Je T'aime. - Chapter 29: Chapter 29

When I awoke in the morning she was gone. I rolled over in bed, hoping to be met by her presence but all I was greeted with was a bundle of tossed blankets and a warm spot in the bed. She must have just left. The sheets had a faint aura of rose and sandalwood. Her banyan and her shoes were gone. She was like a ghost. A beautiful, charming ghost.
I stared at the trotted down sheet where she had once slept beside me. Something so simple as a wrinkle in a piece of fabric could stir up so many emotions within me. For eighteen years of my life I had slept alone in my bed, and it caused me no troubles to wake up solitary. But now that I had shared a sleep, an empty bed felt cold and distant, and to be quite frank, it hurt.
I decided to wash down my woes with coffee. I looked outside, and it looked quite miserable. The snow had been soiled by time into a horrible gray slush, and yet it was still too cold to be able to do anything. The sky was nearly as gray as the ground. In order to lift my own spirits I put on a gown of a brilliant sky blue, lined with white fur. It was some kind of mink fur, I guessed. The French made a lot of money selling furs in their territories in the Canadian wilderness. So did the British, selling timber wood and tobacco in their lands on the Atlantic coast. And yet my mother pushed further and further into the bald, well-grazed lands of Europe.
Hofburg has a lovely sitting room in the middle of the palace, just below my apartments. I smiled as I sat down on an armchair near the fire. My little sibling's toys were scattered all over the floor. They made a treacherous path to cross, but they were lovely nonetheless. A servant served me my coffee, and I had to push one of Carolina's dolls off of the table so I could put down my cup. On second thought, I wanted to have a look at the doll. It was wearing a purple dress, which had supposedly been made by Isabella. If she had made this in a bigger size, I most certainly would have worn it.
A footman came into the sitting room. Luckily, I had finished my coffee by then. "Your Highness, your presence has been requested by Father Lachner in the Augustinian Church."
The path to the Augustinian, which was located in the same complex as the main palace buildings, was through a Medieval-era hall past the center courtyard. This hall was free-standing, and was complete with the Gothic architecture of the days of a deadly plague. The old, wavy windows seemed to hold to some kind of holy reverence, latching to everything that they have seen. I had not been in this hall since I followed behind my brother's coffin, a flag of Austria draped over it. Joseph had been a pallbearer that cold January day. I remember watching him dedicatedly pray during the Requiem. Near the entrance to the church, the monks were taking down the black cloths of mourning. It was strange to think that as soon as my little brother had died, publicly we all moved on. Such was the rigorous march of court life.
The bells of the church echoed throughout the air. I was told that they would be heard all of the way across Vienna, though I had never experienced it myself. Like always, an echoing of some Gregorian chant filled the space that led to the church. With all of the grandeur of the Augustinian and all of the royal protocol that came with it, it was certainly not enough for all of the proceedings of court. Though weddings, baptisms and funerals took place here, coronations were held at Frankfurt. I was told that it was held there because of a thousand year old tradition, but taking a tour of the Empire in order to demonstrate wealth and power to the public certainly wasn't a downside.
The mornings of this hour were quiet in the monastery. The monks had been awake since four in the morning, who were already deep into their work praying or transcribing holy texts. The high ceilings gave the sanctuary an airflow, almost like a whole world within itself. The organ was still, the Most High Virgin was left alone, and Christ hung over emptiness. Yet the bells still rang out in the absence of human souls. When I was a child I thought that a troll lived in the bell tower, ringing out the sound at the high of the hour when no-one else was there.
Father Lachner emerged from the pulpit, nearly frightening me with his sudden, black-cloaked presence. "I'm glad you could make it," he said, descending the stairs at the altar. "Everyone else in the palace seems to be getting ready for the opera tonight. It was a miracle to get my message along."
"Opera?" I inquired. "I've heard nothing of an opera."
"Some Italian theatre company was passing through and your father invited them to perform. Supposedly the Princess of Auersperg requested that they stay, as she heard them perform at some other occasion."
"Oh," I said, "So my father takes the word of the Princess more than my mother, the Empress?"
Father Lachner held his hands up in surrender. "That's not for me to say."
"So, what opera is it?"
"Something called Orfeo ed Euridice, which is certainly not of Christian origin, so I have no knowledge of it."
"Orpheus and Eurydice! It's Greek mythology."
"Then I have no interest," Another figure came from behind the altar. She wrapped her hand-knitted shawl tighter around herself. "Ah, Frau Beltz. Come sit with us, won't you?"
Klaudia curtseyed to me, though she was irregular and off-balanced. "I wanted to thank you, Your Highness, for your generosity. Dorothea's funeral was wonderful, and I didn't have to go into debt because of it. Well, more into debt."
"You're very welcome. Happy to help."
Klaudia stared down at the ground, tightening her shawl again. "I hate to ask you again. You must know that I am no beggar. But the seamstress work has been slow recently, and I've been having trouble affording food, on top of the rent. And now I'm only buying for one. Father Lachner's good charity has been supporting me, but again, Your Highness, I must ask for your assistance."
I was already moving to take my necklace off when Father Lachner stopped me. "She's asking for a chance at a job, Maria Christina, not your jewelry to barter."
"Oh," I said, shoving back down the embarrassment that came with a missed social cue. "Well, there's an opera tonight and you can sew me a dress to wear. And I'll pay you.... How does fifty Thalers sound?"
Klaudia' eyes went wide. "Fifty is more than I could ever ask for."
"Fifty Thalers and a private tour of the palace. Follow me. Bye, Father Lachner."
"Farewell, ladies."
Klaudia Beltz looked around wide-eyed at every little detail of the palace. She seemed to even be entranced by the floors. From the floors to the ceilings, to the walls to the paintings, the statues to guards and back to me. She was mostly silent, the awe of it all overtaking her vocal cords. Finally, as we were about to climb the stairs, she pointed to a statue of a cherub that was set above a mantle in the hall. "Is that real gold?" She gestured to it, almost as if she was afraid to touch it.
"I don't know. Probably," was my reply.
We continued up the stairs, Klaudia gazing upon every inch of the hall in bewilderment. "You live in a cathedral, Your Highness. A temple. I've never seen a building so grand."
"Thank you. I've lived here all my life. Well, except in summer when we move to Schönbrunn," I let the seamstress into my apartments. "And here are my apartments. The bedchamber is just through here-"
I glanced over to Klaudia, but she seemed to be star struck by the sitting room all by itself. "This is bigger than my entire apartment."
I had some fabric samples brought up from the dressmakers downstairs, and I laid out some of the gowns I already had on my bed as examples. As if she ran automatically, Klaudia immediately set to work. She had me stand on an ottoman, as still as a doll, and was draping the fabric around me. She had the extra pins and needles pinned to the pinafore of her apron, and one she held in her teeth. Yards of pink floral-printed silk damask draped around my body were slowly turning into a gown. Fashion plates and magazine clippings of the latest fashions were laid out across the floor, which Klaudia looked to in moments of confusion. She brought ribbons and lace up to the gown and held them up, overlooked them for a few seconds, hummed, and pinned them in place. All I could do was watch the craftswoman work her magic.
"I feel horribly underdressed, I have to admit," Klaudia murmured through lips holding a pin. She glanced back into the mirror behind her, adjusting her plain brown linen skirt. "I should have picked out better clothes to go to the church that's attached to a palace. It's interesting that I even made it in here, considering what kind of woman I am."
I overlooked the gown that was beginning to take place around me. "You're a rather grand seamstress, I think, so I don't know why you barrier yourself from here."
"Oh, Your Highness, the ghosts of my past are my barrier. If your mother knew of me, she would banish me from this place for sure. And if she knew all about me, she would banish me from the nation."
Silently, Klaudia went back to work sewing lace onto the hemline of my bodice. As I looked over her I noticed how much that her late daughter resembled her. The only difference was that Klaudia's eyes were hazel, but I remembered Dorothea's were blue. "So," I finally said, trying to beat back the awkwardness that began to hang in the air like a class-divided cloud. "How did you and Dorothea end up living alone? Is your husband at war?"
Klaudia glanced up from her work with a kind of cheeky smile and shook her head. "Maybe. I don't know. I haven't seen him in almost six years."
"How cruel of him to abandon you! And to leave you there to fend for yourself!"
Klaudia waved away my statement. "I have no desire to trouble him about it. He doesn't even know that Dorothea exists... existed."
"No recollections of his daughter. What a lack of a man."
"I don't blame him for anything. He didn't know. He paid me my money and he was on his way," She looked up to me and squinted with puzzlement. "You're not catching my words, are you?"
"I don't think so."
She lowered her voice to a whisper. "I used to be a prostitute. He said his name was John. He had blue eyes and he paid me twenty-five Thaler. That's all I remember. When I realized I was pregnant I had to quit. When I was a girl my grandmother taught me how to sew, and she said it saved ladies' lives. So that's what I did to support myself. He must have been handsome because Dorothea was such a pretty girl. And I gave birth to her all by myself, and I named her all by myself. Her name means 'gift of God'."
"But prostitution is illegal, on the order of the Empress. The police walk the streets at night. Offenders can be flogged- even killed."
"That didn't stop anyone. Even the policemen liked a pretty girl every now and again."
I was struck by the words of the woman who wove her needle in and out of the hem of my gown. She spoke so freely, as if her life wasn't held down with the weights of law and of sin. "Do you not fear banishment?"
"There are many more things that I could be banished for than that. I'm twenty-five now, and I've had quite the life behind me. If they want to catch me now, they can be my guest," Klaudia stepped back from her work. "There. What do you think?"
I took a look at myself in the mirror, doing a little sway to test the motion of the fabric. "I love it. Let's hope Princess Isabella isn't wearing pink, too. That would be quite the clash. We'll be together most of the night."
"Are you and the princess close friends?"
I glanced over to the spot in my bed where the sheets were still trodden down and the sheets pulled aside, preserved as brilliantly as they were this morning as if they were a museum exhibit. How I wish I could preserve so domestic a picture behind glass, where it would linger for eternity. "Yes. Very close," I heard my voice say, but my mind was miles away from the movement of my lips.
"That's good. It's always nice to have a good friend."
"She's the greatest friend I've ever known," my mind flashed with images of her, her eyes illuminated by moonlight, her dancing like that of a brilliant swan, and the glow of a candle revealing her body through the thin fabric of her chemise. Some kind of ghost ran its fingers across my waist, and I could have sworn that the touch was hers, pushing herself off of me after a tumble in the garden. "My brother's wife."
"The nature between in-laws is rarely so warm. It's great that you two are friends. Have fun at the opera tonight. I will be at your humble service if you need anything again."
I broke myself out of my love-induced trance. "Of course. Here, let me get you your money before I forget."
But the trance came back. As Klaudia took the gown off of me I still thought of her. Incessantly. Madly. She danced in my mind, but her husband, my brother, pounded at the door of my fantasy. And behind him was my own fiancé in his military finery, my knight of honor who had departed from me in a parade of promised victory. But while victory is promised, it is not certain to come to light.