A year had already passed since Austria entered the Crimean War.
Which meant.
It had also already been a year since I had been left alone, waging war with the archduchess.
What was the point of being a soldier-emperor?
Was he really a soldier? He was the emperor!
“Whitey, you think so too, don’t you?”
I stroked the mane of Whitey, the white horse Joseph had given me as a gift.
Did he not like the name I gave him?
“Franzi, you think so too, don’t you?”
When I changed his name and called him Franzi, the fellow finally seemed satisfied and let out a snort.
“What’s so good about Franzi? I think Whitey is better.”
His lofty Majesty had left me here and gone off, hadn’t he?
“Empress.”
And there was the voice I did not want to hear, even at the riding grounds.
“Archduchess.”
“Show proper respect.”
“If Your Highness shows respect to me, I shall do the same.”
“Where did you learn the etiquette of remaining on horseback while conversing?”
“In Bavaria, I suppose.”
The archduchess knew perfectly well that it was nonsense.
After all, she too had been raised in Bavaria.
The archduchess glared for a moment at me, seated atop my horse and looking down at her, before speaking in an icy voice.
“Yes, Bavaria, of course.”
For a voice naming her homeland, it was filled with an extraordinary amount of contempt.
“His Majesty the Emperor is out on the front lines for the sake of the empire, yet the empress does nothing but laugh and play with beasts in a stable and talk back to her mother-in-law….
It seems that place’s unbridled ways have made you forget even your duties as empress.”
Her gaze dropped to my white horse.
“Is calling a beast by His Majesty the Emperor’s pet name also Bavarian etiquette?”
“Franzi is not His Majesty the Emperor’s pet name. Joscha is His Majesty’s pet name, Archduchess.”
I glanced over the maids standing back, frightened.
“But… did you threaten my maids again?”
“Threaten? Ha, don’t make me laugh.”
“Is that so? Then why are those girls so terrified?”
Still on horseback, I looked down at the archduchess.
“It is difficult to believe that Your Highness, so busy with matters of the empire, came all the way to this riding ground merely to teach me and my maids the order of the court.”
I lightly took hold of Whitey’s reins.
Even at my slightest movement, Whitey pawed the ground in place, pleased.
At my provocation, the archduchess did not shout or raise her voice.
“Those girls are afraid not because I threatened them, but because they saw the empress lowering her own dignity and fear the sparks may fall on them.”
The archduchess came closer and closer to me.
“I did not come all the way here merely to educate some maids. I came to set right the order of the imperial household that the empress has thrown aside.”
“Order?”
“Since the empress has abandoned her responsibilities as empress, I have no choice but to follow behind her and clean up this disgraceful mess.”
So all this chaos was my fault?
“The imperial palace would not stop functioning just because I am absent. To begin with, do I have any duties given to me? Is the empress someone who cannot even appear at official occasions without His Majesty the Emperor?”
They had stripped away every responsibility and authority, and now told me to bear only the duties.
“Do you wish for me to remain shut up in the empress’s palace?”
She probably did think so. But she could never answer yes.
She snorted.
“Have I misunderstood the meaning of seclusion? At a time of crisis, when His Majesty the Emperor is shedding blood on the battlefields of Lombardy for the empire,
the empress is secluded in a warm and safe stable. And I have disturbed that seclusion.”
A seclusion in which I abandoned my duties.
She put on the mask of the archduchess once more and spoke to me.
“If you think the responsibility of an empress is merely to show your face to the nobles in a banquet hall, it is proof that you are still immature.
At this very moment, the empress’s true duty is to care for charitable hospitals as the mother of the empire, to comfort the wounded soldiers, and to maintain order in this imperial palace so that His Majesty’s absence is not felt.”
She looked me up and down, taking in my attire.
“And yet, look at the state of the empress now.
With that vulgar Bavarian freedom, you are bringing down the dignity of the imperial household… The reason I have not treated you as an empress is because I am trying to correct an immature niece.
The authority the empress desires is granted only when she fulfills her responsibilities.”
Fine. I would do as she wished.
With Ferenc’s help, I dismounted.
“What are you all doing? The ride is over.”
***
Sophie watched her daughter-in-law dismount.
‘So she finally gets off the horse.’
Instead of satisfaction, she felt deep exhaustion.
That child did not think she had dismounted because she had violated the etiquette of an empress.
She had simply done so because she was tired of the nagging and wanted to escape the situation.
“What are you all doing? The ride is over.”
That blunt, willful tone she threw at the maids.
There was not even a speck of the dignity of an empress to be found.
‘That child covets only authority and freedom.’
She was the woman who, in order to preserve order, had even made her husband give up his right of succession and placed her young son on the throne as emperor.
And yet Sisi had brought the pestilence called freedom into the empire Sophie had protected with blood, gnawing away at everything she had built.
‘Joscha.’
That unfamiliar pet name Sisi had dared to utter left the tip of Sophie’s tongue stinging.
The empress had bewitched the emperor with such frivolous means and, in the end, driven him out to the battlefield.
And yet Sophie could not understand an empress who expressed dissatisfaction with the emperor being away at war.
“If the ride is over, review the list of慰問 gifts for the charitable hospitals and bring it to me before the day is out.”
With those words, Sophie and Sisi turned away from each other and left the riding ground.
‘When will I be able to make that immature, stubborn niece into the empress of Habsburg?’
The road was still long.
Sophie returned to her office and began the work that had piled up.
She opened the secret police report that Interior Minister Bach had submitted late the previous night.
Trends in public opinion within Vienna. Reports that in every salon, she and the empress were being divided into opposing sides in heated debate. There were even voices of dissatisfaction with the Bach system openly breaking out.
“Fools.”
Sophie picked up her pen.
The empire was in crisis, and she did not like that they were divided over such trivial reasons.
She began to write a letter to her son, the emperor.
「Congratulations on your victory at the front. However, in Vienna, the heart of the empire, there are seditious movements taking advantage of Your Majesty’s absence to disturb order—」
Sisi was not the only one dissatisfied with the emperor’s absence from Vienna.
Sophie likewise looked with displeasure upon Joseph, who had abandoned his role as emperor to act as the empire’s first soldier.
‘I told him so often that an emperor must have no emotions.’
As time continued to pass, Sophie realized that the list of慰問 gifts for the charitable hospitals she had told the empress to review still had not been submitted, and went to the empress’s palace again.
“You may not enter at this time.”
A guard blocked the archduchess’s path.
“You had best have a reason for standing in my way.”
Without the slightest change in expression, he calmly carried out the duty assigned to him.
“Her Majesty the Empress has said that she will not receive anyone in audience at this time.”
Sophie asked back, dumbfounded.
“Audience?”
Access had been forbidden before as well, but she had not expected them to go so far as to use the word audience.
“It is Her Majesty the Empress’s command, Your Highness.”
Sophie struggled to hold back a hollow laugh.
‘I demanded duty, and she answers with authority.’
Sophie did not continue arguing with the soldier.
It was clear that doing so would only diminish her own dignity.
She turned stiffly and headed back to her office.
The next day, and the day after that, no report came in.
“Head maid, has she requested to see the archduchess at all over the past week?”
“She has not.”
It was far too suspicious.
So much so that it was hard to believe this was the same empress who had come every day, if only to see her daughter for five minutes.
***
The battle that took place at Solferino was won thanks to the defensive line Marshal Radetzky had built with veteran skill.
The enemy was quite literally ground down against Radetzky’s defenses, and the Austrians forced the Franco-Piedmontese allied army to shed enormous blood no less than they had, ultimately holding the battlefield.
‘Water… water….’
‘Save… me….’
The screams, heard in Italian, German, French, Hungarian… in all manner of languages, continued to circle in his ears.
The supplies Sisi had sent had saved the soldiers, but the one who had driven those surviving soldiers into this slaughterhouse of Solferino today was none other than himself.
He gripped Sisi’s photograph tightly in his hand.
“Sisi….”
As if fleeing from this terrible reality, Joseph clung to Sisi, who was not here, and took comfort from her.
The tent flap was drawn back, and his adjutant raised a salute.
“Your Majesty. Marshal Radetzky wishes to ask about our tactics going forward.”
Joseph hurriedly put the photograph away.
Since this adjutant had been placed at his side by his mother, if he were discovered, word would surely reach his mother’s ears at once.
“We will discuss tactics in one hour.”
After confirming that the adjutant had left, Joseph took out the photograph again.
He heard murmuring outside the tent, but Joseph paid it no mind.
“Your Majesty.”
‘I must miss her badly. I’m hearing the empress’s voice.’
“Is that photograph so pretty?”
‘It is beautiful.’
Joseph caught the scent of perfume inside the tent.
‘…Perfume?’
When he slowly lifted his head and looked,
“Empress!”
The empress was there, having entered without a sound.
Joseph was speechless. Why was the empress here?
He shook his head to shake off his stray thoughts.
‘No, no.’
“Empress, do you know where this place is? Return at once. It is dangerous here.”
“Mother gave me permission. She told me to go慰問 the wounded, you see.”
That was not what Sophie had meant.
“My mother said that?”
Sisi nodded and straightened the things on Joseph’s desk.
“There.”
Sitting in the empty space on the desk, Sisi met Joseph’s eyes and said,
“She told me to fulfill my responsibilities as empress. And then she told me to go慰問, did she not?”