“Elisabeth.”
“Yes, Aunt.”
“You and Joseph seemed quite close. Close enough to call him by a pet name in the banquet hall.”
“I did?”
When had I ever called Joseph by a pet name?
Unable to hide her delight, Aunt smiled even more brightly.
“You’ve grown so close you don’t even realize it?”
“Joscha, drink it for me.”
Ah. I did. I really did.
“I made a mistake.”
I could feel both my cheeks burning.
“No wonder Sophie is in such a hurry.”
The archduchess, in a hurry?
“In a hurry? The archduchess is the most coldheaded person in the empire.”
“Sophie devoted her entire life to shaping Joseph. She must have poured affection into him as though he were her masterpiece.
She dried up his emotions, cut away private affection, and forged him into the perfect emperor, one who bore only the duties of the empire. She must have believed that was the only way to make this unstable empire stand firm.”
What had Joseph’s childhood been like?
Thinking of Rudolf, Joseph surely could not have had an easy time growing up either.
As I grew solemn, Anna’s hand touched the back of mine.
“But now, you are filling that empty space for him.”
Anna smiled gently and let her gaze drop briefly toward my lower abdomen.
“Congratulations.”
Anna changed the subject and brought up something new.
“Thank you.”
Was Joseph impressive, or were we simply that compatible?
Anna lightly placed her index finger to her lips and winked.
“I won’t say it aloud. If Nandi hears, by tomorrow all of Bohemia might be holding a festival. That man has no idea how to keep good news to himself.”
We looked at each other and burst into quiet laughter.
“May I ask why you came to Bohemia?”
So we were finally getting to the point.
The greatest reason I had come to Bohemia was, after all—
“For His Majesty to become the true king of Bohemia, he needs Uncle’s blessing. Please help him wear the crown not as the emperor of Vienna, but as the heir of Prague.”
She pondered for a moment, then asked me,
“Hungary and Sophie won’t simply stand by.”
As for Sophie, I would have to hope Joseph blocked her well.
Hungary could be held off until the Austro-Prussian War.
Now, while the Hungarian nobles were weak, Joseph had to ignore them and wear the Bohemian crown first.
That was why I had made him enter the Crimean War on Russia’s side.
“Hungary is… far too greedy. I love their freedom and their romance, but I cannot love their ambition as well.”
The moment we made the Great Compromise with Hungary, the Austrian Empire might become terminally ill.
After Hungary was given priority and the Dual Monarchy was formed, the first thing Hungary did was oppose the expansion of autonomy for other minorities.
“If you give them one thing, they will ask for two. If you give them two, they will demand half the empire.”
Whenever reform bills tried to look after the Slavs, Hungary exercised its veto in the Imperial Council and resisted.
“For all that, did you not love Hungary?”
“My ladies-in-waiting were Austrian, or Hungarian.”
Where on earth had the rumor that I loved Hungary spread from?
Anna looked me over, and at last she spoke.
“But surely you are not so naïve as to expect the Bohemians to obediently offer their loyalty to His Imperial Majesty with Nandi’s blessing alone?”
“I am merely trying to plant an expectation. An expectation of reversal in the Bohemians’ frustration that has been left to fester since the days of Empress Maria Theresa.”
Bohemia had originally been an important place, but because of the grudges from the War of the Austrian Succession, Maria Theresa had excluded Bohemia from politics.
And the final blow had been the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire.
Even their special status as electors had vanished, leaving them with the sense of loss that they had fallen into being just another province of Austria.
I stroked my belly and spoke as if making a vow.
“This child will be born here in Prague.”
*
After returning to the bedroom, I sank into thought.
I knew, roughly, what future lay ahead.
And I also knew how much I had distorted history so far.
Originally, at this point, I would have lost Sophie and completely let go of Gisela and Rudolf.
And I would not come out of the empress’s palace at all.
Joseph, though frustrated by me, would be unable to resist his mother…
Why had Joseph suddenly changed as a person?
That, I truly did not know.
We were supposed to have a major fight over Rudolf’s education, then, after defeat in the Austro-Prussian War, he was supposed to join hands with me politically in order to compromise with Hungary.
“Were you waiting for me?”
Even I had not expected him to change like that.
“Let’s say I was.”
He knew very well that I usually went to sleep a little later and woke up later, yet he still asked.
By the way. Something I had not seen had appeared again.
“You suddenly have a mustache?”
“Uncle gave it to me as a gift.”
To think that Joseph’s trademark mustache in the portraits had actually been a detachable fake.
I giggled and peeled the tuft of hair off his philtrum.
How fascinating. What a strange feeling.
“Were you that attached to it?”
“A little.”
But Joseph, that is not what you should be cherishing. The beard is not the problem. The top of your head is.
When I lightly patted the space beside me, Joseph sat down next to me as though he had been waiting for it.
“Sit here and wait just a moment.”
Let’s see, the ladies-in-waiting always carried something with them…
“What are you looking for so intently?”
“Just a moment.”
I rummaged through the luggage the ladies-in-waiting had brought, searching for what I needed.
“Found it!”
Triumphantly, I set two bottles on the bedside table.
One was filled with a dark brown liquid that sloshed inside, and the other contained a yellowish powder.
“What is all this?”
“A secret remedy for Your Majesty.”
“A secret remedy?”
Joseph first opened the lid of the brown bottle and smelled it.
“Coffee? You want me to drink coffee in the middle of the night?”
I snatched the bottle away from him and playfully wagged my index finger from side to side.
“Don’t eat it. Give it to your skin.”
“… What?”
Whether Joseph looked dumbfounded or not, I kicked off my slippers and hopped onto the bed. Then I positioned myself behind him.
“Now, stay still. You mustn’t move.”
I dipped my fingers into the sticky, reduced coffee concentrate and touched Joseph’s…
The angle was not right.
I crawled back down from the bed and stood in front of him.
With my left hand, I gently supported his chin, then began carefully rubbing coffee along the M-shaped line at the edges of Joseph’s forehead.
“It’s brewed very strong from the finest coffee beans left over by the imperial household.”
“Do you think coffee will have an effect on hair?”
“Won’t the caffeine wake up the sleeping roots?”
Joseph let out a small laugh, as though responding to my mischievous joke.
“Waking up hair roots—this is the first I’ve heard of such a thing.”
“You still don’t believe me after seeing my hair?”
If I said this glossy hair was all thanks to coffee and beer, he ought to believe it.
“It would be hard to find stronger proof than that.”
Joseph.
You were more worried than I thought.
So the reason you kept touching my hair lately was because of a sense of lack…
After applying coffee to Joseph’s hair, I immediately picked up the next bottle.
“Is that also for applying?”
“This one is for eating.”
When I opened the lid, Joseph recoiled in disgust and pulled his head back.
“Ugh, what is that foul smell?”
“Brewer’s yeast.”
“Yeast? Do you mean the dregs left over from making beer?”
“You know it well.”
“Wait a moment, Sisi.”
When I brought a teaspoonful of yeast close to his lips, he was horrified and seized my wrist.
“You intend to feed pig fodder to me, the emperor?”
“You know very well that the workers at breweries have thick heads of hair, don’t you?”
“That is merely a rumor.”
“Just as Jenner made a vaccine based on a rumor about the beauty of milkmaids, won’t it cost us nothing to try?”
Joseph squeezed his eyes shut and turned his head away.
“That, I absolutely cannot do.”
It could not be helped. Even a splendid office is no good if the person himself refuses it; I could not force it into his mouth.
I would just think of it as a substitute for beer and eat it myself.
“Wait!”
Joseph, horrified, snatched my wrist again.
“Wait.”
“Your Majesty said you would not eat it.”
“I would hate it even more if your mouth smelled of pig fodder.”
It was not that bad after adding honey.
“Then just beer—”
In the blink of an eye, the world spun around.
“Tonight, let us be satisfied with only the scent of coffee.”
Joseph pushed the bottle of yeast far away.
The bitter scent of coffee seeped into his own scent, creating a strangely alluring fragrance.
Ah, the coffee I put on his hair had not fully dried yet…
Well, did it matter?
“Joseph. You know.”
“I know.”
“No, not that. Can’t you speak more comfortably?”
“Speak more comfortably?”
I felt the arms wrapped around me tighten.
“Exactly what I said. That stiff way of speaking—‘I did so,’ ‘shall we go,’ ‘that is so.’”
I looked up at him with a dissatisfied expression.
“Can’t you not use it when it’s just the two of us?”
He narrowed his brow and spoke as if troubled.
“This is… the etiquette of the imperial family, and it is also my habit. I have been educated this way since the moment I was born.”
How stubborn.
“When you’ve even dyed your hair with coffee, can changing one way of speaking be so difficult?”
“I felt as though I, as emperor, would collapse.”
Come to think of it, he had said that in Milan four years ago.
“I know that way of speaking is like the last piece of armor to you.”
I reached out and gently brushed my thumb over his lips.
“But you don’t need to wear something that heavy all the way into the bedroom. Even Sisyphus needs to rest sometimes.”
He seemed about to say something, then stopped, only moving his lips.
“… What if I do not know how?”
“Surely you don’t mean how to speak normally?”
“How to speak as an ordinary man, not as the emperor—I have never learned it, ahem, never learned.”
The corners of Joseph’s lips trembled faintly.
“Is this… right?”