Mozart's Last Aria (21 page)
A
t 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, he.
“
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’ve 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 von 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’ve 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 snickered. “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’ve 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’ve 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 ran 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.
E
verything 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’ve you found?”
“The scope of Pergen’s secret operation is enormous. But I must confess I’ve spent most of the night on a single case.” He flipped the ledger shut to show me the label pasted to the center of the cover: “Mozart, Johann Chrysostom Wolfgang Amadeus.”
I ran my finger beneath my brother’s name and thought of the paper fluttering in the wind on his grave. I longed to tell Swieten what I knew of Lichnowsky’s treachery, but I needed him to volunteer the truth. “Show me.”
“Come.” He took me to a divan of scarlet velvet. He riffled the pages of the ledger, stiff as winter leaves with the ink that covered them. “In here, the truth about Wolfgang’s death.”
“Was it—?”
“Poison, as we thought.”
“How was it done?”
“At a meeting of the Masonic lodge. Hofdemel administered
acqua toffana
to Wolfgang in a cup of punch.”
“He murdered Wolfgang because he thought he had been cuckolded? But at the palace Pergen confessed. Did he mislead Hofdemel into killing my brother?” I knew this was only half the story. Was I trying to trap the baron into covering up for Lichnowsky? A lie that would send me back to my village?
Swieten tapped his fingernail against his teeth.
Gottfried, don’t hide from me
, I thought. “Is that how it was?” I said.
He laid his palm flat on the ledger. “That’s how it was.”
If I had thought my heart had broken when I entered the office—when I had seen that it was my own lover who had allowed Lichnowsky to go free—now it was shattered for certain. It ruptured with the force of my guilt, my betrayal of my good husband and my children and my God. I put my hand to my mouth and sobbed.
He made to comfort me, but I shook my head, and he knew that I didn’t weep for my brother’s death.
I pointed toward the door. His eyes narrowed in pain, as though he saw across the hall to the traitor on the steps. “Lichnowsky,” he whispered.
He reached for me, but I moved away along the divan.
The baron pressed his hands against his eyes. “I wish to explain to you,” he said.
Those words. The aria I had sung to him in the Imperial Library just before I had seen that he loved me.
I wish to explain to you, O God, what my grief is
. I heard the song in my head, but even Wolfgang’s music seemed discordant now. The aria faltered, and fell silent.
“This is my chance to bring Wolfgang’s ideas to the attention of the entire Empire.” He turned his dark eyes to me. They were tearful. “If I could give up this life here in the palace and travel Europe with my violin, playing his music in every village square, you know I’d do it. But I’m a mediocre musician. I can’t transmit his message that way. I’m a politician. Wolfgang’s values—freedom, equality, brotherhood—it’s within my power now to make them law.”
His fingers knitted together, strong as they had been when he held my body.
“But you loved Wolfgang,” I said. “How can you forget your devotion to him?”
“Wolfgang and I talked so often of these enlightened ideas, of how they’d transform the Empire. I do this for him.”
I clicked my tongue. He flinched, as though I had spat on him.
“Don’t you think I wish Lichnowsky all the torments of the innermost circle of Hell?” He slapped his hands together. “But if I try to punish him, the emperor will get rid of me. Treachery by a prince? No, that’d make the emperor himself look threatened. If he couldn’t count on the loyalty of a prince, then he must really be in a vulnerable position. Don’t you see?”
The agitation in my breast subsided. It was replaced by something as heavy and still as lead.
“My choice is clear,” he said. “An ineffective action leading to my dismissal. Or the possibility of reforms which would be a true memorial to Wolfgang’s wonderful soul.”
A horse stamped on the cobbles of the courtyard below. My carriage. I couldn’t quite believe that I’d have to ride that coach all the way back to my village—that I’d be without my baron.
“I understand why you chose as you did.” My voice was broken and shaky. “What’ll happen to Prince Lichnowsky?”
Swieten hesitated. “Well, he’s
my
agent now.”
He bowed his head in shame.
“I see.” I knew what I must do. As for Wolfgang’s case, only the details remained.
“How much money?” I said. “How much did Lichnowsky receive? What was the price of my brother’s life?”
“Hofdemel got ten thousand gulden a year to work as an agent for Pergen. Lichnowsky received much, much more, and from the Prussians, too. He was able to recover his family estates, even though they’d been under Prussian control since King Friedrich captured Silesia forty years ago. The return of his lands—that’s how the Prussians first persuaded Lichnowsky to work for them.”
I thought again of the richness of Magdalena’s apartment. The piano Wolfgang had played there, bought with the money that would purchase his murder.
“Wolfgang had to be silenced—to keep the money coming,” Swieten whispered.
“Because of
The Magic Flute
?”
He shook his head. “The Prussians ordered Lichnowsky to set up a new lodge. He was supposed to recruit powerful Austrians who’d think they were working to promote their Masonic beliefs. In fact they’d be enlisted as Prussian spies.”
“And Wolfgang knew about this.”
“He was with Lichnowsky in Berlin when the orders were issued. So, yes, Wolfgang knew.” Swieten glanced at the ledger with all its details of my brother’s case. “He threatened to make the pro-Prussian lodge public, unless Lichnowsky helped him launch his Grotto.”
“But Lichnowsky—” I sensed the odor of the prince’s Spanish cigars on the air in the office, lingering from his meeting with Swieten.
“Lichnowsky couldn’t allow the Grotto to go ahead. He was recruiting men for his Prussian lodge and passing the names to Pergen. Helping Wolfgang’s new lodge would’ve made Pergen think he was engaging other Prussian spies without the police minister’s knowledge.”
“Yet Pergen confessed. He said he ordered Wolfgang’s death.”
“Lichnowsky told Pergen about the Grotto. So that Pergen wouldn’t suspect him. He identified Wolfgang as a Prussian agent and the secret founder of an illegal Masonic lodge. For that, Pergen decreed Wolfgang’s murder. But Lichnowsky engineered it, to protect himself.”
Swieten reached along the divan and squeezed my fingers. His face was hopeful and tentative.
I withdrew my hand and went to the window. I laid my palm on the pane. The skin seemed to stick to the freezing glass. “The intrigue of the capital wasn’t for my poor, naïve brother,” I said. “It’s not for me, either.”
Swieten stood behind me. I sensed his hesitation before he spoke. “Is there nothing in the imperial city for you?”
Had the fog cleared from the courtyard of the Estates House, I’d still have seen nothing through the tears that obscured my sight. “Gottfried, I must return to my children.”
His hand was on the bare skin of my shoulder, edging into the hair at the nape of my neck. I froze. I awaited his command, as I had waited all my life for instruction. He held his fingers there a long time.
“I understand,” he said.
Precisely because he accepted my decision, it was hard to maintain my determination. “Even when you and I are apart, we’ll both play his music,” I said.
“For me, the music is at an end.” His sad eyes rested on my neck, the cross of ambers he had given me. “Anyway, I always believed he composed only for you.”
I thought of what Magdalena had said at the graveyard, her solution to Wolfgang’s riddle. I understood that Swieten was right. There was passion for me in Vienna with the baron. But the world would lay its corrupting touch upon us and make our affair seem tawdry. The love that was left to me was in Wolfgang’s music.
I hurried down the stone stairs and into the courtyard. The fog froze my tears.
Lenerl averted her eyes as I climbed into the carriage. If she told tales on me when we returned to the village, my sobs would be the least of the strange things she might relate. I let them come.
The driver circled back to the entrance. The horses’ hooves clattered toward the vaulted gateway.
Swieten came down the steps three at a time. He caught the coach at the gate as the traffic on Herren Lane forced it to pause.
He laid his hands on the side of the carriage. I heard again the music of the aria I had sung for him in his library. This time the strings and the soprano were in harmony. I saw that he heard them, too. He smiled at me, though his jaw trembled.
The carriage pulled into the street. With a snap of the whip, the horses took me away from the baron. I leaned out of the window. The mist and the traffic closed about him. He became as invisible as if he had been consigned to the cells with Pergen’s victims.
Within a half hour, my carriage was in the countryside, adrift on a fog that smothered Vienna in its enclosing silence forever.