by C. M. Mayo
Bombelles knows a better place to eavesdrop than the service stairwell. Like a palace, a big city hotel is a Swiss cheese. As the agents de súreté publique, the French police spies, would say, to listen in, c’est simple comme bonjour. Around the second corner from that antechamber, just before the service stairwell, is an innocent-looking little door: it appears to be the door to a broom closet. Bombelles was simply doing his duty on the first day to inspect the immediate surroundings when, with his penknife, he jimmied the lock. The setup was impressive. Coiled on the floor lay a tube that ran underneath the wall. On the other side of that wall, in the empress’s reception salon, was a chest of drawers just tall enough that, to see the top of it, he had to, inconveniently, stand on tiptoe. This meant that a man of shorter stature such as Count del Valle, or a woman, would not notice that the tube connected—this was delightful—with a brass vase placed there. This vase had four rosettes of elaborate open grillwork. These were the receptacles for sound. The “vase,” filled with silk violets, was an apparatus that must have been made by a doctor for the deaf: it worked brilliantly.
Bombelles has always resented Carlota. As the son of their tutor (who was himself the son of the third husband of the archduchess Marie-Louise), Bombelles grew up alongside the archdukes in the Hofburg: a boy’s paradise. He can take his pleasure in women (he’s happy to pay for it), but he dislikes women; he shares the conviction of many a Jesuit, that the so-called weaker sex cannot be trusted; they are mentally inferior and sow-like. The Belgian princess, in Bombelles’s opinion, was the worst possible choice for a wife: always with her nose in a book, so pious, so pushy. Almost all his life, Max had been the Heir Presumptive to the throne of Austria! And, after the birth of Prince Rudolph, next in line! If not for her, Max never would have accepted a foreign throne, certainly he never would have signed that Family Pact. Her selfish ambition is disgusting. When Max was sick, sicker than he had ever been in his life, prostrate in his bed—she barged in, ignoring Dr. Jilek’s anguished protests, and she forced Maximilian into it. Trying to fix that ungodly mistake has been the focus of the last several months of Bombelles’s life. He’s had to go all the way to Vienna, where he could do nothing, then back to Mexico, and now, again to Europe. Fool’s missions. She will not have children, so what was she thinking to covet a crown? General Almonte had been furious, he had actually turned a shade of purple, when he found out that, after several childless years—they’ve been married since 1857—Their Majesties do not sleep together. Carlota, always scheming, comes up with these mad, crude solutions; then, having set the ship on fire, she becomes hysterical.
Bombelles has placed the tube in his ear. He knows that France’s business with Mexico, c’est fini—for, were it otherwise, would he have this closet to himself? In the ten days Carlota has been in residence in the royal suite, the police spies have not used this closet once. She could meet with the queen of England and the powers that be could not care less. But what damage can this Jezebel still do to Max? In the dark Bombelles holds his breath: the first voice, somber in tone and without inflection, he recognizes as hers.
“You are much changed since I saw you last.”
“I have suffered so terribly in these many months. You also are much changed.”
“State your business.”
(Rustling sounds. Then, much louder:) “I beg you, give me back my child!”
“I have done you great honor in granting you this interview. You should not make me regret it.”
“How is he?” (Louder:) “Tell me how he is!”
“He is well.”
“What else, what more! Oh, my child!”
“He improves every day in person and intelligence.”
“Oh . . . oh . . .” (Rustling.) “If you only knew what worry, what grief has weighed upon my heart!”
“I am treating your child with the greatest kindness. I am supporting it with my own money.”
“I ask nothing more than the privilege of supporting him myself!”
“Yourself?”
“Yes, myself!”
“If we give you back your child, you should refund the money the emperor has paid to your family.”
“Those pensions were granted to the Emperor Iturbide’s family, many years ago. The emperor did not give us that money; he reinstated a debt of the nation. Besides, since February we have not been paid.”
“I bid you adieu.”
“No! No, if this is your condition, we will pay it. I would pay anything rather than be deprived of my child!”
“You affixed your signature to a solemn contract, that your child is to be educated by the emperor.”
“But I did not forfeit in any way my legal right to the possession of my child.”
“You have this advice from foreign lawyers, I suppose.”
“No! From Mexican lawyers of the highest character.”
“Ah! Then you received this advice before giving up your child to us.”
“No, Your Majesty, I received it when I returned from Mexico City to the city of Puebla, after I had been kidnapped.”
“Kidnapped? That is ridiculous.”
“I was arrested and taken out of Mexico City against my will.”
“The emperor did right. You should not have come back to Mexico City. And you did wrong to address yourself to General Bazaine instead of the emperor.”
“At that time I did not know of the misunderstanding between them.”
“There is no misunderstanding. It was not, however, an affair for General Bazaine. You have always acted badly toward us. You stood aloof from us when we first came to Mexico. And now you show no gratitude to the emperor for having made your son and nephew princes.”
“My husband and his siblings are the children of a legitimate emperor, and if they had not borne their titles, it was because they had not cared to.”
“He was not of royal blood. Whether or not that was a legitimate throne is debatable.”
“Many are saying the same about your throne, and that you keep my son to bolster your favor among the Mexican people.”
“What advantage can your son be to me? The emperor and I are both young. We may have children of our own.”
“I earnestly hope so, if that will restore me mine.”
“You may have other children.”
“I do not know. I am sure of this one and I want him.”
“For how long are you willing to give him up to us?”
“Not an hour longer than I am compelled to!”
“I advise you to write to the emperor yourself.”
“I have done so many times and received no reply.”
“Write again. And write politely.”
After this, the voices become muffled, indistinct. Then, like the descent of a curtain: definitive silence.
Bombelles, a little too quickly, closes the door behind him. On the other side of the wall, Charlotte, momentarily alone, startles. She’d heard something—inside the wall—that was not the hydraulic lift.
In the street below, a whip cracks. Voices.
“Bombelles?” she says. She has never taken the liberty of calling him Charlie. She does not trust him.
“Your Majesty.” He smoothly bows.
“Have them send in a fresh pot of coffee.”
September 30, 1866
NIGHT IN THE ETERNAL CITY
Rome’s Piazza del Popolo: its marble lions and obelisk naked to the hot sky, morning shimmering up from the pavement. Before the doors to the church of Santa Maria del Popolo, Carlota furls her parasol—a black parasol, black to match her dress and mutilated bonnet. Madame del Barrio, close behind, furls her parasol also. They have already seen this church. Her Majesty and the remnants of her retinue have been in Rome now for five days. They seem to be going in circles. Madame del Barrio does not know what to do. Count Bombelles, the one person who would, was—by Her Majesty’s order, given coldly—left behind in Trieste. Radonetz (one of Maximilian’s most trusted men in charge of t
he administration of Miramar Castle), Her Majesty had, quite violently, accused of thievery. The Almontes—abandoned in Paris. Monsieur Eloin—dispatched to Brussels. It is all crashing down around them, and Carlota is obsessed with the notion that Louis Napoleon conspires to poison her. She is mad. You can see it in her eyes, said Frau von Kuhacsevich. Deplorable, Count del Valle said. What will become of us all? And Dr. Bohuslavek, he is so terribly young, he seems unsure of himself. He is afraid.
Madame del Barrio hands the two parasols, hers and the empress’s, to José Luis Blasio. Blasio had arrived at Trieste two weeks ago, bearing Maximilian’s instructions for Her Majesty’s meeting with His Holiness here in Rome. And what happened in that meeting? In the three days that have gone by, Her Majesty has not uttered one word about it, nonetheless, they all guessed the cruel thrust of it, for, on her return to the hotel from the Vatican, she instructed Count del Valle to dismiss—immediately—the pope’s honor guard and the French military band.
In Santa Maria del Popolo’s vestibule, after Her Majesty, Madame del Barrio and Blasio have knelt and crossed themselves, Blasio catches Madame del Barrio’s eye. She can read his lips.
“Not again?”
What else can they do but obey their sovereign? Madame del Barrio can only hope that, perhaps, by midday Her Majesty will have exhausted herself. Her Majesty has not eaten since the day before yesterday, and then only nuts and oranges she insisted on peeling with her own hands. Mathilde, her maid, told Dr. Bohuslavek, who told Frau von Kuhacsevich, that Carlota sucked like a peasant at those oranges, for the water, she says, and the wine, all the liquids served to her are poisoned. Carlota cannot be reasoned with. This morning, a feverish flush in her cheeks, first thing, she flew to the Trevi Fountain, where she removed her gloves, bent over, and scooped the water with her hands! She then tore the veil from her bonnet, and wiped her face with that. Here, at least, it will not be poisoned. I was so thirsty!
Madame del Barrio and Blasio follow Her Majesty down the nave of Santa Maria del Popolo, pretending to listen to her rambling about its artistic treasures. Whenever the empress looks away, they dart glances at one another. She’s speaking unnaturally fast, leaping from Bernini, to something Goethe wrote, to the Bible—
“Do you understand?” she asks Madame del Barrio.
“Yes, ma’am.”
Carlota addresses the air to the left of her ear: “The time has come for silence.
Blasio drops one of the parasols.
“Silence!” Carlota cries.
Their footsteps echo, ten, eleven, twelve, and suddenly, she stops. Before the Caravaggio, she lights a taper. She falls upon the marble floor, and pressing her hands together in prayer, she seems to beseech the terrible scene itself: Saint Peter crucified, upside down. The golden tones of the old man’s flesh; the stake driven through the hand; the mouth agape in agony . . .
Not knowing what else to do, her lady and her secretary both kneel, the one a little way behind Her Majesty and to the left; the other to her right.
Madame del Barrio, her hand over her mouth, darts Blasio another look.
Carlota flings opens her arms, as if upon a crucifix. And then—they clearly hear it—her stomach growls.
There was, one long month and a half ago, a shard of a moment when it seemed to Charlotte that this nightmare was about to transmute into the Apotheosis of the True Destiny, when she drove up to Saint Cloud, and saw that, waiting there to receive her, stood Prince Louis.
She had come to Saint Cloud for her interview with Louis Napoleon: the aim of so many weeks, so much worry, letters and telegrams. She had been thinking of nothing else for weeks. So much depended this. She had become agitated, unable to eat. All the way in from the Grand-Hôtel, Charlotte was in such a state, she gripped Madame Almonte’s hand. Madame Almonte gripped it back. The one Charlotte wanted, more than anyone, was her father. But her father was dead. Her brother, King Leopold II, cared not a fig, unless there was money in it for him. The Kaiser, in betraying her husband, had made himself her enemy. About Mexico Queen Victoria had shown only ignorance and priggish disdain. Grand-maman was also dead, she had not approved from the beginning. No one approved of Maximilan accepting this crown, except such as Louis Napoleon. And Madame Almonte. Together, in Charlotte’s lap, their hands made one big fist. Charlotte could feel the little bones in her hand being crushed. “Thank you,” she said to Madame Almonte, and at the look in her other lady, Madame del Barrio’s eyes, they all three burst into tears. But then, as the terrible wheels rolled over the gravel of that drive and finally creaked to a halt, there—at the window: that shining boy in his uniform.
The Child of France. He calmed her so, like a puff of opium. His beautifully molded mouth was set in, not so much a smile but a unique expression at once elegant, martial, and kind. She knew this was a child who would be kind to his pets. He would speak to them; the pictures in their minds would float above his head like kites; he would know when they wanted water.
She accepted his small gloved hand. With what satisfaction she saw that, pinned to his chest, was the medal of the Order of the Mexican Eagle. It flashed in the sun.
Such sun. Madame del Barrio balanced the parasol over Charlotte’s head.
Prince Louis led her up the path. He had celebrated his tenth birthday; and he was going to be devastatingly handsome.
“My, Louis, you have grown.”
“Did you have a pleasant journey?”
“I had the journey God wished me to have.”
Perfume of roses and gladiolas drifted in from the other side of the hedge. A dog barked in the distance. Their shoes made such noise upon the gravel. The sounds, the smells, they seemed to have blue shapes and conical colors.
“Did you call at Fort-de-France?” he asked.
“Not this time.”
“Where did your ship take on coal?”
“Havana and Saint Thomas.”
“Did you see any sperm whales?”
“No, but many dolphins.”
They strode past the line of Praetorian guards. For some reason, they bothered her. She felt a noxious but scentless emanation from their gazes: disapproval. Pity. She, empress of Mexico, was not a human being to them. They, rigid as if cast in bronze, were not human beings to her. From beneath their visors, they were watching her with alien intelligence, as they would watch a prisoner being escorted to her execution.
As Prince Louis led her up the steps, she remembered to ask about his accident. In July he had fallen from his trapeze and suffered a concussion, from which, obviously, he was recovered.
“I am quite well now, thank you.”
He did not ask her about Orizaba, as he did the last time. He asked nothing about Mexico. He recited no pretty list of native fruits and vegetables. At the top of the steps was Eugénie, and here Prince Louis, squaring his heels, took his leave. Eugenie brought Charlotte and her ladies inside: into the lair of Mephistopheles.
Todo es inútil, All is useless, she had telegrammed Max. If she never saw this Babylon again, she told Madame del Barrio, it would be too soon. She could not return to Mexico, not yet. Rome—she needed to go see His Holiness—but prudence made her go first to Trieste, and there await Maximilian’s instructions.
Miramar, their ivory castle on the Bay of Grignano: its parterre, so lovingly designed and cared for, its pines and oaks and ilex trees receiving the sweet sea breezes. The gardener and his wife cried tears of happiness to see her. There were several cats she recognized, and three black kittens, darling fur balls. But how peculiar, like having become a ghost in her own life, to go into these rooms, Maximilian’s library, his wood-paneled office. There was where he sat at his desk reading, writing letters. There was where he took his breakfast, there where he played billiards with Bombelles and Schertzenlechner. The music room with her pianoforte; she touched the keys but found no will to play. Her boudoir. For their wedding gift, the city of Milan had given them a bed. It was still there. She threw herself upon it—and cr
ied.
Free of her, Max could have married a more suitable princess. Someone like Princess María Amelia de Braganza, his first love who died on Madeira. What a splendid empress she would have made, and her own half-brother, Dom Pedro II, Brazil’s emperor of the Divine Holy Spirit. María Amelia, she was so sweet, so pure. Their children would have been beautiful.
And it occurred to Charlotte, and not for the first time, that it would have been better for Maximilian if she had died in Yucatan. She had begun to suspect this had been intended for her; two of the servants on that expedition contracted yellow fever. Scrupulously she had avoided fruit; nonetheless, attacked by headaches, dizziness—she was sure of it, she had been poisoned. Among the ruins of Uxmal, she had been overcome by a nameless dread that left her, for some minutes, unable to speak. The heat. The whirring hiss of insects. The sky: staccato of swallows. That nauseating smell of bat droppings. She did not know how it happened, perhaps she had floated to the top of that pyramid—there she was, empress of Mexico, surveying a realm of rubble, and encircling it all, trackless jungle.
Useless woman, she told herself. Useless to her husband, useless to her country—anchor on too short a chain, making the whole ship list. She should have produced an heir. It was so crucial for the stability of an empire—this empire of nine million; this empire larger than England, Scotland, Ireland, France, Spain, Sicily, Sardinia, and Prussia combined; this empire commanding two oceans—of course Louis Napoleon was jealous! And Almonte and Bazaine. With Carlota gotten rid of, it would be easier to replace Maximilian with General Bazaine—ah, wouldn’t it. Franz Joseph was afraid of her also—for she alone had dared to stand up to the All-Highest—All-Highest ofthat cobbled-together empire. All of Austria, all ofHungary, the provinces— they loved Max.
These were the incontrovertible, shocking facts: nearly 550 million francs’ worth of debt had been issued in Paris, of which 6 percent had been paid to the Mexican Imperial Treasury.
She knew she was being drugged. Her handwriting had become ragged. It was a titanic struggle to keep a leash on her thoughts, they raced and tumbled, faded into a kind of noisy fog. She was a doe, frozen in the middle of a clearing: enemies encircling her . . . creeping closer . . .
