The Kingdom of Back(24)

Hyacinth left his seat and began to walk toward me. The others did not seem to react to this, and when I chanced a look at my father and Woferl, I realized that they sat motionless in their chairs, as if time had chosen to suspend them entirely.

I finished the menuett and promptly began another. From deep within the notes emerged the rise and fall of a breeze, ripples of rain in a pond, the high trill of a bird’s call. Sparrows flitted overhead, settling into the branches of a thick forest’s canopy that had grown over the ceiling’s paintings and chandeliers. The wind curled around me, stirring the edges of my wig. I felt the cooling mist of rain against my cheeks.

Hyacinth finally reached me. He sat down on the clavier bench beside me and studied my dancing hands. The glow of his eyes cast blue light against his face. “Very good, Nannerl,” he said, his voice bright with approval. “Play another.”

I did. Why are you here? I asked Hyacinth. I must have spoken the words in my mind, for they sounded muted, and my lips stayed closed.

He heard me all the same. Hyacinth smiled and stayed beside me, inching closer as I played. His boyish face glowed with joy. Then he stood and wrapped his arms around me, his slender young hands covering my own. He moved his fingers with mine and the music changed to something new, the notes as crisp and clean as rain against glass.

“I am here because you wished it,” he replied. “The music you wrote into your notebook called for me. Did it not?”

And I nodded, because it was true. Our fingers danced along the keys in a perfect scale.

“I have brought you to this performance. And look at you now, dazzling with your true talent. The court will remember you.” He leaned closer to me. “Now that I have helped you, it is your turn to help me. Are you ready?”

I nodded again. I was not playing to an empty room with no audience, like I’d seen in my nightmares. Here I was playing before the royal court, their attention rapt as they listened to me, their tongues silent and suspended. The boldness I’d felt as I composed my secret page, as I made my secret wish . . . it filled my head so fully now that I swayed from the rush. What more could come in the future? How much farther could we go, if I helped Hyacinth in return?

I’m ready, I told him.

The princeling’s fingers skipped across the keys. “Return to Salzburg. Wait for me there. I will come for you. Bring your brother.” He smiled at me, his teeth perfect and sharp. “The time has come for the next step in our plans, Nannerl.”

Bring your brother. I instantly wondered what Hyacinth needed with Woferl. But I did not ask him what he meant by it. It made sense, I suppose—for I could not be here at this performance without my brother in attendance. So must it be in the kingdom. I leaned back into the music, grateful for Hyacinth’s presence, afraid of what he might say if I refused.

And then, finally, I finished.

Just like that, the world vanished with the end of my performance. The ivy and moss, the birds and blue light, the mist on the ground. Hyacinth. My dreamlike trance. I blinked and they all went away, leaving in their wake the palace chamber, the marble pillars, the paintings adorning the ceiling, the emperor and empress, my father and mother, my brother.

For a moment, there was utter silence. Then the emperor jumped to his feet with the empress and clapped loudly. The princesses and princes stood and joined in, followed by the royal council. In the midst of the ovation came praise, words like splendid and prodigious and ethereal. I rose in a daze, bent low, and curtsied. Mama clapped in delight, and beside her, Woferl applauded so loudly that he seemed hardly able to contain himself. My father smiled at me in approval, pride and surprise clear on his face. He had never heard me play like this before. A surge of joy seared my chest.

As I rose from my curtsy, I chanced one more glance in the emperor’s direction. No princeling to be seen. The emperor stood firmly in his place instead, not a young, lithe boy but the merry gentleman who had first greeted us. Hyacinth had disappeared so thoroughly that I couldn’t be sure he was ever here. But the magic he’d left behind still hung thick in the air, in the sound of the applause, in the echoes of the music he had inspired me to play.

I shivered at the touch of it, the memory of his fingers against mine, dancing across the clavier. He had given this to me, and in return, I had promised to offer something to him. My glass pendant felt very heavy in the pocket of my petticoat.

“How long will you stay?” the empress asked my father.

“Another week or two, your Majesty,” Papa replied. “We will play for some of the nobles before we return to Salzburg.”

She glanced toward Woferl and me. Her eyes were gentle, her lashes very pale. “Herr Mozart,” she said to my brother. “Your hands produce such clean, crisp notes, and with such grace. Thank you, my child, for honoring my court with your presence.” She looked at me. “As with you, Fr?ulein Mozart. You and your brother show talent far beyond your years. I will send you both a present tomorrow, as a token of my thanks.”

Woferl, unable to resist her kind words, leapt up from beside me and wrapped his arms around the empress’s neck. He kissed her soundly on her cheek. Before the empress could react to his embrace, he turned to face Princess Maria Antonia, the little girl who had blushed for him earlier, and asked her promptly if she would marry him.

The others laughed heartily at his display of affection.

I often think back on this moment. Sometimes I wonder whether this was when the princeling first began to work his magic on Woferl, and whether Hyacinth ended up haunting the little princess too. Years later, Maria Antonia would become the feather to break the backs of an already-broken people—France’s young queen, Marie Antoinette.