Mozart's Last Aria

by Matt Rees

  ‘Get away, madame,’ he called.

  Gieseke groaned as the first man rejoined the attack, butting him in the small of his back.

  I made to move further along the street.

  ‘Not to your lodging. They’ll look for you there,’ Gieseke shouted. ‘Back to the palace.’

  I hurried down Dorotheer Lane and across the square. The door of the library was barred and the lights had been extinguished within. I ran along the wall to the carriageway beneath the imperial ballrooms.

  Rushing into the lamplight, I was sure I’d find guards who might come to Gieseke’s aid. But I saw no one.

  I went on, past the high stained-glass windows at the rear of the palace chapel, fearing that I’d be too late. Then I heard a voice from the darkness.

  ‘Madame, you’re distressed.’

  I turned. Prince Lichnowsky came into the lamplight. He wore a high fur collar and a tall sable hat.

  He frowned. ‘Madame de Mozart?’

  I grabbed at his glove. ‘Do you carry a weapon, my prince?’

  ‘A sword, but—’

  ‘You must come with me.’

  I dragged him across the square. With the little breath I had, I explained that Gieseke was in danger. The Prince picked up his pace, opening his coat and drawing his sword. I recalled the Prussian ambassador’s accusation against Lichnowsky. Yet he seemed brave and noble, neither a coward nor a scoundrel.

  The street was empty. The doorway where Gieseke had fought the two men was quiet. Lichnowsky slid his sword into its scabbard.

  I stood in the doorway and relived the moment in which I had glimpsed the knife. I felt sure it had been coming at me, not Gieseke.

  ‘Allow me to accompany you to your inn, madame.’ Lichnowsky extended his elbow.

  I recalled Gieseke’s warning not to return to my lodgings. I wished to give myself time to think. ‘I’d prefer to walk a while—among a crowd of people. To make me feel safe, not so isolated. It would calm me down. Do you mind?’

  His lips tightened with a hint of impatience. He bowed. ‘An honor.’

  I took his arm.

  ‘I have a meeting I must attend. I mean to say, it’s a social obligation, you understand,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t wish to detain you.’

  ‘Perhaps you may rest and recover yourself in an anteroom, while I conduct my business.’

  ‘I thought it was a social affair?’

  His mouth hardened once again. ‘The Graben is a short distance this way,’ he said. ‘Even on an evening as cold as this, it’ll be full of carriages on their way to the theaters. I’m sure you’ll find it most diverting, and you’ll be quite safe with me.’

  15

  We came onto the Graben at the Plague Column. The lamps of passing carriages flickered over the memorial to those who died of the Black Death. Nine carved choirs of angels ascended toward its gilded peak. To me, it seemed the cherubs were slipping down to hell, grasping in vain for the elusive light of salvation above them. I prayed for the faith to see the sculpture as it had been intended.

  The street was loud with the hammering of horses’ hooves and the bellowing of coachmen, spurring on their teams and warning pedestrians. Lichnowsky kept close to the walls of the houses, clear of the carriages.

  ‘I’m concerned for Herr Gieseke,’ I said.

  He looked about to be sure that no one listened, though it was barely possible for me even to hear my own words over the chaotic traffic.

  ‘There’s nothing to worry about,’ he said, holding my arm close to his side as we walked. ‘Don’t be fooled by an actor’s fine diction. He’s sure to be acquainted with many disreputable fellows. Believe me, he’d know just how to deal with them.’

  Had I turned and left the pavilion of the theater when I first encountered Gieseke, I might have allowed that the Prince’s assessment was true. The actor had seemed nothing more than a disheveled lout. But I had stayed. Now I couldn’t forget what he had told me and with what genuine terror he had spoken. ‘Herr Gieseke believes—’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That Wolfgang was poisoned.’

  ‘The man’s just repeating wild rumors.’

  ‘Wolfgang thought he had been poisoned, too.’

  Lichnowsky stared at the Holy Trinity on top of the Plague Column. ‘The poor man,’ he murmured.

  ‘He never confided this in you?’ I asked.

  The Prince lowered his head.

  ‘Will you help me?’ I said.

  ‘At your service, my dear madame.’

  ‘I must know if it’s true.’

  He returned his gaze to the monument. I wondered if he was thinking of those who had been saved from the plague, or of those who had succumbed to it.

  ‘Please.’ I brought my hand out of my fur ruff and laid it on his wrist.

  ‘What if it were true, dear lady?’

  I confess I hadn’t considered how I might act once the truth was uncovered.

  He noticed that I was at a loss. ‘There’s more of Wolfgang in you than is at first apparent,’ he said. ‘I saw how you bounced on your heels after your performance at the Academy of Science. You would have cavorted with joy just as he used to do, had you not held yourself back out of shyness in front of new acquaintances.’

  ‘What does this have to do with—?’

  ‘Your naiveté, too, is like Wolfgang’s. It was this which placed him in a dangerous position.’

  ‘So you too believe he was murdered?’

  ‘No, I don’t.’ He smiled his reassurance, fleeting but kind. It was strange to see his inert features even so briefly animated. We had embarked upon a topic which perhaps robbed him of his habitual rigid control.

  ‘There are dangerous people in this city,’ he continued, ‘who had reason to dislike Wolfgang. If you persist in questioning the manner of his death, they may conclude that you’ll blame them for it.’

  ‘But I’d never accuse—’

  ‘And attempt to silence you before you can slander them as his killers.’ He leaned close to me. ‘Wolfgang never quite grew up. Your brother believed he could behave exactly as he did as a little boy, when he played at the palace and jumped into the lap of the Empress. He didn’t notice how Vienna was changing. Don’t be fooled by the gentility of Baron van Swieten’s Society of Associated Cavaliers. This is a bloody town of vicious passions.’

  A coachman bawled an insult at a man who had attempted to cross the street on foot, cracking the whip over his horses and making the poor fellow run to avoid a trampling. I watched the relieved pedestrian hurry into a side-street.

  The Prince lifted his hand to point along the road. ‘Look down there. Before the cathedral spire. Four years ago a murderer was broken on the wheel in that square. Tied up and tortured. Each of his bones was smashed with a mallet, one by one. Then he was hung. The good people of Vienna, our great city of art and culture, turned out in their thousands to enjoy it. They’re no more civilized than anyone else.’

  I covered my face with my hand. No doubt Lichnowsky thought I was merely a squeamish woman. Yet that wasn’t all. I was thinking of my husband and the small tortures he decreed as official punishment for those convicted of smuggling and poaching.

  Lichnowsky continued, ‘The city’s intellectuals, including some of those you met at Swieten’s salon, were there to savor the prisoner’s agony, too.’

  I felt the horror of the execution, as though my own bones were being crushed. My legs weakened and I dropped against Lichnowsky’s chest.

  He brought his hands under my arms to support me. ‘I’ve spoken too roughly, madame. Forgive me. You must have time to gather yourself.’ He led me through the traffic. ‘Across the way here, it’s the house where I must meet my—my friends. Let’s step inside.’

  I caught only glimpses of the street through my dizziness. The long white heads of a team of carriage horses dipping in unison as they trotted by. The feathered brown flanks of a passing mount brushing against me. A heavy doo
r opening. A well-appointed hallway. The butler’s eyes, dark hollows, as he bowed before Lichnowsky.

  16

  Up a flight of broad, stone stairs, Lichnowsky led me into a large chamber. I blinked hard, but the walls remained a blur of bright colors. He sat me on a divan.

  ‘A glass of punch will revive you, madame.’ He snapped his fingers at a footman.

  ‘Where are we?’

  A piano played in the room above us. Wolfgang’s variations on a minuet by the director of Royal chamber music in Berlin. Very well executed.

  ‘We’ve arrived before the others come for the meeting,’ Lichnowsky said. ‘But you mustn’t be seen by them, I implore you.’

  The footman approached with a cup of warm punch on a silver tray. I took a long sip.

  The images on the walls of the chamber took shape. They were painted in the Venetian style, sensuous and shocking. Animals and naked men and women lounged across rocks, draping themselves in vines and dining on vivid fruits.

  Footsteps ascended the stairs, with a rumble of jocular male conversation. The men went into another room and closed the door.

  ‘What is this place?’ I said.

  ‘Madame, I believe those were the guests arriving for my meeting. You must rest here. I’ll return as soon as certain affairs are completed.’ Lichnowsky patted my wrist and went onto the landing. He gestured to someone further up the stairs.

  I heard a few measured paces across the floor above. The piano stopped playing. Lichnowsky continued across the hallway.

  I drank the remainder of my punch. The footman took away the empty cup and shut the door behind him with care.

  The nudes on the walls taunted me with their carefree pleasure. I frowned at these representations of Paradise, innocent and pure. Closing my eyes, I was back on the dark street as Gieseke wrestled our attackers.

  Music sounded across the hall. A small orchestra of perhaps eight instruments.

  I stepped through the door onto the empty landing.

  Men shouted, and I started in fright. The voices continued in song. The cry had been merely the song’s opening phrase.

  ‘Out loud let the instruments sound,’ they sang, ‘announcing our joy.’

  The music came from behind double doors across the hall. In E-flat major. The men’s chorus gave way to a single tenor and two bass singers.

  It was impossible not to recognize the style, disciplined and graceful, the melody clear over the complex counterpoint. This was my brother’s composition.

  The tenor sang of a ‘great mystery’. Then he added, ‘Sweet are the Masons’ feelings on such a festive day.’

  Lichnowsky’s ‘business’ was with his Brother Masons.

  As I laid my hand on the knob of the double doors, I recalled that Gieseke had said dire punishments were imposed upon those who revealed the secrets of the Brotherhood. What would they do to a woman eavesdropping on their rites?

  The chorus joined in with the tenor. Under cover of the louder group singing, I edged the door open.

  I entered a large, long hall. The corner nearest the door was unlit. I could remain here without detection, provided no one left the room.

  The Masons sat along the walls on velvet benches, perhaps thirty of them, their swords at their sides. I noticed Stadler seated not far from me. The musicians played at the far end of the hall.

  Behind the orchestra was a raised stage. On a painted backdrop, a triangle veiled the sun. Its glowing outline was blocked in with stones. I saw that it was a pyramid, such as ancient Egyptian rulers constructed for their burials.

  Lichnowsky had told me the King of Prussia built an Egyptian Garden at his palace in Berlin. Perhaps its architecture resembled the design of this hall. The symbols daubed across the stage surely represented secret mysteries of the Masons, like the triangles in Stadler’s souvenir book. I wondered at the Egyptian connection. Could the King of Prussia be a Mason?

  On a table in the middle of the stage lay an unsheathed sword and an open volume the size of a family Bible. Upon the book, a skull.

  A man walked into the lamplight on the stage. It was Lichnowsky. He wore a white apron around his midriff.

  ‘Esteemed Brothers in the Craft, it has pleased the everlasting Master Builder to tear our beloved Brother from the chain of our Brotherhood.’ His voice was loud and slow. ‘Who did not know him? Who did not value him? Who did not love him, our worthy Brother Mozart?’

  Lichnowsky examined the gathered men. His expression was hostile, as though his eulogy were an accusation. Did he expect someone to confess that he hadn’t loved or valued Wolfgang?

  ‘Only a few weeks ago he stood in our midst and with magic tones added beauty to the dedication of our Masonic Temple. We have heard his music again tonight. He was a most enthusiastic follower of our Order. He was a husband, father, friend to his friends, and a Brother to his Brethren.’

  Lichnowsky returned to his seat.

  One of the men rose from his bench. He was the librarian I had seen when I visited Baron Swieten.

  Stadler crossed the floor, blindfolded the man, and led him to the center of the room. He called on him to introduce himself for his initiation into the lodge.

  ‘Petitioner Josef Strafinger, son of Michael, twenty-seven years old.’ His voice was low and probing, as though he were searching through the darkness of the room from behind his blindfold. ‘Born on May the first in Rohrau, Austria. Of Roman Catholic faith. A commoner. By occupation, assistant to the Imperial Librarian.’

  Stadler lifted his sword. ‘A warning, and your oath. Swear to speak to no one of the secrets of the Brotherhood or the practice of our Royal Art, nor to write or engrave the least syllable or character of them on any surface beneath the canopy of heaven. Should you do so, swear by the Grand Architect that you know your penalty shall be for your throat to be slit ear to ear and your tongue to be torn from your mouth.’

  The blindfolded initiate repeated the oath. His mouth was solemn and hard when he had finished.

  I imagined this moment in Wolfgang’s own initiation. I was overcome by a sense of the danger that had closed around him. I covered my eyes. When I lowered my hand, I seemed to see Death rush past me into the room, tearing the blindfold from the initiate’s head.

  But the features revealed weren’t those of the librarian. It was my brother’s face. I gasped. The words of the bloodthirsty oath echoed in my ears. Wolfgang’s voice acknowledged the murderous fate of a traitor. He turned to me, a bloodless, blue corpse, grinning like the skull on the stage.

  I heard a shriek, and I backed toward the door. The Masons turned to the entrance of the hall. I realized that it had been me who called out.

  I ran. The men came after me.

  Lichnowsky caught my arm and hurried me down the stairs. He pulled the apron from his waist and shoved it into the arms of a footman.

  As we went into the street, the Brothers gathered on the staircase. The blindfold was up over Strafinger’s brow. His expression was of mortification, as though I had seen him undressing. One of the men called out, ‘A woman? Who brought a woman?’

  The chill of the night froze me. Lichnowsky held my upper arm as we went along the Graben. ‘Now you know that I’m a Mason.’

  I shook my head. ‘I already knew that. I saw the triangles you drew in Stadler’s souvenir book. But I didn’t know the horrors to which Masons swear.’

  ‘It’s just an oath. It means nothing. It’s a bit of theater, that’s all.’

  ‘You were Wolfgang’s Brother? This was his lodge?’

  ‘For seven years.’

  ‘Did he swear such an oath?’

  ‘I must insist that this subject is dangerous.’

  ‘Did he?’ I raised my voice. ‘Did he swear?’

  ‘Stop this. It’s too risky to talk about it.’

  We came to the steps of St Peter’s Church. He squeezed my fingers. ‘You’re very cold. Let’s go inside.’

  17

  In the quiet half-li
ght of St Peter’s, the Prince sat me in the rearmost pew. He drew a flask from his coat and raised it to my lips.

  I coughed on the cognac and let my head drop back in exhaustion, staring into the shadows of the cupola. High above the altar, the angels crowned Maria. Let them surround me too, I thought.

  I took another taste from the flask.

  Before the high altar, three nuns kneeled in prayer. A priest came from the sacristy and murmured to them.

  Lichnowsky stared at the priest. ‘Wolfgang’s sister-in-law came to these precious men of God. To ask them to give the last rites to him.’

  Relief warmed my chest like the alcohol. ‘I’m happy to hear it. I was worried that he hadn’t received absolution. Constanze’s letter didn’t mention—’

  ‘The priests didn’t come.’

  Lichnowsky spoke the words, but I thought I heard the voice of Wolfgang whisper them in unison, pleading and lost, wandering the church, his sins unforgiven. I looked around for him, but felt only the chill on the air.

  The door of the sacristy slammed shut. I turned with a start. The priest was gone.

  ‘Why didn’t they come?’ I said.

  ‘Perhaps you’ve heard that the Masons are a godless bunch.’

  ‘But that’s not true, surely. Not Wolfgang.’

  ‘Of course not. But since when did a priest feel compelled to listen to anyone’s explanations? Most of the Brothers are deeply religious. Yet in the opinion of the priests, all of us are as opposed to the church as the Illuminati.’

  Lichnowsky rubbed his knuckle against his front teeth. ‘Everyone suspects the Masons. If it isn’t the priests, it’s Pergen. He has agents inside the Brotherhood. We must obtain permits from the Police Minister for new lodges and pledge our loyalty to the Emperor. All this we’ve done.’

  ‘But the Illuminati?’

  ‘They remain underground. No one knows who they are. Even Pergen, I believe. If he discovered a member of the Illuminati, he’d—’

  I touched the Prince’s arm. ‘Go on.’