The Kingdom of Back

by Marie Lu

  “Johann?” I said, before I was even sure of it.

  The boy had already passed me by, but he stopped in his tracks and looked around in confusion. I dared not call out his name a second time. Papa would be home soon.

  I thought for a moment that Johann would keep going, convinced that my voice had just been a part of his imagination. But before he could turn away, he caught sight of me standing in the doorway of the inn. I felt embarrassed for my silence, and the blush rising on my face. Still, I did not turn away.

  Johann hurried over to me. He pulled the bottom of his scarf down a bit so that he could speak, and his breath rose in a cloud. “Is it you, Fräulein Mozart?” he said. His face brightened, and he gave me a quick, awkward bow. “I hadn’t expected to see you here.”

  I could not help but smile at him; it was comforting to hear our familiar language. “Neither had I,” I replied. “What are you doing in London?”

  Johann blinked to moisten his eyes in the cold, and I noted how frozen his lashes looked, the strands beaded with icy dew. He pointed farther down the street. “My father wants me to attend university next year, to study law. We came to London to see the schools.” He raised an eyebrow at me, his smile wry. “I may end up back in Germany, as I can’t say any here have stirred him. I liked Oxford, but you should have seen his face. He was shocked by the brashness of the students—loud and unapologetic, always protesting something or other.”

  I put a hand to my mouth and stifled a surprised smile. “It sounds delightful,” I remarked, impressed by the idea of such spirit.

  Johann shrugged, still smiling. “What about you?” he said. “Are you here with your family? Come to perform for the London public?”

  “My father has gone to see the king,” I said. “Woferl and I are to play for him soon, I imagine.”

  “You will be able to see him, without a doubt.” Johann put his hands back into his pockets, too cold to gesture with them. “I’ve heard the Americans are unhappy with the king’s taxes and are giving Parliament an earful. He is desperate for entertainment to lighten his mood.”

  “Then I suppose we must thank the Americans.” It was so easy to laugh with this boy. With Woferl gone from my side, and Hyacinth quiet, I found myself savoring the warmth of this small moment.

  He told me about his family, then, and about his father. I learned that we had much in common. He and his sister—who was my age, he told me—were the only surviving children of his parents. His father, passionate about Johann’s education, had enlisted an army of private tutors and scholars to teach him literature, art, languages, history. He told me that he loved to paint.

  I felt a sudden urge to tell him about the Kingdom of Back—all of it, the beauty that took my breath away, the darkness that haunted my waking dreams. He was a painter, someone who also lived in other lands. Perhaps he would understand.

  “How long are you staying in London?” Johann asked me.

  “I’m not sure. A month, at the least.”

  “I will try to see you again,” he said. His smile turned shy then, and his gaze was full of warmth. “If I cannot, may I have permission to write to you?”

  My father will never let you, I thought. But he had slipped past my defenses, and the crisp London air had made me bold. “Yes,” I said. I told him about our flat at Getreidegasse no. 9, and the house outside London where we would stay for the next few weeks.

  Johann’s face glowed. I wondered what I looked like to him—a foolish girl in front of this older boy, unable to think of more to say. I was not raised as the type of girl to keep secrets from her father, and yet, I had so many of them. But I still found myself smiling back at Johann, thinking only of when I could hear from him again.

  Johann tightened his scarf around his face, then uttered a muffled farewell to me before he continued down the street. The wind blew his dark hair into a flurry. I was too afraid to return the goodbye, so the word stayed huddled in my throat instead. Finally, when he disappeared into the crowds, I looked the other way, where Papa would come hurrying back.

  There, I saw Woferl standing at the edge of the inn, partially hidden behind the corner.

  I froze. He must have seen everything.

  Woferl’s face was turned to me. I wondered how long he must have stood there, and what he may have heard. He did not smile at me, nor did he look angry. He simply stared.

  “Woferl,” I called out to him.

  He did not answer me. I swallowed hard, suddenly wondering if Hyacinth was beside him and had made himself invisible to me. The thought made me tremble. My brother, when he loved me, would keep any secret of mine close to his heart. But the rift between us still felt heavy in the air, like an off-key note, and there was something wary in his gaze that pulled him away from me, something that made me afraid of what he might do.

  Then Papa came bustling down the street, his eyes squinting in the cold wind, and Woferl’s stare broke. He turned and ran to Papa, gave him an affectionate smile, and tugged on his pockets to see if he had brought any sweets. I watched them carefully. When Papa nodded at me, I smiled back and asked him about his meeting.

  “It went well enough,” he told me. “We will perform for the court.”

  But his face seemed tired, his shoulders hunched. I knew immediately that it meant he did not expect us to be paid much for our private concert, that the king must be tightening his purse strings. My heart dropped at the disappointment in my father’s voice. England was costing us more than we could earn.

  Despite the tempest of my thoughts, I brought myself to nod in response. “I’m glad, Papa,” I replied. My eyes darted down to my brother. I held my breath, waiting for the moment when he would speak.

  But the moment did not come. Instead, Woferl sucked on a piece of candy and hummed under his breath a tune from another world.

  * * *

  That night, I dreamed about Johann. He and I sat together under the old ivy wall of an English cottage’s garden, right next to the door that led out into the countryside. The moon was unusually bright, perfectly halved, and Johann’s face was completely lit by its light. From this close angle, he seemed to be the loveliest boy in all Europe.

  “Are you happy, Nannerl?” he asked. “Do you like the path that your life has taken?”

  “I don’t know,” I replied. My eyes darted away from his and came to focus instead on the sapphire silhouettes of trees in the distance. A part of me expected Hyacinth to appear, but he never did. I held my blue pendant in my hands, and my thumbs rubbed idly across its glassy surface. When I lifted my fingers and moved them through the air, everything rippled with light. Music played wherever I tapped. The grasses billowed around us in an undulating sea.

  Here, this place, this dream, belonged to me.

  I turned to him. “Are you happy? Do you dream of traveling to a different place in the world?”

  Johann leaned toward me until his lips touched my cheek. “We do the best we can.” Then he looked past the ivy wall and pointed toward the stars. “If I see you again, and if you see me,” he said, “let’s run away and marry on a white shore. Let’s go to Greece, to Asia and the Americas, where you can perform for any audience you desire. They will love you so. You never need to hide away your music again. Will you come with me, if you see me again? Will you promise me that?”

  And all I could say was yes, my heart aching with desire for this world that was mine. I woke with the word still dancing on my tongue.

  My hand was clutching my pendant tightly. For a long moment, I lay awake, letting my fingers run against the glass surface. Then I sighed against my pillow, glanced at where Woferl was breathing evenly in his sleep, and rolled over to hold the pendant up to the moonlight.

  Something seemed different about it.

  I squinted, frowning now, and held it closer. Then a silent cry escaped from me. I dropped the pendant into my la
p.

  I wanted to shake Woferl awake, but all I could do was stare down at this charm that I had remembered to be a smooth, transparent blue.

  Its surface had cracked into a thousand slivers.

  HYACINTH’S REVENGE

  Several days later, Papa became gravely ill.

  At first, he complained of chills, a weary back, and a sore throat, something he waved away as a passing irritation. The next day, he had doubled over on his bed with his hands clutched over his stomach, and Mama and Sebastian had to send for a doctor. Fever settled over him in a heated cloud.

  Woferl and I continued our clavier lessons alone, as quietly as we could. I kept my thoughts to myself and did not dare to share them with my brother. My shattered pendant stayed in the bottom of my dresser.

  Woferl never mentioned my moment with Johann. My father never found out.

  He blamed his illness on the English weather, the fog, and the rain. Without his making arrangements and setting up meetings, several more of our performances were canceled. We were forced to dig into the money we’d earned in Germany. This only deepened Papa’s frustration, which in turn seemed to worsen his state.

  I found myself lingering outside my parents’ bedchamber, watching my mother wringing out a towel to place on my father’s head. I would stare at his pale, sickly face and silently will him back to health. My brother, still reluctant to talk to me, would quietly ask me how Papa was doing. I never knew what to say. Our practice sessions felt strange without his shadow towering beside us.

  After several weeks of little progress and performance cancellations, Mama finally moved us to the English countryside outside of London, to a small Georgian house on Ebury Row, so that Papa could recover in peace. The house was plain but spacious, and when we first arrived there I looked out of the carriage window to admire the pastures and estates.

  On our first day, Mama requested our clavier be pushed to a corner and covered with a sheet of cloth. We were not to play while our father stayed ill.

  This did not stop Woferl from composing music. I saw him working at night, jotting down measures into the music notebook that Papa had given him after our Frankfurt tour.

  One afternoon, I found Woferl hunched over his writing desk overlooking the garden and approached him. He did not speak, but his eyes darted up at me, and I noticed the shift of his little body as he turned himself unconsciously toward me.

  “May I see what you’ve written?” I offered.

  Woferl did not look up. His hand continued to scribble a fluid line of notes on the page. “After I’ve finished,” he said at last. “I am nearly done with my symphony.”

  It was a response. My heart lifted slightly at that. He had not spoken to me like this since the incident at the château. Perhaps Papa’s illness has finally softened the grudge between us.

  I waited. When Woferl finished his page and turned to a new sheet, I tried again. “Tomorrow I am going to explore around the house, and walk in the garden. Will you come with me?”

  Woferl said nothing. I looked over his shoulder this time, so that I could see the measures he wrote out. The symphony was light and fluid, with the same liveliness I remembered from its first pages, which I had seen some time ago. I read my way silently down the page, picturing the harmony in my mind. My eyes settled on the last measure Woferl had written down.

  It was a chord, three notes played together with no separations. “That does not belong,” I said automatically, without thinking.

  Woferl frowned. I saw his eyes jump to the same chord, even though I had not pointed anything out.

  “You’re right,” he replied. “It doesn’t quite fit.”

  His agreement surprised me. I reached over, put my finger down on the paper, and drew three invisible notes. It was the same chord, separated out so that each note came after the other. “This would be better,” I said quietly.

  Woferl looked at the paper for a long moment. He dipped his quill back into its inkwell, and then crossed out the old chord and replaced it with mine. I watched him carefully as he wrote, expecting to hear an edge in his voice should he choose to speak to me again.

  But when he looked at me again, there was a small smile lingering on his lips, his satisfaction at a good measure of music.

  “It is better,” he echoed.

  * * *

  Gradually, Woferl began to ask for my advice again. When I wrote my own music in secret, he would look on, murmuring in appreciation when he enjoyed a measure. He did not come with me to explore the house, but when I wandered the garden, he would watch me through the window. And sometimes, if he were in a particularly good mood, he would slip his small hand into mine, holding us together until some distraction drew him away again.

  Papa recovered slowly in his bedroom, with his windows open to the country air and his bedside drawer constantly adorned with fresh flowers from the garden. His mood was better too, now that we were far away from the chilly London streets. I would hear him laughing with Mama sometimes, or them speaking together in hushed voices on warm afternoons. The sound was as sweet as the summer rain.

  Woferl had been in good health too. His cheeks were round and rosy, and his childish giggles rang through the house. As we were still forbidden from touching the clavier, we spent most of our days playing together. I invented musical games to humor him and hid trinkets all over the house that he would then have to find.

  One day, Woferl dragged Sebastian into our room and begged him to draw us a map of the kingdom. I listened in surprise. The rift between Woferl and me had been because of the kingdom—and yet, now he was asking for it to be drawn as a map. Sebastian did, and my brother laughed and clapped his hands in delight at the funny little boxes he would draw for us, his crooked castle on the hill and squiggly trees.

  I looked on, amused but uneasy at my brother’s enthusiasm. The kingdom did not look so powerful or frightening on paper. My brother was well. My father’s health was slowly returning. And as I watched Sebastian amuse Woferl, I began to wonder whether, perhaps, the kingdom had truly been nothing more than a faery tale. It was easy to think so here, in this rose-scented house soaked in sunlight. I had not seen Hyacinth since the château. Woferl did not have any more nightmares.

  Maybe he had left us entirely. I lay awake at night, trying to make sense of it. It had been so long, I began to hope that perhaps Hyacinth had forgotten about my betrayal and wouldn’t seek revenge for the way I’d turned away from him.

  Perhaps he was never real at all.

  Still, now and then, I’d find myself looking into the shadows of my room and wondering whether I saw a slender figure hiding there. I had completed three tasks for the princeling. He had promised, if I helped him, to grant my wish in return.

  Was my relationship with Hyacinth really to end this quietly? Was I destined to fade into the air as my brother moved on without me and my father followed him? Would Woferl turn to me one day and point to some empty corner, whispering to me that Hyacinth had returned to him alone?

  By the time Papa recovered enough from his illness to bring us back to the city, winter had set into London and the days were darker and even colder. It was a bitter contrast to our sun-soaked days in the countryside. Our concerts were adequately attended, but a far cry from our earlier stops. After several more months of disappointing performances, Papa decided that he had had enough of England and arranged for us to leave.

  “There is no love for God’s music here,” he complained to my mother on our carriage ride to the pier at Dover.

  “Perhaps there is too much, Leopold,” my mother replied. “Herr Johann Christian Bach himself is the queen’s music master.”

  At that, Papa nodded in bitter agreement. Herr Bach had helped us win an audience before the royal English court in the first place. But how were we to compete with the London master of music? “Ah, Anna,” he said with a sigh. “Too many mu
sicians make their living here. We’ll go elsewhere. The envoy from The Hague has approached me again. I have already made arrangements with the Duchess of Montmorency.”

  Mama’s expression did not waver, but I could plainly see the disappointment on her face. “I thought that we would not see the Dutch,” she said. “We have been away from Salzburg for so long.”

  “The Princess-Regent Carolina and her brother are anxious to see us,” Papa replied. “They wish the children to perform and have requested a bound volume of Woferl’s compositions ready for the prince’s eighteenth birthday.”

  “A volume?” my mother asked. “How many?”

  “I thought six sonatas could be ready for publication as soon as we arrive.”

  Six sonatas. I could tell that this was no idle guess, but the number the Dutch had asked for, and that Papa had already promised.

  At Mama’s frown, Papa lowered his voice into his affectionate tone. “Anna,” he said, “it will go better than London, I assure you.”

  “Do you not remember what happened in Prussia?”

  “Prussia.” Papa grimaced and waved a dismissive hand. “This is different. The Dutch will pay us in guilders, not kisses. Think of it.” He took my mother’s hands. “There will be concerts every night, crowded with patrons, and opera houses and gardens overflowing with people who cannot get their fill of good music. Every nobleperson will be eager to receive us. Princess Carolina is a great admirer of ours and insisted on our presence.”

  I looked down at my brother to see him listening quietly and biting his lip, his face intent. He knew as well as I did that it was no use arguing once Papa had made up his mind. The Dutch envoy knew that our London tour had soured in the end, and it was this weakness he sought to exploit by tempting my father to make up for those performances. Besides—I could see the light in Woferl’s eyes, his brightening at the challenge before him despite his exhaustion.