The Empress: A novel

by Laura Martínez-Belli

  Since his early years in the militia, Vicente had pledged himself to Santa Anna, for whom he was prepared to die if necessary; as the years passed and he rose in rank, he had gradually become a staunch Santanista. He had sacrificed his best years, his best friends, and his right leg—ruined by shrapnel—for the struggle alongside him. He believed in Antonio López de Santa Anna as much as he believed in the Holy Trinity; he believed in his intelligence and in his idea of Mexico. But, eventually, in Vicente’s mind, fame went to the man’s head, and Santa Anna was drifting into excesses such as demanding to be addressed as His Most Serene Highness, among other extravagances. The last straw was when he spent only forty days in mourning for his wife before marrying a girl who could have been his daughter—this seemed a serious defect in the moral integrity of a man of noble birth. Constanza thought it was curious that it was a personal and not a political matter that caused her father to turn his back on the figure who for so long had embodied his ideals. On stormy nights, when his rheumatism gave him severe pains in his leg, she heard him fulminate about Santa Anna and curse his ancestors.

  Though she didn’t agree with it, Refugio allowed him to take his anger out on the Liberales; she understood that her husband was simply a disappointed man, deeply wounded by the pain of having fought for a cause that ended up being bankrupt. From her own trench, Refugio found another way to fight battles. While it was Vicente’s voice that reverberated around the house most loudly, everyone knew it was Refugio’s softly spoken words to which they must pay attention. Graciously, and with a manner as stiff as the starched garments she wore, she took responsibility for maintaining order. Nobody did anything without her permission, and even when Vicente gave an order that contradicted hers, no servant would lift a finger, even when he raised his voice. Refugio, using who knows what artifices, always managed to make her husband believe that it was he who made the decisions.

  She was the perfect wife, the perfect lady of the house. But when night fell, she gave free rein to her most secret dreams. When everyone retired, she went into Constanza’s room to give her a kiss and, after tracing the sign of the cross on her forehead, slip her a book that only men were permitted to read. With this simple gesture, she would take her due. Bringing up a freethinking woman would be her way to rebel against an established order that she’d never been able to openly defy. Whenever Constanza asked where she got the books and why she gave them to her, she placed her fingers on her lips and said in a low voice, “Return it before sunrise.” That was the only condition. At first, Constanza read slowly, hesitantly, afraid she would be discovered, but the fear disappeared as she quickly became absorbed in the book. The world became infinitely broader, larger, more interesting. She learned about the geopolitics of a Europe that seemed to be crumbling like a cookie, and, without fully understanding it because of her age, she read The Spirit of Laws, sensing that she was witness to an important document.

  Her clandestine reading became their secret, and in the mornings, when she awoke looking like a raccoon, Refugio covered up the rings around her eyes with makeup. On a few occasions, Constanza almost gave them away with the urge to correct her brothers as they discussed politics at dinner. Refugio would open her eyes wide from across the table, telling her with the severity of her expression to keep her mouth closed. Constanza gathered that Clotilde wasn’t interested in reading the prohibited books, because even on occasions when the atmosphere could be cut with a knife, she remained oblivious, coughing delicately into her silk handkerchief. In her most private thoughts, Refugio imagined that the fragility of her youngest daughter’s body was a reflection of her mind. To her, Constanza was always the strongest, but she was as afraid as she was proud: she suspected that so much strength would come at a cost.

  In the Murrieta household, life went on, far from the wars and the betrayals of politics; the eldest brothers left the home, Clotilde’s health improved as quickly as Easter flowers sprout, and Constanza began to understand that, within one territory, there were several Mexicos that were about to collide like trains.

  9

  1866, on a ship bound for France

  For three and a half weeks, Carlota locked herself in her cabin. The sound of the engines was driving her mad, she insisted; it prevented her from sleeping, and she had intense headaches that were becoming increasingly unbearable. She tossed and turned in her bed; the voyage at sea seemed much worse than traveling by carriage. She was dizzy. She was nauseous. She vomited every morning and, contrary to her initial thoughts, the sea air turned her stomach even more.

  One day, pale and tired, she spoke to Frau Döblinger.

  “Mathilde, I need you to line my entire cabin in mats.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I need to do something to reduce the noise from the machines; it’s as if they’re rumbling in my head.”

  “As you wish.”

  Mathilde left the cabin puzzled at the empress’s request. She wasn’t an eccentric woman; she never asked for senseless things and certainly couldn’t be considered fussy. In fact, these last few years, she had adjusted to eating tortillas and enjoyed the cajeta, she had adapted to the new climate and landscape, and adopted the Mexican customs. A request of the kind she had just made therefore seemed strange. She really must hate the noise, Mathilde thought, before instructing the servants to carry out the task.

  The cabin’s walls were soon lined, but the insulation came at the expense of the temperature, which rose to the levels of an oven. Air no longer flowed through the portholes, and Carlota sweated constantly. Manuelita, overwhelmed by the stuffy room, tried to persuade her to go for walks on deck.

  “It will give you some air, my lady. It will do you good.”

  After a great deal of negotiating, the lady-in-waiting managed to convince Carlota to break her self-imposed imprisonment and go up on deck for a short walk. But even then she was silent, lost in her thoughts, asking herself over and over again how, in a few weeks, she was going to solve what had proved unsolvable in the two years of the empire. She felt the pressure on her at all times, and to combat anxiety, she chewed on handkerchiefs, sometimes ruining them. When her nerves got the better of her, she let go of her lady-in-waiting’s arm and, in desperation, said, “I can’t allow myself to waste time strolling on the deck like a damsel, Manuelita. I must write pleas, take notes, make calculations. I cannot, I cannot . . .”

  “But, my lady, a few minutes won’t make any difference . . . France isn’t going anywhere.”

  “Oh, Manuelita! You are so naïve. France has already gone. Don’t you see? Minutes, months, years . . . it’s all relative.”

  Suddenly the empress seemed to be lost in the passageways of her mind. Then, abruptly, she turned and rushed back, calling, “I’m retiring to my cabin to work.”

  “But that place is an oven!” Manuelita answered. “You’ll fall ill shutting yourself away with no air. I’m not surprised you feel nauseous stuck in there, Majesty.”

  Carlota stopped dead. She turned and said, “The nausea will be with me for some time, however much air I have.”

  Manuelita raised an eyebrow. “Why do you say that, Majesty?”

  The empress turned again. “No reason, Manuelita, no reason.”

  Since they left on this foolish journey, as he called it, Dr. Bohuslavek had monitored her health closely, in part because an effusive Maximilian had entrusted him to do so before leaving, and in part because he was sure that the dizziness and nausea had nothing to do with the state of the roads, the sailing, or the high temperatures. He had observed her closely since they left Orizaba. At first, he feared it could be typhoid, but he soon ruled that out. What Carlota was suffering from, he’d seen many times over the course of his career, and it wasn’t a cause for alarm, but for celebration, especially when the subject was a young and healthy sovereign, ready to produce heirs to her throne. Even a blind man could see the empress was pregnant. Three months pregnant, Dr. Bohuslavek estimated—no more. The worst time to trave
l, without a doubt, which was why he was so watchful. Lately, the empress had been given to extravagant outbursts, hysterics, losing her temper. The doctor didn’t like that. When Carlota returned to her cabin, she found him waiting at her door.

  “Doctor, what are you doing here?”

  “I’ve come to examine you, Your Majesty. I’m concerned about your dizzy spells.”

  Carlota gestured at him to enter the oven of a cabin.

  “But I’m fine, Doctor. You don’t need to examine me every five minutes.”

  “In your condition, it would be negligent of me not to do so, Your Majesty,” he replied.

  At first Carlota held her breath, but then she slowly sighed, releasing the tension.

  “How long have you known?”

  “A few weeks.”

  “I see.”

  “How have you been feeling? Apart from the vomiting and discomfort . . .”

  “Not well, Doctor, not well. I’m nauseous all the time, and I no longer know whether it’s from the child or the worries I have in my head.”

  “Does the emperor know, Your Majesty?”

  Carlota opened her eyes wide before answering. “No. I haven’t told him.”

  “And may I ask why, Empress?”

  “I didn’t want to tell him anything until I was sure.”

  “But this heir could change everything. Your Majesty should inform him.”

  Carlota sat down on a two-seat settee that occupied the center of the space.

  “Yes. I know. It’s the heir we’ve waited so long for.”

  Her voice dragged a protracted groan along with it. She wanted to hold her face in her hands and hide from Bohuslavek’s eyes, but she resisted the urge with all her strength and held his gaze.

  Dr. Bohuslavek remained standing, silent. Before he could say anything, Carlota spoke.

  “Thank you, Doctor, you may leave.”

  “If Your Majesty needs me, I shall be close by.”

  The heat that rose in Carlota as he left was different than the one in the room.

  She knew she couldn’t hide her pregnancy. She could leave, she could flee the rumors, but the pregnancy would pursue her from the inside. It was inevitable—something that can’t be hidden. If the baby she was expecting had been Maximilian’s, everything would’ve been different. They’d been given three years to produce an heir, so time had been against them. For a young couple, three years was a prudent and reasonable time in which to have a child, but since Max was unable to consummate the marriage, it proved impossible: only Holy Mary could give birth as a virgin. But the blame had always fallen on her; in the eyes of the world, she was the sterile one. What other reason could there be for their failure to conceive? The rumors of her infertility had spread like wildfire from the moment dear Maximilian had decided to adopt a native boy in Querétaro to make a Habsburg of him. He had him baptized and adopted him without Carlota’s knowledge, surprising both her and the Conservatives who’d crossed the sea for a European prince, only to find he’d taken a dark-skinned child as his own. The little prince lived just two days, and, though he’d been baptized as a Christian, he was buried as a native. To quell his fury, Maximilian then tried to adopt a child in keeping with his position; the most obvious was to take in the grandsons of the previous Mexican emperor Iturbide. Agustín, two, and Salvador, almost fifteen, were set to become the heirs to the throne after Maximilian died; in the meantime, they would study in Europe. The plan fell through when the boys’ mother, who had initially been persuaded, decided that she preferred to have commoners for children so long as she could be their mother. To Carlota’s delight, she took them away. At heart, Carlota hadn’t lost hope that she would one day give birth to her own heir, born from her blood and body. How often she had wished she was pregnant . . . She’d prayed for it each night, imploring God the Father to make her conceive. And now there she was, at twenty-six, onboard a ship set for Europe, under pressure from everybody, from her husband, from the empire, to demonstrate that the Mexican adventure had not been an act of folly or some delusion of grandeur, finally pregnant, feeling more alone than ever.

  10

  1860, Mexico

  Following Mexico’s adoption of a new constitution in mid-1857, the Murrieta household was abuzz with men wearing solemn hats and worried faces. More meetings happened there than in the government offices, and the comings and goings of men in formal coats and white gloves had become as routine as Don Vicente’s bad mood. The head of household received his guests discreetly, inviting them into his study, where they talked behind closed doors. It was futile, because the heated discussions could be easily heard from the hallway. Constanza listened to their raised voices as they called Juárez a traitor, or said that Ocampo and Juárez were insane, while Vicente tried to call order by banging his cane like a gavel.

  Constanza fervently wished that she could take part in these debates. Knowing it was impossible, after a quick reconnaissance to make sure she wouldn’t be seen, she held her ear to the door.

  “But, Vicente, they’re granting tax exemptions for the Isthmus of Tehuantepec and some of the borderlands; it’s as if they were a condominium!” one man yelled.

  “And what’s more,” another voice added, “they’re giving free passage to the gringos between Guaymas and Rancho Los Nogales, between Camargo and Matamoros, and wherever they want on the Tamaulipas border.”

  The voices grew in intensity along with their grievances, passions were inflamed, and Constanza stifled the shock and delight she felt hearing such rude language come from such honorable mouths. La Reforma not only enacted freedom of religion and the nationalization of church assets—matters crying out for a solution for opponents of Juárez—but also established civil marriage, secularized hospitals, removed clerical intervention in cemeteries, and eradicated all religious communities.

  “We have to do something,” they all agreed.

  “But what can we do? Take up arms again?” one of them would ask.

  “I can’t bear another war, and I don’t think Mexico can, either,” another would say languidly. “I buried all four of my sons in three years.”

  “But we can’t sit here and do nothing while the country is thrown over a cliff.”

  “Juárez will be our downfall.”

  And during each discussion, Vicente’s stick thumped the floor, marking its metronomic rhythm while he thought: We have to do something. Something. But what?

  11

  As days, months, and years passed, the reform laws were enacted one by one with everyone watching, sometimes with astonishment, sometimes with disbelief. Mexico was gradually transformed, eliciting despair from some, and fueling the hopes and dreams of others. Refugio marveled at modernity reaching the country. She felt angry that they knew themselves to be an independent nation, in theory, but that they were still governed by the sons of viceroys, criollos born in Mexico of European descent, with a complex because they are from neither here nor there. She’d seen it too much, for too long. She was fed up with Santa Anna and sick to death of His Damned Excellence, as she privately called him. She much preferred Juárez. She admired and respected him, and in the silence of her heart she hoped that the notables who gathered in her parlor remained unable to agree until they learned to flow like stones dragged by the sea.

  At night, away from the raised voices, as if the moon brought peace to their politicized souls, Refugio and Vicente spoke calmly. With his wife, he was a different man, unknown to anyone except her. Not even his children knew this side of him: the man who had doubts and needed advice. He didn’t always allow this facet to emerge, but when it did, Refugio knew that her husband listened, at least until the moon faded and was replaced by an overbearing sun that allowed no other celestial body to shine.

  “Refugio, I’ve been thinking,” he said to her on one of these fleeting nights.

  She snuggled behind him so that he could feel but not see her; she knew her husband spoke more freely without having to look her in
the eyes. He felt her soft breasts pressed against his back.

  “I think I know what we have to do to save the country.”

  “The country, or yourself, Vicente?”

  He pretended not to hear her.

  “I think we must become monarchists again . . . we Mexicans, I mean. Don’t you think? We should have a king.”

  Refugio closed her eyes, or at least she thought she had, because, all of a sudden, she could only see darkness.

  “What on earth are you saying, Vicente?”

  “Yes . . . it’s the logical thing to do. Think about it: Mexico was at its peak when it had Aztec emperors.”

  “Where are we going to find a tlatoani now, Vicente?” Refugio asked sarcastically.

  “Don’t be ridiculous, woman. I’m referring to a European prince.”

  “A European? Now you’re talking nonsense, Chente.”

  “And why not? Independence brought disaster. Mexicans don’t know how to govern themselves. We need a strong ruler, someone born to reign, someone who knows how to lead us in peace.”

  Refugio couldn’t believe the words coming from her husband’s mouth. Had he completely lost his mind? Were they all crazy, or just afraid? Couldn’t they see the sovereignty that Mexico had won through blood, sweat, and tears? Refugio let go of her husband’s back and leaned up on her elbow. She wanted to be upright to say what she was about to say.