A Woman In The Shadows

It was pouring with rain everywhere and I, notwithstanding the moment of extreme tension, smiled to myself.

- “What do you have to smile about, Highness? He asked, curious.

-We are leaving a stream of water behind us.

- Does it seem so funny to you?”

- “Yes, decidedly”, a response at least unusual, not really according to protocol; “our passage certainly will not pass unnoticed”.

Even he smiled for the first time since we had met and that smile completely transformed his face, giving him a pleasant air and lighting up his too serious eyes.

- “You’re right” - he agreed – “we really look like two ducks in a pond”.

I laughed at that that curious expression I had never heard before and he echoed me.

We had to dine together in my apartment that evening.

When he arrived, he was most handsome in his red and gold suit, I had chosen a blue dress embroidered with silver and pearls.

- “What happened to that gracious dress that you had on today?” - he asked me.

- “Why”?

- “I liked it very much”.

- “But is was certainly not suitable for this so special evening.”

- “You say so? Aquamarine is my favourite colour.”

I looked at him and asked myself if he could be serious.

- “Would you have the patience to wait for me fifteen minutes more?”

- “Certainly”.

I disappeared into my rooms and changed in haste and fury, putting on a dress in the colour that he had declared was his favourite.

When I returned to the dining room, he met me with a delicious smile and whispered to me:

- “You have been kind to indulge me, but I don’t want you to believe that it’s your duty to do it in every case.”

- “No” - I said - “but I will always be happy to see you smile like now.”

- “Have they perhaps said that I am not a cheerful type? That I’m too serious and sometimes even sad?”

- “Yes”.

- “And what else have they said about me?”

- Oh God - I thought - here we are.

- “I know many things about you as an Archduke and Prince, about your brilliant studies, your culture, but, sincerely, I don’t know anything about you as a man; I imagine that also you don’t know much more about me.”

He insisted as if he had not heard:

- “What else?”

Then I gave a start - “Do you want to refer to what you mentioned in your letter?”

He stared into my eyes so intensely that I found it hard to bear that look. He made me stay calm whatever thing he revealed to me.

- “No” - I murmured - “they haven’t told me anything about that story and I, notwithstanding I was burning with curiosity, haven’t asked anyone anything. It seemed to me indelicate towards each other and I have decided that I would have learnt it only from you. If you don’t want to talk to me about it, don’t worry, I will respect your discretion and your wishes. Talk to me about it only when and if you wish. It’s your right to not say anything if it’s so painful for you. Because it is, isn’t it? I understood it as soon as I read those words.”

Peter Leopold did not reply, he only grasped my hand and brought it to his lips. I saw that his eyes were moved to tears.

- “I thank you for your sensitivity. I swear to you that I will tell you everything, one day. It’s not easy for me, but perhaps with you I will do it. I hope that we will be friends.”

- “Friends?” - I murmured and from my voice there must have leaked out the delusion that, notwithstanding everything, had invaded me at those words.

- “Is that not enough for you? Do you want” - he hesitated a moment - “love?”

I remained silent and thought of the only love that had lightened my life and, comparing it at this moment, felt a cold chill in my heart.

We sat down facing each other and not one of us had much desire to eat. We looked at each other, scrutinising each other in silence and chasing each other’s thoughts, while the waiters bustled around us.

I found him quite pleasant and interesting, in his manners and looks. Sensitive and sweet, which moreover confirmed the impressions his letter had made on me, but also direct and frank when it was necessary.

I felt a little embarrassed before his gaze, which was examining me with scrupulous attention, even though not arrogantly.

I hoped that I did not seem too insignificant to him nor too foolish. The extended silence at a certain point seemed intolerable to me and, I do not know why, I began to tell him about my childhood in Naples and the games in the park at the royal palace at Caserta, the marvellous climate and the sea.

- “Have you ever seen the sea?”

- “No, never.”

- “Oh, - I smiled - “in Naples it’s marvellous. Blue and green, transparent and warm. At sunset, the sun leaves golden stripes on the water that appear to contain all its light, almost to console us for the night that is coming and, in the evenings with a full moon, it’s a dream. Also in Vienna does the starlit sky appear to be a golden quilted blanket?”

He smiled, resting his chin on his hand, “Are you always so poetical?”

I do not know if he said it ironically, but by now the memories of my past, which was around the corner and yet it seemed to me centuries ago, crowded my soul so much that I could not stop. In the end, I had told him more than I would have wanted, but I did not regret it. I felt lighter and calmer now.

- “Have you ever been in love?” - He then asked me.

- “No” - I lied.

H blushed and closed his eyes - This however was a lie. I did not believe I deserved it.

- “Why do you want to know about me what you do not want to tell me about yourself?”

- “You are right, I apologise.”

- “And yet I want to be sincere with you. I was sixteen years old when I fell in love with a young gentleman in my brother’s entourage.”

- “Do you still love him?”

- “No; it was, I think, an adolescent thing, a little too much daydreaming. Or perhaps it was only a way of saying to myself that my soul and my heart were mine only and no-one could have them if I did not allow it - well, life is not like that, I know, but at times you need to just delude yourself in order to not die.”

- “Die? Did you die when they told you that you would have to marry me and not your lover? Certainly, you would have preferred it to have been him to give you your first loving kiss and make you dream and not an Austrian archduke, surly and cold, a little sad and certainly not handsome like your Spanish gentleman.

I thought of the resentment smouldering for days inside me at the idea of not being able to realise a dream and end up in the arms of a stranger and I kept quiet to not hurt him.

I now felt suddenly tired and I no longer had the desire to open up my heart to someone who did not intend to open himself up at all.

Peter Leopold noticed and apologised.

- “I have been indiscreet, excuse me”. “You have been sincere and I instead cannot manage to tell you anything about myself.”

- “My love was a dream, almost a fine game, I knew it from the start; even though I suffered enough, it did not leave too painful wounds in my heart. I did not add “Like yours”, but he understood.

Contravening every rule of etiquette, he took my hand again and kissed it. I felt his lips slightly trembling. I looked at him and saw that he was pale and his eyes seemed lightly circled with dark and misty, like from a fever.

- “Do you feel well?” - I asked.

- “Yes, why?”

- “Excuse me, you are so pale.”

- “I am well, I am just very tired. - If you give me permission, I will withdraw.

- “Certainly, your Highness. I also, indeed, am tired and over the next few days many commitments await us.”

- “Right” - he said, bowing his head respectfully.

I saw him furtively pass a hand over his forehead and, when he got up to leave, he seemed to me to stagger slightly.

- “Your highness” - I called him back

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.”

- “All right. See you in the morning.”

- “Yes”.

He bent down and kissed my hand with his usual formal composure. He went towards the door, then thought again and turned towards me. He embraced me almost convulsively and murmured: - “Don’t you want to let me stay with you tonight?”

I felt an explosion of joy in my heart - “I want it more than anything else in the world.”

He loosened my hair and I undid his shirt. Our hands joined and our mouths searched for each other greedily.

He took me in his arms, notwithstanding that I protested that he should not make that effort, and placed me on the big bed that saw us finally become husband and wife.

Shortly after dawn, he woke me up and he said to me that he had to return to his apartments to get ready for our departure.

I, still half asleep, could not immediately comprehend the situation and I had to look at him with the rather dazed air of someone seeing a ghost, because he kissed me and said: “Don’t you remember any more that I’m now your husband?”

I smiled: “Yes, I remember.”

- “And did you not like it?”

- “I did, and -” I blushed, interrupting myself, I did not yet have enough confidence to ask him what he had felt in making love with me, much less did I dare to venture onto that slippery ground which was an investigation of his fantasies. If he had been thinking about her while he was with me or, instead, I had finally become in his eyes a real person with the feelings, fears, joys and expectations of every being and not of an ideal woman, for something else unreachable, who shone with their own light like a sun, without blemishes or weaknesses.

- “Yes” - he said simply - “It was very pleasant also for me. And - I didn’t think about her, if that’s what you wanted to know. I was really with you, only with you. Now I must go.

- “Stay a little longer, it’s not yet morning, that was the song of the nightingale, not the skylark.”

- “Don’t tell me that you know about Elizabethan theatre.”

- “Yes, enough, there are works that I adore, even though some of my teachers considered it inappropriate for modern times, too full of passion and dark tragedies.”

- “I like it too, even though I had to read it almost hidden from my mother. Well now, my beloved, it’s time to go, even though I have more desire to stay. We’ll meet again later.

Suddenly a flash of pain crossed my soul and I held his arm tight with force, he looked at me surprised:

- “What is it?”

- “Don’t go, I don’t want to end up like Juliet.”

- “Romeo, if I’m not wrong, loved her up until death. What are you referring to?”

- “Nothing, it’s just that, suddenly, I don’t know how I’ve seen clearly that I could not in any case survive you and that my life will end with you.”

- “What dark thoughts! They don’t go well in such a young girl. And just after the first night with your husband. Aren’t you calm?”

- “I am, but it’s difficult to explain what happens to me every so often. Irrational feelings, inexplicable intuitions, which however then happen always exactly how I have suddenly seen them, in a flash which brightens the darkness of the future.”

- “I fear that your teachers were right, Shakespeare’s theatre is not suitable for you.”

- “Don’t split hairs with me, I can’t bear it.”

- “Oh, oh, are you so decisive notwithstanding your sweet and submissive look?”

- “It’s for you to discover, my lord.”

He laughed and went away without adding anything else.

I lied down again with a sigh of happiness waiting to call the maids who should dress me and prepare me for the journey that awaited me that day.

I brushed my hand over the pillow on which until a little while ago his head was resting and swore to myself that I would have won him over to such a point that I would have made him forget for ever his adolescent love affairs.

I didn’t yet know that I would have had instead to fight all my life against the ghosts of other, many other, women, whilst remaining for him the woman to whom he would always return, as to a safe haven, the friend who supported and encouraged him in his incessant work, consoled him in his sorrows and looked after him in his moments of physical and psychological weakness.