The Kingdom of Back(52)

I put a hand to my mouth and stifled a surprised smile. “It sounds delightful,” I remarked, impressed by the idea of such spirit.

Johann shrugged, still smiling. “What about you?” he said. “Are you here with your family? Come to perform for the London public?”

“My father has gone to see the king,” I said. “Woferl and I are to play for him soon, I imagine.”

“You will be able to see him, without a doubt.” Johann put his hands back into his pockets, too cold to gesture with them. “I’ve heard the Americans are unhappy with the king’s taxes and are giving Parliament an earful. He is desperate for entertainment to lighten his mood.”

“Then I suppose we must thank the Americans.” It was so easy to laugh with this boy. With Woferl gone from my side, and Hyacinth quiet, I found myself savoring the warmth of this small moment.

He told me about his family, then, and about his father. I learned that we had much in common. He and his sister—who was my age, he told me—were the only surviving children of his parents. His father, passionate about Johann’s education, had enlisted an army of private tutors and scholars to teach him literature, art, languages, history. He told me that he loved to paint.

I felt a sudden urge to tell him about the Kingdom of Back—all of it, the beauty that took my breath away, the darkness that haunted my waking dreams. He was a painter, someone who also lived in other lands. Perhaps he would understand.

“How long are you staying in London?” Johann asked me.

“I’m not sure. A month, at the least.”

“I will try to see you again,” he said. His smile turned shy then, and his gaze was full of warmth. “If I cannot, may I have permission to write to you?”

My father will never let you, I thought. But he had slipped past my defenses, and the crisp London air had made me bold. “Yes,” I said. I told him about our flat at Getreidegasse no. 9, and the house outside London where we would stay for the next few weeks.

Johann’s face glowed. I wondered what I looked like to him—a foolish girl in front of this older boy, unable to think of more to say. I was not raised as the type of girl to keep secrets from her father, and yet, I had so many of them. But I still found myself smiling back at Johann, thinking only of when I could hear from him again.

Johann tightened his scarf around his face, then uttered a muffled farewell to me before he continued down the street. The wind blew his dark hair into a flurry. I was too afraid to return the goodbye, so the word stayed huddled in my throat instead. Finally, when he disappeared into the crowds, I looked the other way, where Papa would come hurrying back.

There, I saw Woferl standing at the edge of the inn, partially hidden behind the corner.

I froze. He must have seen everything.

Woferl’s face was turned to me. I wondered how long he must have stood there, and what he may have heard. He did not smile at me, nor did he look angry. He simply stared.

“Woferl,” I called out to him.

He did not answer me. I swallowed hard, suddenly wondering if Hyacinth was beside him and had made himself invisible to me. The thought made me tremble. My brother, when he loved me, would keep any secret of mine close to his heart. But the rift between us still felt heavy in the air, like an off-key note, and there was something wary in his gaze that pulled him away from me, something that made me afraid of what he might do.

Then Papa came bustling down the street, his eyes squinting in the cold wind, and Woferl’s stare broke. He turned and ran to Papa, gave him an affectionate smile, and tugged on his pockets to see if he had brought any sweets. I watched them carefully. When Papa nodded at me, I smiled back and asked him about his meeting.

“It went well enough,” he told me. “We will perform for the court.”

But his face seemed tired, his shoulders hunched. I knew immediately that it meant he did not expect us to be paid much for our private concert, that the king must be tightening his purse strings. My heart dropped at the disappointment in my father’s voice. England was costing us more than we could earn.

Despite the tempest of my thoughts, I brought myself to nod in response. “I’m glad, Papa,” I replied. My eyes darted down to my brother. I held my breath, waiting for the moment when he would speak.

But the moment did not come. Instead, Woferl sucked on a piece of candy and hummed under his breath a tune from another world.



* * *





That night, I dreamed about Johann. He and I sat together under the old ivy wall of an English cottage’s garden, right next to the door that led out into the countryside. The moon was unusually bright, perfectly halved, and Johann’s face was completely lit by its light. From this close angle, he seemed to be the loveliest boy in all Europe.

“Are you happy, Nannerl?” he asked. “Do you like the path that your life has taken?”

“I don’t know,” I replied. My eyes darted away from his and came to focus instead on the sapphire silhouettes of trees in the distance. A part of me expected Hyacinth to appear, but he never did. I held my blue pendant in my hands, and my thumbs rubbed idly across its glassy surface. When I lifted my fingers and moved them through the air, everything rippled with light. Music played wherever I tapped. The grasses billowed around us in an undulating sea.

Here, this place, this dream, belonged to me.