The Empress: A novel

by Laura Martínez-Belli

  He must’ve seen it coming without resistance, because all of a sudden, visiting the Cuernavaca garden became a vice, and for the first time he didn’t seem as interested in the plants. The fact was, Maximilian was going through a difficult time and—she believed—she could fill the void inside him.

  Schertzenlechner, his beloved, the love of his life, had left an abyss of disillusionment in his heart.

  It began when rumors of betrayal reached him. One of his closest men had passed on secret information to ministers about the family pact.

  “We suspect Schertzenlechner,” everyone said to him. And Maximilian, naturally, refused to believe it.

  It couldn’t be him. Anyone but him. But the evidence was irrefutable. One by one, they placed documents on his desk that proved his disloyalty. A friend, whom he not only paid as well as the best valet in Vienna, but who also received the priceless currency of his heart. After drinking almost an entire bottle of wine, he called him into his office.

  “How could you betray me, Sebastian, when I gave you everything?”

  “What’re you talking about?” his valet replied. And then, after making sure they were alone, Sebastian reached to caress his beard. Maximilian gently pushed his hand away.

  Schertzenlechner was surprised. Never in all the time they’d spent together, which was many years, had Maximilian rejected one of his caresses.

  In response, Maximilian pushed the documents at him that proved he’d been leaking information about the secret letter of protest he’d written traveling to Mexico onboard the Novara.

  “Max, you don’t believe that I—”

  “I want your resignation.”

  The men held each other’s gaze. They knew one another well enough to tell when words weren’t needed.

  “So, that’s it? This is how it ends?”

  “You betrayed me, Sebastian. How could you?” A knot formed in his throat.

  And then, as he expected Schertzenlechner to plead with him, to get on his knees and beg him for forgiveness, kiss him, remind him of all they’d been through and tell him to think carefully about it, that they had so much history together, Sebastian struck.

  “If you dismiss me, I’ll publish information about us.”

  Maximilian went pale, not because of the possibility of being outed, but because of the coldness with which his love had just threatened him.

  Just then Charles de Bombelles, his friend and accomplice since childhood, burst into the office with better timing than Zeus himself pouring down on Danaë in the form of golden rain. Hearing Schertzenlechner’s threat, his blood boiled.

  “You must imprison him, Your Majesty,” he suggested with fury and some pleasure.

  “No. Not prison,” said Max, whose heart was softer than cigarette paper. “Send him back to Europe.”

  “What are you talking about, Majesty?” Bombelles complained.

  “You heard me. Send him back to Lokrum.”

  Schertzenlechner smiled as he left the office. He knew Maximilian wouldn’t dare touch him, not for punishment, at any rate.

  And while the decision to send him back with all expenses paid and a lifetime pension wasn’t popular, everyone at court was relieved to be rid of not only a spy but also the emperor’s lover.

  Nonetheless, Maximilian found enough courage and love inside him to write him a farewell letter.

  Dear Sebastian,

  Since you are not coming to Chapultepec, I must pick up a pen to wish you a safe journey and to tell you that, though nobody in this world, not in any of the diverse situations I have lived through, has ever tortured me as profoundly and as harshly as you, nor caused me so much pain, I nevertheless forgive you with all my heart and all my soul. May God reward you and give you the peace you were unable to find by my side. I will remember you in my daily prayers.

  Maximilian

  In the midst of this grief, Concepción entered the stage, fresh as moist clay, letting the earth cover her toes. While he wandered the garden, she approached him barefooted, and with sincere kindness she handed him a straw hat with which to cover his head; she smiled at him, and he thought he saw a world of tenderness in her eyes. Another day, while he was writing poems in the garden, she approached again and, like Mary Magdalene with Christ, knelt, took off his shoes, and washed his feet with a pitcher of cool water. And so each time she approached him she showed, without saying anything, an amorous demeanor that completely ignored all the rules of etiquette. He experienced something he’d never felt with anyone. It wasn’t love, for he believed he knew what that was and didn’t recognize it now. It was more like curiosity, mystery, taboo. He’d always been attracted to forbidden waters, and all at once the girl in the garden—the pretty Indian, as he called her in his thoughts—began to personify all of this. She was nothing like the ladies of the court. If he wanted, he could have any of them with a snap of his fingers. He’d never had the urge. Concepción went from being the gardener’s wife to a window through which he gazed at the prohibited again. And when the time came, she knew how to welcome him into dark, sturdy arms, which he was unable to resist, while Ignacio, who knew about their love affair, gave himself over to drinking in his room, inconsolable. He understood that the owners of the house had droit de seigneur, and he wasn’t about to confront the emperor of Mexico. He was well aware of the girl’s charms, and as much as his pride was wounded, he had to learn to share her.

  51

  Carlota was supervising preparations to return to Chapultepec when Constanza brought her the letter containing the terrible news. She opened it, read it, and immediately fainted. Constanza had to hold her to keep her from falling flat on the stone floor.

  “Majesty . . . help!” she yelled while she tried to support her in her arms. The rest of the ladies soon arrived.

  “What is it?” asked an alarmed Manuelita.

  “I don’t know. She read the letter and fainted.”

  Manuelita del Barrio picked up the correspondence, reading to herself silently.

  “Mary, Mother of God! Her father has died. King Leopold . . .”

  The ladies all crossed themselves in unison.

  Constanza rushed out of the room and said to Philippe, “Call for the emperor, quick.”

  Philippe ran off, worried.

  King Leopold I, the empress’s father, had died in Brussels a month earlier from complications with kidney stones. Though he’d suffered from stones for some time, Carlota had still expected him to live for many more years. He wasn’t a man whom death stalked closely.

  Three months of official mourning were proclaimed in Mexico City, where the emperor and empress went with grieving souls: her for her loss and him for his separation from Concepción. But it was Carlota’s sorrow that resounded most loudly in the carriage. The empress secretly blamed herself for being so far away. She reproached herself for not being by his side to receive his final blessing, the blessing of the man she loved so much. She’d always considered him the most loving of fathers. Her only comfort was that she’d received his blessing in England before leaving. She looked at Maximilian, the prince who’d turned into a frog, and tried to justify her actions: he was the cause of her distance. She was far away to be with the man to whom he had given her—at her own insistence—to settle in a country whose throne her father had wanted them to accept. It consoled her to think that, finally, he would be reunited with her mother, but at the same time, the bereavement was crushing her whole.

  Black ribbons were hung from windows all over the country, subjects sent heartfelt letters expressing universal sorrow, the imperial flag was flown at half-mast, and a protocol was established to receive the condolences of the diplomatic corps, government officials, and members of the French army. And while Carlota was grateful for the demonstrations of respect and affection, she didn’t personally receive anyone. She shut herself in her room, and no matter how many times they asked her to receive those offering their sympathies, she replied, Have them sign the book. She was referring
to the visitors’ book, in which everyone who passed through Chapultepec to commiserate with the empress could leave their name.

  Maximilian tried to show her affection in this painful time, but it was too late: between them there remained only camaraderie. By now, they knew they didn’t love each other, and they didn’t pretend not to know. They were colleagues, invested with rank and responsibilities to which they devoted themselves with stoicism, but neither of them pretended there was any sentimental bond between them. Curiously, once they understood this, their souls were freed. They accompanied each other, supported each other at difficult times, even asked each other for advice, each of them listening to the other. But beyond that, nothing. They became mother and son, brother and sister, and when it came to pleasure and love, it was better to say nothing; that way the disappointment hurt less.

  The letters of condolence arrived by the sacksful. Some they read and others they didn’t, depending on the sender. One of the letters that Carlota read was from her governess the Countess of Hulst, who lived in France. The empress had agreed to come out of her room for a few minutes, and she was playing a somber piece on the piano under the watchful eye of Constanza when Manuelita appeared, morose from having to dress all in black, to deliver the letter. Since Carlota had fainted at the news of her father’s death, nobody gave letters to her alone anymore. Carlota saw who the sender was and seemed cheered.

  “Oh! My beloved countess!”

  Manuelita breathed more easily when she saw that the letter didn’t seem to carry bad news. Carlota read in silence, and sighing now and again, leaned back in her armchair.

  When she’d finished, she said, “What a pessimistic woman! I love her, but how could she be so negative? She always sees the glass half empty.”

  “Who, Your Majesty?” asked Constanza, pretending to embroider a handkerchief, silently glad that the empress had stopped playing the piano so melancholically.

  “The Countess of Hulst, my old governess. She never lets up: she continues to insist that being here is suicide, that I should return to Miramare.”

  She’d always opposed the young princess embarking on her Mexican adventure. She’d tried to dissuade her a thousand times, and a thousand times Carlota argued with her in the hope she would see her error. The woman never ceased in her efforts and, even now, as she offered her condolences to the girl—now a woman—whom she’d helped raise after her mother had died, she came back with the same tedious refrain. That being there was madness, that she should return, that she would only find death and dishonor.

  Constanza pretended to disagree, but deep down she was relieved to find that some people in France thought like the Mexican Liberales. How foolish can a person be?

  “Get me paper and ink, Constanza. I’m going to reply.”

  Constanza stood and brought it to her.

  “I’ll retire to my rooms,” Carlota said.

  “But Majesty, it does you good to leave your bedchamber. Don’t lock yourself away again like last week.”

  “What a fusspot you are, Manuelita. Pain likes seclusion,” she answered.

  As soon as she had left, Constanza threw her embroidery on the chair; if there was one thing she hated, it was sewing.

  “I swear,” Manuelita said to her. “Sometimes I feel like shaking that woman.”

  And though Constanza wanted to laugh at the comment, she pretended to be offended.

  “Show some respect for the empress, Sra. Del Barrio.”

  And then she left to see what she could hear around the court.

  The atmosphere was heated. People were saying that France was going to withdraw its troops, that the end was near. The situation was spiraling out of control. The Confederate general Robert E. Lee had surrendered in the United States, and Leopold I’s death filled the monarchs with pain and sorrow, not just because they’d lost a great sponsor of the empire who did the impossible to ensure that his son-in-law’s throne was recognized in Europe—he had even interceded with Queen Victoria to persuade her to send an ambassador to Mexico so that the empire had the diplomatic recognition of the British—but because when he died, the Belgian Crown passed to his son, Leopold II.

  Leopold II never had any fondness for his sister. Ever since they were children, he’d enjoyed tormenting her, and he did all he could to enact laws to strip power from princesses. To him, women were good for very little and a hindrance, especially women with power. These had to be watched very closely. He’d always considered the Mexican adventure to be absurd, and he preferred not to embroil himself in it: he had no interest in entering into arguments with the United States or in having an empress sister on a French throne.

  Even so, following the royal protocol, he sent an emissary to Mexico to make the news of Leopold I’s death—and his ascension to the throne—official. But Maximilian had other plans.

  “What do you mean you won’t receive him?” said Bombelles. “Protocol requires that you do; he’s a king’s emissary to a foreign emperor married to his only sister.”

  “Well, he should’ve thought of that when he decided not to send any more Belgian volunteers.”

  “You can’t insult him like this, Max.”

  “Of course I can. Leopold also wants to take control of Carlota’s inheritance from her father. Not on any account. Say that I’m indisposed in Cuernavaca.”

  And however much his advisers insisted, Maximilian didn’t give in; it was Carlota who received the emissary in Chapultepec, and it was she who bid him farewell when, his pride wounded and commiserating with the empress for her husband’s lack of political refinement, he left for Europe without being received by the emperor.

  The delegation set off in the direction of Puebla. From inside the carriage, now and again the emissary peered through the dust-covered window, trying to take in the snowcapped volcanoes rising above the green valley.

  Frustrated because he couldn’t see much through the small window, he asked the coachman, “Excuse me, sir, do you mind if I travel with you?”

  A little surprised, he gestured with his head.

  “Oh, I’m most grateful.”

  For the rest of the journey the two men talked, distracted by the trees, feeling the pure air beat against their faces, glad because the conversation made the ride less tedious. The coachman, however, looked from side to side warily.

  “What is it?” the emissary asked.

  “It’s just that there should’ve been a French army escort, and it hasn’t arrived.”

  “Shall we wait?”

  “I don’t know. It’s not good to stay still for long before we reach the coast. This area’s full of bandidos.”

  “In that case, we’d better continue, don’t you think?”

  The man hesitated. There wasn’t a single soul near them.

  “Yes, we’d better.”

  As they passed Río Frío, a band of outlaws attacked. The emissary was shot in the head, and the rest of the delegation were seriously injured.

  “But who were they?” the survivors asked anxiously. “Thieves?”

  “No, they must have been Juárez’s troops, because they didn’t steal anything.”

  Though Maximilian sent his personal physician to attend to the wounded, nothing could be done for Leopold II’s emissary. He died on the spot.

  When the king heard the news, he flew into a rage, not at the emissary’s death—though undoubtedly that bothered him—but at his brother-in-law’s lack of etiquette. So proper when it came to dancing waltzes and so foolish when it came to political dealings.

  “Wretched good-for-nothing,” he murmured when they told him they hadn’t been received. “I’m not surprised he’s banished from every land he sets foot on.” Then he tore the letter in half and said to himself, “Maximilian just signed his death warrant. He won’t be receiving any more help from Belgium, not for anything.” And pounding the desk with his fist, he yelled, “Not for anything!”

  In her room, the empress was thinking about her reply to t
he Countess of Hulst. She wanted to stay calm and avoid being impertinent with a kind woman of an advanced age who, though she often questioned Carlota’s decisions, did so only out of the great affection she professed for her.

  She sat down and, accustomed as she was to writing long letters, after thanking her for the letter she had received, her condolences, and her other courtesies, went straight to the heart of the matter:

  Allow me to correct you on a few points, for I sense your despair at the matter at hand. Our task, which you judge so severely and that you consider almost impossible, is not so unattainable. Only the heavens know what will happen, but if we fail, it will be no fault of our own. Don’t give too much credence to what you hear in our beloved France; I shall not try to understand the reasons for the recent stir about the Mexico expedition. The “kingdom’s glory” has been quite suddenly upset by unexpected obstacles unknown there, at great cost in money and soldiers. It remains what it has always been: an audacious and difficult idea; but what merit can there be without risk?

  Carlota smiled. She liked the tone she was achieving in the letter. She continued.

  This expedition has founded an empire that is not just an illusion.

  She was about to underline empire, but changed her mind and went on.

  Perhaps all you see is ambition (of which the whole world accuses me), but it was not me who was the motive for our journey to Mexico. Nor will I be the motive for those who wish to reembark because there are a few clouds on the horizon or the coast is not clear.