Becoming Marie Antoinette (10 page)

My first tutorial with the countess was unspeakably dull, a relentless litany of names, dates, and figures, few of which would remain in my head for more than a moment or two. By the end of the first half hour I found myself pacing about the room, tracing the patterns in the inlaid floor with the toe of my slipper, picking at the lint on the red velvet upholstery, and wishing that my new governess had a livelier disposition, while I was certain that she was wishing
me
to be considerably less exuberant and more attentive. More like Charlotte, perhaps. But try as I might—and I was truly making every effort to concentrate—I cannot learn when my mind is not entertained.

When the wearied countess decided that we had studied enough for one day, my relief was surely obvious. Lerchenfeld’s
frown illustrated her disapproval. The following afternoon I resolved to do better, but when my eyes began to glaze over during her recitation of the battles we fought during the Seven Years’ War, I changed the subject by asking her where she was born.

“Bavaria,” the countess responded, startled by my question.

“Do you ever miss it?”

Her eyes misted over, a reaction that surprised me. “It was a very charming place to grow up,” she told me. I believe it was the first time I had heard her speak of anything with a degree of sentiment. I suppose a human heart pulsed within her humorless husk of a body after all.

I rested my chin in my hands and gazed at her. “Please tell me about it,” I said. In the double blink of an eye, my question was no longer the diverting stratagem I had intended; now I was genuinely intrigued by whatever it was that had so touched my new tutor. “I want to know everything about Bavaria.”

“There are many beautiful forests and the air is fresh and sweet …” she began, followed by several hazily romantic reminiscences of her birthplace. Before we knew it, the countess was glancing at the elaborate mechanical clock near the wall. “My goodness, the time!” she exclaimed. “Well, we will have to finish up with the Battle of Lobositz tomorrow.”

I did not wish the Countess von Lerchenfeld to feel that we had frittered away another afternoon of instruction, so the next day I pleased her with my ability to locate Bavaria on a map, as well as the Schwarzwald, the Black Forest, recalling that she had proudly boasted of their clock-making and their cherry tortes. Perhaps, I suggested slyly, if I were to
taste
one of these confections, I might always remember our lesson on Bavaria!

The weeks flew by—which meant that my three months of purgatory in Fauchard’s Bandeaux would soon end; but it also signified the imminence of Charlotte’s marriage to King Ferdinand of
Naples. Outside the Hofburg, the frost was all but gone and tiny shoots of grass had begun to peek out from the cracks between the paving stones. Birdsong awakened me, and the afternoon light didn’t wane quite so soon. For the first time in my life I dreaded the coming of spring.

On the seventh of April, as the trees were beginning to bud, my beloved Charlotte, clad in cloth of gold with a tissue overlay of white organza, her bodice studded with precious gems, and her hair threaded with seed pearls and dressed high off her forehead, was united by proxy with the king of the Two Sicilies at the Church of the Augustine Friars in Vienna. The elegance and majesty of Charlotte’s bridal wardrobe could not have made a more incongruous contrast to the torment in her soul.

Our brother Ferdinand, who was only a year older than me, knelt beside Charlotte at the altar, representing his Neapolitan namesake. For one who was prone to boyish pranks, he took his responsibility quite seriously. My sister kept a glum but dignified gaze on the bishop during the entire wedding Mass. Earlier that morning Charlotte had warned me that she dared not glance in my direction for fear she would dissolve into tears. But she was made of sterner stuff than I, and I would do well to gain a bit of her mettle. With an impressive amount of confidence and maturity for a girl of fifteen, she was already determined to make the most of her destiny
in spite
of her new husband. That Ferdinand of Naples was a weak and indifferent sovereign was, to my clever sister, an asset she intended to turn to her advantage. She had heard he cared for nothing but hunting. “
Wunderbar!
” she’d told me. “
Magnifique!
While
he
amuses himself slaughtering innocent beasts,
I
shall consult the ministers and become the true ruler of the Two Sicilies. A king in petticoats and panniers.”

Nevertheless, the mood at her wedding reception—a grand meal of more than a dozen courses served in the ornately mirrored
Spigelsaal where we always dined on state occasions—was decidedly more funereal than celebratory, for once the toasts were over and the crystal goblets were drained, after the ices and cakes were consumed and the sticky dishes cleared away by a fastidious army of liveried servants, Charlotte would be bidding farewell to her family and her homeland. With every passing minute I grew more anxious, my heart beating faster, my stomach churning, aware that each second that had passed would never come again. By dusk, Charlotte’s presence would be no more than a memory that would begin to fade by the following morning; an echo of slippered footfalls, the imprint of her head on the bolster.

Above the courtyard of the Hofburg, the sky was mottled with patches of gray, threatening thunder. Behind three teams of matched bays, the enormous berline that would convey Charlotte out of Vienna, past Laxenburg just to the south, and over the Dolomites into Italy stood at the ready. To Maman this luxuriously appointed black and green carriage, its hunter green wheels embellished with pure gold, was an emblem of imperial splendor. The bride and I saw a sarcophagus on wheels.

All of us—Maman, Joseph, Christina, Elisabeth, Amalia, Leopold, Ferdinand, Maxl, and I—were gathered outside to say good-bye. Charlotte’s two ladies-in-waiting, her official chaperones, were already seated inside the carriage, their enormous skirts leaving little room for the reluctant bride. The horses, caparisoned and plumed in the Hapsburg colors of yellow and black, stamped impatiently as the coachman (indifferent to our sorrow as long as his purse was full) puffed away on his long-stemmed clay pipe. Charlotte’s retinue of German maids would follow, their departure unheralded by anyone of note.

Each of us embraced Charlotte, as of the past few hours the queen of the Two Sicilies. When it was my turn, we held each other so tightly that neither of us could breathe with ease. So close
were our torsos that I could feel my heart beating against the boning of her bodice. I twined one of her lightly powdered curls about my fingers in a gesture of girlish affection. “Do you feel any different, now that you are a queen?” I murmured.

Charlotte pulled away, just far enough to cup my face in her hands. “Just a little,” she admitted, adding with a wicked smile, “Now that I am a queen, I can contradict Maman if I wish!”

We shared a chuckle, choking up as we realized that it would be the last time we would ever be two little daughters of Austria, a pair of rosy cherries on a single stem.

“
Mein Gott
, I miss you already,” I whispered in her ear. A teardrop snaked its way down the side of my nose.

“Maman is watching us,” Charlotte said softly. It was almost an apology.

“Antonia,
ça suffit
,” our mother said. “That’s enough. Farewells are a part of life.”

Charlotte and I separated slowly, reluctantly, until only our gloved fingertips touched, lingering for one moment more as we pressed them together.

“Antonia. Enough.”

“Oui, Maman.” I stepped away from my sister, treading backwards, almost deferentially, afraid to meet Charlotte’s eyes again for fear of erupting into sobs.

With great formality, Maman kissed Charlotte on both cheeks. “Godspeed, my daughter. Bring honor to the House of Hapsburg with your piety, your good sense, and most of all, your fertility.”

My sister’s eyes were moist. But when Charlotte was helped up the traveling steps and handed into the coach, the fullness of her emotions got the better of her. My heart was breaking as I stood on the cobbles, wobbling in my court heels. I lifted Mops into my arms and waved at her with his paw; his tawny coat soon grew wet with my tears.

A crack of the coachman’s leather whip spurred the horses into action and the carriage clattered out of the courtyard, swaying side to side. But just before it reached the gate, the driver pulled up the teams and brought the berline to an abrupt halt. The door flew open. A footman scrambled to unfold the traveling steps as Charlotte vaulted past him onto the paving stones, practically losing her shoes. “Toinette!” she cried. Hitching up her heavy skirts, yards of fabric trailing behind her, she ran straight toward me as though her life depended on it. I handed Mops to Maxl and opened my arms to receive her. For several moments we remained in a fast embrace, motionless but for two pairs of gently heaving shoulders.

“I have not yet met my husband, and already I am unhappily married,” Charlotte murmured, her words intended for my ears alone. “I cannot conceal my fear that your destiny will be the same as mine.” She kissed me on the mouth. Her lips were soft and tasted of the salt from her tears. Charlotte drew back a few inches and regarded my own doleful face. “
Sois courageuse
, Toinette. Be brave.” Her words were as much a reassurance to me as an effort to find that resolve within herself.

Charlotte turned and without another word walked back to the berline as if she were about to mount a scaffold—head raised, chin defiantly high. Her final, cathartic burst of emotion over, she was now a proud martyr to her fate. The courtyard was eerily silent. We watched as the footman handed her into the carriage once again, then heard the soft
thump
of the closing door, the click of the turning lock, and the coachman’s command to “Drive on!” As Charlotte rode away from Vienna forever, I saw her face pressed to the glass, trying to capture one last glimpse of home. I would not see her again.

S
UMMER
1768

Following Charlotte’s departure, Maman declared the Rosenzimmer a permanent classroom, or perhaps more accurately a laboratory, where with a good deal of alchemy an Austrian archduchess would be transformed into the French dauphine. The enormous mechanical clock sitting regally in its four-postered gilded case kept track of the time by striking once every quarter hour and on the hour itself, when miniature likenesses of my parents emerged and danced a minuet with each other to the accompaniment of a music box embedded within the clock. It made me feel closer to Papa to take my lessons in the Rosenzimmer and I believe Maman, too, felt as though he was watching over my progress. I often thought that she had spent her entire store of sentiment on my father, and consequently had none to spare for their offspring. With her singular combination of devotion and precision, she even knew exactly how long she had been married
to Francis of Lorraine, having recorded the exact moment of Papa’s death in her prayer book.

I liked to imagine that my marriage to the dauphin—should it ever finally happen—would prove just as felicitous. And if God should choose to take him before me, I hoped, too, that I would miss him as much.

Among the thousands of rooms that lay within the vast Hofburg, the Rosenzimmer was one of my favorites—although I had yet to see even a fraction of them because our family affairs were conducted where we resided, in the Leopoldine wing, named for Maman’s grandfather. The Rosenzimmer derived its name from the decorative oil paintings above each of the doorways—glorious still-lifes of roses, in every size and hue imaginable. When I was younger I tried to convince my sisters that the room itself smelled of roses. It was years before I discovered that the scent that clung to the crimson upholstery, the heavy velvet drapes, and even the oils, was our mother’s perfume.