BUDAPEST, HUNGARY
JUNE 8, 1867
“Empress, we are ready for you.”
She turns, a small nod and a flourish of her hand. “Time to assume the role.” She slips her arms through the sleeves.The silken fabric, expertly stitched and tailored, molds around her curves. My, but she has never quite grown accustomed to how heavy these things are. Heavier, it seems, than her own tired frame.
All around her, nervous footmen and chattering attendants fuss, bickering like frantic bees in the hive that encircles their all-important leader.
“Fluff her skirt!”
“Mind the trim!”
“Time to go!”
“Can’t be time already, can it?”
“Ready, Empress Elisabeth?” The imperial hairdresser stands before her, the ancient crown poised between two fingers, its diamonds catching a glint of candlelight. As delicate as the wisps of a spiderweb. And yet, durable enough to have survived the centuries, to have persisted longer than the royal heads on which it has rested. Heads now embalmed, hairs now gray and fallen out.
“Ready.” She nods, lowering her chin so that the diadem can be nestled into her chestnut curls—curls that have been named the most valuable crown jewels in all of the Habsburg collection. The curls, they say, that won her the emperor’s heart.
The crown in place, she glides forward and glances at herself in the full-length mirror. She does make an arresting vision; even she has to admit it.
The gown is of white and silver brocade, laced with rows of diamonds and stitched to hug her narrow figure. A long cape of white satin drapes over her shoulders before tumbling to the ground. But it’s her face that they always want to see, more so than any imperial stitching or ancient tiara. They’ve all heard of her slanting, honey-colored eyes. Her smoothly sculpted cheekbones. Her lips, the lips that the emperor once declared as “fresh as strawberries.” The emperor. Her heart lurches clumsily in her breast. God, but she is tired. Will she have the energy to survive this day?
A knock, and her heart trips once more. She glances up, her eyes darting to the heavy oaken door. Which one of them will it be on the other side? Will it be the emperor? Or will it be . . . him? Her cheeks grow warm at the thought, and she chides herself. Even after everything she has been through, she still reddens like a girl of sixteen at the thought of him, the mention of his name. Her own husband doesn’t pull such a scarlet blush to her cheeks.
The door lumbers open, groaning like a sluggish guard woken from his midnight watch after too much ale. In an instant, she sees him, and he sees her. He takes her in. She can tell from his face that she has succeeded in beating the breath from his gut; he wears the look of a stunned animal.
“Sisi,” is all he manages to say. He throws his arms up, wide, as if to pull her into him. But he checks himself, takes note of the servants bustling about.
“Your Majesty.” He clears his throat. “Are you ready?”
She inhales, considering the question. Is she ready? No. She never really was ready, she supposes. That was the problem, wasn’t it? But she lifts her chin, throwing her shoulders back.
“I am,” she answers, one quick nod. She glides forward. The dress drags—its splendor too heavy for her exhausted body. But she sighs and continues across the room.
She can already hear them on the other side of the walls. Not so much the individual cheers and cries, but a dull, persistent throb. Constant. Like the crush of the sea waves on the earth: unyielding, unceasing.
He offers his arm and she slides her own through it, her soft flesh pressing into his heavily starched uniform. The doors open wider now. She blinks, longing to pull a gloved hand upward. To shield herself, to hide her face from all of those direct, inquisitive eyes. . . . Eyes that will study her and take her in, as if she is theirs for consuming. She seethes with that instinctive, familiar desire to flee, to escape. But she checks her impulse. Stands a bit taller.
And then she hears it. “Sisi!”
A breath inward. A moment to fortify herself as she turns to him. “It is time.” And it was. At last, it was time.