The Empress: A novel Read online

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2017 by Laura Martínez-Belli

  Translation copyright © 2020 by Simon Bruni

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Previously published as Carlota by Editorial Planeta Mexicana, S.A. de C.V. in Mexico in 2017. Translated from Spanish by Simon Bruni. First published in English by Amazon Crossing in 2020.

  Published by Amazon Crossing, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Amazon Crossing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781542004800

  ISBN-10: 1542004802

  Cover design by Faceout Studio, Tim Green

  For the countries of my life.

  And for those who, when they crossed the sea,

  changed not only the sky they were under but also their spirit.

  Contents

  Cast of Characters

  Places

  In 1855, a . . .

  Beginning

  Part One

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  Part Two

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  Part Three

  47

  48

  49

  50

  51

  52

  53

  54

  55

  56

  57

  58

  59

  60

  61

  62

  63

  Part Four

  64

  65

  66

  67

  68

  69

  70

  Some Notes And Acknowledgments

  Bibliography

  About the Author

  About the Translator

  Cast of Characters

  Charlotte / Carlota—Belgian princess who is married to Maximilian of Habsburg; later becomes Carlota, empress of Mexico.

  Maximilian—Austrian archduke Ferdinand Maximilian Joseph of Habsburg; later becomes Maximilian, emperor of Mexico.

  Charles-René de Bombelles—Maximilian’s best friend.

  Sebastian Schertzenlechner—Maximilian’s valet and another close friend.

  Auguste Goffinet—Lawyer of Leopold II. He has a twin brother, also a lawyer.

  Manuelita del Barrio—Carlota’s lady of honor in Mexico, a conservative, religious woman.

  Mathilde Döblinger—Carlota’s lady of honor.

  Constanza Murrieta—Eldest daughter of a prominent Conservative Mexican family.

  Clotilde Murrieta—Constanza’s sister; a Conservative.

  Refugio de Murrieta—Constanza’s mother; a Liberal.

  Don Vicente Murrieta—Constanza’s father, a leading Conservative; one of the people who orchestrate the Mexican Empire and invite a European prince to take the crown.

  Salvador Murrieta—Constanza’s brother; a Liberal sympathizer.

  Agustín Murrieta—Constanza’s brother, destined for priesthood.

  Joaquín Murrieta—Constanza’s eldest brother, the image of his father, conservative, traditional, and loyal to his father’s ideals.

  Modesto García—Adopted ward of Juárez’s predecessor, Ignacio Comonfort (president of Mexico in 1855, after Santa Anna was overthrown).

  Benito Juárez—President of Mexico, leader of the resistance against the empire.

  Philippe Petit—Belgian carpenter who becomes a soldier.

  Lieutenant Colonel Baron Alfred van der Smissen—Commander of the Belgian army in Mexico.

  Leopold I—Carlota’s beloved father.

  Leopold II—King of the Belgians, Carlota’s eldest brother.

  Count Philippe—Carlota’s other brother.

  María Ana Leguizamo / Concepción Sedano—An indigenous Mexican woman.

  Marie Henriette—Leopold II’s wife, queen of Belgium; Carlota’s sister-in-law.

  Marie Moreau—Carlota’s lady-in-waiting in Laeken.

  Victor Hugo—Famous French writer, author of Les Misérables, about the French Revolution. Sympathetic to the Republicans / Liberales.

  Antonio López de Santa Anna—President of Mexico, Santa Anna was an enigmatic, patriotic, and controversial figure who had great power in Mexico during a turbulent forty-year career. He led as a general at crucial points and served twelve nonconsecutive presidential terms over twenty-two years. He was perceived as a hero by his troops, as he sought glory for himself and his army and independence for Mexico.

  Places

  Miramare—A beautiful castle on the Gulf of Trieste in northeastern Italy. It was built in 1860 for Austrian archduke Ferdinand Maximilian Joseph and his wife, Charlotte of Belgium, later Emperor Maximilian and Empress Carlota of Mexico.

  Chapultepec Castle—Located on top of Chapultepec Hill, the name comes from the Nahuatl word chapoltepēc, meaning “at the grasshopper’s hill.” The castle is known for its magnificent views, said to be unsurpassed in beauty anywhere in the world. It became the official residence of Emperor Maximilian and his consort Empress Carlota during the Second Mexican Empire (1864–1867).

  Cuernavaca—The capital and largest city of the state of Morelos in Mexico. The city is approximately a ninety-minute drive south of Mexico City and has long been a favorite escape for Mexico City residents and foreign visitors because of its warm, stable climate and abundant vegetation.

  Querétaro, Las Campanas Hill—The hill on which the emperor, who had been trapped in the besieged city of Querétaro for several months, surrendered to General Mariano Escobedo in May of 1867, officially ending the Second Mexican Empire.

  Tervuren—A municipality in the province of Flemish Brabant, in Flanders, Belgium. One of the wealthiest municipalities, it is linked to Brussels by a large processional avenue built by King Leopold II for the Universal Exhibition of 1897.

  Laeken—The Royal Castle of Laeken, official home of the Belgian royal family, is situated here. The castle was built in 1784 by Charles de Wailly. It has been the royal residence since the accession to the throne of King Leopold I in 1831.

  Bouchout Castle—A castle in the Flemish town of Meise, Belgium. After Maximilian’s death, Charlotte led a secluded life at Bouchout Castle until her death in 1927. Since 1939, the Bouchout Domain was incorporated into the National Botanical Garden of Belgium, and since being renovated in 1989 it has been used as a meeting and exhibition hall.

  Lokrum—A small island in the Adriatic Sea off the coast of Dubrovnik, Croatia, where the archduke Ferdinand Maximilian Joseph of Habsburg built a house and magnifice
nt gardens.

  In 1855, a group of Mexican liberals led by Benito Juárez and Ignacio Comonfort overthrew Conservative president Antonio López de Santa Anna. With Comonfort as the new president, the Mexican “Liberales” enacted a new constitution that brought in massive reforms for the common folk. In theory, it represented the will of all the people—but the Conservative Party strongly opposed the reforms, which chipped away at some of the institutionalized privilege associated with the Church. Mexican society became instantly and viciously polarized.

  Then, in July of 1861, Benito Juárez’s government declared a debt moratorium, alarming Mexico’s international creditors—Spain, Britain, and France—who swiftly mobilized a military expedition to demand the fulfillment of its obligations. The unpaid debt totaled eighty-two million pesos: seventy were owed to Britain, nine to Spain, and three to France. An expedition of almost ten thousand soldiers disembarked in Veracruz in December of that same year. Juárez’s government promised to pay the debt, and the Convention of La Soledad was signed. The Spanish and English troops withdrew immediately, but the French commandants rejected the agreement and remained in Veracruz.

  Mexico was on the verge of celebrating its fortieth anniversary as a republic, and its story so far was disastrous: three federal and two centralist regimes; three constitutions; 240 coup attempts, rebellions, and uprisings that in turn led to sixty changes of presidency; half the national territory lost; the Church’s assets disposed of; schools, universities, hospitals, and shelters gone; and now a new intervention of foreign forces.

  In this turbulent time in the nation’s history, the Conservatives—heirs to what was once the Mexican aristocracy—allowed themselves the luxury of imagining. They imagined a Mexico with a European Catholic prince who would embody the grandeur and sovereignty of an opulent and majestic people. They imagined the Second Empire . . .

  Beginning

  His hands. Those hands, accustomed to brandishing a sword, glide over her back. Her whole body is a bristling cat. She trembles. And yet she knows this place is the only place in the world. For now, that’s all he does: he brushes his fingers against her, he unfastens the buttons down her back. No more and no less. But she anticipates the surge from the wave that approaches. He touches her, slowly, as if afraid his hands might break her. But he knows what he’s doing. He has done it many times before, though with less smooth flesh. Less noble. Her breathing, hurried. Her energy, pulsing in places unknown before now. She moistens. She feels the urge to open her legs but she doesn’t. She controls herself with supernatural force. She is afraid. But she wants it. She wants to feel. At last. She feels at last. Her skin speaks to her, it begs her to keep feeling. To let the hands keep going, let them search. Let them find her. She tilts her head back, and then he kisses her. He kisses her neck. She tastes not of nobility, but of woman. With one hand he holds the small of her back, and with the other he strokes her collarbone. His mouth. That mouth, which has spoken to her so many times in the closeness of silence, begins to explore her. Under her ears. The center of her neck. And she can’t hold back any longer and searches for his lips. He responds. She feels a strong, firm tongue against hers. She moves urgently and then he says, “Slowly, relax, let me.” Embarrassed, she stops. But he looks at her. He looks at her with those eyes that tell her there is no other moment, there is no present other than the one they are experiencing, loving each other, touching each other, feeling each other. They are two people for the first time. With no names or titles. A man and a woman. Nothing more. Then she opens her lips and lets him in. She needs to prolong the moment. She lets him discover her. She feels that she is going to explode. But no, not yet. She cannot even remotely imagine what is still to come. He lays her down. He keeps kissing her as he undresses her. She trembles and covers her face with her hands. She doesn’t want to see. She does not want to. All she wants is to feel those hands, that mouth exploring her. She fears the nudity. She doesn’t want to see him. But then he positions himself over her. He whispers in her ear. He looks into her eyes as he penetrates her. She receives him, juicy as a ripe mango. She wants to let out a moan but contains herself. The part of her that was missing is now complete, she feels. He moves. And she feels that she wants to move to his rhythm, to rock with him. She closes her eyes and a prayer slips out. But then he covers her mouth. “Quiet,” he orders her. And he looks at her. She obeys. “Kiss me,” she pleads. And he kisses her while they rock together, disintegrating with pleasure.

  Part One

  1

  July 1866, Mexico

  Not once in the last two years had the idea of fleeing her own empire crossed her mind. Two years and two months in Mexico. That was all it had been. A massive and naïve adventure. An imperial dream in foreign lands. Two years of borrowed and illusory glory. Seven hundred and ninety days, each with its night. A very short period of time, and yet too long. Enough time to believe that, if she stretched enough, she could touch the stars with her fingertips. And now here she was, escaping in a coach under torrential rain back to the Europe that had spat in their faces. She knew it. She knew it with the sadness of someone irreversibly giving up her life’s work. She had to return.

  Carlota looked out the window. Through the drops of water blurring everything, she could just make out a vast landscape of trees being battered by the angry wind with biblical force. Sorrow twisted her eyebrows and mouth. A fitting goodbye. She was no different than those trees being beaten by destiny. The landscape filled her with grief, and with a pull she closed the green velvet curtain embroidered with the imperial eagle. Had she not been an empress, had she been just a simple Mexican, she would have cried. From inside the coach, they could hear the horses’ frightened whinnies and the thundering sky. They had warned her. The roads were dangerous at that time of year; nobody in their right mind would travel to the port of Veracruz through the mist of the Acultzingo peaks in the season of rains and yellow fever. But as soon as she learned her emissaries had failed and Napoleon III’s refusal to withdraw his troops remained firm, Carlota—who’d always been strong and foolish in equal measure—gave orders to leave immediately so she could intervene in person. To her great regret, she knew that waiting for the rains to abate was one luxury she could not afford. She could not. Everything was crumbling before her eyes. The empire. Maximilian. Herself. Everything. She had to stop it. It wouldn’t be the first time that Napoleon III—Louis, as those close to him knew him—had listened to her, however hard it would be to go down on her knees and beg.

  The badly pocked road jostled her like a marble in a shoebox. In an attempt to still herself, she shifted, and, after a moment’s hesitation, she clung to herself, seeking refuge. She was tempted to stroke her belly, when suddenly the coach tipped onto two wheels as it swerved to avoid an enormous stone, forcing her to clutch one of the doors. Her lady-in-waiting, Manuelita del Barrio, went white, terrified they would overturn, and stifled a scream that became almost embarrassed under the severe gaze of the empress, whose emphatic silence struck her with the same force as the storm. Carlota was accustomed to repressing fear with the determination of a martyr being burned over green firewood, and that wouldn’t change now just because torrential rain was turning the ground to mud as they drove along the edge of a precipice. That was how her life had been for as long as she could remember: a life on the edge of the abyss. And controlling any sign of weakness was a skill that Carlota had perfected. In any case, worrying about the safety of the road was trivial compared to her ocean of preoccupations. Best leave that in the hands of God. Her God would not allow her to die tossed off a cliff. He wouldn’t abandon them to their fate in a ravine. Her God would guide her to the gates of the Vatican to meet Pius IX and intercede on behalf of a barely nascent empire. The empire must not be lost. Maximilian had to hold on.

  Abdication was tantamount to a death sentence. She had seen it in her grandfather, who upon abdicating the French throne had only brought dishonor and discredit to the dynasty. Abdicating the Mexica
n throne would catapult them in the direction of Miramare, to looks of pity. Abdicating was not the act of a thirty-four-year-old prince, but of the elderly, infirm, lacking in spirit. There was no property more sacred in the world than sovereignty. One does not abandon a throne like a person fleeing a rally dispersed by the police. They did not have the right to abandon a nation that had called on them. Louis the Great had said it: “Kings must never surrender.” Her thought exactly: “The emperor must never surrender.” For while there was an emperor in Mexico, there would be an empire, even if it was just six square feet of land. They had arrived as champions of civilization, as regenerators and liberators, and they wouldn’t leave with the excuse that there was nothing to liberate or to civilize, nothing to regenerate. She had put it all in writing to Maximilian. “One does not abdicate,” she had told him. He had to wait for her. Yes. The dangers of the road to Veracruz were, without doubt, the least of her problems.

  Her thoughts suddenly became blurred; everything began to spin around her, as if the carriage had lost its course and her God had abandoned her for a moment. In the distance, through scattered echoes, she heard her lady-in-waiting whisper to her. “Your Highness? Your Majesty? Are you all right?”

  Carlota blinked a couple of times before feeling the floor under her feet again. She fixed her eyes on the woman, trying to recognize her.

  She spoke again. “Do you need anything, my lady? You look terribly pale.”

  Eventually, Carlota responded. “No, no, I’m fine . . . a dizzy spell. That’s all. I’ll have some water.”

  Manuelita quickly offered her some. “Are you feeling faint, Your Majesty? From all this movement . . . Don’t worry, Majesty, it will pass, it will pass.”

  She took a fan from among her skirts and began to flap it energetically at the empress.

  It wouldn’t be Carlota’s first dizzy spell during the journey back. She would feel faint on many more occasions on the way, all of them attributed to the movement of the sea or land. But Carlota knew it was just a matter of time—nine months—before the reason for her fainting fits would be clear.