Mozart's Last Aria

by Matt Rees

  ‘Duped? By whom?’

  ‘He asked me to forgive him.’ She sobbed. ‘That’s all he asked.’

  ‘But you refused?’

  ‘How could I excuse such a terrible thing? He destroyed the greatest gift God ever gave to mankind. He obliterated all the unwritten music Wolfgang would’ve created.’

  ‘So he decided to kill you and to end his own life.’

  ‘He went wild. He slashed me. Then he cut his own throat. I watched him die.’ She pointed along the row of graves. ‘He’s buried over there, but I haven’t stood before his tomb as I stand here now. I must do penance for the part I played in the Maestro’s death.’

  I wondered if Franz Hofdemel had given signs of his jealousy. Perhaps she might have persuaded him earlier of her innocence. She must have been so drawn to Wolfgang’s astonishing gifts that they blinded her to the simple needs of her husband. Now she repented.

  Blindness, penitence.

  I stepped closer to her. ‘It was you.’

  She frowned.

  ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘The riddle Wolfgang wrote at the end of one of his last sonatas. “She repents her blindness as she is always penitent. At the keyboard her notes run riot like demons cast out. I will be with her as a brother in the halls of Paradise, at her side as always I’ve been, though not as my father intended.’’

  Magdalena shook her head. ‘Me?’

  ‘Penitent, as Maria Magdalena is always portrayed. You shared her name. In the Holy Bible she was possessed, but Jesus cast the demons out of her. Wolfgang did the same thing for you, soothing your fits with music. He chose you to be at his side as Jesus chose Maria Magdalena. He did it despite the disapproval of his apostles – his Brothers.’

  ‘A riddle?’

  ‘Scribbled on a manuscript. Listen, “at her side as always I’ve been, though not as my father intended”. Not as the wife our father would have wanted for him, but as an equal companion in his new Masonic lodge.’

  ‘A Mason, me?’

  ‘Wolfgang intended to start a new lodge that would admit women, on the basis of special character and talent. You said he valued your talent as a pianist. You were to be the one who would join him in his new venture.’

  Magdalena laid a hand over her breast and stared at the heavy, damp earth on Wolfgang’s grave.

  ‘Your husband couldn’t grant himself absolution,’ I said. ‘Perhaps now that you know how Wolfgang felt about you, you can at least forgive yourself.’

  She turned to me. Her scars were black beneath the veil. ‘Madame, I don’t agree. About the riddle.’

  ‘But you must see?’

  ‘I do,’ she said. ‘Surely it refers to you.’

  She went along the line of graves, past the spot where her husband was buried.

  I watched her descend the path to the graveyard gate. The muscles of my face hung as if stricken with some wasting disease. The wind rustled the lilac bush. I turned my back against the cold gust and gazed at Wolfgang’s grave. He had written the riddle at the end of a sonata dedicated to me, to ‘my Nannerl’.

  ‘‘I will be with her as a brother in the halls of Paradise,’’ I whispered, ‘‘at her side as always I’ve been, though not as my father intended.’’

  What had my father intended? For me to marry a provincial official who provided a comfortable home. But not for me to display my accomplishment as a pianist, to earn a living by my music. That was what Wolfgang had wanted. He had seen how it grieved me that I was ignored while he took all the accolades. He had wanted me to have what he had.

  We had been apart so long, it seemed impossible that he had been so concerned with me at the end. Yet now it struck me that Constanze, Fräulein Paradies, and Magdalena Hofdemel had told me Wolfgang often spoke of my talents, up until his final days. I recalled how I had walked home from early mass in the snow, before I learned of his death. I had wondered whether the same snow fell on him so far away. All that time we had thought ourselves estranged, yet we were bonded to each other as if we shared the same soul.

  I wiped away a tear. It seemed to freeze on my fingertip.

  Wolfgang’s new lodge had been for me. A magic kingdom of music and love and equality, like the ones we invented for each other on those long, playful coach rides when we were children. My brother and me, our talents complementing each other but not competing. Together in our Grotto.

  The wind caught the parchment on Wolfgang’s cross. Its edges stuttered against the wood. I kissed my finger, and laid it over his name.

  36

  At early Mass I feared my spirit would burst from my body and run howling out of the cathedral. For once my fervor wasn’t for my dead brother. My supplications for his soul were at an end. When I left St Stephen’s, the Danube fog muffled the wheels of my carriage and dampened my skin like a loveless kiss. At the Imperial Library, the footman told me Baron van Swieten was at the Estates House on Herren Lane, where the government ministries had their offices. I ordered my driver to take me there.

  A workman balanced on the top rung of his stepladder, polishing a lantern in the entrance. He came down from the steps and touched his brow in deference to me. The light swung above him like a hanged man. I told my coachman to wait in the courtyard with Lenerl, and I went to the stairs.

  A slim, tall man sauntered onto the landing above me. He paused before a statue of a classical Greek maiden stretching out of an alcove. He tipped his wide-brimmed English hat to her like a gallant strolling in the Augarten, and laughed at his jest. When he descended the stairs, his shoes tapped on the marble as though he were dancing.

  He looked like Prince Lichnowsky. But his bearing was so carefree that I couldn’t believe this was the stiff, nervous man I knew. He had passed by me before I realized that it was, indeed, him.

  ‘Guten Morgen, my prince,’ I said.

  Lichnowsky’s mouth, usually so constrained, widened in an uninhibited smile. I was reminded of the relief and triumph on the faces of my stepsons when they expected a beating for some misdemeanor but escaped with a scolding. He touched the head of his cane to his hat in greeting. The ring on his little finger bore a cameo of the Emperor’s profile.

  ‘Heavens, I’d never have known it was you, Madame de Mozart. What have you done to your hair?’ he said. ‘I’ve not seen you in a bonnet before. You’ve had rather a severe trim, haven’t you?’

  ‘This style accords better with my true personality. As I hope does the smile I’m seeing on your face for the first time.’

  He laughed, raising his arms wide. A joyous welcome for the whole world.

  ‘What business brings you here, my prince?’

  He leaned against the white marble wall. ‘I came to see a friend. To congratulate him on his elevation. There’s a new Police Minister, as I believe you know.’ He winked.

  I thought of Pergen whimpering at my feet. What had Lichnowsky to do with the Police Ministry?

  His exuberant mood made me curious. He was transformed from the wretch Fräulein Paradies overheard cowering before the Prussian ambassador less than two days before.I can’t go on, she had heard him say. Pergen knows. I pictured his expression when he had told me about the murderer broken on the wheel in the city square: furious and impotent, like someone finding himself trapped. It occurred to me that he had been under a threat of some sort – a threat which had been lifted when Pergen lost his post.

  ‘I know of Count Pergen’s dismissal,’ I said. ‘I was unaware he had been replaced.’

  What could have endangered Lichnowsky while Pergen was in power?

  The Prince smirked. The easy grin of a practiced liar rewarded for his deception.

  Deception. Reward. The substance of his lie was as evident to me as the teeth in his broad smile. ‘The mission to Berlin with Wolfgang wasn’t on behalf of your Masonic Lodge,’ I said. ‘You went as a secret agent.’

  ‘An agent?’ he sniggered. ‘For whom?’

  ‘Not Austria, because the mission caused you to fear Pergen.�
��

  ‘Why on earth would you think I fear—?’

  ‘You worked for the Prussians. But Pergen found out.’ Why else would Lichnowsky have needed to tell the Prussian ambassador that Pergen knows? Paradies had overheard a visit from a spy to his master.

  The Prince leered. ‘You should limit your improvisations to the piano, madame. I’ve nothing to worry about, in any case.’

  ‘The new Police Minister may be your friend. But no matter who fills that position, a Prussian agent will be his enemy.’

  ‘Do I look like a man afraid?’

  I hesitated. Could I be wrong about him?

  ‘Well, do I?’ he said.

  I shook my head, puzzled. ‘You worked for the Prussians. Yet you don’t fear the Austrians.’

  He rubbed his thumb along his lip. ‘Which can only mean…? Madame?’

  With a shock, I understood how he had escaped danger. ‘You must be in the pay of our Imperial secret police, too. A double agent.’

  His smile broadened.

  ‘Where does your loyalty truly lie?’ I said. ‘With Prussia? Or Austria?’

  ‘Who commanded Wolfgang’s loyalty?’

  ‘My brother was no spy.’

  ‘That’s not what I meant. He refused to be a musical servant to the Archbishop of Salzburg all those years ago. He came to Vienna to be independent. He’d spin out a tune for anyone who paid him.’

  I saw his meaning. Lichnowsky maneuvered between Prussia and Austria to his own advantage. He served no master. But I resisted his comparison. ‘Wolfgang’s loyalty was to music.’

  ‘Tell that to poor Franz Hofdemel.’

  Magdalena. As he died, her husband realized he’d been duped into believing in her infidelity with Wolfgang. ‘That wicked rumor was of your making,’ I said.

  ‘Hofdemel was quick-tempered, easy to provoke. He trusted Wolfgang as a Brother. Anyone could see he’d turn violent if that bond was violated.’

  The same lodge. Hofdemel and Gieseke, Wolfgang and Lichnowsky. All the dead, and this one living man connecting them to Pergen, who had confessed before me to Wolfgang’s murder.

  The Prince’s eyes didn’t belong to the prisoner broken on the wheel after all. They were blank and sadistic, like the executioner smashing the bones of the condemned man.

  ‘You made Hofdemel believe that my brother carried on an affair with Magdalena,’ I said. ‘So the jealous fool poisoned Wolfgang.’

  Pergen had given the order for Wolfgang to die. But Lichnowsky had carried it out.

  I stumbled on the steps and reached out to steady myself. I was in the presence of the man who truly had devised my brother’s death.

  Lichnowsky came toward me, his cane clicking against the marble steps. ‘Madame Berchtold, you’re faint,’ he said.

  My married name was like a taunt on his lips. He spoke it with heavy emphasis, as though he wished to tell me that the death of Mozart was no concern of mine, for whom years ago the Maestro had ceased to be family.

  He was wrong. Lichnowsky hadn’t seen me in the red frock-coat at the palace.

  I was Mozart.

  My stomach stung as though the poison that killed my brother burned through my innards. I pushed away the hand the prince offered in support.

  The handwritten page in my pocket seemed to pulse against my hip. My brother’s idea for a new Masonic lodge. ‘The Grotto.’

  Lichnowsky’s lip twitched. ‘It really isn’t your place to involve yourself in such things, madame.’

  ‘The Grotto disturbed your arrangement with Pergen somehow,’ I said. ‘What did Wolfgang’s new lodge mean to you?’

  ‘It was the idle fancy of a man who ought to have restricted himself to music.’ The voice of a judge, pronouncing sentence on Wolfgang. The executioner’s eyes again.

  ‘You told me Wolfgang tried to interest the Prussians in The Grotto. How did The Grotto endanger my brother?’ I looked into Lichnowsky’s face and found the absolute ruthlessness of a man accustomed to living in fear. In fear of Pergen. Pergen knows. ‘Wolfgang returned from Berlin and started work on The Magic Flute, filling it with Masonic symbols. To Pergen, it looked like the Prussians were backing the opera, funding its subversive Masonic ideas. Isn’t that right?’

  Lichnowsky clicked his tongue. ‘So what?’

  ‘A popular opera about a secret society. Funded by the Emperor’s enemy, the King of Prussia, who’s also a Mason. Organized when you and Wolfgang were together in Berlin. Maybe the Police Minister decided his double agent’s loyalty was really to the Prussians.’

  ‘Pergen is hardly the point now, my dear lady,’ he said.

  ‘Perhaps Pergen never was the point. But what was?’

  He prodded the wall with the tip of his cane. ‘By all the saints in heaven.’

  ‘When I came to Vienna, I wondered if my brother’s killing was the result of Hofdemel’s demented love. But that man’s jealous rage was of your making. What then? Did Wolfgang die because of international espionage and Pergen’s secret plots? Or was it a dispute between Masons over admitting women to the Brotherhood? I will have the truth from you, sir.’ My voice grew loud. It echoed around the enclosed staircase.

  ‘Madame—’

  ‘Why? Tell me, why did my brother die?’ I shouted.

  ‘Money.’ Lichnowsky’s face was red with fury. He leaned over me from the step above. ‘Pergen’s bribes. The Prussian bribes. That’s all. Money killed Wolfgang.’

  I whispered, ‘You feared Pergen would halt your payments, even more than you dreaded disgrace.’

  The ferocity dwindled on his face. A cold contempt replaced it.

  It had all been for money, then, that Lichnowsky arranged Wolfgang’s death. To keep Pergen’s bribes coming by proving his loyalty. To maintain the payments from the Prussian ambassador, who didn’t know that he was also working for Pergen.

  Lichnowsky glared at the lanterns across the courtyard, hanging on the fog. I wondered if the intensity in his face was murder itself.

  Would I recognize it? Surely it had been in the eyes of the two men who entered the Baron’s box at The Magic Flute. I realized now that they had been sent by Lichnowsky. They must have waited outside until Gieseke came to speak to Swieten. Then they dragged him backstage and killed him. While I sat entranced by my brother’s music.

  Who had been singing their encore when those thugs returned to commit murder? The astonishing high F coloratura of the Queen of the Night’s aria sounded in my head as if she stood beside me on the steps. Hell’s vengeance boils in my heart, she sang. The last words Gieseke would have heard. The force of the Queen’s anguish overcame me.

  ‘You took the life of a great genius.’ My hands tightened into fists. ‘You’ll be punished for it.’

  He smiled. ‘Yet here I am, walking free.’

  ‘Not for long,’ I said. ‘I’ll tell the new Police Minister about your double game.’

  ‘Do you think a Prince is to be punished for his secret work on the Emperor’s behalf? Simply because a scribbling musician met an unfortunate end?’

  ‘How dare you.’

  ‘If you don’t like it, go to the Minister and tell him what you know.’

  ‘I shall.’

  ‘I encourage you to do so. Really, I do.’ He gestured up the stairs with his cane. ‘The big doors below the gold crest of a two-headed eagle. That’s his office.’

  I looked up the steps, then back to the Prince.

  ‘Run along, madame,’ he said. ‘The sword of justice ought to fall on me swiftly, don’t you think?’

  His laughter was soft as I rushed up the stairs.

  I crossed the broad white corridor toward the Police Minister’s office. The eagle crest was topped by the Emperor’s crown.

  The Minister’s door opened and a man slipped out. He carried a stack of ledgers in his arms. When he saw me, he gave a little bow. It was the Baron’s assistant, Strafinger.

  Lichnowsky’s footsteps descended the stairs behind me. My pulse ra
n fast. It couldn’t be as I feared.

  Strafinger stood aside and held the door open for me.

  Behind a standing desk, Baron van Swieten was reading a document. He looked up and smiled.

  I shook my head, disbelieving. I felt a pressure within my chest, as though my heart would shatter. He laid down the paper and dropped his guilty eyes.

  37

  Everything within the Police Minister’s office sank into black, as though the light of the sun had never once penetrated the room. The Baron’s assistant left and shut the door. I opened my eyes wide, though I wished most of all to pretend I didn’t see the man I loved before me.

  The room was paneled with light chestnut wood, carved in the ornate style of the Renaissance. On one wall a tapestry depicted in dull blue and green a hunt in the Vienna woods. The floor was of polished ceramic, the tiles arranged in dark chevrons. Fog clung to the window.

  Swieten crossed the room and took my hands in his. He was unshaven. The skin beneath his eyes was gray and puffy.

  ‘Nannerl,’ he whispered, kissing my fingers. ‘My dear.’

  His face bore the same hopeful, querying expression as it had when Pergen was dragged from the Emperor’s room. It asked if I was free to stay with him. I still could give no sure response.

  Don’t let him lie, I thought. If he does, I know I’ll have to leave Vienna. ‘Gottfried,’ I murmured.

  He closed his eyes and stroked my face.

  I looked at the papers on the desk. ‘Pergen’s office?’

  ‘I’ve been here all night. The Emperor commanded me to review the files, so that we might know in what other ways Pergen overstepped his authority.’

  ‘A great opportunity,’ I said.

  ‘I’m so glad you see that. I really can change things throughout the Empire. To improve the lives of millions of people. The Emperor gave me this chance. But I owe it to the bravery you showed yesterday when you performed at the palace.’

  A brown ledger lay open on the lectern. I touched the edge of the page. ‘What have you found?’