The Empress: A novel

by Laura Martínez-Belli

  Goffinet began to make calculations.

  “And as you know, Maximilian went to great lengths to ensure my father granted him a vast dowry.”

  “It’s no secret, Majesty.”

  And no, it was no secret. In his negotiations with Leopold I prior to the marriage, Maximilian had stretched him almost to the breaking point. He wanted no less than three million francs to marry his beloved daughter, and the king emphatically refused. But in addition to being king, Leopold was a father, and, softened by the pleas of his only daughter, smitten with the archduke, he finally agreed. Goffinet knew—because he had ears everywhere—that Maximilian had written to his brother Charles Louis boasting that he’d finally managed to extract, in his words, some of the gold that’s so dear to the old miser. Yes, Goffinet knew that and other things, too, but he was prudent and knew when to keep quiet; that was one of the many virtues that Leopold II valued in him.

  The king of the Belgians went on.

  “You also know that, in the early years of their marriage, half the ownership of Miramare and half the island of Lokrum were given over to my poor sister.” And seeing Goffinet nod, he asked him, “Who will be personally liable for repaying the loan that Maximilian requested from the Royal House of Habsburg for the construction of Miramare Castle on the Bay of Grignano?”

  Goffinet was silent for a moment, in case the monarch was asking a rhetorical question. Seeing that he was waiting for an answer, Goffinet replied, “Your esteemed sister Charlotte, Majesty.”

  “My poor sister, yes, financing that aberration of a building. What do you think of Miramare, Auguste?”

  Though he knew when to be quiet, Goffinet also knew when to respond honestly; that was one of the virtues Leopold II respected in him. And, as if more endearing qualities were needed, he’d never contradicted him.

  “In my humble opinion, Majesty, Miramare is an uninhabitable chocolate box. I’ve looked around the castle, and around the gardens twice, and one of the two is superfluous.”

  Leopold nodded, raising his eyebrows and pursing lips that were already invisible behind his enormous beard. He liked confirmation of how right he was. Sure enough, he considered Miramare an appalling place as a permanent residence. He stood up and began to pace the office; when his mind was performing calculations, he always walked in circles.

  He continued.

  “And though I tried to bar women from inheriting, so that princesses would depend on the male heirs, as is only natural, the fact is that my sister has inherited an immense fortune. Immense,” he repeated as if to make sure he was understood.

  “Indeed, Majesty.”

  “But”—and saying this, Leopold broke into a half smile—“as I’m sure you’ve heard, my poor sister has lost her sanity.”

  There was silence.

  Goffinet knew what his king was about to ask him to do. He knew him well; he knew him all too well. Leopold waited. After a few seconds, Goffinet offered a solution.

  “Perhaps, with Your Majesty’s consent, we should notify the banks and the administrators of her fortune that, owing to her incapacity, it shall be you who controls her finances, Your Highness.”

  “I expected nothing less of you, Goffinet.”

  “Consider it done, Majesty.”

  “There is another matter.”

  “Anything you say, Majesty.”

  “I want to recover the absurd dowry that my father, blinded by his weakness at the time, granted to the Habsburgs: they shall not enrich themselves at the expense of the Saxe-Coburg fortune. The only person who should profit from the family wealth is the sovereign of the Belgians; that is to say, me,” Leopold remarked in all seriousness.

  Goffinet hesitated. This, by all accounts, was much more difficult. It wasn’t surprising that the sovereign should wish to increase his wealth—he’d known of his avarice for years—but recovering a dowry was another thing altogether.

  “Don’t look so worried, Auguste. If there’s one thing you’ve learned under my rule, it’s that there are no impossible roads, only long ones.”

  “Whatever you say, Majesty.”

  “There are rumors that Maximilian never consummated the marriage with my poor sister.”

  Goffinet hid his astonishment.

  “You must confirm these rumors, Auguste. If they’re true, Charlotte’s dowry will return to Belgium. Send word when you have news.”

  Clapping his hands, he brought the conversation to a close.

  Auguste Goffinet left the royal office as hastily as he’d arrived. He would have to send out his scouts, buy favors, uncover secrets. He had to begin operations immediately.

  Before long, the Goffinets confirmed what seemed to be an open secret in Mexico. Everyone was saying it. Nobody denied it. The empress hadn’t been happy with her husband. The emperor had never been alone with her. There were ladies of the court who ventured to say that they doubted they’d ever had relations. They never slept together, whether in Europe or in Mexico. Sovereigns sleeping in separate rooms was nothing new among royalty; it was common knowledge that their chambers were usually connected by secret doors so that marital visits could take place in privacy. But what struck Auguste most was a comment from one of the emperor’s private secretaries, who said that Maximilian would sooner sleep on a filthy camp bed than share a bed of silk with Carlota.

  It was said that the emperor was a man of dubious habits. He had become close to a vulgar servant, in spite of the concern it aroused among the rest of the court. They nicknamed this man the Great Moo for being as bestial as a cow, but his name was Sebastian Schertzenlechner. Maximilian met him when he was a rankless soldier, and he soon became a servant at Hofburg, where he swept chimneys. He went with Maximilian to Lombardy-Venetia, and then, when he was named emperor, he accompanied him to Mexico. There Maximilian decorated him and made him an imperial adviser. When Maximilian traveled, exploring his dominions, Carlota remained in Chapultepec while Schertzenlechner accompanied him, for matters of duty, the emperor hastened to explain. Goffinet, astounded, uncovered documents that proved that the Great Moo had been blackmailing Maximilian, and Schertzenlechner had been expelled from the empire for treason. Someone close to Maximilian had leaked to a newspaper details of the family pact that Maximilian had been forced to sign before accepting the Mexican throne. Maximilian, for all intents and purposes, had renounced his dynastic rights in Austria, and someone in his circle had released this information. All fingers pointed at Schertzenlechner, who ended up confessing. The betrayal was punishable with imprisonment, but Maximilian, in his infinite mercy, had commuted his sentence, returning him to Lokrum and paying him the salary that corresponded to a state adviser: the not inconsiderable sum of a thousand florins. A good deal for a traitor, thought Auguste Goffinet. But Schertzenlechner didn’t waste time once he got to Europe: he began telling everyone he was the emperor of Mexico’s lover.

  Auguste sat back in his chair and handed a pile of papers to his brother, Constant.

  “What’s this?”

  “It’s this Schertzenlechner’s memoirs; the contemptible swine deposited them with a European notary and is threatening to go public with them if anything happens to him or he’s forced to return to Austria.”

  Constant didn’t ask how his brother had obtained them: Auguste was an expert in acquiring secret documents. They had hundreds of incriminating pages in their possession, which was why they burned any written communication between them, and always preferred to speak face-to-face. The things people confessed in writing! They had to be either naïve or very stupid. Either way, it suited the Goffinet twins fine. Hundreds upon hundreds of letters revealing affairs, betrayals, jealousies: it had made them powerful from the shadows. The twins no longer asked each other how they managed to acquire the information. They never asked questions to which they didn’t want to know the answer.

  One of them—it mattered not which, for they were two peas in a pod—removed his spectacles and rubbed the mark the frame had left on his
nose. The failure to consummate the marriage couldn’t be verified, but as they say, there’s no smoke without fire.

  After many long discussions with the Habsburgs, held with the utmost discretion—for the Goffinet brothers were masters of secrecy—Leopold succeeded. With shame and humiliation, the Habsburgs, unable to refute the evidence, declared the marriage between Maximilian and Carlota to be void; the alliance had been doomed from the start. The Belgians could keep Carlota, filthy rich; she was all theirs.

  Before he’d even shaken the twins’ hands, Leopold had bought shares, made deposits and investments overseas, acquired promissory notes in England, transferred properties to his name, and taken possession of Carlota’s art and jewelry collection, including the gifts that Franz Joseph, her brother-in-law, had given her on the occasion of their wedding, to the value of three hundred thousand florins. These included the Bleeding Heart: a priceless heart-shaped diamond encircled by rubies, a symbol of the misfortune that had befallen them from the moment the couple looked at one another, condemning each other to a life of misery.

  44

  1864, Mexico

  Constanza had aroused Philippe’s interest. For the last few weeks, he’d found her more serene, less impetuous, more interesting even. It wasn’t that Constanza stood out for her beauty; it was more like some sort of spell had kept certain qualities hidden until now. He met with her for a couple of hours each day to teach her French, when the empress retired to write letters. At first the lessons had been tedious. Though Constanza did her best to make progress—which she undoubtedly did, for she was clever, and as she’d told him herself, a fast learner—they were always watching the clock in anticipation of having to return to serve Carlota. Being away from the empress made him anxious, like a dog whose owner has gone away. But since Constanza’s brother had visited her (thanks to a couple of inquiries, Philippe now knew who the regular visitor to the palace was), some instinct had put him on alert. He didn’t know why, but it gave him shivers down his spine. He knew that feeling: it was the one he’d felt when he had looked through Mr. Walton’s accounts. But it wasn’t just that; there was something else. After that day, Constanza became more distant, more silent, more cautious. Put simply, the young woman had suddenly grown, like in a story by Hans Christian Andersen, the writer to whom the emperor had just awarded a medal. Philippe wondered how he could decorate a man for writing a story in which an emperor walks around naked because people are too afraid to tell him. Even an idiot could see the criticism hidden in that children’s tale. Like the magic beans that grew until they touched the sky, Constanza had changed. Since Famke wounded him with unfulfilled love in that alleyway, he’d distrusted any woman who was an easy catch, and until now Constanza had been a little mouse waiting for the cheese. Not anymore. She used to melt into a smile whenever he bounced his tongue against his palate to pronounce rumbling consonants. Not anymore. He used to feel her tremble each time he held her hand to help her write a word. Not anymore. And that, paradoxically, had made her irresistible. Constanza changed overnight. And it wasn’t just her attitude toward Philippe, but also toward the rest of the court.

  Sure enough, a veil of caution covered her from dawn until she retired to sleep, and even then, the slightest movement of the curtain woke her. Discovering that her brother was an accomplice of the Liberales had sharpened her senses. If he was on the other side, anyone could be a double agent. Constanza began to distrust everyone. They all seemed like imposters: Juana, the housemaid who faithfully took some of the empress’s monthly menstruation to show the French; the cooks; Manuelita del Barrio, who with her shrewd maneuvering gained ground every day; Mathilde Döblinger, who acted as matron from the shadows; Bombelles, the emperor’s stalwart . . . All of them and yet none of them. She even struggled to look in the mirror, because in it she recognized her own duplicity.

  One day, gathering her braid in a bun, she began to fear for the empress’s safety. How convenient it would be if she suffered an accident. If both of them, she and the emperor, suffered one. Removing them would solve a lot of problems at once, leaving the Mexicans to continue killing one another without interference. Were they expecting her to assassinate Carlota? She shook her head, forcing herself to banish the monsters in her imagination. She couldn’t do that. She was fond of the empress, who was just a few years older than her, but had the burden of so many lives on her shoulders. She felt close to her. She had never been near such a powerful woman. In her world, women didn’t give orders but obeyed, and being shoulder to shoulder with one who exuded so much power had captivated her, amazed her. Carlota filled her with hope. Perhaps one day women would be able to lead governments, command armies, take part in the decision-making, and no longer be condemned to accepting their oppression. But it wasn’t simply a matter of gender. If Carlota had been a man, Constanza would have followed him, too. She had only one defect, a gigantic and obvious one. Charlotte of Belgium, archduchess of Austria and empress of Mexico, was not and would never be a Mexican. However much good she did, she would never be one of them. She was an intruder, an uninvited guest. She had usurped the throne, and not as governor but as consort.

  Constanza then thought about herself. She told herself that, as ambitious as she aspired to be, she could never marry for convenience. The thought of ending up like Carlota horrified her: married to a man disparagingly nicknamed the Austrian Pulque. And that was the kinder term, because more than once, anonymous hands had graffitied the walls, alluding to his tastes. Constanza knew of one such sentence that the palace servants had had to quickly cover with gallons of paint: You came as Maximilian, but you leave as Max the Small; for everyone knows, how you cast off your clothes, and offered your anus to all.

  An ignominious rhyme someone had scrawled in large black letters in the middle of the night. They didn’t want him; he, too, had the same massive defect Carlota had. Their arrival hadn’t stopped blood being spilled; it had only exacerbated it. Because of them, Mexico continued to bleed, and however much affinity she felt for the empress, Constanza couldn’t allow that. She was Mexican. She had to act according to her beliefs and remain cold-blooded.

  She took a deep breath and put on her best disguise, the one she’d always used: that of a woman satisfied with the life she’d been given. She pinched her cheeks and gave them a couple of slaps.

  It wasn’t hard to make out the colonel. Alfred van der Smissen was tall, dark-haired, blue-eyed, and imposing, not so much for his appearance as for his gaze: he never looked happy, he could only look severe. Even when he congratulated his men, he did so with such rigidity that the lucky recipients only wanted the moment to end. Still, he was an upright man, and his promises were as unbreakable as the steel of his sword. Nothing intimidated him; he spoke little and observed everything. Maximilian listened to his opinion, for he considered him a man of reason and a believer in the empire, and his military expertise was renowned. However, the colonel had little patience for the Mexicans; in his mind they lacked discipline, and it wasn’t uncommon to hear his booming voice shouting throughout the palace. All of these qualities were a gift, as far as Carlota was concerned. If she’d been born to reign, Alfred had been born to command. Nature had equipped him with forbearance, loyalty, and intelligence, virtues that she recognized and valued in those closest to her. She knew that Alfred van der Smissen was the kind of man who would sooner turn a gun on himself than betray the empire, Leopold I, or her.

  Constanza knew it, too, so she would have to be diligent if she was to gather any kind of information. To get close to Van der Smissen, she would need help, and she knew exactly who could give it to her. She needed a Trojan horse, and that horse’s name was Philippe. Time to get to work, she told herself. And that’s what she did.

  45

  Juárez, arms crossed over his desk, was speaking to a young man in his twenties. They were talking with the intimacy with which a mentor speaks to his student. Juárez, insignificant only in appearance, looked even smaller in his presence.
The young man’s expression was hard and dry; he had jet-black eyes with the malice of a cat in them, and his bronze complexion seemed polished smooth, like a rock tumbled by the tide. His general demeanor was of indifference, which made him tremendously dangerous for anyone trying to guess his thoughts.

  “Are you sure?” the president asked him.

  “As sure as I know my own name,” the young man replied.

  Despite the intention behind the phrase, which was meant to be a guarantee of authenticity, Juárez was suspicious for a moment. He knew that the young man had been orphaned almost at birth. And Juárez knew what it meant to be orphaned at the age of three. His guarantee, therefore, seemed more romantic than disingenuous: Who knew what his real surname was? The one he used had been chosen at random in the civil registry years ago, when after finding him on the streets, Comonfort, Juárez’s predecessor, arranged for him to receive an education and a roof over his head. However, without eliciting condescension, the young man always earned his sympathy.

  “Modesto,” said Juárez, “if you’re going to do it, you have to be sure.”

  “Rest assured, Presidente, I have it all figured out. I already spoke to—”

  “I don’t want to know the details, or have anything to do with this,” he cut in. “I’ll fight my battle with Maximilian; he’s the one I’m interested in.”

  “Yes, Presidente, but believe me: she’s the linchpin without which Maximilian could not go on.”

  Juárez blew out his breath, uncomfortable.

  “Do what you have to do.”

  “I promise I won’t let you down.”

  “Don’t promise, Modesto.”

  “Then wish me luck.”

  “I don’t believe in luck. It has gone against us many times, Modesto. But while there are men like you anywhere in the republic taking up arms, the fatherland will exist.”

  Modesto smiled. He liked the president’s grandiloquence. Hearing him speak about the fatherland, justice, and the law always lifted his heart.