Mozart's Last Aria Part 18

Chapter 24.

The painted faces of the saints shone with sacred clarity from the niches of the Franciscan Monastery. In the gloomy twilight on Backer Street, I wondered if the luminous portraits were an illusion, some symptom of Dr. Sallaba's poisonous gas.

Swieten made to speak, but he turned his face to the window of his carriage, instead. I struggled against the urge to touch his hand, pulling back my arm as though restraining an excitable pet.

"I don't like to leave you by yourself," Swieten said. "It isn't safe. The men who attacked you in the street last night-"

"No one knows I'm here. I need to be alone for this."

At the cathedral, the footman gave me his arm. I stepped down into the square. He swung onto the step at the rear of the carriage.

From the window, the baron peered into the half darkness. "I'll collect you at your inn, madame, at seven," he said. "We'll proceed to the Freihaus Theater. They're giving The Magic Flute tonight."

I inclined my head in a.s.sent. "Your Grace is most generous."

The silver k.n.o.b of his cane glimmered in the diffuse light from the lantern dangling beside the driver's seat. He pointed with the stick and his voice became curt. "Through the main door and to the left, by the tomb of Prince Eugene."

The coach clattered away past the cathedral's North Tower.

I kept to the shadows as I pa.s.sed through the high doorway of Vienna's mother church. I slipped away from the nave to the place where Wolfgang's funeral Ma.s.s had been held.

The sandy brown stone of the Chapel of the Cross was blackened by generations of candles. Behind the altar, a tormented Christ arched away from His cross, struggling against the nails in His hands and feet. He was almost the size of a real man, His head rimmed with thorns made of the same cherrywood as His body. Hair cut from a human beard had been glued to Our Lord's chin, but its dryness made it more lifeless than the wood.

A draft swept the chapel. It set the lanterns swinging. They lit Our Savior's face, illuminating His agony, then dropped away to leave Him in shadow, over and over. Like a fairground trick, the light animated the carving. I crossed myself twice.

The stone floor was cold when I lowered my knees to it. I couldn't hold Christ's tortured gaze. Where had Wolfgang's coffin lain when Swieten and Constanze brought my poor brother here for the funeral service? Years of guilt pulsed through every part of me. I s.h.i.+vered with a quiet sob.

For my greed and for the sin of jealousy, I begged forgiveness. Begged the Christ on the cross. Begged Wolfgang.

After our father's death, I had inherited all the money saved from the tours of Europe Wolfgang and I made as children. Our father had invested well, and it was a substantial sum. He also left expensive furnis.h.i.+ngs, musical instruments, and a h.o.a.rd of gold watches and jeweled snuffboxes that were gifts from the n.o.bility of all Europe.

Wolfgang had been the main attraction during those early tours. He ought to have had his share. Though our father disinherited him, even so I could've sent half the money to Wolfgang. Yet I begrudged my brother his freedom. I convinced myself he should pay for it with his inheritance. He had left Salzburg for a life of accomplishment and fulfillment in the imperial capital. He had abandoned me, my talents ignored and my prospects for a good marriage dimming as I entered my late twenties. We had been close as children, but I had cut myself off from him.

I looked up at the crucifix. I betrayed Wolfgang for money, as Judas had sold one greater than him who had loved him.

I twisted the rosary of dried seeds from the Holy Land. Did I deprive Wolfgang of money that could've made him secure? I thought of the debts Constanze mentioned. Wolfgang had been living beyond his means, but I knew it wasn't our financial dispute that had hurt my brother. I had done something much worse than to cheat him out of a few thousand forints. I had denied him the last remnant of the family that had nurtured his talent and taught him about love.

Another sob caught at my chest. Intercede for me, Virgin, with your son, my Savior, I thought.

The lamplight rocked across the face of Christ. I saw His pain, as He called to His Father whom He thought had forsaken Him. His pa.s.sion was alive and it was my sacred duty to bear it, like the agony on the gray death mask Dr. Sallaba displayed in his room of poisons.

I told Holy Mary my vow: to face any suffering, any hazard, so that I might make amends to my brother. I crossed myself as I rose to leave the chapel.

Outside in the square, someone exclaimed at the new degree of chill in the air. Another man laughed at his companion's discomfort.

It was night now. But I had no thought of the danger that had seemed to hang in the darkness after I was attacked with Gieseke. I was calm and decided.

A shepherd drove a small herd of sheep past the cathedral. He called to a s.h.a.ggy, lumbering wolf dog, which nudged the bleating animals toward Schuler Street. Then I was alone in the drifting lantern light.

I pulled my cloak around me and set out for my inn. My thoughts were clear now. I had spoken to Wolfgang in prayer. That night at the opera I felt sure he would reply.

Chapter 25.

Lenerl dressed my hair by the window overlooking the empty Flour Market. The cobbles were s.h.i.+ny and damp around the statue of Providence. Blinking with each tug of the brush, I watched for the lanterns of the baron's coach.

As I waited, I thought of love. Not of husbands and of duties.

Only of love.

In Salzburg when I was in my twenties, I had fallen for D'Ippold, an army captain who headed a school for boys of n.o.ble birth. He didn't satisfy my father's ambition to marry me into the aristocracy. His suit was rejected. I obliged my father many years later by pledging myself to Berchtold, who had one foot on the lowest rung of the n.o.bility. Perhaps Papa thought that, in his search for a husband of high birth, he was merely matching me with a man appropriate to my aspirations. After all, I had always refused to pull my hair back in a cap and instead wore it up like a woman of rank. With all my years of prodigy behind me I finally had the comfortable home and children that my unexceptional friends had long enjoyed.

A coach clattered past the Capuchin Church and halted outside the inn. The baron's face appeared in the window. I saw why love had preoccupied me. I trembled with guilt.

"The emperor will attend tonight's performance," Swieten said, as I settled onto the bench opposite him in the carriage.

I thought of the haughty, slow walk of the man I had seen trailed by his courtiers across the park at the palace that afternoon. "I recall him as a child, when I played for his mother, the empress, at Schonbrunn."

Swieten murmured something I couldn't hear. I sensed a heaviness in him.

"Will I think him much changed?"

"Leopold? Out of all recognition. It's hard to imagine the emperor was ever a child."

At the Freihaus, carriages crowded the road. Baron van Swieten tipped his hat to the ladies and gentlemen as we crossed the courtyard to the theater.

I bounced on my toes with antic.i.p.ation. Except for one trip to Munich, I had only ever seen Wolfgang's operas performed in Salzburg-in halls with which I was familiar to the point of extreme weariness.

The marble entrance of the theater was as dazzling as the costumes of the wealthy Viennese in the lobby. I heard Wolfgang's name on every pair of painted lips.

Swieten gestured across the lamplit foyer toward the stairs. "I must attend upon the emperor's arrival, madame," he said. "You'll find my box in the first tier. I shan't be detained long, I hope."

He maneuvered through the lobby. The crowd jostled for a good position from which to coax a nod of acknowledgment from the emperor. I mounted the stairs.

When Wolfgang and I played at the palace, the future emperor had made no great impression. Leopold hadn't been first in line to the throne. One would've a.s.sumed him well made for some provincial dukedom. By contrast, his sister Maria Antonia had run about the royal chambers with us, giggling. Now she lived under arrest in Paris with her husband, the French king. Perhaps a lively convivial nature clashed with the demands of the world. It had certainly been the case with Wolfgang.

At the head of the stairs, the usher directed me toward Swieten's seats. I came into a long gallery. Lichnowsky paced the empty corridor. He glared at the baron's box, as though he might conjure someone from its emptiness by the force of his impatience.

I called to him. The expression he turned upon me was that of a man preparing for a duel, sharp and alert. With an effort he softened his face.

"Are you looking for Baron van Swieten, my prince?" I said.

"Where is he?" His voice was low and strangled.

"He attends the emperor in the foyer."

He put a finger to the corner of his eye. The gesture was like a dark blot on a page of fine penmans.h.i.+p, so evidently was it a sign of the disturbance beneath his placid expression.

"Haven't you seen this opera yet, my prince?" I asked. "You, a great patron of my brother?"

"I was at the premiere, madame." A noise from along the corridor. His eyes snapped toward it. "I find it a most excellent work, of course."

"I'm told Wolfgang considered it his finest."

"I don't believe it surpa.s.ses his Don Giovanni."

"Why's that?"

"In The Magic Flute, you'll see that the hero and heroine discover the essence of life in some kind of holy union. Don Giovanni realizes that one can learn the truth about the world only when forced to take a journey to h.e.l.l."

"Perhaps Wolfgang learned that h.e.l.l isn't one's destiny," I said. "It can be escaped, by prayer and goodness."

He shook his head and seemed about to contradict me, but he heard the orchestra tuning up. He bowed and went down the stairs, shoving past the couples coming up from their obsequies to the emperor in the lobby.

I entered Swieten's box and glanced over the balcony toward the stalls. The musicians in the orchestra laughed and joked with the easy confidence of men who knew they had a hit.

"You?"

I turned to the voice. Hiding behind the open door, Gieseke waited.

"Are you unharmed, sir? Thank heavens, I see that you are," I said.

He was in costume for the night's performance, a long white robe. His face was painted into a stern glare with thick stripes of black grease.

"Where's Swieten?" he said.

A round of applause started and the orchestra stood. The violinists tapped their bows against their music stands. The emperor proceeded down the aisle to his seat, followed by a retinue in clothing so fine the fabric shone like suits of armor. Leopold moved with a deliberate grace. His puffy, grim face was frozen and aloof.

"Of course, Swieten's down there." Gieseke remained in the darkness at the rear of the box. "Sucking up to the emperor with the rest of them."

"Watch your tongue," I said. "The baron is worthy of respect."

The actor held himself poised by the open door, an eye on the corridor.

I stepped toward him.

"Leave me alone." His voice grated through his throat as though it had been burned. "I didn't know you'd be here. It's dangerous to be close to you."

"What do you mean?"

"After you ran away, I was nearly stabbed to death." Under the theatrical makeup, there were traces of purple bruises. He lifted his hand. The palm was bound around with a grubby cloth. "I had to grab the knife by the blade to pull it away from that thug."

"You think those men wanted to hurt me, not you?"

"I'll keep quiet about Wolfgang's poisoning. You won't. Of course they wanted you."

"But they let me get away. Maybe they wanted you, after all."

His eyes disappeared into the thick greasepaint. He nodded, slow and appalled. He saw that I was right. What did he know that made him dangerous enough to kill?

"You saw it done," I said.

"Done? What?"

"The poison. You saw it administered, didn't you? When?"

He bit at the bandage where it crossed the back of his hand. "At the Masonic hall. After they performed the cantata I wrote with Wolfgang."

"Who did it? Who poisoned my brother?"

"I'll only tell a man with whom I share other secrets."

The bond of brothers. "A Mason?"

"That's right."

"Why not a woman?"

He grabbed my shoulders. "What did you say?"

I struggled free, stumbling against the rococo woodwork of the balcony. The emperor had taken his seat. The conductor came to his podium to loud acclaim. Until then I hadn't noticed how large the theater was. The burst of applause from five tiers of boxes was jolting.

Gieseke stepped through the door and rushed away.

A heavy chord from the trombones started the overture, as the door shut behind him. I flinched at the sudden volume.

A second and third chord. In E-flat major. The same key as the music I had overheard at the Masonic lodge. Wolfgang never used key signatures randomly. They always signaled a mood or some other information to the listener. With these first three bars of the overture, I already knew that this was a Masonic opera, just as Gieseke and Schikaneder had told me.

As the fugue developed, I peered through the lamplight across the theater. Count Pergen sat in the front row a few seats from the emperor, his legs crossed and his buckled shoe dipping in time to the rhythm of the overture.

In the box opposite me, Prince Lichnowsky sat beside a pretty, dark-haired woman. She leaned forward to the edge of the balcony and danced her fingers in the air as though she played the melody on a piano.

Swieten hurried to the chair next to me, resting both his hands on the k.n.o.b of his stick as he had done when he listened to me play at the Academy of Science. He turned to me with a smile for the music. He must have noticed the disturbance on my face, because he reached out for my hand.

On the stage, the action commenced. Tamino fled a giant serpent. "Help me," he cried.