The Empress: A novel

by Laura Martínez-Belli

“I’m more afraid of a long life,” she said.

  “Why do you say that, Charlotte?”

  “I don’t know. The thought of living too long scares me.”

  “How long’s too long?”

  She blew out a breath.

  “I don’t know. When it weighs too heavily, I suppose. Life should be lighter, don’t you think?”

  And she looked at him with such sadness that Van der Smissen had to make an immense effort not to kiss her.

  To the colonel’s complete astonishment, she took his hand, and they sat with their palms together as if looking into a mirror, and then she entwined her fingers with his.

  She didn’t say anything to him. No sound, no plea, no request came from her mouth. But they were both flooded with desire.

  “Charlotte . . .”

  “Alfred.”

  They asked for permission without words.

  They consented with their eyes.

  And at that, Carlota began to feel.

  The hands accustomed to brandishing a sword glided over her back. Her whole body was a bristling cat. She trembled. And yet she knew that this barge, this lake, was the only place in the world. That was all he did: he brushed his fingers against her. No more and no less. But Carlota could anticipate the surge from the wave that was approaching. He touched her slowly, as if afraid he might break her. But he knew what he was doing. He had done it many times, albeit with less smooth flesh. Less noble. Carlota’s breathing was hurried. Her energy pulsed in places unknown before now. She moistened. She felt the urge to open her legs but didn’t. She controlled herself with supernatural force. She was afraid, but she wanted it. She wanted to feel. At last. At last, she felt. Her skin spoke to her, begged her to keep feeling. To let the hands keep going, let them search. Let them find her. She tilted her head back and then Alfred, her colonel, kissed her. He kissed her neck. Contrary to what Van der Smissen had expected, her skin tasted not of nobility but of woman. It was just Carlota, simply Carlota. With one hand he held the small of her back, and with the other he stroked her collarbone. His mouth. That mouth, which had spoken to her so many times in the closeness of silence, began to explore her. Under her ears. The center of her neck. And she couldn’t hold back any longer and searched for his lips. He responded. She felt a strong, firm, fleshy tongue against hers. She moved urgently and then he said, “Slowly, relax, let me.” Embarrassed, she stopped. But he looked at her. He looked at her with those blue eyes that told her there was no other moment, there was no present other than the one they were experiencing, loving each other, touching each other, feeling each other. They were two people for the first time. With no surnames or names. A man and a woman. Nothing more. Then she opened her lips and let him in. She needed to prolong the moment. She let him discover her. Carlota felt that she was going to explode. But no, not yet. She couldn’t even remotely imagine what was to come. He picked her up as if she were a feather and laid her on the boat. He kept kissing her as he undressed her. She trembled and covered her face with her hands. She didn’t want to see. She did not want to. Though the night covered them in darkness and they had to feel their way, she feared his nudity. She didn’t want to see him. But then he positioned himself over her, whispering words into her ear that she did not understand, and she felt him slide inside her. She received him full of grace. She wanted to let out a moan but contained herself. That part of her that had been missing was now complete. The lake’s water accompanied their rocking. She started to say something, but he covered her mouth.

  “Quiet,” he ordered her gently, and he looked at her. She obeyed.

  “Kiss me, Alfred,” she pleaded.

  And he kissed her as they rocked together, disintegrating with pleasure.

  55

  1868, Tervuren in Belgium

  Carlota’s room in Tervuren couldn’t have been gloomier or bleaker. She had decorated it with her wedding dress, a bouquet of withered flowers, a pre-Hispanic idol, and, to the horror of anyone permitted to enter, a life-size model of Maximilian: a ghost with whom she had long conversations in which only she could hear the answers. Queen and lady of the dominions of her parallel universe that didn’t reek of death or betrayal. She liked watering the flowers on the rug, and the servants had to be at the ready to rush in and mop up the puddles.

  Like an overfilled waterskin, she burst. She split open. She exploded. She came apart. Too many detonators for a mind wounded by misfortune and depression, a depression as deep as the lakes between the mountains of the Valley of Mexico, her valley of tears. Too much pain, and the will to bear it exhausted. Mexico. The coup de grâce that condemned her from the moment she entered the ring, boarded the Novara, for the best fight of her life. The ears and the tail. White handkerchiefs for the empress. She was just nearing thirty. That was all. Three decades of light. After that came the shadows, if not total darkness.

  She locked herself in her room for hours. Madame Moreau took care of her with loving patience and with sorrow in her heart. Every day, when she woke her, she tried to find the woman from Laeken, the devout empress who must still inhabit this body somewhere, but she found only a void.

  Carlota wrote compulsively. Ten, fifteen, twenty letters a day. Mutilated letters that never reached their addressees, though they were read by physicians, ladies-in-waiting, and people close to her to learn the hidden desires and intentions of her little royal head lost in limbo.

  At first, Marie didn’t understand what she was reading. She needed time and counsel before she could decipher the encrypted messages that Carlota wrote with great care in impeccable handwriting. Marie shuddered when she saw the truth hidden behind these confessions of a madwoman, for there was nothing on the surface that revealed the ravings of her mind. But she’d lost her senses, there was no doubt about that. Or was she feigning? Seized by this doubt, while Carlota wrote at her desk she watched from a corner of the room where she pretended to be reading (and sometimes she was). Carlota didn’t write in a trance. She seemed at peace, enjoying the tranquility of dipping the pen in ink and shaping letters on the page. From the corner, Marie listened to the murmur of the nib on the paper; it was relaxing, which was why, seeing her so serene, in silence, not talking to the model of her dead husband or gamboling on the rugs as if in a meadow, she let her write. But all she had to do was read what she had written, and her heart was crushed like a grape being turned into wine. Carlota had always been an exceptional letter writer, and even in her madness she still was. She wrote letters to Napoleon III full of hatred and love. Sometimes the French monarch embodied the devil himself; sometimes, the most absolute generosity of the Almighty. Then she wrote to an idealized version of Maximilian. Her letters conveyed hopes and dreams of a life that hadn’t been theirs. A life in which they’d been happy, a life of love and complicity. But, more than anyone, she wrote to a living Maximilian. A Maximilian who hadn’t so much as brushed near death. And finally, the recipient who most disconcerted Madame Marie Moreau was a complete stranger to her: a Belgian soldier, apparently, whose name she’d never heard mentioned. A soldier called Philippe Petit.

  “Who is this Philippe?” Marie asked, intrigued.

  “He was a soldier in the Belgian legion,” they told her.

  Madame Moreau’s mind raced like a steam engine. Why, in the whole universe of men that Carlota addressed, was this rankless soldier worthy of her deranged letters? Was he the father of Carlota’s child? She had to find out.

  In the letters she thanked this Philippe for saving the emperor from his personal Calvary on Las Campanas Hill; Maximilian and Christ, victims of the same executioner. Marie crossed herself at the irreverence, unable to take her eyes from these lines. In secret, and with a certain timidity, Carlota sometimes said to her, If I were a man, I’d rather be on a battlefield than suffer the prison of these torments.

  If I were a man, thought Marie, and she crossed herself again.

  The letters only grew worse. From one to the next, the violence increased. Death seemed
like the only escape; offering herself up for sacrifice seemed like the most logical and satisfactory way out. And given that there was no way to end her existence by the sword, she would do so by the only means possible: starvation. But then they brought her lunch, and she ate normally, as if the universe of the letters existed parallel to the real one, never intersecting. In one she killed herself. In the other she lived. In one, Maximilian had been saved from the rifle fire; in the other he lay buried in the Habsburgs’ royal crypt in Vienna. But from one encrypted message to another, Marie looked in horror at the clues that Carlota was leaving for the little bird that dared eat the bread crumbs on the path, entire paragraphs of a madwoman telling the truth. Marie, bewildered, read as Carlota, in her madness, confessed things that she would never have dared to if she were sane:

  The marriage I had left me as I was before, though I never refused Emperor Maximilian children . . . My marriage was only outwardly consecrated. The emperor made me believe it was, but it wasn’t, and not by any fault of my own, since I always obeyed him, but it’s not possible that it was, or I wouldn’t have ended up as I am.

  So there it was, in her handwriting. Maximilian’s marriage had not been consummated. Poor Carlota had been left a virgin. Or at least, Marie silently thought, she hadn’t been deflowered by the emperor. Because she had given birth, and to a bastard; that was a fact.

  What could have become of that boy born in the Gartenhaus? She could only hope that Charles de Bombelles had found a trace of goodness in his inhumane heart and given him to some good people. Otherwise—Marie prickled like a sea urchin—it was likely that the boy was as dead as Maximilian.

  56

  1865, Mexico

  The gossip said that Carlota had a lover, and many eyes were turned indiscreetly to Van der Smissen. Their walks together at Lake Chalco, and the glow that Carlota suddenly had, didn’t go unnoticed. She couldn’t help blushing whenever someone looked at her, as if she wore a sign that said adulteress on her forehead. Though she enormously enjoyed her Alfred’s company and the pleasures he afforded her, guilt tormented her. There was only one person whom she trusted enough to open up like a mussel parting its valves from the steam, and that person, as enthusiastic as if she’d waited her whole life for the emperor to be cuckolded, was Constanza.

  Amused and even proud of the empress’s infidelity, she covered for her. And when Carlota felt the recriminating gaze of her late father, seeming to say, Oh, my child, what have you done? Lying with a soldier on a barge on Lake Chalco like a commoner, Constanza gave a rousing speech in defense of lovers on a par with Alexander the Great at Gaugamela.

  “No, no, and no, Majesty. Do you think the emperor doesn’t lie with that girl in Cuernavaca?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “But nothing. Kings and queens have always had lovers. You’re not reinventing the wheel, Majesty.”

  “Yes, I know, but—”

  “You have nothing to be sorry for, my lady. Hasn’t the emperor been traveling Mexico for years with that Sebastian, the one with the unpronounceable surname?”

  “Schertzenlechner . . .”

  Carlota grew feeble just uttering his name.

  “That’s the one.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Majesty, forgive me, but I don’t understand why you feel guilty.”

  “I’m being very weak.”

  “Weak? You, weak, Majesty? Allow me to tell you that I have never met anyone in my entire life as brave and as strong as you.”

  “I’ve succumbed, just like the emperor, Constanza. We’ve both succumbed.”

  “One swallow does not a summer make, Your Majesty.”

  And as she said that, for the first time, the beginnings of a smile appeared on Carlota’s face.

  “One swallow does not a summer make,” she repeated.

  The two women were silent for a moment.

  “If only the emperor had loved me like Alfred does,” Carlota murmured.

  And then, Constanza, with her usual complicity, lied to silence the ghosts of regret.

  “And the emperor loves you in his own way, Majesty.”

  Carlota gave her a puzzled look.

  “And what way is that, Constanza?”

  The young woman swallowed dryly and remained silent, unsure how to answer.

  Then in a low voice, the words almost pouring out, she said, “At some time he must have loved you. He still must love you, my lady.”

  “Perhaps if I’d had wings or branches for arms . . . ,” said Carlota.

  “But in his letters he shows affection, Majesty.”

  “Those are just words, Constanza, and the wind takes them. Formalities, protocol. What good is it if he calls me flower of my heart or angel of my life if he then prefers to sleep on a mat rather than share my bed?”

  Instead of answering her question, Constanza decided to stoke the fire.

  “You have a man in your bed now, Majesty.”

  Carlota looked at her gravely.

  “Yes,” she said. “But how do I hide from God’s eyes?”

  “God will forgive you, my lady.”

  “God has already condemned me, Constanza.”

  A shiver ran down Constanza’s back when she recognized that this was the glaring truth. Poor woman, she thought. Nobody did the right thing by her. Not even her: after learning to appreciate her, she was doing nothing to help her, quite the opposite. While he was at it, God would condemn her, too.

  “Majesty, don’t punish yourself,” Constanza was bold enough to say. “We’re not in the Middle Ages.”

  “How curious you should say that, because life here seems like the Middle Ages; one moment we’re happy, comfortable, and serene, only to realize that a band of guerrillas could attack us at any time.”

  “Why do you say that, Majesty? Because of the cannons set up here, on the castle roof?”

  “And from the signal system we use to communicate with the city, Constanza. Like in medieval times. It’s a constant Who goes there?”

  Constanza could only nod.

  “The night before last, I jumped out of bed when I heard the artillery fire.”

  “Two nights ago, Majesty?” asked Constanza, surprised; she didn’t remember there being an incident. Seeing the empress nod, it dawned on her. “Oh! That! It wasn’t artillery! It was fireworks for Candlemas!”

  And she explained that saints and patron saints were commemorated by launching enough fireworks into the air to split the earth in two the whole night long. Carlota, annoyed, retorted, “As if God would’ve chosen four in the morning for the Annunciation!”

  They both laughed.

  “Constanza . . .”

  “Yes, Majesty.”

  “Do you think we should keep the French in Mexico?”

  Constanza opened her eyes wide, trying to hide her astonishment at the change of subject. For a very short moment, she thought she could act as diplomat.

  “Your Majesty, without the French, the empire won’t stand.”

  “But they offer their fraternal support in exchange for our money. We’re paying them.”

  “Are you saying that if you don’t pay them, they’ll leave, Majesty?”

  “The French do nothing by halves. Either we have them fully on our side, or there’s no sense in keeping them here.”

  “In that case, Majesty, best let them go.”

  “Thank you, Constanza.”

  And leaving Constanza with ideas fluttering around her head, Carlota gave her permission to go.

  Constanza couldn’t bear the remorse: sometimes she thought it would be better to kill her than to continue poisoning her. Although, in secret—so that only her conscience could hear her—she told herself that perhaps Modesto’s herbs would only have a light effect, since she was administering them in such small doses. Constanza wished Juárez would hurry up and win the war and throw the monarchs out. She wanted Carlota to leave, to flee, to run away from Mexico and return to Belgium to die in peace, freeing C
onstanza from the enormous burden she bore on her shoulders. But she knew that the evil was already done. Her wounded conscience would never recover from the onslaught. Her soul would drag its chains of guilt and punishment for eternity. That was why she was so supportive of Carlota’s prohibited love: to forgive herself. To give the empress back a little of the life she was stealing from her one sigh at a time.

  57

  A man’s spite can be as dangerous as a sword. Though Carlota was no more attainable than a star, when Philippe confirmed his suspicions about her and the colonel, something inside him turned to ice. It wasn’t rage; that was a familiar feeling. Nor was it impotence, or sadness, but suddenly the insecurities of his childhood flooded back and drowned him. Philippe, disarmed, was left choking. Constanza was the first to feel his resentment.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked him, interrupting their lesson on third-group verbs.

  “Nothing.”

  “Well, it doesn’t seem like nothing.” She fixed her eyes on him, waiting.

  “It’s just that I don’t trust the colonel.”

  Constanza exhaled sharply.

  So that was what it was. Jealousy. Corrosive jealousy, forcing him underwater when his entire body was made of metal. His face held a strange severity.

  And suddenly, Constanza felt as if time had stopped. There was silence. The world’s sounds disappeared. Philippe’s face remained impassive, though to Constanza it seemed as fickle as a candle’s flame. She couldn’t think of anything he could ask of her that she would refuse.

  “Philippe,” she said to him then. “You know Carlota will never notice you.”

  He felt horror like a red-hot iron being driven into the back of his neck.

  “She’ll never look at you with the eyes I look at you with.”

  Philippe observed her. A five-letter thought was left suspended in the air: F-A-M-K-E. He recognized her gaze. He’d been looked at like that once, with that desire to ravish him. He wanted to feel it, too. But he couldn’t understand why the empress always got in the way, as if any other woman was a consolation prize. He could have whomever he wanted. He knew it. No woman had ever escaped the draw of his virility. So why didn’t he give himself permission to love? He was an idiot, he recriminated himself. And he was pondering these and other mysteries of love and the absence thereof when Constanza, slowly but nonetheless taking him by surprise, stood, took him by the hand, and led him to her bedroom. There, Philippe, who despite his surprise had known very well the direction in which they’d been heading, gazed at Constanza as she lay on the bed.