But the melody from the forest lingered in my ears, beautiful and alluring, coaxing me forward. I felt the ache of it with the same intensity as the night of my first dream, when I’d wokenwith my hand outstretched, wanting to be a part of that world. The rain tapped a muffled rhythm against the roof, the pulse right before a song.
What would Hyacinth say? The glimmer in his eyes told me he would urge me on. And Woferl? He would clap his hands in delight and ask to hear the melody. Slowly, slowly, the threat of my father’s punishment began to fade against the steady desire to write it down.
Finally, with one bold gesture, I took up the quill and dipped it into the inkwell. My hands reached up as if of their own accord toward my notebook. I turned the pages until I’d nearly reached the end, and then I stopped on a blank page that no one would think to look at.
For a moment, I hesitated.I am done with it,Hyacinth had told me when he’d returned the notebook.Use it as your path back to me.
What had he done to it? The blank page seemed unremarkable. Yet the longer I stared, the more I felt it staring back at me, as if the princeling had touched his fingers to the paper and soaked his otherworldly being into the fibers. He was watching me, waiting.
Tell me what you want,he had said.
So I began to write.
The room was silent, save for the scratching of quill against parchment and the roar of the music in my mind. The strokes of my ink shook slightly against the page, but I forced myself to steady. The palms of my hands turned clammy with sweat. It wouldn’t be long before I would hear someone coming back up the steps to our room.
But I couldn’t stop. A wild joy rushed underneath my blanket of fear. This moment was fleeting—and mine.
The melody from the carriage path looked back at me from the paper, suddenly made into reality. I continued, writing as quickly and quietly as I could, nurturing the little tune, knowing that at any moment I would hear someone coming back up the steps to our room. When I finally put the quill down and ran my finger across the page to see if the ink had dried, I noticed how warm the paper felt. My breaths came shallow and rapid.
I hurriedly replaced the quill, then closed my notebook carefully so that it would not flip open to my page. My heart beat wildly at the thrill of this secret. The air, the light,somethingshifted in the room. It was as if the princeling were watching me through the paper that connected us.
I had never disobeyed my father before. From now on, there would forever be my life before this moment, and my life after.
By the time Mama came back upstairs with Woferl, I had returned to my usual lessons. They listened to me play for a while. From the corner of my eye, I could see Woferl’s large grin, as if he could not contain his joy, and my mother’s face, a calm canvas, even as she smiled and nodded along to my playing. On the floor beside her, Woferl fidgeted as he hunched over his papers, scribbling.
I felt as if he already knew about my secret, that he would jump up at any moment, flip through my notebook’s blank pages, and expose my little tune to the light. I could hear his familiar laugh in my head. But he remained beside my mother. I continued to play. Long moments passed.
Finally, when I finished and Woferl took his turn at the clavier, Papa returned home with a rumpled powdered wig and a whirlwind of words, hardly able to contain his excitement. “Anna,” he said breathlessly, gesturing to my mother. I looked upfrom where I sat on my bed. Only my brother continued to play, as if lost to his surroundings.
Mama laughed. “You look flustered, Leopold.”
“Word has spread throughout the city,” Papa replied. I could not remember his eyes ever looking so reflective. “On the streets, in the palace square. Everyone wants to hear more about our arrival. They call the children miracles. We are being talked about everywhere.”
Woferl and I exchanged a quick look. Mama clapped her hands together in pleasure.
“The sentries tell me that the empress has taken ill,” he continued, then quickly added, “Just a cold, nothing to fret over! Woferl and Nannerl are to play for them in three days, at the Schönbrunn Palace, at noon.”
And so our first performance was decided. Woferl looked up from his writing and announced that he would name his concerto after the empress. I thought of my secret page and waited for my father to look at me and see it imprinted in my gaze.
What have you been up to, Nannerl?he would ask.
But he didn’t. Instead, he went on about the court’s excitement over our concert, the reactions of those in the streets. His eyes crinkled with pleasure. I stayed where I was and watched the way he took Mama’s hands in his. He did not know. My secret hummed in the back of my throat.
Somewhere in the air, unseen, Hyacinth watched me and smiled in approval.
I knew that he had heard it. And I wondered what he would do next.
Mama woke both of us early the next morning. I startled out of a dream of wandering down a dark path through the upside-down trees. Woferl sat up in bed and rubbed sleep from his eyes. Through a crack in our window, I could already hear the bustling sounds of Vienna’s streets waking to greet the day.
“Hurry now, children,” she said, patting both our cheeks and giving us a wink. “You need to look the part you will play.”
We ate a quick breakfast of cold meats and poppy seed bread, and then I put on my white cap and left the inn with Mama, Papa, and Woferl. Compared with Salzburg, the streets looked wider here and paved with newer cobblestones. It was still early, and the wet air bit my cheeks with its chill. I could smell the honey and wheat from the bakeries. Ottoman merchants in layered coats and shining sashes gathered near the Fleischmarkt’s coffeehouse, conversing with one another in Turkish. Men hawked walnuts and colorful ribbons at intersections.
I held Woferl’s hand. Papa walked on my brother’s other side, distracted by the sights, and when he walked too fast, I picked up my skirts and hurried along behind him. To the Viennese, it must have been obvious that we did not live here. I looked nervously away from several curious passersby. It seemed like a long time before we finally arrived at the tailor and dressmaker shop, adorned with a sign that saidDAS FEINE BENEHMEN.
“Welcome, welcome,” said the man that opened the door for us. He blinked blue eyes at my father. “May I ask your name, Herr?”
I glanced behind him at the shop. It was very tidy, lined with elaborate caps and leather shoes on models, stays and stomachers trimmed with braided silk, rolls and rolls of fabrics in all colors and patterns, petticoats and gowns with beautifulembroidery. In one corner stood a full mantua gown cut in the latest fashion, made out of an elaborately patterned yellow silk that sloped elegantly at the hips. I found myself admiring its repeating floral images, the way it bunched in and then straight at the back. It was the kind of dress one wore before royalty. WhatIwould wear soon enough.
