A Woman In The Shadows - Maria Pia Oelker

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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.

      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

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