Becoming Marie Antoinette: A Novel

by Juliet Grey

  How eagerly I anticipated the day when I would have a gaggle of lively children at my heels, tugging at my skirts, always keen to play games! For the time being I lavished my affection on my dog and my doll. As they had both entered my life when I was all of seven, I had given them the sort of spectacularly unoriginal names that young children typically bestow upon their playthings and pets. Poupée was the French doll with the pretty painted face that my sister Maria Christina had given me for Christmas; and Mops was my pug—Mopshund being the German word for a pug-dog.

  Joseph did not attend his wife’s funeral, nor did Maman, who continued to recuperate. And very few people followed Angel Josepha’s tin-plated sarcophagus down to the imperial crypt below the Kapuzinerkirche, the Capuchin Church. I was all the more sorrowful after my request to accompany her bier was denied. She should have had a sympathetic friend there to say good-bye and to wish her soul a safe journey to heaven. And although she was not beautiful, she was virtuous; I never heard her say an unkind word, nor reproach anyone—even my brother—for their conduct toward her.

  A few weeks after Angel Josepha’s death, the imperial physicians reported that Maman had fully recovered and was capable of resuming her imperial duties. Naturally, we were grateful and relieved, and none of us more so than Maman. But I noticed a difference in her. It was not merely that she was thinner, and perhaps had even lost one of her three chins. She seemed weary, less patient, and even more attentive than ever to her deeply ingrained sense of duty. No longer did my mother appear to embrace life, although God had allowed her to live; instead, she seemed burdened by earthly cares. Even her beloved Kammermusik concerts no longer brought her joy.

  While the court was in official mourning my sister Josepha’s wedding to the king of Naples had been placed in a state of limbo. Naturally, it would not have been seemly to plan a joyous celebration, but in all sincerity, the only one who was looking forward to Josepha’s impending union was Maman. Yet by the second week of October the three months of mourning had elapsed and my sister’s bedroom in the Hofburg was as bare as a nun’s cell. In preparation for her journey to Naples, nearly everything Josepha owned had been packed into heavy wooden trunks studded with her initials. I didn’t much envy her trousseau. It consisted of dozens of gowns and robes made up in brightly colored silks and brocades and trimmed with everything one could imagine—spangles and beading and lace and gold fringe, and precious gems, of course—because Maman had been informed that the Neapolitans were fond of these unsophisticated, garish touches. She wanted to be sure that King Ferdinand would become smitten with Josepha immediately. The way Josepha explained it to me, “the sooner the baby, the stronger the alliance.” She meant Austria’s alliance with the Two Sicilies. The closer the days drew to October 15, the date of my sister’s departure, the more I was forced to confront an ugly truth about our mother: It didn’t matter to Maman if Josepha and her husband did not fall in love, just as it hadn’t mattered to her when she urged Joseph to marry Homely Angel Josepha of Bavaria. And yet she had been so deeply enamored of our papa that she refused to wed any man but him, despite our grandfather’s objections to such an unequal match.

  I was no longer as cocooned from the harsh realities of the world as I had been only a year earlier. The passing of my unloved sister-in-law and the imminent departure of Josepha for an equally loveless marriage forced me to confront a painful lesson about the privileges of rank that I would have been just as happy to delay. Palaces and carriages and bejeweled gowns came at a high price. Gap-toothed Marta who emptied my chamber pot every morning may have envied my sumptuous wardrobe and my hours of leisure (and who would not prefer to caress the strings of a harp than dispose of someone else’s urine?), but she had the freedom to follow the promptings of her heart and marry the man she loved because the fate of nations did not depend upon her union.

  On October 12, after the family breakfasted together Josepha drew me aside and, with a catch in her throat, asked if she might speak to me alone. She had barely touched her food, nervously tapping her heavy silver spoon on her egg cup and only nibbling at her toast. Her pot of bitter chocolate, which she looked forward to drinking each morning with girlish enthusiasm and an indulgent spoonful of Schlag, was ignored and grew cold.

  It was a long, labyrinthine walk to the wing of the palace where the archduchesses lived in what we laughingly referred to as “the convent” because our brothers all resided on the opposite side of the courtyard. Our skirts rustling, Josepha clutched my hand as we sped through countless cream-colored chambers embellished with boiserie—raised moldings and elaborate scrollwork—passing innumerable pairs of footmen standing as stiff and silent as statues at the entrance to every room.

  Each of us had our own apartment consisting of a formal reception room, a salon, and a bedchamber. A stranger entering our residential quarters might have been surprised by their simplicity, a striking contrast to the rococo splendor of the state rooms that reflected the latest taste in décor and the grandeur of empire. Someone who had never seen the formal salons, and who had only visited the Hapsburgs en domicile, might have thought we lived like any large family of the German gentry—pious, industrious, and boisterous.

  Josepha followed me into my salon, shutting the door quietly behind her. Mops eyed her curiously from his bed on the floor, sensing in his uncanny canine way that something was amiss. Clasping my hands in hers, Josepha drew me over to the blue velvet love seat. “I want to say good-bye to you,” my sister told me. Her hands felt cold and damp. Her face was pale, the color drained from her cheeks.

  “But you don’t have to say it yet,” I insisted. “You don’t leave for another three days.” I rested my head against her shoulder. “I wish you could remain with us for another three weeks, so you don’t miss my twelfth birthday.”

  Josepha sighed heavily. “Even so, I think I would miss it anyway. In fact, little one, I’m afraid we may never see each other again.”

  I shivered at her words. “What are you saying?”

  “Maman says I must pay my respects today to … to Homely Josepha—before I leave for Naples. She says that it’s the proper thing to do.” My sister’s voice was hollow.

  “You have to perform a take-leave for a dead person? Homely Josepha will never know.”

  “But Maman will.”

  I had little use, and even less patience, for empty ritual. “Well, what if you didn’t do it?” I asked her. “Or what if you told Maman you would and then only pretended to go into the crypt?”

  Josepha trembled. “You know I can’t. I could never lie about something like that. It wouldn’t be right. And even if Maman never found out, God would know. I could confess my sin and make peace with disappointing Maman, but I couldn’t disappoint Him.”

  Although she was trying to appear brave, her eyes were filled with terror and tears. “Descending into the Kaisergruft to commune with the dead souls there, especially Maria Josepha’s spirit, and our having the same name … I can’t explain it, Toinette … but I have a premonition that you and I shall never see each other again.”

  She would not be consoled by my reminder, now halfhearted, that there was no such thing as ghosts.

  “It’s not Homely Josepha’s ghost that I am afraid of.” My sister shuddered. “I know her soul is in heaven, but her body … Joseph said she was buried quickly because the doctors didn’t want the disease to spread. What if they weren’t careful enough?” I placed my arm about her shoulder and allowed Mops to jump into her lap; if I was unable to allay her fears, surely the pug’s warm, devoted presence would comfort her.

  “Maman thinks I’m being childish about the whole business.” Josepha reflexively stroked the dog’s smooth tan coat, then rested her cheek against his thick neck. “To her mind, I have an obligation and it is my duty to fulfill it. Yet it is also my duty to become King Ferdinand’s bride.”

  I squeezed Josepha’s arm to reassure her. “I know you don’t want to wed him,” I said softly.

>   “It doesn’t matter whether I wish to marry him or not—”

  “Well, certainly not to Maman,” I interrupted.

  “—it’s that I don’t think I ever will.” Mops hopped onto the floor and began to nose about the ruching at Josepha’s hem. Finding no errant crumbs, he grew disinterested and pattered over to a comfortable spot on the rug. My sister impetuously threw her arms around me, holding me so tightly that I could feel the boning in her lilac silk bodice pressing into my chest. I had forgotten how much taller she had grown. Ever since I’d learned that I was to marry the dauphin of France, I’d begun to wish I could stop time and keep things just as they were. I would stop it at the picnics and the operas—before we ever got to the leave-taking and the funerals. When I was younger, maybe five or six, I’d made a wish that I would never be sad. It hadn’t come true.

  Josepha began to weep. “I’m afraid I will join Johanna,” she sobbed as she held me even closer. In addition to Maria Anna (whom we all called Marianne), Maria Christina, Maria Elisabeth, and Maria Amalia, we’d had another sister—Maria Johanna Gabriella Josepha Antonia. Johanna was born five years before I was, and only one year before Josepha. The pair of them had been as close as Charlotte and I were. In 1762, two days before Christmas, Johanna died of smallpox. She was only twelve years old. Just a few months older than I was now.

  That thought alone was so immense, so frightening, that my efforts to reassure my sister evanesced. What could I say to Josepha? How could I tell her, with any measure of honesty or certainty, that her fears were unfounded? I could not lie. So we perched on the edge of the love seat, our tears staining the blue and rose floral Aubusson as we clutched each other so tightly that the very impression of our bodies reaffirmed the physical, the corporeal, the fact that we were alive.

  “Promise you will never forget me,” Josepha whispered, her words warm in my ear.

  “Never,” I whimpered. I swallowed hard and blinked back a sob, forcing a brave note into my voice. “Never.”

  Always dutiful, pious, and obedient, Josepha did as Maman instructed. After my sister took leave of me that morning, she descended into the dank and drafty Kaisergruft and knelt before the tomb of Angel Josepha. Our sister Elisabeth and I saw her that afternoon and kissed her good-bye once more. Already Josepha complained of feeling ill. Her cheeks were flushed with color, though she insisted she was cold. By the time Maman summoned us to the Rössel Room where the imperial physician somberly disclosed the worst, I was no longer allowed to see her.

  I fixed Josepha in my memory as she was on the last afternoon I saw her: a frightened girl in a gown of violet brocade, a good sister and an even better daughter—one who placed a higher value on her pledge to Maman than on her own brief life.

  October 15 was the day on which Josepha should have climbed into a grand traveling coach in the courtyard of the Hofburg. It was the day she should have ventured forth, clattering over the cobbles toward the unknown, a new life, first as a bride and a queen, and then as a mother, in a kingdom where a hot sun warmed a sparkling sea. But instead of waving our handkerchiefs, wiping our tears, and wishing my sixteen-year-old sister, Archduchess Maria Josepha Gabriella Johanna Antonia Ana of Austria, a safe journey to Naples, we were bidding her a final farewell as she took the ultimate unknowable journey, on her way to heaven.

  Josepha’s fears had been well founded, her terrified premonition correct. One of the Capuchins, his own face wet with tears, later admitted to Maman that in their haste to inter the corpse, Angel Josepha’s tomb had not been properly sealed, which is how my beautiful sister caught smallpox. More than ever I wished it were possible to turn back the hands of the clock, stopping them at a moment when the clergy or the doctors or someone would have noticed the—the literal graveness—of the error. But I could not trick Time. Now there were two Angel Josephas. I had been too hasty in naming the first.

  THREE

  Stalling for Time

  WINTER 1767–1768

  I knew better than to listen at keyholes and spy on people. I would have to confess my sin after Mass on Sunday. But I also knew that Maman and Joseph were discussing my future, and I would defy any twelve-year-old girl to restrain her curiosity under the circumstances.

  The pair of them were in Maman’s study, which she kept so chilly that the frosty air blew through the keyhole against my cheek. Outside in the Hofburg courtyard, the wind howled with alarming ferocity, swirling the late December snow in circular eddies. As I crouched beside the door and squinted into the room, I could see my eldest brother, tall and noble, known to the rest of the world as Franz Joseph of Austria, snap open his enameled snuffbox and place a pinch of tobacco in the crook between his right thumb and forefinger.

  “You were saying, Maman?” he said before inhaling sharply.

  Our mother scowled. “You know I think that’s an ugly habit.”

  “You don’t approve of anything I do.” Joseph chuckled. “Snuff is all the rage among titled gentlemen. But whether it’s progress, reform, or snuff, you have neither patience nor tolerance for modernity.”

  Maman sighed heavily, as if she knew her next sentence bore such import that it would require a massive exhalation to keep it hanging in the air. “I fear for the little one, Joseph.”

  “Many girls are wed at twelve.”

  Maman snorted. “Antonia at twelve looks ten. At her age, I had already begun to resemble a woman.”

  Our mother’s expression was grave. I’d started to notice that ever since she announced my betrothal, the pouches beneath her eyelids had been growing darker with fatigue.

  “You are aware, Joseph, that I am loath to admit an error in judgment. But it might have been a mistake to negotiate a treaty with the French when Antonia is so young. After all, the world—”

  “You mean France, Maman,” my brother interrupted. He availed himself of another pinch of snuff.

  “—cannot be expected to sit back and wait until Antonia grows taller and begins to develop,” our mother continued, as though Joseph hadn’t spoken a word. “Did you know that the very first thing Louis inquired of his ambassador to Vienna was whether Antonia had good breasts? I tried to offer him Charlotte, but she is older than the dauphin by two years and Louis wouldn’t hear of the match. Evidently the boy is as immature as Antonia. And as bashful as a violet. Louis feared that Charlotte would devour him.”

  I wondered what Charlotte would have made of Maman’s characterization of her and debated whether I should tell her. After all, it had been her idea for me to eavesdrop. My sister had convinced me that there were occasions when politics took precedence over piety—such as when one’s fate is in the balance.

  A footman approached and I straightened up, seized by the momentary fear that he might tell Maman. Then I remembered the vast differences between my rank and his. Still, I gave him a wink and touched my finger to my lips. He inclined his head respectfully.

  I knelt beside the keyhole again. Maman was speaking. “Austria cannot afford to delay much longer while Prussia and Russia rattle their sabers in earnest, threatening to carve into our territories as if the Hapsburg Empire were an enormous roasted joint. We need allies. We once had Parma. Now it is lost to us, and Lombardy with it, thanks to the English. And while the French have hardly been our friends, a strategic alliance with them will strengthen both our kingdoms by checking the ambitions of our enemies.”

  Joseph continued to pace anxiously. My eye began to twitch, and I drew away from the keyhole for a moment. “Then why not renegotiate the terms of the marriage treaty,” I heard him suggest. “Elisabeth is twenty-four; perhaps she should be offered to Louis—not for the young dauphin, of course, but for the king himself. His Most Christian Majesty is a widower, yet he remains a vibrant and most vital man with”—Joseph chuckled—“an immense … joie de vivre. He is still quite the roué, you know.”

  “I know Louis has mistresses.” My mother sounded like she had been sucking on lemon pastilles. I adjusted my position to get a
better view of her. She looked equally sour. “All sovereigns have paramours. And no matter their feelings, it is not for their wives to make scenes. Although she may have already lost his love, she risks losing something far worse if she berates him. She loses his esteem.”

  Joseph spoke in a low rumble. “Ça suffit. Enough, Maman. Papa is more than two years dead.” He rubbed his arms in an effort to massage some warmth into them.

  My torso was growing pinched from crouching so awkwardly within the carapace of my corset. Come to the point! I thought impatiently. Enough talk about husbands and wives and mistresses. What about my wedding to the dauphin! Moments later, Maman resumed the conversation. But her voice sounded strained. I imagined her thick body tensing beneath her black damask bodice. “I have already considered dispatching Chancellor Kaunitz to speak with France’s Foreign Minister, the duc de Choiseul. Let the diplomats sort it out—our representative and Louis’s. But there is no getting around the fact that your sister is no longer the beauty she once was.”

  A lump rose in my throat and I stifled a gasp. Did Maman mean me? Have I somehow lost my looks? Is it because I still resemble a child?

  “Look at Elisabeth through the eyes of a politician, Joseph, and not with those of a devoted brother.” My mother cleared her throat, endeavoring to suppress a telltale crackle in her voice. I knew that sound well; it was the harbinger of unwanted tears. “Elisabeth survived the smallpox, but her face is so ravaged with pockmarks that Louis would never have her. He might have done so once upon a time, but he prizes feminine beauty.” Maman sighed with tremendous resignation. “And your sister Amalia is also too disfigured to make an acceptable queen of France. No, it will have to be Antonia and the dauphin. What is done must never be permitted to be undone.”