The Princess of Nowhere

by Lorenzo Borghese

  Pauline intervened. “Sophie is a freethinker, Donna Anna.” There was no Italian word for it, so she used the French.

  “What!” Donna Anna crossed herself, horrified. “Not even a league from the seat of the Holy Father! In my own house!”

  “Our house, Mama.” Camillo’s tone was gentle, but he looked stern.

  “I cannot allow it—this poor, innocent child—” Although she had described Sophie as a poor, innocent child, she had taken a step back and was looking at her as though Sophie had turned into a venomous snake.

  “We must leave now; the carriage is waiting,” Camillo reminded her, taking her arm once again and steering her firmly away from Sophie.

  “Is she even baptized?” Donna Anna asked, twisting around as Camillo tugged her along. “I won’t have her here if she isn’t baptized!”

  Sophie stood frozen in the center of the marble floor, still clutching one of Dermide’s gloves.

  “Yes, you really should be baptized, Sophie,” Pauline said carelessly, taking the glove and pushing Dermide toward the door. “That sort of thing was all very well ten years ago in France, but we are more civilized now.”

  The dowager princess and Pauline had persisted on this theme for about a week, but Camillo held firm: Sophie was Napoleon’s ward, and without his express command, they had no right to interfere in her religious education. Grudgingly, Sophie found herself grateful. Her free thought was the only thing she had left of her own family. Everything else—her clothing, her books, her maid, even the Italian she now spoke in place of French—had come from Pauline. She had clung to this last link to her father with a kind of stubborn desperation, in the face of numerous attempts by Pauline and Carlotta and Nunzia to bring her into the church.

  She was too young to appreciate the irony of a papal prince defending her agnosticism from a daughter of the French revolution.

  As if to make up for her tantrums and megrims during the journey, Pauline had behaved perfectly for nearly a month after arriving in Rome: charming, elegant, deferential. She received dozens of elderly noblewomen in the drafty salons of the Borghese palace. She attended church with her mother-in-law. She walked out with Camillo to see the great ruins in the center of the city or went driving with Sophie and Dermide, the picture of lovely motherhood. Camillo and his mother held a grand reception at the palace in Pauline’s honor and began to plan an even more elaborate affair at the villa for the last night of Carnival.

  Then the German had arrived, seemingly out of nowhere, and Pauline had forgotten all about Camillo and Donna Anna and her obligations as a princess.

  Georg was the heir to a northern duchy and came made-to-order for anyone who wanted someone completely different from Camillo. Prince Borghese had a lofty, square brow, hazel eyes, and curly, thick hair; he loved the outdoors; he knew everything about dogs and horses; he liked to dance and eat and laugh. He rarely read books; his French was execrable. The German prince had a long, narrow face. His hair was blond and fine and straight, his eyes a pale blue. He prided himself on his learning. He detested all forms of sport. He spoke fluent French. He rarely smiled.

  Sophie at first had heard only the rumors. Pauline was not interested in looking maternal for this visitor, so Dermide and Sophie were not invited to appear when she received the northerner.

  “She is at it again,” Carlotta whispered to Nunzia one morning. She had found some pretext to come to Sophie’s room, hoping to find her countrywoman there. “And if the family hears of it, there will be trouble.”

  Sophie was over by the window, working on her drawing—an accomplishment she despaired of ever mastering. Carlotta’s vehement “she” could only mean Pauline; Sophie’s pencil fell from her hand and bounced from the table to the floor. At once both maids looked over at her, startled, and she dove under the table after her pencil. When she reemerged, she studiously resumed her sketch, trying not to look as though she had heard anything.

  “I think the cardinal knows” was Nunzia’s low-voiced response. “I saw him with her yesterday, and he looked very grim.”

  Cardinal Fesch was Pauline’s uncle, Letizia’s brother. Sophie had met him a few times and found him nearly as frightening as Pauline’s mother. He, too, was constantly urging Pauline to have Sophie baptized.

  What did he know? Sophie wanted to ask. But the intimacy of the voyage had receded now that Sophie was a young lady again, in her own room, with a new and very dignified Roman governess. Carlotta no longer confided in her.

  “I can’t imagine what she sees in that German.” Carlotta glanced over at Sophie and apparently was reassured because she continued, “Never a mancia for the boy who holds his horse, never a thank-you or please to anyone. Stiff as a poker, and so pale you wonder if he ever sees daylight.”

  “General Leclerc was blond,” Nunzia said thoughtfully. “Perhaps she likes blonds. And he is a prince.”

  So, thought Sophie. It was another prince. A mean, blond, German prince. She tried to think of who it could be, but her knowledge of Roman society was very limited. Rome was far more conservative than Paris about admitting children to adult events; she and Dermide rarely came downstairs in the evenings now, even to say good-night. The only people Sophie saw regularly were the servants, her governess, and Dermide.

  Carlotta sniffed. “I like the prince she already has better.”

  They had left, still whispering, and Sophie had stared down at her drawing. How could she fight an enemy she had never seen? How could she somehow gain access to the salons downstairs, where guests were entertained? Sophie had meekly accepted her isolation for six weeks; now her misery and loneliness stood plainly exposed and she was determined to do something. Pauline had a page, not much older than Sophie, who accompanied her nearly everywhere. Why could Sophie not be something like a page? Pauline’s other attendants were young women from influential families, who had been chosen either by Napoleon or her new mother-in-law; no doubt Pauline would like having another companion who was loyal only to her.

  Thus had begun Sophie’s campaign to transform herself into a junior lady-in-waiting. She suborned one of Pauline’s young maidservants, who stole some of Pauline’s cosmetics. Nunzia cut and curled Sophie’s hair and helped Sophie alter one of her dresses, lowering the neckline and shortening the sleeves. Sophie sacrificed half of her small store of pocket money for a pair of long gloves. Her governess’s lessons on posture and deportment were suddenly of the greatest interest to Sophie, and she practiced walking with a book on her head for hours at a time every day.

  When to approach Pauline? Sophie did not dare wait for the now-infrequent summons to come down with Dermide before preparing for bed. Instead, she spent more of her coins to bribe the page, Paolo, and was waiting one evening in the front entrance hall of the palace when Pauline, Donna Anna, and Camillo returned from an outing to visit Camillo’s younger brother.

  Pauline swept in first, shedding her bonnet, muff, pelisse, and gloves into whatever hands would receive them. “I do not understand why Francesco prefers to stay in Frascati, so far from Rome,” she announced loudly. “In the summer I am sure it is all very well, but at this time of year—” She broke off, as Sophie advanced and made her very best curtsey.

  “But who is this?” She turned to Camillo, who had come up behind her. “Is this one of your young cousins, husband? She is charming!”

  Sophie had hardly dared to raise her eyes, but now she did. Pauline, in her usual careless fashion, was already turning away. So Sophie’s beseeching glance caught Camillo’s instead.

  He touched Pauline’s elbow. “Dearest, look again,” he said, with a hint of laughter in his voice. “It is not my cousin but yours.”

  Pauline stopped, turned, and peered at Sophie, who stood in her very best book-on-the-head manner. “Sophie?” She stepped closer, then burst into peals of laughter. “It is Sophie! Mother of God, look how grown-up she is! And tall! She towers over me!” This was an exaggeration, but Sophie was now several inches taller than
Pauline. “Sophie, how old are you now? I thought you still a child!”

  “Thirteen, Cousin,” said Sophie, advancing her age recklessly by over a year. She was counting on Pauline’s notorious inability to do sums, since Sophie had still been ten when Pauline took her in the previous winter.

  Pauline touched one of the ringlets Nunzia had produced at the cost of many tears and several small burns on Sophie’s scalp. “And you are all dressed up, are you not? You look very fine. What is the occasion? Are you going out?” She frowned. “I do not think you should accept invitations without consulting me, Sophie.”

  “No, no—I am not—I did not—” Sophie took a deep breath and started on her prepared speech. “Cousin Pauline, I have spoken with Signora Russo, and she has agreed that I am doing well with my lessons and may attend you now sometimes during the afternoon and evening if you should wish for my company.” This was not as much of a lie as Sophie’s claim to be thirteen. Sophie had indeed talked with her governess but had given that elderly lady the distinct impression that the idea came from Pauline.

  “Well,” said Pauline doubtfully. “Well, I must think about it. Thirteen is still a bit young, don’t you think, Camillo?”

  “My birthday is in three months,” said Sophie hastily. Her birthday was in April, true, but she would be turning twelve.

  Donna Anna intervened. “This is all nonsense. She is much too young to attend you, Daughter.” With a grimace of distaste, she touched Sophie’s cheek and held up her reddened fingertip. “Imagine! Rouge, on a girl of her age!”

  Sophie’s eyes flashed, and she tilted her chin up. At that moment, although she did not know it, her expression was the perfect mirror of Pauline’s.

  “I will think about it,” Pauline repeated, in an entirely different tone of voice. “Sophie, you may accompany me to my sitting room.”

  That was how Sophie had become a junior lady-in-waiting to the princess.

  Several weeks passed, and she had still not met the German prince. Pauline usually summoned her only in the afternoon or for informal events in the palace, although she took special care to include her on outings when Donna Anna was also present. But now at least she had heard more about him. The other attendants treated her like a doll, playing with her hair and arranging her clothing. They also spoke over her head to each other, as if, like a doll, she could not hear. So she learned that the prince never visited now when Camillo was present, that Pauline would meet him sometimes in the gardens of the Borghese villa and return to the palace wet and wind-blown from what was officially a carriage ride. That Camillo was wildly jealous and was trying to arrange to have his rival recalled to Germany.

  One evening Sophie had been dismissed after a small dinner party and was getting undressed when she realized that she still had a pair of Pauline’s earrings tucked into her petticoat. The princess had decided halfway through dinner that they were too heavy and had beckoned Sophie over to remove them. Normally, Sophie would have waited until morning to return them, but the prince was away from Rome for a few days, and Sophie now knew her way around the palace quite well. There was a back stair to Pauline’s suite of rooms, which ran up one side of the palace and opened onto a salon below Sophie’s room. Taking a candle, she threw on a shawl and made her way across to the central stair, down two floors, through a series of dark receiving rooms and into the side room that gave access to the stairwell.

  Beneath the small door set in the wall, Sophie saw a line of light. It didn’t occur to her to think that anything was wrong; Pauline’s page often used this stair to run errands for her. Pauline herself even used it when she wanted to return to her rooms to change without entering the central reception hall. So Sophie clicked open the panel—and stopped open-mouthed. There was the page, on his way up to Pauline. And there, with him, was a stranger who could only be the infamous German prince.

  He was wearing a half-mask, although Carnival would not start for several weeks. He was thin and blond, and his eyes glittered like blue-tinged frost inside the mask.

  “It’s only Sophie,” said the page, as the stranger stepped back in dismay. “Come on.” And he tugged the blond man’s sleeve.

  Sophie stood speechless, frozen, horrified. This was what she had wanted, was it not? To know Pauline’s secrets. To see the mysterious lover for herself.

  Paolo turned back, frowning. “What are you doing here, Sophie? Surely the princess didn’t send for you?” He jerked his head meaningfully toward the masked man. No, Pauline would not want any other visitors right now.

  She still couldn’t speak. Mutely, she held out the earrings.

  “Oh! Right, she wondered where they were. I’ll take them up.” And he put them casually in his vest and then led the German on up the stairs.

  Sophie had made herself wait until she heard Pauline’s low laugh and musical voice echoing down the stairwell. Then she had crept back to her room, got undressed, climbed into bed, and burst into tears.

  A few days later, the prince had returned. All seemed peaceful for a day or so, and Sophie found herself glad to think that there would be no visitors on the staircase now. Then, on the Friday after his return, everything had changed.

  Sophie and another young woman had been with Pauline in her dressing room. Camillo had stalked in and started shouting before they could even get up from their chairs. Terrified, they fled, but they heard plenty on the way out.

  “You slut! You whore!” The normally gentle Camillo was white with anger. “You are a disgrace to your brother, a disgrace to my house! Have you no shame? No modesty? You are no more fit to be a princess than the girl who sweeps the kitchen! We have not even been in Rome for two months, and you give me horns! Where is my heir, madame? Don’t I get a son before you start opening your legs to every man in Rome?”

  Camillo had found out, who knows how—from one of the servants, from his mother, from Angiolini, who reportedly had spies in the household. Not from Sophie; she couldn’t bear to think about that meeting, and if she had ever imagined herself taking vengeance on both Camillo and the German prince by telling the former about the latter, that notion had died on the dark staircase with the sound of Pauline’s laughter.

  Pauline shouted back—Sophie was too far away to hear the words now—there was the sound of something breaking, and then Camillo emerged, his face like stone. He walked past the shocked attendants without even looking at them and shut himself in his rooms.

  An icy silence settled over the household. Servants spoke in whispers. Sophie prayed for once that Pauline would not summon her to help her dress or to go with her to the shops.

  A week later, Prince Georg left Rome. The pope had suggested that he was needed back home. And the next morning, Sophie, summoned to Pauline’s bedchamber, found Camillo lying half-dressed on a sofa, looking very pleased with himself, while Pauline turned in front of him modeling a sleeveless gown of flowing gold tissue.

  “Ah, Sophie!” Pauline whirled over to her. “This is my costume for our ball on the last night of Carnival. You shall have one in white, trimmed with the gold, to match. And here is my mask.” She held up a delicate crescent of gilt pasteboard and swan feathers. “Do you like it?”

  Sophie nodded. She looked at the prince, lounging on the sofa, and back at Pauline. They were reconciled, that was clear. She should hate him again.

  “Now come over here and pick your own mask,” Pauline commanded. On a side table lay a pile of fantastic papier-mâché concoctions—animal heads, crowns, birds, flowers, pagan gods, even a stone tower. Sophie looked at this last, fascinated. It had two little windows for the eyes. “Not that one, silly. That is a man’s. Here.” She led Sophie over to another group of masks, clearly for smaller heads. “Let’s try this one.” It was a wood nymph, with leaves for hair. Sophie felt the mask settle over her nose and then tighten as Pauline fastened the strings.

  “Perfect!” Pauline led her to a mirror. Startled, Sophie saw a stranger—her own body, taller and more slender than she re
membered, then a graceful white neck, a childish chin and mouth, and the knowing, distant face of the dryad. The leaves were silk and mingled with her own hair as though Nunzia had worked for hours on the effect.

  “What do you think, Camillo?” Pauline appealed to her husband.

  “Lovely,” he said politely.

  But he was not looking at Sophie. His gaze was fastened possessively on his wife.

  Sophie had loved Carnival, at least at first. When she wore her mask and domino, she felt truly grown up. Strange men approached her and kissed her gloved hand and begged her to tell them her name. The great palace was open at all hours of the day and night; Sophie could come and go as she pleased so long as Pauline did not require her. The streets and piazzas were full of people. There were musicians, clowns, jugglers, acrobats, tame bears, singers, dancers. It was like one of the fairs her parents had taken her to in the villages near Pontoise, only it was the whole city, and it was not one day but eight.

  Pauline seemed to like it as well. Every day she wore a different new gown beneath her domino. Every day she set the swan feathers on her head, looked in the mirror, and announced, “Let us enjoy ourselves today!” Camillo, in a bronze owl mask, escorted her for the first few days, but then he grew preoccupied—Sophie heard him talking to his secretary about a surprise for Pauline at the Borghese ball—and Pauline chose one or another of the young Romans who vied for her attention to escort her to a concert or a dance.

  On the fourth day, Sophie had handed Pauline the swan mask as usual. But when she put it on, she did not smile and say “Let us enjoy ourselves today!” Instead, she looked at herself in the mirror for a long time, in silence. Then she turned suddenly to Sophie. “Sophie, this evening we shall watch the horses race down the Corso. I have sent a footman to reserve a place for us at the Palazzo San Marco.”

  That was when Sophie knew there was going to be trouble.

  For the next three days, she had stood next to Pauline on the balcony overlooking Piazza Venezia. Each day, as the horses pounded into the square, a brawny young man in a harlequin mask would wrestle one of the stampeding animals to a walk and hand it over to the waiting grooms. Then he would strut across the piazza and bow elaborately, looking up at Pauline. She would look down at him and smile. And even naive little Sophie understood that it was not really the horse he was wrestling into submission.