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A Woman In The Shadows
A Woman In The Shadows
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A Woman In The Shadows

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He turned round again to me and, in that moment, I thought – “He’s really not well.”

- “Tell me.”

- “Sleep well”.

- “Thank you, I wish you also a good rest. Do not dream too much of the beautiful gardens of Madrid. Here we are in Austria and the weather is really very bad. The Spanish sun is by now far away.

I also got up and took two steps towards him and he shook my hand, this time not in a formal way, but almost comradely: “Anyway, thank you for everything. You have been a pleasant discovery.”

Then he went off quickly, before I could add anything more.

The next day, someone said to me that, in fact, Leopold had not been very well in the last few days before our meeting, but that now he was much better. I thought, I do not know why, that it was not at all true and that his indisposition was still present and that it belonged more to his soul than to his body.

Going from Bolzano towards Innsbruck, it seemed to me that the mountains hung threateningly over me; the dark colours, only rarely and for short moments illuminated by some ray of sun, that managed to escape from the low blanket of cloud that hid the mountain peaks, gave me a sense of oppression and melancholy. Inside myself I compared that severe and dark world with the sun which had shone on my days, sometimes burning, but so bright and vital. And it seemed to me that my most pessimistic expectations were coming true. Even he had seemed to me cordial, not so reserved and grey as they had described him to me; perhaps not extrovert and effusive like a Neapolitan prince, but certainly anxious to establish a good relationship with me. He had said: “You have been a pleasant discovery” - and I wanted to delude myself that I had made a small breach in his heart. I had to do it in order to not feel myself alone and abandoned. Because this was the feeling that dominated me, while I travelled up the roads that, little by little, left the Adige Valley to climb up towards the mountains. Leopold was in another carriage and we met each other only during the brief stops.

Chapter 3

On the morning of the wedding day, the sky seemed for a short time to take away the usual dullness and the sun appeared, warm and bright, even though continually threatened by grey clouds which raced over the sky and promised more torrential downpours.

- “My life will always be like this sky” - I said to my Neapolitan lady- in-waiting when I looked out of the window - “I could do with a fine sun to warm my soul, but it does not come out very often, I fear.”

- “What are you saying, your Highness? I do not understand and today should not be a day of melancholy. You told me your future husband is nice and kind, don’t you think you’re lucky?”

- “Yes, don’t worry” - I forced myself to smile, but I thought – “Only that he will not love me and he will always have his heart elsewhere.”

At six o’clock in the afternoon, I made my official and solemn entrance to Innsbruck.

Leopold was waiting for me in front of the church of San Giacomo and, when I saw him, I could not do other than feel my heart constrict: he was white and suffering, so much so that at a certain point he had to be supported by his valets: he looked like a man condemned to death being led to the scaffold, rather than a husband on the most beautiful day of his life. He only glanced at me and I felt tears welling up in my eyes: it was not like this that I had imagined the day of my wedding. In reaction, I rejected that thought almost with hatred and concentrated my thoughts on the face of my beloved Felipe, sunny, smiling, bright and extrovert. I did not make much use of that absurd rebellious attitude, but at least I seemed to manage to keep a minimum of my identity.

Suddenly, while were kneeling, he stretched out a hand to squeeze mine. I heard a just perceptible whisper and turned my head slightly, he was again very ill and I feared that he was about to faint.

I waited a moment, but he did not add anything more and I convinced myself that I had imagined it all. Our nerves were evidently at the point of snapping.

The long ceremony finished and Leopold, immediately after the lunch, excusing himself in a cold and formal way with me, returned to his rooms, feverish in mind and body.

I found myself in the middle of a whirl of parties and receptions without him. Luckily my father-in-law, sparkling and cordial, was a delicious companion and helped me to feel less alone. There were never-ending dances, theatrical performances and receptions, but I did not manage to enjoy anything and those celebrations seemed long and tiring to me, without a bit of joy.

During those days, Leopold was so ill as to be at risk of even his life and to receive the last rights; the weather was changeable and unpleasant; but the worst still had to come: My father-in-law suddenly died two weeks after our wedding, one evening after the theatre, and that was really the greatest distress for us; my mother-in-law seemed to have suddenly lost her sense of living, my brothers- and sisters-in-law, especially the youngest, felt almost lost without their cheerful and affectionate father, so good and dear also with me, who was after all a complete stranger.

The people loved him, his family loved him and everyone wept with sincere sadness.

The day after his death, I saw Leopold again, who had just been declared out of danger and had had himself taken to console his mother.

He greeted me with a pale drawn smile, but he did not say a word to me.

I looked him in the eyes and he, when he read my disappointment and resentment, diverted his eyes from mine.

Returning to his rooms, he brushed me with his hand and whispered: “I’m sorry to have disappointed you like that, but I can’t do anything about it”

If I could have, I would have given him a stinging reply, such as I often reserved for annoying people when I was at my father’s court, but it was not the time and place and I bit my tongue, limiting myself to say goodbye to him with a nod of my head.

The situation was paradoxical: on the one hand, the mourning and the preparations for the solemn funeral, on the other, the wedding feast having gone down in flames and equally frenetic preparations for our departure for Italy.

I saw with anxiety the time approaching for me to find myself side by side with Leopold in the narrow carriage ride for days and days.

Every so often we met, but we still had never yet slept together, him being very weak (and I suppose very weak also in spirit from that succession of unpleasant or painful events).

The evening before our departure, we went to say goodbye to the Empress and she, notwithstanding her grief, had kind words for me and gave her son her instructions and recommendations. My husband was tense and silent and I, once more, felt cast aside without any consideration.

I retired soon to my apartments with my heart full of contradicting feelings.

Firstly, sadness and melancholy, secondly, resentment for the evident indifference that my husband seemed to harbour for me, thirdly, curiosity about the places that I was getting ready to see during the long journey, which would take us towards that land in Tuscany that they said was so beautiful and rich in art, finally, a good dose of anxiety about the start of my new married life, with all that that would entail.

I was naturally not sleepy and, when my maid and my ladies-in-waiting had withdrawn, I started to read a book.

Reading was my passion and, even though my culture was not the highest, I tried to always find some new work to improve it.

That evening, however, it was a book of poetry which I had brought with me from Madrid and which I had never opened since then.

I had been told that in Florence I would find a rich and lively cultural life and that I would be able to indulge myself at my leisure among works of art and libraries. It was a thing which consoled me a little, but only a little.

At a certain point, I heard light knocking at the door and, without looking up, said: “Come in” - expecting one of the maids had come to ask, as always, if I needed anything.

The door opened silently - “I don’t need anything, thank you” - I said - “you can go to bed”.

Not hearing a reply, I finally lifted up my eyes from the book and gasped: in front of me was Leopold.

I leapt up from the armchair, making the book fall to the ground with a dull thud.

He signalled me to keep quiet and knelt down to pick up the book. He handed it to me with a smile.

- “You don’t mind, do you, that I have come to find you?” - he then asked, almost timidly - “I couldn’t sleep. You neither, I see”.

I didn’t know what to say, I felt my heart beating furiously.

- “Who told you that I was still up?”

I blushed –

- “No-one, but” -

- “And if I had been already in bed?”

- “You're my wife after all” - he objected – “don’t I have the right to enter my wife’s bedroom?”

- “I’m not your wife yet” - I responded, embittered - “And you, it seems, don’t care about it very much.”

His eyes became dark and narrow, like two cracks - “Do you want to provoke me? Do you perhaps believe that I am not capable, if I wanted, of asserting my rights over you in every way? But I did not want our life together -”

- “That you abhor just thinking about it” - I interrupted him - “because all you do is compare me in your heart with the one you lost and you find that I am ugly and insignificant in comparison with her. Thus you feel you have the right to reject me, to keep me away from you and your heart and accuse me of wanting to take the place not asked for. But you know, like me, that neither of us has been free to choose and I certainly am not to blame if they separated you from her. Will you reproach me for this lost love for all your life? Why then haven’t you fought for her? Like a tiger you should have pulled out your claws and instead you are closed in yourself, stewing until you put your own life in danger. I well know that you don’t love me and perhaps you never will and if you ever come into my bed, it will be because the sovereign rights and loyalty to the Imperial family call you there. But do you perhaps believe that it’s different for me? You have kept me away from you since the first moment and now - now you come and tell me” -

The tears choked the words in my throat, I tried to swallow them to take control of my emotions again - “Please, go away, I want to be alone.

Leopold remained in silence listening to my bitter outburst.

- “Calm down” - he murmured - “and forgive me. I repeat that I don’t want to force you against your will. You accuse me of not being able to forget, but not even your heart is really as free as you want to make it look. I don’t want us to start our life together so badly. It has been a terrible month, this last one, and I must still take back the reins of myself. I only wanted to talk with you for a bit.”

He took one of my hands and with the other dried the tears which were running down my face. He made me sit down again in the armchair in which I had sunk on his arrival. He sat at my feet and indicated the book he had in his hand.

- “What were you reading, may I know?”

- “Poetry”.

- “Yes, if I remember well you are very poetical, especially when you talk of the sea and the starry skies. We haven’t had much sun lately, have we? But I believe we will find it soon, when we are far from here, in Italy, you and I alone.”

- “Do you think so?”

- “Certainly, trust me and be my friend. I need it.”

I looked at him and saw that he was sincere.

- “Would you like to read me one of those poems?”

- “They are in Spanish; do you understand it?”

- “Just a little, but it’s not too different from Italian, if I remember well, and I understand that perfectly. At the Florence court, we will speak Italian obviously and I am fully committed to learn it properly. You naturally have an advantage, seeing that you were born in Italy.”

- ”But I have a Neapolitan accent you could cut with a knife and, according to my teachers, this was not good. They despaired about it.”

- “You will learn also Florentine. We will learn it together, if you wish” - he added.

I smiled at the idea of the two of us, like little schoolchildren, appling ourselves in the evenings to studying the Tuscan dialect.

- “What are you smiling about?” - he asked

- “The two of us doing our homework in the evenings to show off our good Italian in the morning!”

- “Ah, certainly, we’ll talk about it. How about that poem then?

I chose the poem that I loved most and which talked of the perfume of orange and jasmine flowers which, on the starry nights of the Alhambra, rose up to the open windows of the beloved. And she sighed from her pain at not being able to join her cavalier and run away with him. A prisoner in a palace that was gilded, but for her darker than a prison.

Leopold listened in silence, then asked me for explanations about the words that he had not understood and, finally, he wanted me to read it again.

- “It’s very beautiful even though sad. It’s a bit like you”.

- “No, your Highness, I would say that that it’s more like you.”

- “And you, do you feel like a prisoner?”

- “A little, I was rather spoilt at my father’s court and I felt like the mistress of the world. Now - I’m afraid.”

- “Of what?”

- “Of facing up to the real world and not having any friend to help me do it.”

- “I’ll be there.”

- “You?

- “You insist on not trusting my words. It’s my fault, I know, and I ask your forgiveness. But I’m sincere when I tell you that we will be friends. Give me time, I beg you, for all the rest.”

- “Time heals, time destroys. Time does not give love that the heart does not feel.”

- “Who said that?”

- “My Neapolitan governess said it. It must be an Italian saying.”

- “Perhaps it’s wrong, don’t you think?”

- “It could be” - I admitted.

- “Do you hope so?

- “Yes” - I confessed - “I believe in“ - I shook my head and did not finish.

Leopold hid his face in my hands, kissing them tenderly:

- “What? Tell me, please.”

- “That you’re in love with me. For that reason, I’ve hated you so much for your coldness these last few days, when I would have wanted warmth and affection.”

Leopold whispered: “For me you’re like the sun after the winter. I can’t promise you that I will forget, but I swear to you that I will always respect you and always be near you. You can count on me every minute of your life.”

He held me tight and kissed me. I returned his kiss and, for the first time since my departure from Spain, I felt at home.

We remained chatting about a piece of poetry, Tuscany, the sea of Naples and the Alhambra gardens, the snow-covered Alps and the parks of Vienna.

Leopold laughed at my Neapolitan witty remarks and I was spellbound to hear his political projects, remaining amazed by his maturity and soundly judgement, unusual for such a young boy. He wanted my opinion about things of which I was totally ignorant.

When I apologised he observed: “Don’t worry, I will teach you myself. Do you know that in my family they call me “The Professor”, because of my obsession with explaining everything that they do not know?

He was ironic and sometimes really nice.

It was getting late and Leopold said that it was time for him to go.

- “I have disturbed you too much and you must be very tired.”

- “You haven’t disturbed me, I am pleased that you came.”