Becoming Marie Antoinette (17 page)

It fell upon the marquis to transport the canvas to Versailles—along with the portraits that Monsieur Ducreux had painted of the rest of the imperial family. Maman had no intentions of giving the impression that she was overtly anxious for my formal marriage proposal, although that was precisely how she felt. Yet Louis of France could never be allowed to suspect as much. My mother pretended that my portrait was merely one of many, a gift from the Hapsburgs to the Bourbons.

But there was not a person involved—not in the Mirror Room at Schönbrunn or in the Hall of Mirrors in the palace at Versailles, who did not see through the ruse.

A month later, the marquis returned, bearing with him the document that fulfilled all my mother’s hopes and dreams for the Hapsburg Empire: King Louis’s official request, dated the seventh of June, 1769, for my hand in marriage on behalf of his grandson, Louis Auguste, dauphin of France.

Although she imbibed but one celebratory sip, Maman commanded that hundreds of bottles of Alsatian wine be brought up from the palace cellars. The melodious sound of tinkling crystal resonated throughout Schönbrunn’s lofty ceilinged rooms; by nightfall there would be nary a minister or ambassador, footman
or maid, nor a single one of the fifteen hundred court chamberlains, who was not a bit tipsy.

I wished to see the document that spelled out my destiny, imagining that it would have a great golden seal affixed to it, or that it would be embossed with a lily, the royal insignia of France, bound in white ribbons to denote the House of Bourbon.

But the formal request for my hand was none of these things. Was it inauspicious that such vital news be conveyed in nothing more momentous than an ordinary letter? After such lengthy (and in truth ongoing) negotiations for my hand and improvements to every other body part, I suppose I had expected a fanfare of trumpets and something on the order of a royal proclamation or decree. I imagined that flags representing our two houses might be flown from some lofty vantage, announcing the royal union to all and sundry.

But the modest form of the offer in no way diminished my mother’s relief. Her voice quavered with emotion—and something else: victory. “Oh, my little one,” sighed Maman. She beckoned me into her arms and I found myself both grateful and confused at her rare display of affection. So tightly did she envelop me that the stiff ruching of her bodice prickled my cheek. Finally, after all I had undergone to become worthy of the title of dauphine, the goal was to become a reality. Louis had viewed Monsieur Ducreux’s likeness of me and approved of the result.

Through the hot tears welling in our thankful eyes, Maman’s private salon—the Millions Room—became a blur of red, white, and gold. Even the crystals in the massive candelabrum above our heads seemed to wink with joy.

“Easter, he says.” My mother had released me from her embrace. A determined finger pointed to the formal commitment from France. “Louis proposes that the wedding should take place next Easter.” Her eyes were dry now; no hint of sentiment remained,
and Maman was once again every inch the empress. “Which would fall in the middle of April, would it not, monsieur l’abbé?” She directed her attention to my tutor, who commended her swift calculations.

“April? Why, that’s nearly a whole year away.” I felt tugged in two directions: happy that Maman’s great plans for me would indeed bear fruit, yet secretly pleased that my departure for a distant kingdom to reside among strangers for the rest of my days would not, after all, be an imminent one.

But Maman appeared displeased by Louis’s forestalling of the great event even as he confirmed my formal betrothal to the dauphin of France—heavens, he’d even sent her a fine set of Sèvres porcelain to commemorate the alliance! But she did as she always managed to do in such circumstances: turn the situation to her advantage.

She regarded the troika of men in whose trust she had placed my transformation and the success of her empire’s foreign policy: the patient, russet-haired abbé; Louis’s outspoken and impetuous minister, the duc de Choiseul; and our suavely elegant ambassador, the comte de Mercy.

“My fondest hope and my deepest fear,” she began, “realized and recognized. Vermond, the archduchess’s French remains deplorable and her proficiency with the written language far worse. Her moral character wants significant improvement as well; she is far too impressionable and naïve—
une vrai ingénue
—to navigate the hornets’ nest that passes for the Bourbon court. The alliance rests on slippery terrain as it is, but it will founder in the mire of political intrigue if she does not develop the skills and the confidence not merely to hold her own but to dominate—and all without appearing to do so. In a manner of speaking, to be a king, you have to learn to be a king.”

The men gravely nodded their concurrence.

“Ten months purchases us much time,” she said, with a surreptitious glance at my nonexistent bosom and a note of panic in her voice. “You will be that much more prepared to kneel at the altar beside your husband and, upon a certain unhappy event, ascend the throne of France.” She added sternly, “Make no mistake, Antonia, you still have much to learn.”

Maman lowered her hand, an indication to kneel before her, as though I were about to receive a benediction. She made the sign of the cross and kissed me gently on the forehead. “I expect great things from you, little one,” she said, and her tone made it impossible to offer any contradiction. “You will not disappoint me.”

I knew, even as I softened my knees into a curtsy and left the Millions Room, its heavy door shut behind me by a silent pair of footmen, that her words were not in fact a blessing. They were a command.

My sister’s letter did more to frighten than to gladden my heart, though I expected nothing less than candor from her. Sugary effusion was not her way. Secretly I remained overwhelmed by the fact that in less than a year, I, too, would be a bride. And would Charlotte’s unhappy fate be mine as well? I had never seen Louis Auguste; the king of France had yet to send a portrait, although
he now had more than one likeness of me. Perhaps my husband would not be at all like hers. And yet, among Charlotte’s many talents was the ability to think several moves ahead in any game of chess (a pastime I could never bend my mind to); when she assessed my future, what portents did she see?

“Do you think this must be what it’s like to be in prison?” I asked Maman. At her insistence we had journeyed to the convent at Marizell. “Why are we here?” I asked petulantly.

“You know the reason perfectly well. And please do not shift your feet so; stand like a proper young lady. We are here because I made my First Communion at the shrine in the Basilica, and before you go to France, I would like you, too, to kneel before the statue of the Blessed Virgin.”

But that was a hundred years ago
, I thought, sighing heavily.

She gave me an exasperated look and, clucking with disapproval, continued to unpack her trunk. I was to do the same, as no servants had accompanied us. It was just to be the two of us: Maman and I. The walls of the cell were bare of embellishment, except for a wooden cross mounted on the white plaster above each of the two cots.

At least the chamber was cool, the thick, stuccoed walls prohibiting the August heat from permeating. It smelled slightly damp and fusty, like a boot that has not quite dried after being left out in the rain. The tiny, barred window was so high that it was useless for providing a view. I thought of my oldest sister, who presided over a convent in Prague. “Do you think Marianne enjoys being an abbess?” I said. How could anyone go from a life at court—so vibrant, so colorful, so gay—to a place so dull, drab, and so dreadfully quiet that the finches in the tree beyond the window seemed to deafen one’s ears with their calls.

“Of course Marianne enjoys being an abbess,” my mother
replied with a note of annoyance. She motioned to me to unlace her stays so she could exchange her corset and petticoats for a coarse shift.

“Must I do that, too?” Maman nodded mutely and placed her finger to her lips. “But if we must be silent here, then what is the point of our visit? I thought you said we came here to talk, woman to woman.” Frankly, I felt like even more of a child—one in need of special attention, like a stray lamb being returned to the fold.

When she made no reply, other than to loosen my laces so that I could undress myself, I pressed on. “Do you think the Virgin will bless my marriage to the dauphin? Will she bring me luck, do you think?” The Virgin Mary was Austria’s patron saint. It never made much sense to me that we were all supposed to make good marriages yet at the same time venerate a woman who had never wed. I unrolled my white stockings and tossed them on the floor. A look from Maman and I retrieved the hose and placed them in my wooden trunk. Then I slipped my bare feet into a pair of crudely made brown leather slippers.

Having jettisoned the costly trappings of empire—yards of black brocade richly embroidered, with an embellishment of gemstones around the neckline—Maman didn’t seem nearly as formidable. The woman who stood before me, strapping leather sandals to her pale and slightly callused bare feet, could have been any dowager of a certain age, with tired eyes and a treble chin. I looked more closely at her feet, noticing for the first time the blue veins beneath her nearly translucent skin, and a yellowed, ingrown toenail. A shiver descended the length of my spine. I was not so sure I liked to witness the empress of Austria appearing so vulnerable. I saw then, in a fleeting instant, that my country’s insuperability lay indeed within my hands; it had never before seemed as apparent to me.

“It is not about luck, Antonia; it is about faith,” Maman said simply.

Like my pug Mops when he got a beef bone, I refused to shake off my present train of thought. Perhaps I thought it would bring back the Maman I was used to: formidable but familiar. “If Marianne had not been a cripple, would you have brought her here too, before her marriage?”

“Your eldest sister chose the religious life, Antonia. Now cease the impudent questions at once.”

I didn’t believe her. Maman was not the sort of mother to cheerfully allow one of her daughters to embrace God, instead of the prince of somewhere or other, solidifying a new alliance for the Austrian empire.
You, fortunate Hapsburg, marry
did not apply to becoming a bride of Christ. Marianne was nearly seventeen years my senior; she would be thirty-one in October. I was too little when she’d left for the nunnery in Bohemia to remember much about her. I wondered how many babies she would have had by now if she had not been born with a deformity of the spine. I wished I had known her.

“And don’t say ‘cripple,’ ” Maman added. “It is an ugly word.”

The long white shift was scratchy against my skin. Had it been woven of nettles? The idea of wearing it for a whole week seemed like torture. Even my detested corsets were preferable.

For one week, my mother and I subsisted on water and brown bread with thick, chewy crusts, like the pilgrims we were. If any of the nuns knew that their visitors were the empress of Austria and her youngest daughter, they did not say a word. For that matter, they did not say a word at all. I don’t know whether they had taken vows of silence, or whether they had nothing to say to us. I could not tell from their placid expressions whether they were happy, or even if they thought about happiness.
When did they stop feeling such pain in their knees?
I wondered every time we knelt on
the cold slate floors. After only one day of repeated genuflection, my legs were purple with tender bruises.