The Kingdom of Back(56)

Or by a princeling.

Hyacinth, Hyacinth, Hyacinth. The name tolled like a bell in my thoughts.

I’d been so foolish to think that he had somehow stepped quietly out of our lives. Here he was again, flitting his fingers through the air. He had always known where to hit me the hardest, had been waiting to use this against me should I ever turn my back on him. I had given up my end of our bargain. In return, he had taken my wish and given it to my brother instead.

This was Hyacinth’s revenge. The cruelty he had planned for my punishment.

Woferl called to me again from bed, but I could barely hear him. I paged through each piece in the volume until I reached the end.

Six of my sonatas, with minor changes. They had been published in a bound volume, like I’d always dreamed of, but they did not have my name anywhere on them. Instead, they were signed by Woferl.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart had stolen my music.





THE AGREEMENT



I did not scream or cry. I did not answer Woferl when he continued to ask me if I was all right. I did not change my demeanor around Sebastian or breathe a word of it to my father or mother.

What was the use?

Instead, I turned my fury inward and let it consume me.

Later the same afternoon, I retired to bed early, dizzy and sore. By the next day, I’d developed a fever that made my skin hot to the touch, and started to vomit. My muscles ached so much that I had to bite back my tears. Sebastian carried me to my bed that day. My skin turned white and slick with sweat, my eyes grew swollen and tired. Rose spots appeared on my chest. My hair, drenched with moisture, stuck to my neck and forehead and shoulders in strings. I struggled to breathe, my lungs rasping from the effort.

Mama, in a panic, sent for a doctor that the Dutch envoy recommended and brought him to our hotel the same evening. He hovered over me in a haze of color, so that I could barely make out his grave face. He told my mother that my heartbeat had slowed, that I might be in serious danger. He bled me, then fed me a bitter tonic and left.

I drifted in and out of sleep. Days melted into one another. I had difficulty understanding what happened around me, except that the date to perform for the princess and prince—to deliver the volume of music to them—came and went. Papa and Woferl attended without me.

Sometimes I thought I saw Papa standing near my bed, talking in hushed tones with my mother. Other times Woferl’s face appeared, tragic and fearful, and tried to speak to me. I recalled his soft hands in mine. I thought I heard him say, over and over again, that he was sorry, that he didn’t know what to do or say. That he had no idea.

I would turn my face away whenever he was near. I couldn’t bear to look at him.

I don’t know whether Woferl protested to Papa about what he had done with my music. It was difficult for me to recognize when I was awake and when I was dreaming. But no one in our family spoke about it, at least not to me. I did not even question it. I knew the reason why. To my father, it must have seemed like a simple and obvious decision.

We needed the money, Woferl would be unable to finish the volume in time, and here were a dozen finished pieces of music written by me that could never be published under my own name. Of course my father wouldn’t hesitate to sacrifice my work this way.

As the weeks dragged on, my sickness grew worse. I began to have nightmares several times a day, thrashing in my sleep, and Mama and Sebastian would come in and murmur comforting words to me. My father prayed at the foot of my bed. I saw my mother had a pair of faded wings on her back, and her feet appeared molded to the floor as if she were the faery trapped in the kingdom’s underwater grotto. She would linger there and cry. My brother squeezed my hand and asked me questions that I couldn’t understand. The floor of my bedroom swayed with a blanket of edelweiss, and strange mosses and mushrooms covered my bedposts. Two moons, not one, would illuminate the floor from my window, their positions growing steadily closer together in the night sky.

Sometimes, I saw Johann sitting at my bedside, his face grave. Are you happy? he’d ask me. I would open my mouth and say nothing at all.

My thoughts grew muddied and confused. At times I couldn’t remember why I was so angry, exactly what had cut into my chest and pried my ribs open, letting my soul leak away.

One night I saw the dark, shapeless figures float past my window, the hooded ghosts from the castle on the hill with their twisted hands and tattered cloaks. I wanted to make them disappear, and bring more candles into my room like I’d once done for Woferl when he had fallen ill. But no one was in the room with me. So I simply stayed there and watched the shapes with growing fear, helpless until the dawn finally chased them away.

On a particularly bad night, I stirred awake with Hyacinth’s name on my lips. I had been calling for him in my sleep. The shadows of my room sighed and breathed. I waited in my delirium, dreading, anticipating his return.



* * *





    As I continued to deteriorate, news came to my father that my six sonatas had been well received by the Princess Carolina, and that everyone marveled at the miracle of Woferl’s ingenuity. The Dutch envoy that had pursued Papa from London to France dined with my family, Mama later told me, and during the lunch thanked my father for making his decision to come on such short notice.

Papa returned, his pockets heavy with coin.

Mama did not speak to me about my misfortune, not directly, but she came the closest, telling me the story of the Dutch envoy with pauses and hesitations. She would not have wanted to add to my pain, if I had not specifically demanded to know.