Shadowsong (Wintersong #2)(40)

“Liesl?” Josef held his bow poised over his strings, ready to tune his violin.

Shaking off my disorientation, I found my place. I played a few chords; old as it was, the harpsichord had been relatively well cared for, the plucking mechanism smooth, the strings in tune. Josef nodded to me as I played G, D, A, and E, repeatedly plunking the notes until Josef had tuned his violin to me. Then he diligently ran through his exercises: scales, thirds, fourths, fifths, repeating rounds of musical phrases to warm up his hands.

I did the same on the harpsichord, trying to acquaint myself not only with an entirely new instrument, but to reacquaint myself with the attitude of playing for performance and not in private. I had long since stopped the agility drills and exercises Papa had made us do every day, and my fingers felt thick and leaden.

“Are you ready?” The Countess watched us with avid interest, but the Count’s attention seemed elsewhere. For someone who had been so keen to bring me here—to Vienna, to his very home—because of my music, he evinced remarkably little interest in our playing. I had initially taken his bumbling eccentricity for charm or possibly the product of a laudanum-addled mind, but my feelings about my patron quickly returned to their initial dread.

“If you please,” I said a trifle sheepishly. “I left a folio of sheet music upstairs with my cloak and other things. If someone could—”

Another red-clad servant entered the room before I could even finish my thought, carrying my leather-bound folio on a silver platter. My dread deepened. The room, my hosts, the entire house made for an eerie company, and the strange sameness of the liveried members of the house contributed to this growing sense of unreality.

I thanked the servant with a tight smile, and opened the folio to sort through the pages until I found Der Erlk?nig. I tried to ignore the press of the Countess’s eyes upon my skin. There was something about her scrutiny that went beyond mere curiosity; there was a sort of hunger or desire that pulsed from her like waves of perfume, and it made me both ashamed and excited at once.

I settled the pages of the score on the music stand of the harpsichord and sat back down upon the bench. I looked to Josef, who was silently running his hands along the neck of his violin, practicing his fingering in an almost perfunctory manner. This casual indifference toward performance struck me more than his coldness toward me; Josef was sensitive and shy. Or at least, he was once.

“Shall we call your guests, Your Illustriousness?” he asked in a dull voice.

The Countess smiled, leaning back in her chair. “I was rather hoping you would indulge us both with a private rendition of Der Erlk?nig, Herr Vogler,” she said. “I hope you don’t mind.”

Josef shrugged, but gave a quick, polite bow. “As you wish, my lady.”

He settled his instrument against his shoulder, his bow in hand loose by his side, and raised his gaze to mine, waiting for me to join him. A low, insistent throb pulsed at the base of my skull, and I regretted not having a bite to eat upstairs at one of the myriad banquet tables. I felt as though I had swallowed gravel, but I smiled at my brother, and nodded. He straightened his back and rested his chin against his violin, while I poised my hands over the keyboard, awaiting his cue. Josef gave me the tempo, counting us in with the bounce of his bow, and the two of us began to play Der Erlk?nig.

The sound of the harpsichord was initially jarring when paired with the violin. The plectra plunked and plucked, the strings shivered and did not resound, and the piece took on an ominous overtone that was not normally present when played on a more modern instrument. I tried to find my footing in the midst of this new aural sensation, trying to focus on the notes and not the sound. I was distracted by a sudden desire to experiment, to improvise. To play. To frolic and gambol and race within the music the way the Goblin King and I had done when I was a child. I shook my head and tried to focus on my brother instead, to listen, to follow, to support.

But he was not there.

Josef was not present in his music. His notes were precise as always, but we were missing something, a connection that ebbed and flowed between us as easy and intimate as conversation. We were playing at each other, not with each other.

The Count shifted in his seat, lifting his hand to stifle a yawn.

Oh, mein Brüderchen, I thought. Oh, Sepp, what is happening to us?

I tried desperately to make eye contact with my brother, trying to find that vein, that lifeline that bound us together. Play with me, Sepp, I begged. Play with me.

I had not been lying when I told the Countess that I was not a performer. I had the skills but not the touch. I wondered if my brother had become so used to playing with Fran?ois that he could not remember how to find me, how to dance together in the music we shared. Or was this disconnect a symptom of a deeper estrangement? How had it come to this, we who had been as close as two halves of one heart now as distant and careful as strangers? Sadness bled from my face down to my fingertips, weighing down the notes with grief.

And Josef . . . he played on with that ruthless, exacting clarity. He was ether and air and void, while I was earth and root and rock. Resentment burned through my sadness, followed by the wash of anger. Meet me, Sepp, I thought, and then changed the accompaniment.

The change in the room was immediate. A lifting of pressure, an intake of relief, the waiting lull before a rainfall. Josef was too practiced a musician to falter when I took him by surprise, but for the first time in a long time, a spark crackled between us, lightning jumping from cloud to cloud. My brother was here. With me. He was present, and listening.