The Accidental Empress: A Novel - Couverture souple

Pataki, Allison

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 147679474X ISBN 13 : 9781476794747

Editeur : Howard Books, 2015

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The Accidental Empress Chapter One

POSSENHOFEN CASTLE, BAVARIA

JULY 1853

Sisi crouched low, peering over the wall of brush. Her gaze was alert, her legs ready to spring to action, her heart pumping blood throughout her veins with a speed that only the hunted can sustain.

“Come out, you cowards!”

Just then Sisi spotted the figure crossing the meadow, a dark silhouette piercing the backdrop of the crenellated white castle and deep-blue sky, and she ducked once more out of sight. Her brother Karl had not yet found her, and he yanked on his horse in frustration, as if to remind the beast of the authority his sisters so brazenly flouted.

Sisi watched Karl, her contempt thickening as she discerned his thoughts: clutching the reins, he imagined himself a Germanic warrior atop a stallion, ready to ride on the Hungarians or the Poles and seize glory from the battlefield.

“Karl the Beneficent, Duke of Bavaria, demands that you come meet your lord and surrender!” He scoured the woods, his words finding Sisi even as his eyes failed to locate her. “Kiss the ring and I shall show you mercy—more mercy than you deserve. But if you continue to run and hide like rodents, I shall have to flush you out. And when I do, you shall wish you had surrendered!” The horse pawed at the ground, agitated under Karl’s grip.

Sisi was fed up with being the prey. The odds were not just; if she had had the chance to mount her own horse, Bummerl, she would chase Karl all the way to the Bavarian border, and he knew that. But she hadn’t expected to have to fend off her brother when she had wandered toward the wooded lake shore with her sister, Helene, to pick wildflowers.

“We should surrender, Sisi.” Helene crouched beside her, worry pulling on her sharp, dark features. “You heard him. Otherwise, he will make trouble for us.”

“Nonsense, Helene.”

Two years younger than Sisi, her brother was nearly twice her size, his thirteen-year-old body robust from adolescence, beer, and bratwurst. But though she lacked his girth, Sisi knew she could best Karl with wit.

“We’ll show Karl the Beneficent what a formidable foe he really is.” Sisi nodded at her sister, picking up a cool, smooth stone. Helene responded with a whimpering sound.

“So be it,” Karl hollered from outside the woodline, on the far side of the meadow. “You have chosen your own fate. And that fate is—pain!” Karl dug his leather boots into the sides of his horse. The beast whinnied in response, and then Sisi felt the earth begin to vibrate beneath her.

“Now we’re really in for it, Sisi.” Helene paced in their hiding spot like a wounded animal as the sound of hoofbeats grew louder.

“Hush, Néné.” Sisi quieted her elder sister. Oh, how she longed to be atop Bummerl! “Helene, when I say ‘run’—you run. Understand?”

“Run where? Right into the lake?”

“No.” Sisi shook her head. “In the other direction. Across the meadow, toward home.”

“Toward Karl?”

“Trust me, Néné, all right?” After a pause, Helene nodded her reluctant assent. Sisi poked her head out once more from behind the brush and saw that her brother had almost cleared the entirety of the meadow. He rode toward the woods where they hid, his eyes narrowed to two slits as he scoured the brushline. But he had not yet discovered their hiding spot. Sisi took aim, raising her hand and the rock in it. The hoofbeats were like cannon blasts now as Karl barreled toward them. She waited, patiently, allowing him to come still closer. When he was within striking distance, Sisi released the rock, hurling it with as much precision as she could manage.

“Ouch!” Karl yelped in pain, halting his horse and sliding out of the saddle before collapsing into a heap on the ground. From the stream of blood curling downward from his nose, Sisi knew she had hit her mark.

They had to seize their opening. “Helene, run!” Sisi ordered, pushing off from her crouched position. She charged toward home on the other side of the field.

“Why, you little witch!” Karl yelled at Sisi’s passing figure, but he remained prostrate on the ground, stunned by her assault.

Heart flying in the heady moment of victory, Sisi raced across the meadow toward the large house. Her own legs might not carry her as swiftly as Bummerl’s could, but they were strong, agile from years of skipping up the mountains, swimming in the lake, hopping across the fields in search of plants and small animals. They would be enough to deliver her to safety.

Glancing over her shoulder to ensure that Helene followed, Sisi cried: “Hurry up, Helene!” She grabbed her older sister’s arm, forcing her to keep apace. They shared the same parents, but little else. Helene thrived indoors: studying languages, reading philosophy, knitting, or writing quietly in a shadowy corner by a fire. Sisi always took charge when they were out of doors.

A few more steps and, hands linked, they cleared the meadow. Panting, Sisi rushed past a startled footman and flew into the front hall of the castle, Helene following behind her. Through the latticed window she saw that her brother had regained his mount and now trotted away from the lake toward home.

“Papa,” Sisi cried, running into the large drawing room. “Oh, thank goodness you’re here, Papa!”

Duke Maximilian’s inanimate frame occupied a large, overstuffed chair in the corner of the dark room. At his feet, beside his mud-licked boots, reclined two snoring hounds, their own paws caked in dirt. They lifted their heavy heads in a perfunctory greeting as the girls ran in, but the duke continued to snore. A lit pipe sent up a curl of smoke where it burned in Duke Max’s lap, forgotten.

“Papa, wake up.” Sisi removed the hot pipe before it singed a hole in his woolen pants, and placed it on the side table. “Wake up!” The duke choked out one last snore before he emerged from his deep slumber, his breath overripe with the sour stench of beer.

“Papa, Karl is chasing Néné and me. Please, wake up.”

“What’s that?” The duke rubbed his eyes, bloodshot and droopy-lidded.

Sisi heard her brother barking a question at the startled servants outside: “Which way did they go?” The front door opened and she heard Karl step into the great hall, his boots landing heavily on the stone floor.

“Ah, Sisi.” Now Duke Maximilian shifted in his armchair, staring at her through glassy eyes, the same honey color as Sisi’s, though not lucid this afternoon. “You’ve arrived just in time. I was just learning a new tavern song.” The duke looked at his favorite daughter with a drowsy grin, lifting an index finger as he began to sound out a bouncy, peasant tune. “But have the others left? Gone home, already?” Duke Max looked around, his gaze listless.

Sisi’s frame sagged as she heard Karl’s footsteps outside the drawing room. “Papa, please—”

“You little wretch, you’ll get it this time.” Just then, her brother appeared in the doorway. His nose seemed to have stopped bleeding, but a sheen of crimson had caked into a muddy line between his nose and lips. “You hit me in the face with that rock.”

Sisi straightened up, turning from her father to face her brother. “You deserved it.”

Helene began to simper. “Papa, please.” But their father stared into the sputtering flames of the fireplace, his empty beer mug tipped toward his lips in an effort to sponge any last drop.

“Sisi, what do we do?” Helene backed away from Karl. Sisi cursed under her breath as her victory turned to failure. She should have heeded Helene’s pleas and mollified Karl; her own reckless pride had led them to this.

“I’ll teach you sneaky whores to defy me.” Sensing weakness, Karl lunged first toward Helene.

“Get off her!” Sisi tightened her hands into two hard fists and prepared to land the first blow before what would undoubtedly turn into her own beating. She shut her eyes, so that she didn’t see the figure emerging just then through the doorway.

“There you are.” Duchess Ludovika swished into the drawing room, an imposing figure of black silk, crinoline-hooped skirt, and thick brown curls. Karl instantly recoiled at the sight of their mother, retreating into a shadowed corner.

“Good, you’re all here.” The duchess crossed the room in two quick strides and yanked open the drawing room curtains, setting free a cloud of dust. “Helene, Elisabeth, I’ve been searching everywhere for you girls.”

“Mamma!” Sisi ran to her mother, falling forward into the duchess’s long, slender frame. She shut her eyes, dizzy with relief.

“Sisi, my girl. Whatever is . . .” But the duchess paused as her eyes moved from Sisi toward her husband’s reposing frame, and the large slicks of mud darkening the carpet. “Look at this mud!” The duchess sighed, her shoulders rising and falling with each irritated intake of breath. “I suppose the servants will have to clean the carpet again.” Then, under her breath, she murmured, “And I’ll have to ask them to dust in here, as well. And this curtain needs mending. And I must remember to ask how the chickens are doing with eggs . . .” Ludovika sighed, tugging once more on the tattered curtains. Unlike her husband, who seldom concerned himself with the managing of their home or the petitions of the local peasants—and certainly not with the concerns of his children—Ludovika always had too many tasks, and too little time in which to complete them.

The duchess looked to her daughters now, the two of them cowering beside her like frightened kittens, and then to Karl’s bloody face. Understanding spread across her features. She let out a weary sigh, looking out the window, as if longing to escape this dark, mud-stained room.

“Gackl,” Ludovika spoke, her tone suddenly sharp. “Is that your horse I see in the garden, untethered?” Their mother used the familiar nickname for Karl, the name they had given him in his cradle because of the noises he had made. Gackl was the local Bavarian term for a dirty, barnyard rooster. Sisi thought it suited Karl just fine.

“Well, is it?” The duchess repeated her query when Karl didn’t respond. Karl looked out the window, fumbling for a reply. She cut him off.

“Go get that animal immediately and take it to the stables. If you can’t care for your horse properly, you shall have no horse at all.”

“Yes, Mother.” Karl answered, his ink-colored eyes burning with a warning to Sisi: This is not over.

“That boy.” The duchess turned from her departing son to her daughters. “And look at you girls—no better. As dirty as a pair of reapers.” The duchess scowled at Sisi, surveying the tracks of mud that lined her daughter’s skirt. Yet she never forbade them from wandering into the woods to pick flowers, or down to the lake to fish.

“Quiet down, Ludovika, I can hardly hear Frau Helgasberg speak.” Their father looked up at his wife from his armchair, momentarily pausing a conversation he appeared to be conducting in his head. Sisi felt herself cringe at the name. Frau Helgasberg was one of her father’s favorite mistresses. That he uttered the name now so unashamedly was nothing new: everyone in the home knew of her existence. Everyone in the duchy knew of her existence. And yet the brazen and frequent reminders of her father’s infidelity never failed to infuriate Sisi.

Ludovika, for her part, was unflappable, not faltering for a moment. “Max, how about a walk to the lake?” The duchess glided to her husband’s side and lifted one of the empty glasses to her nose. She sniffed disapprovingly and swept the other empty mugs into her hand.

“Up you go, Max, you’ve squandered enough of this day.” Ludovika pulled at the wool blanket covering her husband with her remaining hand, but he pulled back, keeping his arms on the cover.

“Away!” He growled, a loose dribble of slobber slipping out the side of his mouth.

“Max, I beseech you,” Ludovika kept her voice quiet, controlled. She was the picture of composure, even if she did feel the same frustration that now caused Sisi to seethe. “Get up. Please.”

“Stop this at once, Ludovika. And do not talk to me this way in front of our distinguished guests! The baron and I will finish our conversation.”

The duchess studied her half-lucid husband, apparently weighing the efficacy of arguing further. She sighed, and, turning to a footman, said: “Coffee for the duke. And quickly, please.” Turning back to her two daughters, she clapped her hands. “You girls had better go wash up. Change your dresses and come down for supper in something more fitting. Your father and I”—now the duchess threw a perfunctory glance in the general direction of her husband—“have news for you.”



“Sisi, my wild girl! Helene! Come sit, we are waiting on you two, as usual.” The duke appeared more alert at dinner, no doubt thanks to the mug of Turkish coffee his wife had placed before him.

The family was gathered in the castle’s formal banquet room, surrounded by the stuffed heads of the large caribou, reindeer, and bright orange fox that decorated the walls. The spoils of her father’s countless hunting expeditions. Watching him now, his frame jittery and his eyes bloodshot, it was difficult for Sisi to imagine Duke Maximilian hunting his way through Bavaria. But tales of his skill as a sportsman were well known; he was seldom at home in Possenhofen for more than a few months before fleeing on another such trip. He, like Sisi, loved the wilderness. Perhaps even more than he loved women and liquor.

“Your mother insisted that we all clean up for this dinner. What do you think she has afoot?” The duke grinned at Sisi, his amber eyes twinkling with teasing, and Sisi’s disdain for him lessened ever so slightly.

In their unstructured household, such formal dinners were a rarity. The duke was seldom at home in the evenings. Their mother, though she tried valiantly to impose some sort of order over a masterless household, found it hard to wrangle her brood of wild and free-spirited children. This time of year, with the days stretching out as they did, long and mild, Sisi’s evening meal was often little more than a bowl of cold soup whenever she wandered indoors, sun-kissed and dirt-stained, from a day spent in the fields and woods.

Sisi presumed that the formal dinner had to do with the news to which her mother had alluded earlier in the day. Was it possible that there was another baby on the way? What with the four siblings that had come since Karl—the little girls Marie, Mathilde, Sophie-Charlotte, and the baby boy, Max—Sisi had grown accustomed to such announcements. It seemed that, however much enmity existed between her parents, they both submitted willingly, and often, to the task of producing heirs for the duchy. Each one of Papa’s long absences was inevitably followed by his unexpected return: a chaotic, confusing family reunion; weeks later, news of another baby.

But Sisi did not suspect that that was her mother’s news this time; not when Mamma’s busy behavior lately had been so unlike her past pregnancies.

Sisi took a seat now at the large mahogany table beside Helene. She had dressed, according to her mother’s wishes, in a simple gown of black crepe, and the maid, Agata, had brushed and styled her long hair into two plaits.

“Black dresses again tonight. Always black.” Sisi had lamented to her sister and the maid while dressing before dinner.

“Hush, Sisi. Don’t let Mamma hear you complaining about the mourning clothes yet again,” Helene had chided her. Like her mother and Helene, Sisi’s wardrobe was ...

Revue de presse :

"This novel is captivating, absorbing, and beautifully told--I can't wait for the sequel!" (Kathleen Grissom, New York Times bestselling author of The Kitchen House)

"A love match alters the course of history...Pataki deserves kudos for choosing her subject matter well—Sisi's life is ideal fictional fodder." (Kirkus Reviews)

"Intricately plotted, Pataki's latest is engrossing and incredibly real." (Romantic Times (four stars))

"Another absolutely compelling story. I loved it." (Mary Higgins Clark)

"The Accidental Empress is lush, romantic, and enlightening—a truly lovely novel." (Therese Fowler, New York Times bestselling author of Z)

"Allison Pataki brings to life one of the most enigmatic, intelligent, and stunningly beautiful women ever to have graced a court in Europe. A remarkable novel about a truly remarkable empress!" (Michelle Moran, bestselling author of Rebel Queen)

"Once again Pataki stuns by diving deep into the pages of history and bringing up a heroine who is not only a jewel, but a red-blooded, complicated woman, allowing us to see history through a refreshingly new perspective. Smart, interesting, and chock-full of betrayal, intrigue, and love -- The Accidental Empress had me glued to the page." (Lee Woodruff, New York Times Best-Selling author and CBS This Morning contributor)

“With her meticulous attention to historical detail and powerfully entertaining storytelling skills, Allison Pataki is a force in historical fiction. Set amid the grand landscapes of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the wilds of the human heart, The Accidental Empress is an epic tale of honor, power, and love. Breathtaking!” (Erika Robuck, bestselling author of Hemingway's Girl)

"A glorious novel about a misunderstood empress...With a sumptuous sense of history and evocative attention to detail, Allison Pataki conjures the rebellious, glamorous spirit of Sisi of Austria." (C.W. Gortner, bestselling author of The Queen’s Vow)

"The Accidental Empress is a tale of royal love we don't know but should, and who better to share it with us than the supremely gifted and entertaining historical novelist, Allison Pataki. A delightful gift for readers...The Accidental Empress is enthralling." (-Allegra Jordan, Author of The End of Innocence)

À propos de cette édition

• Éditeur: Howard Books
• Date d'édition: 2015
• ISBN 10: 147679474X
• ISBN 13: 9781476794747
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 512