Mozart's Last Aria

by Matt Rees

  ‘I heard the oath.’

  ‘So you did, when you—’

  ‘Wolfgang tried to break the rule that excludes women from the Masons. He’s dead. But who else is at risk, Herr Stadler?’ I said. ‘Who else was involved in the new lodge? You? Gieseke?’

  He groaned his acknowledgement. ‘Lichnowsky, too. He backed Wolfgang in founding the new lodge.’

  I wondered why Lichnowsky had ventured into so hazardous a project. I looked across the theater to the Prince’s seats. The woman with the piano-playing fingers leaned her head against the edge of the box, enraptured. Lichnowsky’s face was as empty of emotion as hers was awash with it.

  The encores of the primary singers were at an end. The heavy scarlet curtains drew back. The entire cast appeared on stage among the classical columns of the set for a curtain-call. I couldn’t see Gieseke among the white-robed priests.

  The door of the box opened. The Baron entered.

  ‘Gieseke?’ I asked.

  ‘Not a sign of him,’ he said. ‘Perhaps he’ll come to me if I wait here.’

  Gieseke had only to have spoken a single word to me, the guilty name. But he had fled. It was as if the identity of the killer had been written out in water, plain before my eyes and yet elusive. I rose to my feet in confusion.

  From backstage came a loud crack, like a heavy rope severed.

  The barge from which the Three Boys had sung their advice to the Bird Man swung out under the proscenium. As it rocked back and forth, a gasp spread through the audience. A man dangled head first from the boat, high above the stage.

  Something spattered down from the barge onto Schikaneder. He wiped it from the shoulders of his feathery costume.

  As the barge swung back, its motion dislodged the hanging man. He plunged to the stage. Schikaneder pulled the screaming Queen of the Night out of the way.

  The body lay twisted on the boards, blood spreading over its white robes. Schikaneder lifted the prostrate man’s head.

  ‘My God,’ he cried, in the penetrating baritone that we had applauded moments before. ‘It’s Gieseke. He’s dead.’

  In his box across the theater, Lichnowsky came to his feet. The pretty young woman spun in horror and pressed her face to his midriff. He looked toward Swieten’s seats. The Baron stared at the stage, his hands closed into fists. Lichnowsky went quickly from his box, and the sobbing woman hurried after him.

  27

  I mounted the stairway to Jahn’s coffeehouse. Ahead of me, I heard the click of billiard balls and two voices. One said, ‘Well played, Prince.’ The other: ‘Pure luck, Lichnowsky, you bastard.’

  As I reached the head of the stairs, I saw the tall figure of Prince Lichnowsky, his arm extended and his palm held out. A stout man, dressed in the fashionable simplicity of the English style, pulled his wallet from his coat and slid out two banknotes. He slapped them into Lichnowsky’s hand with a grimace.

  ‘You’re lucky that you’re of a lower class than me, Hoffmann,’ the Prince said, as he put the money away. ‘Otherwise I’d demand satisfaction for your insults.’

  ‘I’d be happy to take you on. Choose your weapons.’

  ‘I wouldn’t dignify you with the honor of a duel. But you’d better watch your mouth, or I’ll thrash you in the Graben outside my house like an insolent servant.’

  When the third man rose from his table, I saw that it was Stadler. He imposed himself between the two men, a hand on each of their chests, and laughed. ‘Neither a duel nor a brawl would bring much honor to either of you,’ he said.

  The loser of the game dropped onto a sofa. Hoffmann waved his hand toward a man in a white apron, who nodded and drew a pot of coffee from a brass urn.

  Lichnowsky pinched some snuff beneath his nose. ‘It’s early in the day for the coffee to have made you so quarrelsome, Hoffmann,’ he said. ‘Usually you don’t challenge me to a duel before lunchtime.’

  ‘Most of the people who know you for a scoundrel are the kind to lie in bed until late, so ordinarily the field is mine until noon.’ He lifted a shaky hand toward me. ‘Today I had to beat the rush.’

  The Prince spun on the heel of his boot with an expression of shock. When he saw me, his face turned to anger, but he composed himself. ‘Hoffmann, you dishonor this lady.’

  ‘Not before you did, surely.’

  ‘This is Madame de Mozart.’

  ‘Wolfgang’s sister?’

  The pot of coffee arrived. The seated man busied himself with pouring from it, trying to cover his embarrassment. Stadler hid behind a news-sheet.

  Lichnowsky took my hand. He led me to a table in the corner of the room.

  ‘You told that man your home is on the Graben, my prince. The meeting of the Masonic lodge. It was held at your house, wasn’t it?’

  He covered his mouth with his hand and coughed. He held up two fingers to the man in the apron.

  Jahn’s was one of the most popular coffeehouses in Vienna, but at midmorning Lichnowsky’s companions at the billiard table had it to themselves. It was comfortably furnished with snug booths of red velvet along the walls. The news-sheets hung on wooden rails beside the bar. The air was charged with the aroma of crushed coffee beans.

  Lichnowsky lit a long Sevilla. His breath shivered between his lips as he blew out the smoke. ‘Wolfgang played many of his public concerts here,’ he said. ‘Financially your brother did quite well in this place.’

  I glanced at the piano beside the bar. A coffeehouse seemed a poor venue for Wolfgang’s beautiful music compared to the palaces in which he had appeared. But perhaps it was my own experience in making music for cash that made Jahn’s seem low. Our family once lingered too long in London and money ran short. We children had been reduced to afternoon shows in a beer hall at a penny a ticket.

  The fellow in the apron brought a tray with a porcelain coffee pot, cups and two slices of cake. He poured a coffee for each of us and set the cake on our table with a bow.

  ‘This is Herr Jahn’s invention.’ Lichnowsky handed me a fork and pushed my plate of cake toward me.

  Jahn bowed with pride and returned to his bar.

  ‘Try it,’ Lichnowsky said, exhaling a blue stream of cigar smoke. ‘It’s wonderful.’

  Though I had breakfasted at my inn after early mass, I had eaten little. I had been troubled still by the shock of Gieseke’s death at the theater the previous night. I took a piece of the cake. It was an apple torte, brown and crusty, soft sliced fruit within. Poppyseeds spread across my tongue, bitter like the grounds of coffee.

  I said, ‘That night when you found me in distress after the attack—’

  ‘I was honored to be of aid to you.’

  ‘You told me Wolfgang’s death wasn’t suspicious. You were wrong. He was poisoned.’

  ‘Come now, madame—’

  ‘But you were correct about one thing.’

  ‘Was I?’

  ‘You said his enemies might strike against his surviving friends. It has happened. Poor Herr Gieseke.’

  Lichnowsky tapped his fork against the crust of his torte. His face bore the impatience of a reckless teenager who must listen in silence to an admonishing parent, though he knows his own acquaintance with risk to be greater than that of the one who lectures him about it.

  ‘There’s more that you haven’t told me, I’m sure of it,’ I said. ‘You can’t pretend you aren’t deeply involved in this intrigue, my prince.’

  He cut away a piece of cake with the edge of his fork and divided that once more into two.

  ‘The Grotto. You were to take part in this new lodge,’ I said.

  With the back of his fork, Lichnowsky mashed the slices of apple on his plate. ‘I told you this subject was best left alone.’

  ‘It’s like a melody that plays over in my head. I can’t ignore it.’

  His eyes, when they looked at me sideways, were probing, sharp and resentful.

  ‘Tell me the truth about Wolfgang’s secret mission to Berlin,’ I said. ‘Why doe
s it scare everyone? His friends are terrified. One of them is dead.’

  ‘So far.’

  I had expected to see fear in Lichnowsky’s face. Instead his features were piqued, like a child thwarted at his play. As his anger subsided, it came to me just what that game had been. ‘When you visited Berlin, it was you who was on the secret mission,’ I said. ‘You’re the spy, not Wolfgang.’

  He drummed his fingers on the table. I had sensed that Wolfgang lacked the guile to be an agent. I saw that I had been right.

  ‘Wolfgang’s presence was a cover for my journey to Berlin, but I’m no spy,’ Lichnowsky whispered.

  Stadler rattled his news-sheet to straighten the page. Hoffmann snored on his sofa.

  ‘There was never a job at the palace in Berlin for Wolfgang?’ I said.

  ‘We told everyone Wolfgang expected a position there, so no one would suspect my reasons for visiting an enemy capital.’

  ‘You’d appear to be just the Maestro’s traveling companion.’

  ‘That’s the idea.’

  ‘What was your true purpose?’

  Lichnowsky’s eyes became distant. They flickered with doubt. I wondered if espionage took a man so far into deceit that he might lose track of the genuine impulse that had started him on his cheating course.

  ‘The King of Prussia observes the same Masonic principles as our lodge,’ he said. ‘He’s a member of the Rosicrucian order.’

  ‘So your trip was a Brotherly visit?’

  ‘The King craved more than fellowship. He wanted his own lodge in Vienna. Secret and outside the restrictions of Count Pergen’s police.’

  ‘To what end?’

  Lichnowsky slapped his hand on the table. ‘You really ought to—’

  ‘To what end?’ I spoke through my teeth, low and hard.

  ‘The King of Prussia’s not interested in our Masonic principles. He wants connections.’

  ‘Spies?’ My fingers touched an arpeggio across my skirt. I hid them beneath the table, but I let them continue their silent exercises for the sake of my concentration.

  ‘Informants, in the highest circles of Viennese society,’ Lichnowsky said. ‘Under the control of Prussia.’

  ‘You went to Berlin to receive orders from the King. You were to return to Vienna to recruit these highly placed spies. That was your plan?’

  The Prince raised his voice. ‘No, no.’ Stadler shifted behind his news-sheet. Lichnowsky collected himself. ‘I went to dissuade the King, to beg him not to carry out his plan.’

  ‘Really?’ My sarcasm surprised me as much as it offended the Prince.

  ‘If our Emperor learned that a Prussian lodge had been planted in his capital it would endanger every Mason here. He’s already suspicious of us. If he linked us to his greatest enemy, who knows how we’d be punished.’

  ‘But the King of Prussia refused to abandon his plan?’

  ‘Not at all. When I presented my case, the King agreed it’d endanger his – his friends in Vienna. But Wolfgang spoiled everything.’

  ‘Wolfgang?’

  ‘After he played for the King in Berlin, he suggested the idea of a Masonic opera.’

  ‘The Magic Flute.’

  ‘Your brother was only looking for funding for his production. He spoke with such animation that the King once more determined to involve himself in Vienna, in our Masonic life. It was Wolfgang’s fault that this mess came down upon us.’ Sweat stood on the Prince’s lip.

  ‘But there’s no Prussian lodge?’ I said.

  ‘There is not.’

  ‘Then why does the danger persist? Why is Gieseke dead?’

  ‘There are powerful men with much to lose. Great men of state, Wolfgang’s Masonic Brothers, whose positions would be at risk if they were suspected of links to Prussia. The Count Küfstein, the Court Chancellor. Count Thun, my father-in-law, and many others. I believe someone wishes to make known the story of the Grotto, so that these worthy men will lose their positions. Austria would be destabilized. Our state would be made vulnerable to a Prussian attack.’

  ‘War? Perhaps that was the King’s intention. Not to set up a cadre of spies, but to sow discord in the palace. To weaken our government.’

  ‘You may be correct.’

  ‘But surely Wolfgang’s purpose was simpler? He wanted to allow women into the Masons.’

  Lichnowsky took a draught of his coffee. ‘That stupid idea.’

  ‘Why stupid?’

  He took me in as though he only now noticed that I was a woman and that this fact made me ridiculous. ‘It’s utterly absurd.’

  ‘Yet for this reason he wrote The Magic Flute. And that isn’t absurd. It’s the most beautiful of his creations.’

  ‘The music, maybe. The ideas are silly.’ He swilled some coffee in his cheek and stubbed out his cigar. ‘It meant a lot to him, I suppose, this notion of women in the Brotherhood. He broached it in Berlin, too. Perhaps the King agreed because he wanted to enlist the wives of powerful men in his lodge. They might have supplied him with information from their husbands. Either way, the King was using Wolfgang.’

  ‘Wolfgang managed to get The Magic Flute produced. How do you know he wasn’t using the King?’

  Lichnowsky spat coffee grounds into his cup and dabbed his lips with the lace of his cuff. ‘Because Wolfgang is dead.’

  28

  A hay cart passed the entrance to the coffeehouse, turned up Rauhenstein Lane, and trundled toward Wolfgang’s apartment. I imagined the comfort I might find at his home. It would be a welcome contrast to the edgy banter of the men at the billiard table. I saw why Wolfgang had been determined to marry after he arrived in Vienna. He played music with men, but he created it beneath the pink marble stucco and the painted relief of the goddess of flowers. With women.

  I heard footsteps descend the stairs behind me. Then silence. An intense force quivered on the back of my neck like the touch of a feverish hand.

  When I turned, Stadler beckoned from the doorway. I stepped toward him. He glanced along the street.

  ‘I must beg you again to desist, madame,’ he said. ‘This business with—’

  ‘With the women in Wolfgang’s lodge?’

  ‘I was weak with fear when I let that slip to you at the opera house. Lichnowsky will know that you heard it from me.’

  ‘You eavesdropped on my conversation with the prince?’

  ‘Mention it to no one else, I implore you.’

  ‘Why are you scared of Lichnowsky?’

  ‘I’m scared of every Mason just now.’

  ‘Your Brothers?’

  ‘My Brothers. But your brother most of all.’ He scanned the street as though he expected to see Wolfgang’s ghost weave through the passing traffic, calling out all his secrets now that he was beyond punishment for disclosing them. Stadler felt no such immunity.

  ‘Wolfgang wanted women in his lodge,’ I said. ‘It’s a violation of Masonic rules. But I don’t see the great danger in—’

  ‘Those are the Masonic rules in Austria. But not in France.’

  ‘In France, there are female Masons?’

  ‘The Revolution brought equality for women, too. You understand? For God’s sake, woman, whether he intended it or not, Wolfgang was introducing a revolutionary French idea at a time when those same French people have overthrown the aristocracy and appear poised to murder their queen.’ Stadler lifted his arms and let them fall to his sides. ‘Now do you see?’

  The street was busy with carriages depositing players at the jeu de paume courts on Ball Lane. The wheels of a yellow trap cracked out a din on the cobbles, passing close to the door of the coffeehouse.

  Stadler ducked back into the shadows of the hallway. When the trap moved on, the clarinetist was gone.

  I went along the edge of the street.

  The revolution in France. The schemes of the King of Prussia. Even I, who was innocent of politics, could see that Wolfgang had taken dreadful risks. Yet I wasn’t surprised. He had spotted a chan
ce to produce a beautiful opera based on his cherished principles. Naturally he scorned the dangers.

  I passed through the entryway of Wolfgang’s building and climbed the spiral steps to Constanze’s door.

  My nephew was at the keyboard once again. This time I barely noticed his false notes. I took Karl’s cheeks between my hands and kissed his forehead. He rubbed his brow and slid beneath the piano. His frown disguised a smile.

  Constanze laughed at her son. ‘Sister, welcome.’ Taking my hands she called to the maid: ‘Sabine, a hot punch. We need to warm you up.’

  ‘Hardly. I’ve just been drinking coffee. My heart flutters like a sparrow’s wings.’

  ‘Then take some punch to soothe your nerves.’

  Little Wolfgang woke and howled in his crib. Constanze went to the next room to calm him with kisses.

  I sat on the bench before the piano keyboard. The maid set a small brazier behind me. The heat of the coals seeped into the small of my back and I realized that I had been bent, as if by the weight of my uncertainty.

  I sipped my rum punch and considered what I had learned of my brother’s death. Of one conclusion I was in no doubt – Wolfgang hadn’t died because of an affair with Magdalena Hofdemel. The rumor that Constanze had been so careful to deny in her letter to me was a calumny. It didn’t fit the facts as I had uncovered them, neither the connections to the Masons nor to Prussia.

  I thought of Hofdemel’s poor widow, alone in her home with the wounds inflicted by her dead husband. I decided I must tell Magdalena that I knew she was without sin.

  Constanze left her baby with the maid and sat beside me at the keyboard. She leafed through a pile of manuscript pages on top of the piano.

  ‘These are the pieces the Prussian ambassador wishes to purchase for his King,’ she said. ‘Will you play one for me?’

  Her smile was so guileless, I wondered that people thought of me as Wolfgang’s double. In her simplicity, the resemblance between husband and wife appeared much stronger.

  ‘Of course, my dear,’ I said. ‘Which one?’

  She pulled a few sheets from the top of the pile. ‘This one, of course.’