The Empress Chronicles by Suzy Vitello

Author:Suzy Vitello [Vitello, Suzy]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: FICTION/General
Publisher: Diversion Books
Published: 2014-09-01T00:00:00+00:00

The Schönheitengalerie lay in the south pavilion of my uncle’s castle, and it was quite a long walk from the center residence. A small retinue escorted me to the edge of the apartment, where I was joined by my uncle’s mad daughter, Amalie, and his round-faced young grandson, Little Ludwig. Amalie dismissed the servants and, reluctantly, they bowed and exited.

Amalie and I curtseyed to one another, and Little Ludwig, velvet tails and all, performed his best bow, his pointy nose nearly touching the marble floor.

Amalie was a slight bit older than Nené, but already, rumor had determined she was unmarriable due to her fits of apoplexy and melancholia. This afternoon she was dressed all in white undergarments, as though for bed. She wore brocade slippers on her slender feet. “My father tells me you wish to see the paintings of his tarts?” she sang.

“Paintings of his tarts,” echoed Little Ludwig, much like one of my parrots.

I was not certain, even with the repetition, that I had heard correctly. “I beg your pardon, Your Grace?”

Amalie burst out in operatic tones then, singing the scales at top voice, the do re mi of her vocal chords echoing off the domed rotunda we now walked under.

“She swallowed a glass piano when she was small,” Little Ludwig informed me.

We Wittelsbachs were known for our eccentricities, but it had been many months since I had last taken the company of these cousins, and I’d all but forgotten how strange they were. Fortunately, they were not dawdlers, these two. I often found that my pace was much swifter than that of my escort, and it was so welcome to finally journey to a destination at the speed I required. Angels’ wings, as always, beneath my feet.

The south pavilion had fantastic light but, alas, the sun was at its least generous interval. Once inside the gallery the three of us scurried about to light candles so as to view the paintings under optimum conditions.

“She—” Amalie pointed to a far corner, where Aunt Sophie, the archduchess, hung upon the wall “—wears man’s britches under her skirt.”

I smiled, remembering my first hunt the spring before and my own secret britches.

Amalie, a candelabra in one hand, her finger like a lashing willow switch in the other, proceeded round the large room, pointing to portrait after portrait, singing out accusations as though an aria. “She, and she, and she have slept with the king. She refused to. She possibly did but then went off to the convent. She gave birth to two red-haired children, Wittelsbachs no doubt, but claimed otherwise. She was a shoemaker’s daughter. My father plucked her right out of the nursery, I would guess. But she died a virgin. And she and she and she were virtuous, I do believe. And that most beautiful one? In the corner? She was the tart no man could win.”

They were all enchanting and lovely, the women. Indeed, “the tart no man could win” had astonishing flaxen hair, and in her eyes was the notion that she could have whomever she chose.

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