Pauline had thought, when the Empress first summoned her, that she intended to use the Metternich family’s connections to keep the Archduchess in check from behind the scenes.
When she had first met the Empress at that tea party, she had thought that if Sisi only stepped into society, she would be able to take it over in no time.
Sisi’s beauty captivated men and women alike. Pauline, on the other hand, had no confidence in her looks, to the point that she mockingly called herself the ugliest yet most charming monkey in Vienna.
But society’s interest in her quickly cooled. Everyone in Vienna knew that the Empress disliked society and rarely appeared there.
‘Even when she held a salon, she only invited a small number of people.’
On top of that, the two were complete opposites in temperament.
Sisi was introverted and yearned for freedom, while Pauline was extroverted and set trends.
And that Pauline was now staring blankly at the Empress, who had become one with her horse.
‘Did she not clearly ask me to help her?’
As if to make a mockery of those words, Sisi continued to display one dazzling movement after another.
Pauline doubted her own eyes. The Empress barely moved the reins. Merely by shifting her center of gravity ever so slightly in the saddle, the enormous horse moved as though it were reading the Empress’s thoughts.
When the Empress brought the horse to a halt, the horse stopped advancing, but its energy did not cease. Its hooves began to dance in place.
Each time the chandelier light caught the sweat-slick muscles of the horse, the Empress and her mount showed an elastic trot that seemed to defy gravity.
“Your Majesty?”
The Empress seemed not to hear her call.
When Sisi moved ever so slightly once more, the horse advanced.
‘With skill like that, why on earth would she ask me?’
She wondered why the Empress had appealed to her in such a frail voice, saying that there was “no strength at all in her legs.”
‘This is a test.’
The Empress was surely testing her now.
Whether she was a friend worthy of sharing this secret with, and whether she could become her political ally.
While Pauline was caught in confusion, the Empress turned her horse at the end of the riding hall.
A pirouette, spinning like a top. With the horse’s hind legs as its axis, it drew a perfect circle without losing its rhythm for even a moment.
And then came the most difficult moment.
The Empress gathered the reins. The horse lowered its powerful hindquarters, collected itself… and rose.
With its forelegs neatly tucked to its chest, the horse balanced perfectly on its hind legs and stood still like a sculpture. And Sisi, atop that perilous sidesaddle, maintained her balance with a serene expression.
After circling the riding hall and returning, Sisi looked at Pauline with an expression of belated realization and smiled awkwardly.
“As you can see, Pauline. My body won’t move the way I want it to… It’s all because I didn’t recover properly after childbirth.”
Pauline swallowed dryly.
‘… Ordinary noble ladies do not perform equestrian feats like that.’
She wondered how she was supposed to take this shameless joke from the Empress.
***
I’m not entirely sure what just happened either.
It just felt like the horse moved on its own?
It was so enjoyable that I couldn’t tell whether I was the horse or the horse was me.
Right now, I felt as though I could even show off the riding techniques I had practiced for drama filming.
… Though, of course, I would have to ride astride for that.
“Ah, yes. That…”
I hadn’t meant to deceive her on purpose, but it ended up that way.
“Pauline, we agreed to be friends, didn’t we? You can speak honestly.”
Pauline glanced at the riding hall where I had just been, then looked back at me.
“If a woman who failed to recover properly after childbirth could ride as Your Majesty just did, every noble lady in Austria would give birth and immediately rush to the riding hall. Myself included.”
She gave a faint smile.
“That is my honest answer, Your Majesty.”
She was the first friend in court to whom I had opened my heart.
Pauline took one step closer to me and lowered her voice.
“And… as a friend, allow me to say one more thing.”
She whispered in a voice no one but me could hear.
“Today, I saw only Your Majesty weakened by the aftereffects of childbirth, with so little strength in your legs that you struggled even to mount a horse.”
“Thank you, Pauline.”
I smiled playfully.
She stepped back to a distance proper for etiquette and gave a Hofknicks.
“The honor is mine, Your Majesty.”
I lightly placed my arm through Pauline’s, linking arms with her.
It was a gesture outside official etiquette, one that only friends would do.
Pauline’s shoulders stiffened slightly, but soon she naturally matched my pace.
“There’s too much dust. I’m thirsty, so I should finish the tea we were drinking earlier.”
As we left the riding hall, I deliberately spoke in a light tone.
“Of course, Your Majesty. But will you be all right after such strenuous exercise?”
“You have a more mischievous personality than I thought.”
We walked down the quiet corridor and laughed as we looked at each other.
Returning to the room where we had held the tea party, we sat down and fell into lively conversation.
Pauline told me about the society I could not mingle with.
“To be honest, Your Majesty, Viennese society has misunderstood you.”
“Misunderstood me?”
“Everyone thought of Your Majesty simply as a beautiful Empress suffocating under court life, someone who needed protection. They believed you avoided society merely because you were shy, or because Bavaria’s free-spiritedness could not endure court etiquette.”
I gave a small, barely noticeable shrug.
“That’s not wrong. I really do find it stifling.”
Pauline nodded at my words and looked at me with a more serious gaze than before.
“That suffocation is not Your Majesty’s fault. The very air here is like that.”
She fiddled with her teacup.
“As for society… last night, a duchess arrived with an enormous stuffed bird-of-paradise mounted on her head.”
Was she about to gossip about someone?
Contrary to my thoughts, Pauline did not sneer, but continued calmly.
“In truth, the important thing was not the bird. What mattered was that every noble lady who saw that bizarre ornament could do nothing but watch one another’s reactions, wondering, ‘Could that be Her Imperial Highness the Archduchess’s new taste?’ No one dared say a word.”
She looked straight at me.
“In Vienna, individual taste does not create trends. Her Imperial Highness the Archduchess’s gaze does. Everyone tries to conform to her strict standards, so of course it feels stifling.”
I listened closely to Pauline’s words.
“Your Majesty came from Bavaria. Your very freedom is the fresh air this gloomy court needs. Unfortunately, however, in this place, being different is easily interpreted as being wrong.”
“… Pauline, do you also want me to enter society?”
She shook her head.
“I strove to become the star of society in order to prove my worth, but Your Majesty must have another path.”
I felt I understood why Pauline had become the star of society.
She told people exactly what they wanted to hear—
“For example… something like the Empress Elisabeth Railway, or the Empress Elisabeth Bridge.”
With a bright smile, she tossed me a mischievous joke.
Scratch that, scratch that.
Oh, honestly.
I remembered something I had barely managed to forget.
***
As Pauline rode home in her carriage after tea time, she thought of the Empress she had met that day.
‘At first, I thought she was an Empress trying to maintain dignity.’
Around the time of the wedding, and at the first tea party, that had certainly been her image.
‘The image of an Empress Her Imperial Highness the Archduchess desired.’
When news spread that the Empress was pregnant and she closed the doors to society, living in what was practically seclusion, many rumors had circulated about Sisi in the beginning.
The rumor that had spread the widest, and that many believed to be true, was that she was the broken wild rose of Bavaria.
There were those who pitied the Empress, trapped in the cage of the court and fallen into depression, and the faction of the Archduchess, who believed the Empress’s education was finally complete. Rumors abounded that she had been made to focus solely on her duty as Empress: bearing an heir.
‘The rumor of discord with His Majesty the Emperor was the most dangerous.’
Even Archduchess Sophie had been horrified enough to send out the secret police.
The misunderstanding had been cleared up by the incident on Archduchess Sophie’s birthday, but rumors of discord between the Empress and Emperor were by no means good for the Empire.
‘Rumors that she was bedridden from an obsession with beauty, and that she was politically incompetent and ignored… As for ignoring politics, that is true to some extent.’
But in Pauline’s eyes, the Empress she had met again today did not seem incompetent.
‘The one who moved His Majesty the Emperor did not appear to be Her Imperial Highness the Archduchess, but Her Majesty the Empress.’
Pauline looked out the carriage window and smiled bitterly.
The reason her marriage talks had proceeded earlier than expected was also because Richard von Metternich, who had been serving as ambassador to France, had been recalled to Vienna.
“Even her frailty… could that perhaps have been an act?”
Pauline instinctively realized that she had been put to the Empress’s test, and that today she had narrowly passed it.
***
“Your Majesty. Are you that happy?”
“I’m going to see my daughter.”
And I had made my first friend in Vienna.
But why was Pauline so unconfident about her looks? She looked ordinary, but not so ugly that she needed to demean herself as a monkey.
Should I send her some of the cosmetics I use?
“Your Majesty the Empress. I have been waiting for you.”
Baroness Charlotte von Welden. The watcher I had to face every time I came to see my daughter.
“Her Imperial Highness the Archduchess has just had her milk and is in the best possible mood.”
Her tone made it sound as though she had even perfectly adjusted the child’s mood to match the time of my visit.
“Good work.”
When I opened the door and stepped inside, I saw an ornate lace-trimmed cradle placed in the middle of the room.
And beside it, seated in a chair as she watched her granddaughter, was Archduchess Sophie.
“Empress, you have come.”
She merely inclined her head, not even rising from her seat.
So this is her territory.
The title of Empress and that condescending “you have come” truly did not go together.
“Fortunately, Sophie was just about to fall asleep. She must have been waiting for her mother.”
Even the small joy of seeing my daughter had to be watched over by my mother-in-law.