The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire

by C. M. Mayo

  If those belles from Lafayette Square and Georgetown could see her now!

  To think that anyone had looked down upon her marrying a Mexican and going to live in Mexico. Things were going to be radically different with a Habsburg here: that was clear to Alicia from the moment she caught sight of the Palatine Guards, Vikings in snow white coats and silver helmets shining in the dazzle of fantastic torches, and inside, the gargantuan Venetian teardrop chandeliers, dripping light over the rustling mass of perfumed guests, officers and diplomats in dress uniform, civilians in tails and white tie, the women alight with jewels. Hundreds of people, indeed perhaps a thousand, were all craning their necks. Who had been invited? Whom did one recognize? Don Roberto, jqué gusto! Ceci, ¡qué tal! Alicia recognized a Mexican countess, the Hungarian cavalry captain who lodged down the street, the Belgian ambassador, and, in a huge velvet cummerbund and a diamond the size of a garbanzo bean in his cravat, Don Eusebio, the richest man in Mexico.

  A buzzing roar filled the air of the stairwell. Kisses for friends, handshakes for acquaintances, and up the crimson-carpeted stairs they swarmed, past tapestries, Sèvres vases, wondrous peacock-like bouquets. Once in the main hallway, still clinging to her husband’s arm, Alicia happened to look up: the cedar beams had been gilded! It was hard to believe this was the same lice-infested wreck that Doña Juliana de Gómez Pedraza refused to inhabit, back in the 1830s, when her husband briefly had been president. Neither had Alicia’s father-in-law lived here. (The Emperor Iturbide’s palace, so-called, was now the stagecoach hotel on the Calle de San Francisco.)

  What’s more, Their Majesties were only using this palace for formal entertainments; though they had apartments here, they had established their Imperial Residence in Chapultepec Castle, which had lately housed the Military College. (This Alicia completely understood, for, as she had remarked to Mrs. Yorke and others, her family’s country estate, Rosedale, was at the same easy-commuting range from the city of Washington.)

  If the inside of Chapultepec Castle were half as sumptuous as this, it would be something out of a fairy tale, Alicia thought, pressing her hand to her fast-pounding heart, sincerely hoping that one day she might be invited there, also.

  The Imperial Palace extended the entire length of the east side of Mexico City’s Plaza Mayor. The rooms given over to the ball were one extravagant stretch of brightly lit parquet after another, all drapes and mirrors and chandeliers, until they ended with the closed doors of the throne room.

  At nine o’clock the doors to the street were bolted, and now the Master of Ceremonies, with the aid of a silver baton and two assistants, divided the crowd; the ladies to line up along one wall, gentlemen the other. The buzz faded to whispers and then a sudden hush. Alicia went up on tiptoes: yes, the doors to the throne room had swung open.

  Soon she could see Maximilian in his Mexican general’s uniform greeting the men, and the empress, trailed by her ladies of honor, working her way down the line of women.

  Carlota’s dark hair was arranged cushion-like over her ears. She was not wearing a diadem, but, à l’espagnole, a single blood-red rose. Her necklace and bracelets were of diamonds; these sparkled in the candlelight. Her gown was of mint green and scarlet brocade with a train of gossamer lace. She moved smoothly, with hauteur relieved now and then by the slightest of smiles. Next to Alicia, two rotund little señoras, nervously fanning themselves, began whispering and giggling. “Shsh!” Pepa scolded. It was an effort to stay back near the wall; everyone wanted a better view of the approaching imperial couple (always, one of the assistants to the Master of Ceremonies nudged them back). Alicia could now hear the conversations, Carlota’s murmurs of “Enchantée,” and some question about the work on the telegraph or, in Spanish, a bland, “Buenas noches.” Carlota spoke the language of each lady she addressed, a word of Spanish here, Flemish there, German, or French, or English. This daughter of the king of the Belgians spoke no less than seven languages! Alicia could feel butterflies in her stomach. She batted her eyelashes and her hand flew to her pearls: Her turn had come! She tipped her head forward and sank into the reverent curtsey she had been practicing all week.

  Once she straightened, Alicia was startled to realize that she and the empress were exactly the same height.

  “Buenas noches, señora,” Carlota said, and said the same again with a slight nod, her diamonds flashing, as Pepa bowed her head (but, as her hip was troubling her, she did not curtsey). The empress was about to move on when Madame Almonte, chief lady of honor, rushed up and whispered into the empress’s ear.

  Carlota turned to Alicia and said in an unnaturally slow, deliberate, perfectly pronounced Spanish, “Señora de Iturbide, we are pleased to have you here.”

  “Ma’am, oh, delighted!” Alicia’s voice came out strangely high.

  Carlota said, switching to English, “Oh, you speak English?”

  “I do? I did? Oh, oh, did I—”

  Pepa interrupted: “She is from Washington.”

  “A very beautiful city, I hear, with the boulevards of Monsieur L’Enfant.” And before Alicia could recover, Carlota had moved on down the row and was greeting the wife of the Mexican foreign minister.

  The orchestra erupted into music; Their Highnesses took their seats upon their thrones beneath the canopy of crimson velvet. The platform for the thrones was covered in the same rich crimson carpeting that ran the entire length of the hallway and all down the stairs. Sitting very erect, Maximilian rested his slender arms on those of the chair and crossed his ankles. Carlota clasped her hands together; the bracelets in her lap threw sparkles, like freckles, onto her throat and face. Maximilian and Carlota now stood; he took her hand and led her down to the dance floor. They opened the ball with the quadrille and then retired to their thrones.

  The imperial couple sat watching silently and, it seemed to Alicia, tenderly, as in a rustling swirl of tulles and satins, the ladies and their cavaliers came back together and, with the aid of the Master of Ceremonies and his assistants, took their places on the dance floor. It was a sight Alicia would never forget as long as she lived: in one of the mirrors, she saw herself, her golden hair crowned with a wreath of miniature yellow tea-roses, her dainty gloved hand in her husband’s, and to the left, and to the right, and behind them, the rows of the other dancers, so many splendid uniforms, gowns all the colors of the most breathtaking bouquet. Then, she danced as she had never danced before, with a lightness and such precision it seemed the music—ba-bum, tra-la—was her own heart, galloping, singing. Oh! surely, her slippers, like Mercury’s ankles, had sprouted wings!

  When the orchestra took its break, in the crush Alicia was separated from her husband. She wandered, fanning herself, tucking stray hairs behind her ear (the dancing did mischief to her coiffeur). One of the several balcony doors was open, and by happenstance, as she approached, three French officers who had been enjoying the cool evening air brushed past her. Rudely, they looked her up and down. “Bonsoir, mademoiselle,” said the last one, a captain, in an oily tone. She answered sharply, “Madame.”

  So it was that she had the balcony to herself. Below, in the vast Plaza Mayor, was an astonishing sight: hundreds of faces turned up in silent wonder. Moonlight cast their shadows before them over the pavement. Some of these people began pointing at her. Behind her the music began again, trilling and soaring; for the first time she realized that they too, the humble people, wrapped in their blankets, had been out here, listening. They had never heard such music; they had never seen such finery, and the whole palace, so long decrepit, now pulsing with light . . . Of its own accord, her hand moved up— she almost waved but, instead, put her gloved fingers to her lips. This was what it would feel like to be royalty, she thought. A heady feeling, headier still, knowing that her own husband had once, long ago, been a real prince. Had history played out differently, it would have been her bachelor brother-in-law, Agustín Gerónimo, sitting on that throne. Imagine that! she thought, then, her own husband would have been Heir
Presumptive! She would be known to all as—she silently whispered—Princess Alicia.

  Her bare arms were turning to gooseflesh, but Alicia could not bring herself to leave this magical perch. Her husband would have scolded her severely, for Mexicans believed that to become chilled by night air could cause earaches, or paralyze one’s face. Simpler sorts believed the night belonged to ghosts, bogeymen, and all class of nagualli. Such was the magnetic power of royalty that it could pull all these people out into the open night. She thought, the pavement must be awfully cold. She wondered if some of them were hungry. She bit her lips. Shivering slightly—oh, she could not help herself: she raised her right hand. But only one person waved back. It was the mounted policeman.

  After the midnight supper, Angelo wanted to sit down, but Alicia insisted that they go on dancing: the waltz, the schottische and redowa, the habanera; her feet were blistering, but on she whirled, light-headed with one too many glasses of pink champagne. She was sure (it was so odd, but she could feel it) that from their thrones, Maximilian and Carlota were watching them. Her fanciful musing had turned into a persistently glittering conception: that she would have been, as she whispered again, Princess Alicia.

  “What, darling?” her husband said.

  She giggled and squeezed his arm, and at that moment he stumbled. Wax from the chandeliers had begun to drip onto the parquet; one had to be careful, Angelo said. He’d had enough. Mopping his brow with his handkerchief, he steered her to the side. She pouted. There was nothing else to do but go sit with her sister-in-law on one of the brocade-upholstered benches.

  “Too much pudding,” Pepa said sourly. Her face was flushed and because she had lost her fan, she was fanning herself with the musical program. Alicia waved at Madame Almonte, but she sailed on, an imperturbable ship in another sea.

  To make conversation, Alicia said, “And our brother, Agustín Gerónimo?”

  “Who knows.”

  “Did you dance?” Alicia asked.

  “Not at my age.”

  Most of the ladies were sitting down now; the men had gathered in clusters, smoking. Only a widely scattered few of the younger couples were still dancing. The parquet, like a stretch of sand revealed by the receding ocean, was strewn with detritus: a fan, flowers, an earring, a crumpled dance card.

  Pepa glared across the room at Maximilian and Carlota. “I do wish they would get up.” That, they had been informed by the Master of Ceremonies, would be the signal for the end of the ball. No one would be permitted to leave the premises any earlier. No sooner had Pepa said this, however, than the conductor, a bald-headed German in spectacles, sliced down his baton, the music crashed to a stop, and as if by Pepa’s personal command, the imperial pair rose from their thrones. This action was answered by a rustling that would have brought to mind a breeze riffling through an autumn forest, had it not been accompanied by so much coughing and scraping of furniture. Alicia looked around: as if bewitched, every single person in the ballroom had stood up also.

  BOOK TWO

  Take what you want, God said. And pay for it.

  —ARAB SAYING

  September 17, 1865

  THE PRINCE IS IN THE CASTLE

  Atín had batted his blue ball with his hand but not hard, what makes it roll-a-roll away so fast, a piffle of breeze? This strange big skyhouse feels breezy, wind chuffs in beneath the cracks of the doors, wind whips the flag on its pole outside, Atín hears it—thwik, thwik—as he has all this morning since he has been left here to play. Atín toddles after his ball, but over the edge of the yawning sweep of bone white it drops: benk, b-benk—

  Gulping with astonishment and grief, he plops down, his bottom on the cold hard floor, and he begins to cry.

  Prince Agustín de Iturbide y Green is his too-big-a-mouthful of a name, and he is tall for his age, which is two, but smaller than anything around him in this place: assorted plum- and jet-fringed sofas, a mottled green urn on a stand, a moon white statue of a woman in a sheet, twisting one arm toward the massive blown-glass chandelier. Behind him a tapestry shrouds the wall; with the breeze coming up the stairwell the tips of its fringe lift slightly.

  He does not see his Auntie Pepa, coming up to him from behind the urn, her hands pressed together, and her hard, nearly lashless eyes melting into gluey tenderness.

  “Shsh, Agustinito,” Pepa says as she strokes his hair. “Shsh.” Brusquely she wipes his tears with her handkerchief, and then—Atín does not expect this—she hefts him to her hip.

  “Ball,” Atín says in English, aiming a finger behind her, toward the stairs. He shouts to make Pepa understand, because sometimes she does not hear. He tries to wriggle down, but she squeezes him around the waist in the stout vise of her arm.

  “Stop fussing. That’s enough—” Pepa is breathless already—“Aren’t you a big boy? Big boys do not fuss.”

  Atín does not like it, being jounced, he does not like that her stiff gray hair smells of perfume. Her dress makes too much rustle, and her heels stamp heavy like Papa’s. Down a long tunnel of a hallway his auntie carries Atín, and around, back, and down a stairwell with walls that stink of paint.

  Checkerboard floors now. And then two soldiers in green with swords on their belts swing open the doors into a high-ceilinged room so brilliant that Atín scrunches his face. Through the glass, which for a moment he does not realize is there, he sees that flag snapping on its pole, a colorful, strange kite. Pepa keeps him on her hip as she threads through the crowd. His aunt is bigger than his mamma, and her big-hipped dress makes her huge. Pepa takes up room, she makes people (that man with the gold fringies on his shoulders) have to step back, out of her way! Her steely gaze says: I know where I’m going.

  “Es el chiquillo. It’s the little one,” murmurs that wheezy grandpa whose eyebrows droop like pasted-on caterpillars. His eyeglass, plugged into his saggy skin, mirrors the window. A lady who looks like she’s swallowed an egg whispers, waggling her fingers at him, “Agustinito, hola Agustinito!”

  In front of a man in a chair, Pepa sets Atín down and gives a yank to the back of his frock. Atín whirls his gaze around the blur of colors, faces—

  Where is his mamma? His papa?

  Pepa bends halfway over from the waist—but there’s nothing to pick up from the floor.

  “Ven, niño. Come here, child,” says the man on the chair. He leans forward, his pale hands reaching for Atín from the ends of his dark sleeves. On his left hand he wears a fat gold ring.

  Atín wrinkles his forehead; he stays put with his Auntie Pepa. The lady on the other chair next to him, her eyes wary, coughs behind her fan. Atín can hear his own breath as he pushes it out of his nostrils.

  The man on the chair claps. “Niño! Digo, ven para acá. Child! I say, come here.”

  That lady on the chair next to him glares down at Atín as if he were something on the bottom of her shoe.

  “Ve cuando te llamen. Go when you’re called,” Pepa commands, waving her hand toward the man in the chair. Her bracelet scatters pinpricks of light against the wall. “Debes ser mi niño bien portado. You must be my good boy.”

  What for is Pepa speaking to him in the nanny language? Atín pushes out his lip. He likes to shout, in English, No! And he’s about to, but the man on the chair grasps him round the waist and lifts him up onto his lap.

  The man’s breath smells of tea. And his whiskers are so firelight golden, and combed smooth and lion-wide away from his chin and all up to his ears. The ends of the beard curl the way Atín’s hair does when his nanny, Lupe, wraps it around her finger. It looks soft as lamb’s wool. Might Atín touch the lion beard? He clenches his hands into fists because . . . because he is not sure.

  No one speaks as the lion man looks Atín up and down. His eyes, fringed with sparse apricot-red lashes, are the same watery blue as the stones in Pepa’s bracelet. They are at once weak and kind and cold.

  The lion man says, “Querojos cachetes tiene. What rosy cheeks he has,” and claps Atín between the
shoulder blades, too hard (he feels that ring). The man begins to talk to the grown-ups, his lips quivering as if he has trouble moving them over his teeth, but his voice swims through the room strong and clear; he is telling everybody all about everything and what to do. That lady next to him snaps open her fan and begins to whisk it furiously, its shadow flits over her nose, black, quick. Pepa stands before Atín and the lion man, her cheeks flushed and eyes glistening as if something exciting is happening, but it isn’t.

  “Ball!” Atín tells the lion man. Again, he tries to tell Pepa. “My ball, down!”

  “Tu pelota.” The lion man interrupts.

  Atín sighs, because pelota is a word that’s all elbows in his mouth. Now, as if on tiptoes, all the grown-ups are staring at Atín. That grandpa with the eyeglass leers over Pepa’s shoulder at Atín, showing his snaggly-peg teeth.

  “Ball dow’.” Atín points at the doors where those soldiers stand, stiff as tin toys and their hands by their sides in fists. Oh, where are those stairs that his blue ball bounced down? This house is too big, and Atín is all turned around. And why does he have to sit on this strange man’s lap?

  “Se le fue supelotita. He’s lost his little ball,” the lion man throws back his head and roars out of his golden beard—and an echo of titters ripples from the crowd. “Pues que te encuentren tu pelota. Well, someone will find your ball, and if not, how’s this? You—” He taps a finger on Atín’s nose— “shall have a new one!”