Je T'aime.

XXIX. The Seamstress

When I awoke in the morning she was gone. I rolled over in bed, hoping to be met by her presence but all I was greeted with was a bundle of tossed blankets and a warm spot in the bed. She must have just left. The sheets had a faint aura of rose and sandalwood. Her banyan and her shoes were gone. She was like a ghost. A beautiful, charming ghost.

I stared at the trotted down sheet where she had once slept beside me. Something so simple as a wrinkle in a piece of fabric could stir up so many emotions within me. For eighteen years of my life I had slept alone in my bed, and it caused me no troubles to wake up solitary. But now that I had shared a sleep, an empty bed felt cold and distant, and to be quite frank, it hurt.

I decided to wash down my woes with coffee. I looked outside, and it looked quite miserable. The snow had been soiled by time into a horrible gray slush, and yet it was still too cold to be able to do anything. The sky was nearly as gray as the ground. In order to lift my own spirits I put on a gown of a brilliant sky blue, lined with white fur. It was some kind of mink fur, I guessed. The French made a lot of money selling furs in their territories in the Canadian wilderness. So did the British, selling timber wood and tobacco in their lands on the Atlantic coast. And yet my mother pushed further and further into the bald, well-grazed lands of Europe.

Hofburg has a lovely sitting room in the middle of the palace, just below my apartments. I smiled as I sat down on an armchair near the fire. My little sibling's toys were scattered all over the floor. They made a treacherous path to cross, but they were lovely nonetheless. A servant served me my coffee, and I had to push one of Carolina's dolls off of the table so I could put down my cup. On second thought, I wanted to have a look at the doll. It was wearing a purple dress, which had supposedly been made by Isabella. If she had made this in a bigger size, I most certainly would have worn it.

A footman came into the sitting room. Luckily, I had finished my coffee by then. "Your Highness, your presence has been requested by Father Lachner in the Augustinian Church."

The path to the Augustinian, which was located in the same complex as the main palace buildings, was through a Medieval-era hall past the center courtyard. This hall was free-standing, and was complete with the Gothic architecture of the days of a deadly plague. The old, wavy windows seemed to hold to some kind of holy reverence, latching to everything that they have seen. I had not been in this hall since I followed behind my brother's coffin, a flag of Austria draped over it. Joseph had been a pallbearer that cold January day. I remember watching him dedicatedly pray during the Requiem. Near the entrance to the church, the monks were taking down the black cloths of mourning. It was strange to think that as soon as my little brother had died, publicly we all moved on. Such was the rigorous march of court life.

The bells of the church echoed throughout the air. I was told that they would be heard all of the way across Vienna, though I had never experienced it myself. Like always, an echoing of some Gregorian chant filled the space that led to the church. With all of the grandeur of the Augustinian and all of the royal protocol that came with it, it was certainly not enough for all of the proceedings of court. Though weddings, baptisms and funerals took place here, coronations were held at Frankfurt. I was told that it was held there because of a thousand year old tradition, but taking a tour of the Empire in order to demonstrate wealth and power to the public certainly wasn't a downside.

The mornings of this hour were quiet in the monastery. The monks had been awake since four in the morning, who were already deep into their work praying or transcribing holy texts. The high ceilings gave the sanctuary an airflow, almost like a whole world within itself. The organ was still, the Most High Virgin was left alone, and Christ hung over emptiness. Yet the bells still rang out in the absence of human souls. When I was a child I thought that a troll lived in the bell tower, ringing out the sound at the high of the hour when no-one else was there.