” Her expression softened. “Nor will you find her an ogre if you concentrate on your lessons. I have instructed the countess to drill you every day in French, history, geography, and penmanship. Your studies with her will commence in the Rosenzimmer after Mass this morning.”
We had been raised to acknowledge that Maman’s word was incontestable. Madame von Lerchenfeld, with her outmoded starched cap that crowned an equally inflexible demeanor, had spent the past two months “finishing” Charlotte, in preparation for her role as queen of Naples. Prior to that she had been the Mistress of the Robes for our older sisters. Charlotte assured me that the new governess was no ogre, but she was no Countess von Brandeiss either. And if Charlotte had survived the woman, I could do no less, or I would never hear the end of it from my sister.
My first tutorial with the countess was unspeakably dull, a relentless litany of names, dates, and figures, few of which would remain in my head for more than a moment or two. By the end of the first half hour I found myself pacing about the room, tracing the patterns in the inlaid floor with the toe of my slipper, picking at the lint on the red velvet upholstery, and wishing that my new governess had a livelier disposition, while I was certain that she was wishing me to be considerably less exuberant and more attentive. More like Charlotte, perhaps. But try as I might—and I was truly making every effort to concentrate—I cannot learn when my mind is not entertained.
When the wearied countess decided that we had studied enough for one day, my relief was surely obvious. Lerchenfeld’s frown illustrated her disapproval. The following afternoon I resolved to do better, but when my eyes began to glaze over during her recitation of the battles we fought during the Seven Years’ War, I changed the subject by asking her where she was born.
“Bavaria,” the countess responded, startled by my question.
“Do you ever miss it?”
Her eyes misted over, a reaction that surprised me. “It was a very charming place to grow up,” she told me. I believe it was the first time I had heard her speak of anything with a degree of sentiment. I suppose a human heart pulsed within her humorless husk of a body after all.
I rested my chin in my hands and gazed at her. “Please tell me about it,” I said. In the double blink of an eye, my question was no longer the diverting stratagem I had intended; now I was genuinely intrigued by whatever it was that had so touched my new tutor. “I want to know everything about Bavaria.”
“There are many beautiful forests and the air is fresh and sweet …” she began, followed by several hazily romantic reminiscences of her birthplace. Before we knew it, the countess was glancing at the elaborate mechanical clock near the wall. “My goodness, the time!” she exclaimed. “Well, we will have to finish up with the Battle of Lobositz tomorrow.”
I did not wish the Countess von Lerchenfeld to feel that we had frittered away another afternoon of instruction, so the next day I pleased her with my ability to locate Bavaria on a map, as well as the Schwarzwald, the Black Forest, recalling that she had proudly boasted of their clock-making and their cherry tortes. Perhaps, I suggested slyly, if I were to taste one of these confections, I might always remember our lesson on Bavaria!
The weeks flew by—which meant that my three months of purgatory in Fauchard’s Bandeaux would soon end; but it also signified the imminence of Charlotte’s marriage to King Ferdinand of Naples. Outside the Hofburg, the frost was all but gone and tiny shoots of grass had begun to peek out from the cracks between the paving stones. Birdsong awakened me, and the afternoon light didn’t wane quite so soon. For the first time in my life I dreaded the coming of spring.
On the seventh of April, as the trees were beginning to bud, my beloved Charlotte, clad in cloth of gold with a tissue overlay of white organza, her bodice studded with precious gems, and her hair threaded with seed pearls and dressed high off her forehead, was united by proxy with the king of the Two Sicilies at the Church of the Augustine Friars in Vienna. The elegance and majesty of Charlotte’s bridal wardrobe could not have made a more incongruous contrast to the torment in her soul.
Our brother Ferdinand, who was only a year older than me, knelt beside Charlotte at the altar, representing his Neapolitan namesake. For one who was prone to boyish pranks, he took his responsibility quite seriously. My sister kept a glum but dignified gaze on the bishop during the entire wedding Mass. Earlier that morning Charlotte had warned me that she dared not glance in my direction for fear she would dissolve into tears. But she was made of sterner stuff than I, and I would do well to gain a bit of her mettle. With an impressive amount of confidence and maturity for a girl of fifteen, she was already determined to make the most of her destiny in spite of her new husband. That Ferdinand of Naples was a weak and indifferent sovereign was, to my clever sister, an asset she intended to turn to her advantage. She had heard he cared for nothing but hunting. “Wunderbar!” she’d told me. “Magnifique! While he amuses himself slaughtering innocent beasts, I shall consult the ministers and become the true ruler of the Two Sicilies. A king in petticoats and panniers.”
Nevertheless, the mood at her wedding reception—a grand meal of more than a dozen courses served in the ornately mirrored Spigelsaal where we always dined on state occasions—was decidedly more funereal than celebratory, for once the toasts were over and the crystal goblets were drained, after the ices and cakes were consumed and the sticky dishes cleared away by a fastidious army of liveried servants, Charlotte would be bidding farewell to her family and her homeland. With every passing minute I grew more anxious, my heart beating faster, my stomach churning, aware that each second that had passed would never come again. By dusk, Charlotte’s presence would be no more than a memory that would begin to fade by the following morning; an echo of slippered footfalls, the imprint of her head on the bolster.
Above the courtyard of the Hofburg, the sky was mottled with patches of gray, threatening thunder. Behind three teams of matched bays, the enormous berline that would convey Charlotte out of Vienna, past Laxenburg just to the south, and over the Dolomites into Italy stood at the ready. To Maman this luxuriously appointed black and green carriage, its hunter green wheels embellished with pure gold, was an emblem of imperial splendor. The bride and I saw a sarcophagus on wheels.
All of us—Maman, Joseph, Christina, Elisabeth, Amalia, Leopold, Ferdinand, Maxl, and I—were gathered outside to say good-bye. Charlotte’s two ladies-in-waiting, her official chaperones, were already seated inside the carriage, their enormous skirts leaving little room for the reluctant bride. The horses, caparisoned and plumed in the Hapsburg colors of yellow and black, stamped impatiently as the coachman (indifferent to our sorrow as long as his purse was full) puffed away on his long-stemmed clay pipe. Charlotte’s retinue of German maids would follow, their departure unheralde
d by anyone of note.
Each of us embraced Charlotte, as of the past few hours the queen of the Two Sicilies. When it was my turn, we held each other so tightly that neither of us could breathe with ease. So close were our torsos that I could feel my heart beating against the boning of her bodice. I twined one of her lightly powdered curls about my fingers in a gesture of girlish affection. “Do you feel any different, now that you are a queen?” I murmured.
Charlotte pulled away, just far enough to cup my face in her hands. “Just a little,” she admitted, adding with a wicked smile, “Now that I am a queen, I can contradict Maman if I wish!”
We shared a chuckle, choking up as we realized that it would be the last time we would ever be two little daughters of Austria, a pair of rosy cherries on a single stem.
“Mein Gott, I miss you already,” I whispered in her ear. A teardrop snaked its way down the side of my nose.
“Maman is watching us,” Charlotte said softly. It was almost an apology.
“Antonia, ça suffit,” our mother said. “That’s enough. Farewells are a part of life.”
Charlotte and I separated slowly, reluctantly, until only our gloved fingertips touched, lingering for one moment more as we pressed them together.
“Antonia. Enough.”
“Oui, Maman.” I stepped away from my sister, treading backwards, almost deferentially, afraid to meet Charlotte’s eyes again for fear of erupting into sobs.
With great formality, Maman kissed Charlotte on both cheeks. “Godspeed, my daughter. Bring honor to the House of Hapsburg with your piety, your good sense, and most of all, your fertility.”
My sister’s eyes were moist. But when Charlotte was helped up the traveling steps and handed into the coach, the fullness of her emotions got the better of her. My heart was breaking as I stood on the cobbles, wobbling in my court heels. I lifted Mops into my arms and waved at her with his paw; his tawny coat soon grew wet with my tears.