What is this council you speak of that your lady is attending? he asked.
A war council, I said. Her ladies-in-waiting are up in arms over it, for it means no one has tea with her. I must go, I said. I paused a moment, aware that he was in no particular costume. Is there no performance tonight? I asked.
A recital, he said. In the music room. This young new composer. I like him. He’ll accompany me.
I must go, I said again.
He shrugged. As you said. Off with you then, he said. Return to your lady. But be sure to come here again tomorrow when next she meets in council.
He laughed again, and it followed me as I ran the passageways back to the Empress’s quarters.
§
Speaking had confused me; my silence had been a mask, and so it were as if a mask had slipped. I no longer felt like myself—I could feel how I even walked differently. I summoned a vision of myself as I had been even a few days ago. Like this, I told myself, and like this, slowing, as if finding the pace at which I’d once walked would return me to my disguise, remembering to be someone who could not speak and answer.
When I entered the antechamber where the Empress sat, her hair waiting for the imperial hairdresser, I hoped I again resembled her mute grisette.
I was late, but as I had never been late before, the Empress was generous if stern, merely raising an eyebrow as I had arrived just in time to help with the removal of the afternoon’s tea gown. Service had not been disturbed. From the face of my former rival, I could see a story of me had been told, but it couldn’t have been too incriminating or it would likewise ruin her fun, and it would have to avoid describing her as the loser—the mute girl was an unconvincing victor, and this would humiliate her.
The Duchesse de Bassano came to complain of the councils again—even to scold. The Empress was neglecting her guests with these long meetings, and guests were offended. All through the palace, these women sat dressed, waiting to be invited, and were not invited, and came to dinner as a group, feeling snubbed. To have tea with the Empress in the afternoon was a great honor, and she was not extending it.
White tulle again for the bodice, I thought, as I set the tea gown gently over my arm. The wrapper came off, and a skirt like sea foam spread out down her crinolines, and I clasped a long white velvet train over the skirt behind her. She added a diamond brooch to her waist, a bracelet of pearls over her sea-foam gloves, and then the Regent again at her neck.
She did not reply to the Duchesse, and instead pulled at her jewel box. She set her fingers on the emerald brooch from the Emperor and turned it where it sat. She held it up, as if to put it on, then set it down again, repeating this quietly as she waited for the hairdresser, her eyes watching the door through her mirror’s reflection.
§
For the recital, I found a hiding place better than the one previous, able to view the piano in part, though not the tenor.
The Princess Metternich welcomed the assembled gathering. This was my first glimpse of her. She looked to me at first like a youth in a gown, her face more the face of a charming boy. The Princess’s eyes were deep set and large so she always appeared intent and serious, but also always a little amused. Her nickname was Cocoa Monkey, I knew from the ladies-in-waiting, and the rumor among the servants was that she was half-caste. To me, she exuded a different kind of chic from the other women of the court for the way her features were already original. She wore a particularly sleek gown of a pale green silk, which made her look even more exotic, her thin shoulders bare and a collar of pearls at her throat. Her hair was worn slicked close to her head and parted severely like a man’s. She appeared distinctly beautiful, while the others appeared only to decorate the room around her. The Princess had none of the seriousness of the Empress and wore her rank the more lightly, as I think she believed in it in a way the Empress did not believe in her own. The Empress seemed as if she could not believe she was Empress until you did. The Empress looked like an actress beside her.
This evening the Princess was full of a barely contained excitement. I arrived as she declared to the gathered crowd that the composer she was introducing was her discovery, found on a night she and the Prince attended the Bal Mabille in secret. They were so taken by the pianist, they sat at a table near the musicians and left more impressed by him than by the dancers. They at once had become his patrons and introduced him to the Empress’s Monday salons.
I was so stunned to think I had danced to his music and never knew that I barely heard her as she gestured to him and then welcomed the tenor to the stage as well, praising him as the greatest living Prussian heldentenor.
She went and stood by the Empress, and they spoke to each other.