by Marie Lu
“Yes, Papa.”
“I cannot have the archbishop thinking that Woferl does not deserve the reputation he has earned across Europe. You understand this, of course, Nannerl.”
I nodded. My father tightened his lips in approval, and then he rose from his chair with a single motion. I rose with him, watching him move out of the candlelight and back into the shadows of his bedchamber. When he disappeared, I turned away.
I had not bothered to ask if my name would appear next to Woferl’s on the oratorio’s title.
* * *
My father locked Woferl and I together in the music room the following morning, with nothing but fresh sheets of paper and quills and ink, and our clavier. We were not to leave until nighttime.
In a way, I was relieved. Hyacinth had always been able to find his way to us, but somehow, trapped in this room, I felt like even he might be unable to unlock a door that my father had secured himself. And even though Woferl and I still hung in an uneasy place, at least here we could speak only with music.
It was the original secret we shared between us, the ability to hear a world that others could not.
Woferl said little about why we were working together, but he seemed relieved too by my presence. He sat beside me at the clavier stand, his body turned unconsciously toward mine as he settled on a tune, the key, and the tempo. He sang part of the harmony to me, so that I would know what he wanted, and then he started to write out the first violin lines. Woferl had become faster at composing, if not for his growing experience then for the stress that Papa placed on him. He wrote in a nonstop fury, until he had completed three lines of continuous music, and then he paused. He looked at me and pointed out the phrases as he hummed.
I watched his thin hands at work. He was very pale this morning, and his dark lashes stood out against the white skin. “We’ll start with arpeggios,” he said to me. His hands floated across the paper. “Slow, and then grand, with other strings below it.” He paused to scribble more notes below the ones he’d already written. “With an undercurrent of notes, to fill out the harmony.”
“A flute,” I said, after I watched him write out the second violins. “To carry your melody above the strings.”
He nodded without looking at me. The music had already taken away his focus on anything else.
I went on, writing the lines for the flute and the horns. As I did, I noticed a shift in our styles, where his flowing melody met the abrupt sounds of my harmony. It was a subtle difference, so small that those unfamiliar with our work might never know.
Woferl would, though. He could distinguish what we wrote even when others could not.
I stared at the parchment. It was as if I were looking at a ghost of myself on the page. I was here, the harmony said.
When I started writing again, I did not change my style. I let it stay mine, the flutes and the horns. Every flourish, every trill and arpeggio. It was distinctly different from Woferl’s work, but to me, it still matched the piece, made it whole. And perhaps no one would ever recognize my hand in this, no one would clap for me when it was performed—but my brother would see it, know it for what it was. So would my father.
Papa will tell me to fix it, I thought. This piece was not my own to do what I wanted.
But I left it anyway.
Woferl paused from his work on the strings to read over what I had written. I peered at him from the corner of my eye, wondering if he would tell me to change it too, if our father’s voice would come out of his throat.
I knew he saw the shift in our styles. But a beat of time passed, and he said nothing.
Finally, he sighed. “Oh, Nannerl,” he said.
It was not an exclamation of exhaustion or exasperation. Nor was it some desperate attempt for him to win me back, empty praise in the hopes of an affectionate response, or even some trick from Hyacinth with words laced in cunning. In his voice, I heard a yearning that reminded me of our younger days, when he would sit in the morning sun and lean his head against my shoulder, watching in wonder while I played. It was love for what I’d written. When I looked more closely at him, I could see tears at the corners of his eyes as he read my music over and over, as if playing it repeatedly in his head.
He didn’t look at me, so he couldn’t see the softness that came briefly over my face, the small smile that touched my lips.
He nodded at the measures, then bent his head again and continued on without a word. I felt the burden on my chest, there for so long since my illness, shift, turn lighter. His dark hair had grown into a longer tail tied at the nape of his neck. His feet still dangled a short distance above the floor, as they had when he was a child. As I stared at him, I felt a certain pity for this little creature, caught by a different limb in the same snare as me.
“Nannerl?” he said after a while.
I paused in my writing to look at him. “Yes?” I said.
He hesitated, then spoke again. “Thank you.”
For helping me, was the part of his sentence that remained unspoken. In that moment, I thought he might address what happened with my sonatas. I halted in my work to look at him, my heart quickening, waiting for him to say it. Would he? The seconds dragged on. I realized that I was hoping he would, so that we could bring this ugly scar between us out into the open.
Woferl’s shoulders seemed weighed down. He wrote a few more measures in silence before he spoke. “I saw Hyacinth last night, in my dream,” he said softly.
I hadn’t heard Woferl mention the kingdom in months. Even hearing his name on my brother’s lips seemed to chill the air. “What did he want?” I asked.
“He runs after me,” Woferl said. He looked pensive now, and weary. “I cannot escape him. He lingers, now that I am alone.”
The cold prickled my skin. Hyacinth was here, in our home. What was he telling my brother?
“If you’re afraid,” I said to him, “you can come to me. I won’t tell anyone.”
He nodded once, but his expression looked pale and unsure. There was more to Woferl’s story, I could sense it—but he just kept writing, the light feverish in his eyes.
We wrote late into the night, until Woferl collapsed in exhaustion against the clavier stand. I helped clean his hands of ink stains, and then carried him to his room before retiring to my own. There, unable to sleep, hollow from the absence of my brother beside me, I lay awake and let my heart burn from what Hyacinth wanted with my brother.
Woferl was in danger. I could sense it now, the ice hanging in the air, waiting for him. Hyacinth was coming for him—somehow, someway. And I didn’t know how to protect him. I turned to my side and stared at where moonlight painted a silver square against the floor. Would he climb through my brother’s window in the night, while we slept? When would he do it? How?
The darkness in me, the someone else that I’d felt in my chest, stirred now. It painted for me a vision of Woferl whispering to Papa about where my compositions had been hidden. Have you already forgotten? the voice reminded me. Why do you protect him?
I tossed and turned, haunted by what the faery might do, until I finally heard my door creak quietly open to reveal Woferl stealing into my room. He hesitated by the door, not uttering a word.
How did he still look so small?
I stayed silent for a moment, unwilling to invite my brother inside. But then I pictured Woferl alone in his room, listening for Hyacinth to appear.
I waved him over. “Come here,” I said.
He crawled into my bed and snuggled beside me, just like he used to. His small body trembled. I brushed my fingers through his hair and let the voice in me slowly fade. There Woferl stayed, listening to my humming, until he finally drifted into a dreamless sleep.
THE RETURN TO VIENNA
We finished the archbishop’s oratorio in nine days, a day later than he requested. The time passed so quickly, I couldn’t remember
the separation between one morning and the next. Everything blurred together into an endless string of feverish writing. We spoke little to each other, except to exchange ideas and notes about the composition. Every night, Woferl came to my room and huddled beside me in bed.
By the end of it, I could see the shadows clearly under my brother’s eyes. My own cheeks were pale, my eyes even darker against my white skin.
Papa looked at the oratorio once with a hurried eye, made several changes, and then delivered it to the archbishop so that he could receive his payment. The archbishop approved, pleased enough with the work to forgive our brief lateness.
A marvelous feat, he told my father.
He had not believed Woferl could do it at all. For a man as powerful as the archbishop, this was just a game to him. But my father did not complain, because soon after, he received a modest sum for our work and his salary was reinstated. We paid our rent.
Woferl had signed the oratorio with his name. I could not bear to watch while he did it. Instead I stared at my father, until Papa had to turn away from my searing gaze, grumbling over the extra time it took us to finish it.
“Perhaps next time he will give the children more than eight days,” Mama said at supper after Papa had told us about the archbishop’s payment. “How can a man toy with his subjects so?”
“Perhaps next time the children will write a piece worthy of more,” Papa replied.
“It was brilliant,” Woferl suddenly said to our father before I could utter something in our defense. The whole of his small body tensed, leaning forward like a stag protecting his herd, and a fierce light appeared in his eyes. “If the archbishop cannot appreciate it, he is wholly incompetent.”
Papa sucked in his breath at Woferl’s words, but I smiled for the first time that morning.
* * *
“You and Woferl did very well,” Mama said to me later that morning. We sat together in the music room for a moment’s reprieve, for the sun had decided to come out on this late winter’s day, and the room felt warm and lazy.
“I know,” I said to her before turning away to stare out the window. “But it is never enough, is it? We could work ourselves nearly to death, and Papa would still hand us the quill and ink.”
At that, Mama frowned. “Nannerl. Don’t speak about your father that way. He loves you, and he loves your brother. He fears for your health and your brother’s as much as his own. He just wants to ensure that our family—including you—is provided for.”
I looked back at her. “Yes,” I replied. “I know the lengths he’d go to in order to provide for us. So does Woferl.”
There was a brief silence. “You are still angry with your brother,” she said gently.
“No,” I replied. “What is the use of such anger?”
Mama sighed. “Woferl is like your father. They are stubborn men, and as the women in their lives, we must learn to voice our opinions without letting them realize it. It is the way of things.”
The way of things.
I looked down, unwilling to meet my mother’s gaze. I wondered if, decades from now, I would find myself in the same position, comforting my own daughter. Would I repeat this advice to her?
“You are stubborn too, Nannerl, like your father,” Mama went on. I could not help looking at her now, and when I did, she leaned forward and touched my cheek with her hand. “I know the little things you do to show your will.” She was telling me something without saying it outright, and although I couldn’t guess at exactly what she meant, I could sense the feeling of it hanging in the air.
Then she gave me a sad smile. “I know your compositions meant a great deal to you.”
I had not prepared myself to hear her speak directly to me about the bound volume of sonatas. Mama was our silent sentinel, always watching and sometimes disapproving, but she did not question our father’s decisions for us. This was the closest she’d ever come to acknowledging my work.
For the first time, I thought about what Mama must have been like at my age. What dreams did my mother have as a young girl? Had she imagined this life with my father, moving always along the sidelines of our lives? When she looked at the night sky, did she ever think of some land far away, where the trees grew upside down and the paths ended along a white-sand shore? When did she become the mother that I now knew?
Suddenly, I feared that I would cry in front of her. I slid out of my chair, then knelt on the rug and put my head in her lap. She brushed my hair with soothing strokes, humming as she went. I savored the sound of her musical voice. Herr Schachtner was right. My mother had a wonderful ear.
We stayed this way for a long while, bathed in the light shining through the music room’s windows.
Finally, the door to the music chamber opened and Papa came striding in. My mother and I looked up in unison, jointly shaken out of our quiet moment.
“The archbishop has given us his blessing,” he said. “We are going to Vienna.”
* * *
“Can we not wait until the following year? We’ve not been in Salzburg for long.”
My mother’s voice was hushed and hurried, tense tonight as she spoke with Papa in the dining room after Woferl and I had gone to bed. I stayed near my door and listened, peeking through a crack at the sliver of my parents seated at the table.
“Next year Woferl may be several inches taller,” Papa replied in his terse, gruff way.
“He’s so small as it is. No one will question that he is a young prodigy, even if he grows a little.”
“And what of Nannerl? She’s a young woman now.”
“Very young, still.”
My father sighed. “We can barely afford to keep Sebastian as it is,” he said, “and we must take the children before the courts while we can. I’ve already received an invitation from the empress.”
I saw the corner of Mama’s mouth twitch. “Is a celebration to happen in Vienna?” she said.
“The empress’s daughter Maria Josepha is to be married to King Ferdinand IV of Naples. They will hold a huge feast and have days of celebrations—all of the royal courts and our patrons are to be there. Think of it, Anna!” Papa’s eyes lit up. “We’ll earn ten years’ salary in a week.”
My mother’s voice lowered so that I could barely hear her. “It is not safe—”
Papa’s voice cut into her words. “Archduchesses do not marry daily.”
Their conversation ended there. I watched them sit in silence for a moment, their figures flickering in the candlelight. Finally, they rose and headed to their bedchamber. I watched them go until their door closed, then went back to my bed and crept underneath the covers.
When the flat at last became still, I sat awake in the dark and thought. In the adjacent room, I could hear Woferl stirring in his bed. Already, Papa had started arranging our trip, and before long, we would have our belongings packed once again into the carriage, be waving our farewells to Salzburg.
I shivered and pulled my blankets higher until they came up to my chin. It was not a coincidence, our trip to Vienna. I thought of the letter I had burned, the ink staining the paper until it blackened and disappeared against the coals.
Come to me in Vienna, and I shall take you to the ball.
What he would do there, I couldn’t guess. How he wanted my brother, I didn’t know. There were too many possibilities, and my mind whirled through each until I exhausted myself with fear. The part of myself I understood shrank away at the thoughts. The part of myself lost in the kingdom stirred and smiled.
All I knew for certain was this: we were headed to Vienna, just as Hyacinth had predicted. And he would be waiting for me there.
THE DEVIL’S DANCE
It had been years since my first performance in Vienna before Emperor Francis I and Empress Maria Theresa. Now I barely recognized the city.
Banners hung from balconies in bright and f
estive colors, and fireworks lit the night sky. People streamed past our carriage with laughter and cheers. The air smelled of wine and of smoke from the fireworks, of bakeries busy putting out celebratory breads and cakes. Our driver shouted impatiently at the crowds that thronged before our carriage; as we lurched forward in increments, I kept my face turned to the commotion outside. People spilled into and out of the opera houses, dressed in their finest, and still others danced behind tall windows or simply out in the street.
Woferl pointed to the people. “They are like colorful birds,” he said, and I thought of the opera we’d attended together so long ago, where I’d seen Hyacinth playing cards from a balcony seat.
My gaze swept the squares, searching for his sharp smile in the throngs, listening for the off-key notes of the kingdom in between the music that filled the streets. But nothing seemed out of the ordinary yet.
We found lodgings that night on the second floor of a house in the Weihburggasse, at the courtesy of Herr Schmalecker, a goldsmith. He greeted my father with a wide grin when we stepped out of the carriage, then immediately started to help him bring our belongings inside. I stared at the house. It was finer than our own in Salzburg.
“It is splendid to see you, Herr Mozart!” he said to Papa. “What a time to stay in Vienna, don’t you think? The city has been like this for several days already.”
Papa smiled back at him. “You are most gracious, sir. We will not forget this kindness.”
“No need to thank me, the pleasure is all mine. Do you think it such a burden for someone to host the Mozarts?” He laughed heartily, as if amused by his own joke, and my father laughed along with him. I smiled quietly next to my mother, while Woferl watched them move the luggage.
