Free The Empress Chronicles by Suzy Vitello

smile on his handsome face. I handed Sophie to the baby nurse as my siblings scattered to reunite with their belongings. Papa opened his arms, and I leapt at him the way I did when I was small. Alas, I was no longer small and practically knocked him down.
    “Sisi, you are a giant.” He laughed, taking steps backwards to keep from falling.
    “You’ve returned.”
    “Indeed,” he exclaimed. “And I have so many surprises for you children and your mother.”
    Mummi lumbered up and muttered, “I cannot wait to see.” Her small dogs stayed close to the hem of her carriage coat and barked shrilly at Papa, as always.
    Papa and I followed Mummi into the main hall, where fresh paint and polish greeted us. Vases crammed full of Michaelmas daisies sat on every surface, their blue-purple blooms like veins against the flesh-colored walls. “Ludi,” Papa crooned. “Where’s my hello?”
    Mummi turned sharply, took in a breath like she did before barking an order, but one look at Papa’s playful face—ah, she never could quite resist it. After long weeks away, especially. We were the same that way.
    With the spaniels snapping at Papa’s heels, he took my mother in a tight, long embrace until her cheeks reddened and she pulled away. “Duke,” she said, “the girl.”
    “Very well,” said my father, and he winked at Mummi as though she were his new bride. The rare affection between my parents warmed me, but I knew it wouldn’t last, and before long they’d pass each other as strangers in the hall. Love, demonstrated to be beside the point .
    “What surprises?” I wanted to know, hoping that whatever they were, they might please Mummi enough to keep her in good spirits.
    “Come,” he said.
    The front rooms of the palace were as we’d left them the preceding year. Drawing room, music room, parlor, library. Mummi appraised the drapes, the upholstery, the carpets. The palace was kept much better than Possi, since we often entertained dignitaries and royalty here.
    Once we reached the far end of the front apartments, I could sense the surprises would soon follow. I heard sounds. A pipe organ, maybe? There were voices. A party of some sort.
    “In the name of the Lord,” gasped Mummi as the hall opened into a room upon which was painted a floor-to-ceiling likeness of Marie Antoinette. Even with my limited studies, I could recognize the teased gray hair, the slate-blue dress finished in Spanish lace. The perfect pink rose in her hand. Petite filigree tables and chairs were scattered beneath Marie. A long bar, upon which pastries and decanters sat, split the room down the middle. On the other side of the bar was a beer garden, complete with peasant women and customers.
    “I had this built while we were away,” said Papa, swilling from his stein and then handing it to a chubby beer girl to refill. “It’s Café Chantant and Bavaria Brauhaus, side by side. Isn’t that clever? Now we don’t need to hop the border for our éclairs.”
    I was used to my eccentric father’s whims and his invitations to people we’d meet on the street to come visit. For cards. For dance. If Papa had written a new play and was in need of actors, off he’d ride, into the streets of Munich, returning with a merry band of willing peasants. When Papa was home, our evenings were filled with balls, parties, poetry readings. “Even for you, Maxi,” sighed Mummi as the red-faced maiden handed my father his refilled stein, “this is over the top.”
    The converted room once housed a collection of chalices, all in glass and gold cabinets, and it certainly seemed more interesting changed to a café and beer garden. There was ivy trained up lattice and over an arbor. Enormous windows cut into the side, where light from the courtyard poured through. I marveled at brightly colored parasols hanging from the ceiling. Just then, a dwarf popped out of a half door and began playing a miniature dulcimer. A drunken woman with a large bosom commenced in a