by Marie Lu
I prayed for the princess that night. She had been among the crowd during our very first performance in Vienna years ago, and as I prayed, I tried to remember what she looked like. Had I taken the time to smile at her? There had been so many archduchesses.
Papa prayed for her too, although he prayed first for Emperor Joseph to not cancel our royal performance in light of the dire circumstances.
Two days later we heard gossip about her gradual recovery, and for an instant Vienna returned to its festive state. She would pull through! A miracle from the heavens! The sounds of music and dance returned to the streets outside my window, and Papa brightened, began talking again about when we’d go to the court. The happiness lasted until the next week, when the princess-bride took a turn for the worse.
Mama fretted quietly with our father by candlelight, when they thought Woferl and I had gone to bed. “Another archduchess has come down with it,” Mama said. “So has the empress herself.”
I tried to write that night, but my hands shook so badly that I finally had to stop. I closed my notebook, then wrapped it in a silk petticoat and pushed it far underneath my bed. In the silence, I thought I heard a sound. When I sat up and listened to it, I realized that it was Woferl weeping softly in his sleep, lost again in his dreams.
This was how we hovered for days and weeks, holding our breath along with the rest of Vienna, until the day finally came when the royal court issued a last announcement.
The princess-bride Maria Josepha had died. The empress followed her a day later.
* * *
The fanciful operas, plays, and fireworks that had lit Vienna for weeks suddenly came to a halt. Theaters shut their doors until further notice. Streets were stripped of colorful banners. In their place hung mourning notices, and instead of the sound of music, we heard wails in the streets, saw crowds gathered in the city plazas for masses in honor of their late empress and princess. Still others spread news of the smallpox appearing in corner houses and alleyways, rashes blistering the skin of their kin.
It was Hyacinth’s whisper, the poison of him seeping through the city, searching for my brother. I could hear it in the air, the sharp pitch of it from the kingdom. My writing grew more urgent. There was not much time now for me to finish my composition for Hyacinth, for me to return to the kingdom before he came to claim Woferl.
“We must leave Vienna,” Mama argued that evening with Papa. “There’s nothing here for us now. I will not have Nannerl or Woferl catching the smallpox.”
“Anna, be reasonable.”
“Reasonable? The entire city has been thrown into a panic. What would you have us do? Surely you do not want to stay here.”
“Well, we certainly can’t leave. The emperor has not retracted his invitation, and we must wait for word from him. He may still wish to hear the children perform.”
Mama made an angry noise as she threw up her arms, and I tensed at this rare display. “The emperor has not retracted his invitation because he’s likely forgotten all about it. What man wants to hear a concert after the death of his wife and daughter? Meanwhile, we wait here like trapped mice.” Her voice grew quieter as she reached for Papa’s hand. “Listen to me, Leopold. Emperor Joseph will not begrudge us for leaving in haste. An epidemic will spread quickly in a city so overcrowded with revelers. How will you make our money if our children die? Many of the foreigners have already started to leave. You see their carriages lined up in the streets, more and more of them every day.”
“No.” Papa’s voice was harsh with determination. “We will stay here for the time being. We will not go outside, unless we absolutely must. Let me think of a plan.”
I sat on my bed in the darkness as their voices rose and fell, my eyes fixed on the bit of candlelight that crept underneath my door and into my room. The air was not cold, but I still trembled. I’d seen before what the smallpox could do to people, turn their skin red and angry, their eyes milky and blind. I thought of Sebastian, who waited for us in Salzburg. Then I thought of Johann and hoped that the epidemic would not spread to Germany.
A commotion in the hall woke me the next morning. I startled, still dazed with sleep, and realized that Mama was shouting at someone outside my door.
I opened it to see Mama opposite Herr Schmalecker, her face red with anger. Papa stood near her.
“Why did you not tell us of this?” Mama said to Herr Schmalecker. “You knew of it, for so long!”
“Calm yourself, Frau Mozart,” he said. An embarrassed smile lingered on his face. “Augustine healed before you had even arrived—so I did not think of telling you.”
“And what are we to do now?” Mama’s voice became shrill. In it, I heard the fear of the mother who had lost so many children before Woferl and me. “Your two other boys have fallen ill. Soon we will all have the smallpox. This will be on your shoulders, Herr Schmalecker.”
Over their arguing, I could hear the wails of Herr Schmalecker’s stricken children coming from somewhere downstairs.
Papa looked at me. His eyes held a silent warning. “Nannerl,” he said. “Go sit with Woferl in his room. I will come get you when I’m ready.”
I nodded without a word and headed to my brother’s door.
“What has happened?” Woferl asked me as soon as I stepped in. He sat unmoving on his bed, his head turned in the direction of Mama’s voice. He looked startled to see me.
“Herr Schmalecker’s youngest daughter had the smallpox shortly before we arrived,” I replied. “The others woke up feverish this morning.”
Woferl searched my face with blank eyes. He looked distant this morning, his soul somewhere far away. I sat down on the corner of his bed and frowned at him. “What is it, Woferl?”
He shrugged. His vacant stare turned to the window, as it had for the past few days. “Hyacinth was in my room last night,” he said. “He stood in the corner and watched me.”
I tensed, my fingers closing tight on his blankets. He found us. “Why was he there?”
Woferl didn’t answer. Perhaps he didn’t know. Instead, he looked back down at the papers spread out on his bed, then pressed his hands to his ears. “I cannot concentrate,” he said. “There is too much screaming.”
I worked on my composition late into the night, urged on by the fear of Hyacinth watching my brother. The song of your heart, Hyacinth had asked of me. I flipped through the pages and listened to the music in my mind. It was a path that extended nowhere, long and winding, forever heading toward a place I might never see. I wrote and wrote until my eyes strained from the low light.
Outside, I could hear the sounds of horse hooves clattering against the cobblestones, the shouts of people as they carried their luggage to the carriages and prepared to leave Vienna. Still other voices were ones of terror, voices calling out for doctors to visit their homes, to see to family members that had fallen ill. I tried to shut out the sounds. They rang in my mind, tearing apart my thoughts.
Finally, when the moon rose high in the sky, I stood up gingerly and crept to my door. I did not know what I wanted to do. I simply did not want to stay in my room any longer.
I walked silently over to Woferl’s door, then opened it and stepped inside. He had fallen asleep amidst the strewn papers of his composition, and his dark hair framed his face in wayward curls. His cheeks looked flushed. I closed the door behind me, then walked over to his bed and crawled in next to him. I hugged him to me. He stirred a little, then instinctively huddled closer to me and let out a sigh.
I tried to remember him as a tiny boy, when his fingers were still small and fresh and chubby, and his face was eager and innocent. I lay awake beside him, caught in my own emotions.
I had not stayed with Woferl for an hour when Papa suddenly burst into the room. I bolted upright, disoriented in my weariness.
“Papa?” I said.
His face was grave. He hurried over to the b
ed and began to wrap Woferl up in his blanket. My brother whimpered, then rubbed at his eyes even as Papa threw a coat over him. “Go back to your room, Nannerl,” he said to me. “I will speak to you in the morning.”
I watched Papa nudge my arm away from Woferl and pick him up. A sudden panic hit me. “Where are you going? Where are you taking Woferl?”
Papa ignored me, then stood with Woferl in his arms and promptly left the room. Through the open door, I saw Mama standing at the top of the stairs. Without waiting any longer, I swung my legs over the edge of the bed and rushed out to the hall. Papa had already started down the stairs. Woferl looked up at Mama and me with sleepy, startled eyes.
I put my hand on my mother’s arm. “Mama, where are they going?”
“Hush, Nannerl,” Mama said. Her face looked drawn, and full of fear. I looked quickly from her to Papa’s back, and then to her again. “Your father is taking Woferl to a friend’s home. He will be safer there.”
“Safer?” I furrowed my brows. He was taking him away to a place where I could no longer watch over him. Hyacinth would find him and steal him in the night. The certainty of it clawed at me. “What about us?”
Mama looked at me. “We are to stay here,” she answered.
I could not believe it. Instinctively, I broke away from her and started running down the stairs.
“Nannerl!”
I ignored Mama’s calls. Papa and Woferl had headed out the front door by the time I reached the bottom of the stairs. I stumbled on one of the steps, then pulled myself upright and ran out toward the street. Herr Schmalecker and his wife stood in the living room and watched me go.
A coach was already waiting for Papa. I hurried to him before he could reach it, and with a strength borne from another world, I grabbed his arm in a tight grip. In that moment, I realized I wasn’t angry with him for taking Woferl. I was angry because he was not taking me.
“Papa!”
He turned around to glare at me. “Go back inside,” he snapped. “Do not stand out in the street in nothing but your nightdress.”
“Why are you leaving us? Take us with you!”
“You cannot come,” he said. He turned away from me and helped Woferl into the coach. “Stay here with your mother.”
“Why?” I demanded.
“Woferl is in the gravest danger. You should know that, Nannerl.” Papa prepared to step into the coach. “His frail health cannot last in this house. A friend has agreed to let us stay with him, at least until the threat subsides. He lives near the edge of the city. He will only take two of us. The times are dangerous enough as they are.”
“Why can we not leave Vienna?”
“You know very well why we cannot leave yet.”
I realized that I had started to cry. When Papa turned away from me again and made to get into the coach, I grabbed him again and pulled him away with all my strength. “I’m frightened, Papa,” I said, fighting to keep my voice steady. “How can you leave us behind and take only Woferl? What if we fall ill? What will happen then?”
Papa grabbed my shoulders and shook me once. “Your mother has come down with smallpox once before—she should not be harmed. You know how delicate your brother’s health is. What will happen to this family if something were to happen to him? Have you ever thought of that?”
“And what if something were to happen to me? I can do everything that he can!” I had started to shout my words now. I no longer cared. “I can take care of our family! There are those in the audience who love me too, and who I can please. We are the same, Papa! Why do you not take me with you?”
Papa slapped me. I gasped, suddenly dizzy, and touched my cheek with my hand. “You are a selfish girl,” he said. His eyes burned me. “Go back inside. I will not tell you again. Wait for me—I will come back for you and your mother.” With that, he turned away one last time and stepped into the coach.
I watched as they pulled away. My hand stayed against my cheek. When I felt my mother touch my shoulder, I flinched and started to hurry back into the house. I ignored the looks that Herr Schmalecker and his wife gave me.
“Nannerl, darling!” Mama called out from behind me. I did not turn around.
Instead I ran up the stairs, then into my bedroom, and then to my bed, where I pulled my music notebook out from underneath my blankets. Hyacinth’s smiling face appeared in my mind. Leave him here, his whisper reminded me. It was still something I could do. The side of me that believed this surged against me, dark and tempting. The light in me struggled against it.
I needed to return to the kingdom, to undo what wrong I’d done. But it was still not too late to let Hyacinth follow through with what he needed in order to fulfill my wish. It was not too late for me. I walked to the clavier, placed the notebook on the stand, and sat down. My wish came back to me now in a terrible wave. I saw my brother’s flushed cheeks, his sleeping figure surrounded by music. I saw myself, walking down a path toward a place I could never reach.
I opened the notebook to the composition of my heart and began to play.
THE CHOSEN PATH
That night, I went to sleep in a haze of fear and grief. The music of my composition haunted my dreams. When I woke, I could still hear the measures I’d played so feverishly on the clavier, the notes hovering in the air.
How Hyacinth would come to me now, I couldn’t say. What if he had found some way to trick me again? Perhaps all he needed from me was to hear my composition. Perhaps he didn’t need me to bring Woferl to the kingdom.
Without my composition to work on, without Woferl at my side, all I could do was spend the day pacing. Awaiting word from Papa. Listening to the constant commotion in the streets. Letting my thoughts spiral deeper and deeper.
Mama and I did not attend church that Sunday. Finally, the day after, Papa came to visit us. I rushed to see him, anxious to ask about my brother, but I did not meet my father’s eyes when I reached him. I simply curtsied, and then stood with my gaze pointed down.
“Woferl has developed a cough,” he said to my mother. “It is nothing serious yet.”
A cough. My hands trembled against my dress.
“How long do we stay in Vienna?” It was always Mama’s first question.
“The emperor has not responded to my inquiries,” Papa said. He looked defeated. “The archduchess is very ill. We will leave Vienna.”
That was it, then.
We packed our things in a silent hurry, bid farewell to Herr Schmalecker and his wife, and headed into our waiting coach. When we went to the home of Papa’s friend and helped Woferl into the seat beside me, I saw that my brother’s eyes had turned so dark that they looked black.
I was in a city, Nannerl. His dream came back to me now, and I shivered at the truth of it. It was burning to the ground. The fire nipped at my skin, and the smoke blinded my eyes.
I took my brother’s hand in mine and squeezed it tightly. “How is your cough?” I asked him as we headed on our way. Behind us, I could hear the city’s cacophony of church bells and prayers and panic.
Woferl shrugged. Already, he looked suspended between here and somewhere else.
“It is just a cough,” he replied.
* * *
We left Vienna and their royal family behind us, then arrived in Olmütz, a small city on the edge of the Morava River, on a day full of rain. I sat opposite our father, although neither of us looked at the other. Papa was not a man of many words, but today he seemed even quieter than usual, and his lips stayed locked in a tight line across his face. He kept his eyes turned toward the windows. Once, when I looked away and could see him only through the corner of my vision, I thought I saw him stare at me. When I turned my eyes back to him, he had returned to his silent study of the rolling terrain.
The room at our Olmütz inn did not help Papa’s mood. When he smelled the dampness of it and saw the smoke that poured
from its stove, he threw his hands up and cursed loudly. “God has punished my greed,” he muttered.
Woferl’s cough grew worse from the rain and smoke, so that he kept us awake throughout the night with his fits. I could not sleep, anyway, as the smoke forced my eyes to tear unabated.
I held my breath for much of the next day. There was no clavier here, not even separate rooms for us. I had nothing to do, nothing to distract myself. All I could think of was the music I had played, of when Hyacinth would come calling for me, and the smile in his raspy, haunting voice.
Woferl continued to cough. His black eyes watered without pause.
The next morning I awoke to the sound of our door slamming shut. My father had left.
“Where is Papa going?” I said to Mama as I sat up. Woferl was not sleeping at my side.
“Hurry and get dressed, Nannerl,” she said to me. Behind her, Woferl swayed on his feet and shivered in his clothes. “We are moving to better rooms.”
We switched to a room with less dampness and smoke, but by now it was already too late. Woferl had trouble breathing properly that evening, and by the time Sunday came and we were to attend church, Woferl had become delirious with a high fever. Mama hovered over him, distraught and teary-eyed, and Papa told her he would ask the cathedral’s dean about my brother’s condition.
I already knew what would happen, although I did not say this to my parents. Hyacinth had found his way to my brother.
The dean, an old friend of my father’s from Salzburg, sent the doctor Joseph Wolff to our inn straightaway, and confirmed that Woferl had smallpox. We moved again to the dean’s house. There, under the surveillance of Herr Wolff and my family, we watched helplessly as Woferl’s fever worsened and his eyes swelled shut with pain.
That night, I dreamed again of the clavier sitting on the dark sands of the kingdom’s shores and of Woferl’s milky, vacant eyes. I woke with tears streaking my face.