Tasso shrugged nonchalantly. “But I was too quick for him. I grabbed a loop, set loose a counterweight, and shot right past his head. Kicked the knife out of his hand. I smiled and waved at him from the chute. ‘You won’t survive the night,’ he snarled, and tried to climb back onto the stage, but he couldn’t manage it—flailed there like a drowning rat clutching some scrap of floating wood until two stagehands came and pulled him up. They laughed at him! The whole theater laughed at Guadagni!”
We, too, laughed and cheered the hero Tasso, but finally Remus cut us off and pointed out that Guadagni likely meant his threat. “You’d better hide away in the coach until we’re ready,” Remus advised. “He’ll come looking for you here.” Tasso’s eyes grew wide in terror. He vanished like a mouse.
As Remus had suggested, Tasso spent those last two days preparing our coach and team of mares. He tried to teach me to drive them, but I found this as difficult as juggling. When I finally judged we were ready, we filled our new home with our belongings. Last of all, with Nicolai’s help, we lifted Tasso’s stove to the coach’s roof and then I strapped it down.
It was midnight when we departed our rooms for the final time, on December 30, 1762, one day short of Guadagni’s deadline. It took us the better part of an hour to ease the giant coach down the icy, pitted street. Tasso sat on his perch and coaxed the mares slowly, taking utmost care not to crack a wheel. We came to the glacis and beheld a full moon shining silver on the wide expanse of snow. This plate of ice crackled as we passed, as though the earth below were stirring in its sleep. We drove through the palace gate and into the city. The streets were empty, windows dark. The city slept, just as I had planned it.
Tasso steered the carriage to the Riecher Palace, and when we arrived, I leaned out the coach door and whispered exactly where to stop.
I turned back to my friends. “Ready?” They nodded, and we set out.
We walked back toward the Stephansdom, which was a black tower in the sky. Remus and I held Nicolai’s arms so he would not fall on the patches of ice. We soon came to the church and slipped inside. We paused in the entrance. The cavernous nave was lit by the glow of candles whose light barely warmed the branched pillars of the ceiling. We saw no one, but I heard the creak of a pew, and a soft footstep on the stone, and I knew we were not alone. Nicolai squinted toward the altar as if something wicked hid behind it.
I whispered to Tasso to follow me. I showed him which door I wished to open. The little man scurried toward it through the shadows. I listened to the clink of metal as he probed the lock. Then I heard the joyful creak of hinges.
We climbed the stairs slowly. Nicolai crawled on all fours in front, and once we knew we were out of hearing of those in the nave, he said between heaving breaths, “I feel the burden … of my sins … lighten with each stair.” I silently hoped he did not tumble down and kill us all.
We finally reached the top, and for several minutes we rested. I lit a candle. Nicolai mopped his brow with the sleeve of his tattered coat. He squinted up at the sixteen bell ropes hanging through the sixteen holes in the ceiling.
“If this bell takes sixteen men to ring it, how are we three to do it? You overestimate my girth if you think I am worth fourteen men.”
“No,” I said, standing up and walking to one of the ropes. “Sixteen is not necessary. It is simply a matter of timing. Not even sixteen men could lift her, but you three can make her rock. You can make her swing.”
I grasped the rope with one hand and pulled hard. The rope could have been hooked to the ceiling for all I felt it budge. But I listened. Those sixteen ropes passed through sixteen holes in the ceiling, and then through sixteen pulleys, and into a single strand, which curled around her wheel. Those pulleys gave the slightest squeak. The Pummerin rocked the slightest hair. Now I listened for a second squeak—the sign that her movement had crested and reversed—and when I heard this, I tugged again. The squeak was louder this time. I repeated this process—then again, again, again—giving sharp, timed tugs to the rope, and gradually I perceived a give.
“They’re moving!” Tasso said. He pointed at the ropes.
They were indeed. All sixteen ropes gently bowed their tails upon the floor in perfect coordination.
“It will take a while,” I said, “before she swings heavily enough to ring. But that is fine. I have much to do.”
Remus laid his hand on a bell rope. When he felt it drop in his hand, he pulled it along. “I can feel it,” he said. He ran his thumb along the frayed fibers as if the rope were some exotic creature he had never read about in any of his books.
“You keep it going,” I said, and let go of my rope.
I took the beeswax, wool, and muslin from the sack, and began with Nicolai’s ears. I filled the cavities with the soft wax, and then stoppered it with wool. I wrapped muslin around his head several times to hold the stoppers in place. He soon looked like a maimed soldier, escaped from a surgery.
“Can you hear?” I asked.
“Has the bell started ringing?” he shouted so loudly that Remus cringed. I thanked God that we were cloistered in the city’s highest tower; no one would hear us shout.
“Tasso, you’re next!” I said. Nicolai climbed to his feet and grabbed the nearest bell rope. He pulled with all his strength, but timed it poorly.
“No!” yelled Remus. “Now!”
Soon they were pulling in unison, and the bell ropes were dancing. I finished Tasso’s ears and began Remus’s.
“And then I will do yours,” Remus said.
“It is not necessary,” I replied.
“What do you mean?” he asked. “You will go deaf!”
I had no time to explain. “My mother,” I said, “she was a bell.” He looked puzzled, but then I plugged his second ear, and we could talk no more. As Remus took his station, it occurred to me I should have reviewed my plans with them one last time. But now, the swinging of the bell was enough to pull Tasso off his feet. Remus sat down with each pull and then stood when the bell reversed and dragged him back up. Nicolai pulled the rope from above his head to his waist.
How long before she would ring? And then, how long until someone arrived to stop them? The timing must be perfect. But before I left, there was one more thing—one more thing I had vowed to do.
I dashed up the stairs, plunging into darkness. I felt my way until I broke into her belfry. The moon shone through the open sides, casting sharp shadows along her lips as she swung, and I crept beneath her. Her still gentle rocking breathed a cold wind across my face. I judged a mere ten minutes before she would strike.
I took the knife from my belt and cut at the leather wrapping around the clapper, which they had placed there to dampen the massive ringing. I tore away scraps of leather and clumps of woolen padding. It was slow going, but after several minutes I had set her free. Tonight she would ring as she was created to.
I hurried down the stairs. “Keep pulling!” I shouted as I rushed past my friends, each rising up and gently falling down, but they did not hear me. Round and round I flew down the steps of the tower, and thankfully I reached the nave before I fainted. I blew out my candle. I slipped through the church and escaped into the night.
When I was halfway across the square, I heard the faintest hum, and it filled me with such joy that I stopped. I closed my eyes. A boom throbbed the night. I let it shake me from head to toe. It washed away any remaining fear.
“Yes!” I yelled up to my friends. “You are doing it!”
They were! They were ringing the empire’s largest, loudest bell, which tolled like footsteps on the heavens now. Boom! Boom! Boom! The ringing filled even the silence between the strikes, and every ear in Vienna must have heard it by now. Soldiers shot up in beds, thinking the Prussian army was closing in. The empress awoke and called for her minister. Children screamed in every house, startled from their dreams. Dogs brayed at the sky. The vibrations set ice and snow sliding off roofs. The ringing cracked windows throughout the Innenstadt,
as far away as the imperial palace. Everyone knew this sound, but surely, they thought, she had not rung this loudly in fifty years!
I ran out of the square.
Climbing onto the coach, I unstrapped the stove on top. I struggled to lift it to my shoulder. Several of the windows in the Riecher Palace glimmered, but the one nearest to the coach was still dark. I threw a momentary prayer to God. I tottered back, stumbled forward, and heaved the stove through a window.
A thunderous crash. The tumbling stove banged like a bouncing cannonball and shattering glass jingled and tinkled across the darkened room, but I prayed that mine were the only ears that could discern the sounds above the pealing.
From my perch on the coach’s roof, I looked up and down the street, confirmed that the ogre was not peering out of his gate, and then, as if it were a door, I stepped through the window.
As it turned out, the drop to the floor was farther than I had expected, and I soon found myself sprawled in broken glass. But in a moment I was up again—no time to dwell on the cuts and scrapes. I shook off the shards like a dog shakes off water.
I seemed to have landed in some sort of library. I shoved the stove beneath a desk and crept toward the door and listened. But just then, my luck ended. Through the tremendous pealing, I discerned a footstep, then, in horror, I spied the tremble of the turning doorknob. My calculations had been all wrong! I had been heard. I barely had enough time to dash behind the door when it opened and Countess Riecher herself strode in.
She held her hands against her ears, so the sleeves of her silk dressing gown bunched up around her shoulders. I marveled at the sharpness of her elbows. She gazed at the smashed window for a moment. “That damn bell,” she murmured, and turned away.
Perhaps she had not heard me after all. She appeared to be searching along a shelf.
I did not move.
She located what she sought and, with a quick movement, released one ear, grabbed something from off the shelf, and plugged it into her skull.
Of course! I realized. She lives just below the bells. She was just the sort to have some means of blocking out the sound. When she turned back toward the door, I still stood there, hoping she would mistake my shadow for some forgotten bust or statue. But, of course, this was not a woman who forgot anything. She peered at me in the dim moonlight, trying to discern my face. She backed away.
I lunged for her. She yelled, but even if her husband had been lying in bed on the other side of the wall, he could not have heard her.
Her eyes grew wide. “You,” she said, though I doubt she heard herself above the din.
“You!” I cried back. I spread my long arms and towered above her.
She attacked.
She scratched my neck and tried to pry out my eyes with the daggers of her polished nails. I yelped and tried to fend her off, but she was a lioness—all claws and roar.
With each booming of the bell she doubled her attack. Then she had one hand tugging on my hair while the other tried to crush my neck. I could not breathe. She could not hear me wheeze, but I heard her growl in my ear.
I pulled out my knife and swung it at her face. It missed, but she glimpsed it glinting in the moonlight and she recoiled, letting loose my neck. She backed against the wall. I pointed the shaking knife at her chest and heaved for air.
I had bought the knife only for the bell. I did not wish to stain its metal with her evil blood.
There was a chest on the floor that looked as if it had accompanied some noble general on an important campaign. I deemed it suitable to store the countess until the bell quieted and I was gone. I gestured with the knife for her to climb in, which she did, but with her final glance, I felt a chill, for her eyes told me that I would not survive our next encounter. I latched the chest, and continued on my mission.
The palace was alive. Fortunately, everyone needed both hands to protect their ears, so the Riechers and their servants were but clumsy shadows in the dark passages. It seemed as if the pealing had actually increased in volume. I pictured my three friends leaping to the ceiling and being gently lowered down again. My feet tingled as the house shook beneath them.
My ears heard every footstep, every voice cursing the blasted bell—and finally there was the sound for which I had come: a baby’s cry. I slipped past human shadows as I ascended the stairs, toward the crying, down the passage that led to Anton’s wing. There I almost collided with another shadow, and when he mumbled, “That blasted bell!” I heard that it was Anton Riecher himself.
But he was deaf to his crying son, even though the screams came from a door not ten paces away. He ran past me down the passage toward the stairs, no doubt hunting for his mother. I sprawled along the wall as the footsteps disappeared down the stairs. Then I hurried down the passage and burst into the nursery.
XXIV.
That kind nurse, and the baby: four ears to protect and only two hands that knew how. The sight broke my heart. The woman was lying on the bare wooden floor, contorted as if she’d fallen down a flight of stairs. From the single window, a blade of moonlight cut across them. The baby lay against the nurse’s chest, one ear pressed into her bosom. The nurse held her right hand against the child’s outer ear—only one hand left for herself. Her head twisted against her left shoulder, her left arm wrapped around her skull to reach her right ear.
This might have worked, but the child writhed in her hold, his body wracked with screams. I dashed toward them and snatched the child, pressing him to my chest. One hand sheltered his exposed ear, and with the other, I drew a glob of beeswax from my pocket. I plugged one ear and then the other as he thrashed in my arms. His face was red and he paused his cry only when he had no air left to scream.
I clutched him to my birdlike chest—which was wrought to sing, not to grasp a child—and held his head with my palm, my long, delicate fingers petting his brow. The bell still shook the city. I began to sing so the child—my son!—felt my voice inside of him. It calmed him just as it had calmed his grandmother in her sickbed, his mother at his birth. Soon his crying stopped, and he looked into my eyes.
I knew this face. His mother’s eyes stared up at me. And then, as I sang, those eyes fluttered. He was asleep.
The nurse on the floor was still shaken, still pressing her ears with all her might. She looked up gratefully, trying to make out which of the household servants had come to her aid. When I stepped forward into the moonlight, she seemed no more surprised than Gluck had been to see Orpheus in his room. Perhaps she, too, had dreamed of me.
“I am afraid I will have to lock you in that wardrobe,” I said to her, and pointed. She studied my moving lips. “I would not want them to blame you. Tell them you put up a fight.” No, she did not understand a word, but she let me lead her to the wardrobe, and stepped inside it as if I were helping her into a waiting carriage. I locked her in. She did not yell for help.
And then I was alone with my son. This lovely sleeping face! An angel in my arms! But as I cocked my head back and forth, I realized that the buzzing sensation was reduced. I listened: each booming crash was softer than the last. There was only one explanation: someone had climbed those stairs and seized my friends. The bell still rang from momentum, which meant I had only several minutes until it subsided into silence, and there was still much to do.
I wrapped the child in some blankets from his cradle and dashed down the passage. The house had calmed somewhat—everyone had found a spot to sit quietly and hold their ears until the pealing stopped. But I heard one person as I reached the bottom of the stairs. Anton was standing in the door to Countess Riecher’s study—the door to my escape.
“Mother!” he yelled. He stepped into the room. He regarded the broken window. “Mother!” he yelled again. With his stoppered ears, he must have heard his own voice as if down a long tunnel.
“Mother?” he cried once more, not three paces from the chest, from which occasional thumping sounded. Then he shrugged and closed the door. He turned toward the stairs—if
he had looked up he might have glimpsed me peering down at him—but he chose to continue the search for his mother on the story below. He vanished down the stairs.
In a moment, I was in the study, the door closed behind me. I had one foot on the window ledge when I looked down at that chest. In my haste I had shut the clasp, but left the lock ajar. I corrected this mistake and threw the key into the icy street.
It would be hours before they had the woman out.
…
I stepped carefully out onto the carriage and climbed into Tasso’s seat, which the little man had suited to himself, not to a musico twice as tall. I clutched my precious bundle with one arm while with the other hand I took the reins. Careful, I told myself, with horses you are a fool. I turned the beasts as if they were a team of rheumatic grandmothers. “Slow,” I told the gentle mares. “No need to rush. We have four hundred miles ahead of us.”
We clunked to the door of the Stephansdom. As I stopped the carriage, I heard the Pummerin strike the naked clapper for the final time. Her ringing still hung in the air, but it no longer hurt Vienna’s ears. I climbed down, and with the Riecher heir tucked safely against my chest, I went into the church.
It was exactly as I had feared. I hid behind a pillar and peeked around it to see my friends in shackles. Six soldiers guarded them, while another man, the church’s Kirchner, shouted in their faces. They had undone the wrapping around their heads, though Nicolai’s muslin was still wound around his neck like a scarf. All three men picked occasionally at the wax in their ears.
“Do you know what you have done?” the Kirchner roared. “That is a holy bell! You have woken every soul in this city. The empress herself! She must think we are besieged!”
The Bells Page 36