The Accidental Empress by Allison Pataki Read Free Book Online

Johann Strauss had begun composing in Vienna. The frogs in nearby Lake Starnberg belched and blurted out their familiar amorous rhapsodies. Sisi spread her arms wide and looked up at the moon, laughing, reveling in and embracing everything about this night.
    Sisi’s parents had not raised her to be strictly religious. Spiritual, yes, but not dogmatic. Her father had even shown himself to be lenient when it came to the Reformers in the duchy, the Protestants who so brazenly flouted the Catholic Church and received punishment for doing so elsewhere.
    But they had imbued in Sisi an appreciation for the Almighty and His presence all around her. While God felt elusive and difficult to find in some of the dank old churches—His words garbled in impenetrable Latin—Sisi felt His undeniable presence in the majesty of the mountains, in the inevitability of sunrise and the softness of moonlight. God was the unseen power that set in motion the natural world; the seasons that ripened and shifted, each one beautiful in its own way; the chamois that leapt uphill without tiring or the stallion that outran the wind.
    Oh, how she would miss Possi!
    Sisi remained outside, tracing the perimeter of the squat white castle in silence for quite some time, when suddenly her musings were interrupted by a rustling noise. A sound decidedly different from the crickets and the owls. A human sound. She turned and saw him: a figure gliding across the meadow, in the direction of the village. It was dark, but Sisi knew immediately whose retreating shape she saw. “Papa,” she said. Quietly, so he wouldn’t hear her. Off, most likely, to see some female consort of his. Sisi sighed.
    “Please let Franz be more faithful to Helene than Papa has been to Mamma,” Sisi begged, sending the prayer out into the warm, still night.

II.

    Once I was so young and rich
    In love of life and hope;
    I thought nothing could match my strength,
    The whole world was open to me.
    —Empress Elisabeth “Sisi” of Austria

Chapter Two
    IMPERIAL RESORT AT BAD ISCHL, UPPER AUSTRIA
    AUGUST 1853
    Sisi found it hard not to grow disheartened when she watched her sister, sitting beside her in the coach and trembling like a frightened doe before the archer’s bow.
    “You’re going to be lovely, Néné. But you must smile !” The duchess seemed to be wrestling the same anxiety as she spoke to her elder daughter. Helene offered no reply.
    “Just a few more hours now, then we’ll be able to stop and freshen up. We’ll change our clothes before we arrive at the imperial resort.” The duchess managed an upbeat tone, but Sisi noticed that her mother did not attempt a smile. Did not mask the severity of the headache that had plagued her for most of the journey.
    Her mother had spent most of the long hours in the coach with her eyes fixed shut—wincing at each smack of wheel against the rutted dirt road, massaging her temples with weary fingers. When at last Mamma did open them, her eyes were uneasy, darting back and forth between her two daughters. Was Sisi imagining it, or was Ludovika studying them, as if comparing her two girls? Was that merely a jostle of the coach, or did Mamma shake her head ever so slightly, sighing, as her eyes moved from Sisi to Helene?
    Their resemblance had seemed to evaporate the instant they had set out from Possenhofen Castle. Sisi, invigorated by the journey and eager to meet her aunt and cousin, had grown more wide-eyed and merry throughout the weeks-long trip. The fresh air along the Alpine road agreed with her; her cheeks flushed a rosy hue, her honey-brown eyes shone alert and vibrant, and her voice was cheerful as she remarked on the fields and villages they passed.
    Beside her slouched Helene, who had been too nervous to either eat or sleep very well on the journey, and whose ashen skin appeared almost translucent against the drab black of her mourning clothes.
    “We’ll get out of these black mourning clothes first thing,” their mother