Chapter Fifteen

Heavy wooden doors closed behind Carlo and Monsieur Jean, and the entire tavern fell silent. Coarse-looking men, huddled over the bar, looked up gape-mouthed at the pair’s appearance. Soldiers halted in their rounds of billiards and drinking games to blink at them. Only the relentless drip of a leaking tap broke the silence.

Carlo turned to look down at his companion. “A charming little tavern?” he repeated in a faint whisper, barely moving his lips.

Monsieur Jean shrugged, still beaming, and strode forward. “Two beers for the gentleman and myself, barmaid,” he called out. “The Prince’s most honored guest deserves your finest.”

The tavern slowly settled back into a normal low-level roar, and Carlo walked across the sanded floor, conscious of the still-staring eyes fixed on him.

“Is that a woman or a man?” someone whispered, piercingly, from the soldiers’ billiard table.

Another soldier whispered back knowingly: “Neither one. It’s a castrato. Heard one of them in Vienna, once.”

“What does it do?”

Carlo swung around, fixing a determined smile on his lips. He let his voice rise until it filled the tavern. “It sings,” he declared, in his purest and most ringing tones. “For kings and empresses, and for your prince. And it also has ears to hear what’s being said about it.”

“What the devil—!” The first soldier stepped away from the billiards table, reaching down for the hilt of his sword. “I didn’t ask you to listen in on my private conversation. Freak.”

“I didn’t ask to hear it, either. And yet . . .” Carlo raised his eyebrows, holding the rest of his face rigidly still. “We appear to be at an impasse.”

Monsieur Jean was back at his side in a heartbeat, smiling dazzlingly. “What are such small misunderstandings between friends?” He bowed sweepingly to the angry soldier. “My esteemed employer, the Princess Esterházy, would like to buy the entire house a round of drinks.”

The sizzling tension dissipated into a roar of huzzahs as the soldiers surged forward. Monsieur Jean led Carlo to a secluded table in a back corner, stepping carefully between the larger men. The soldier who’d spoken earlier nodded stiffly to Carlo. Carlo nodded, infinitesimally, in return, conscious of the burn of frustration in his chest. It would have felt shockingly good to fight, just then, and release the night’s simmering store of outrage.

Truly, he was losing all his wits.

“Now, then . . .” Monsieur Jean set the two beers on the table and sat down across from Carlo, smiling intently. “Tell me, Signor Morelli, all about yourself.”

A new group of soldiers burst into the tavern just as Carlo began his fourth beer. It had been some time since he’d drunk beer instead of wine, he realized. It was a plain drink, for plain men, not the refined nectar of the aristocrats. He’d forgotten just how much he liked it. His head felt pleasantly dizzy as he glanced across at the incoming group, led by the Esterházy scion who’d so dramatically won the battle games on the opera stage the night before.

As the Esterházy lieutenant—Anton Esterházy, that was it—strode inside, his eyes swept across the room and passed over Carlo without interest.

“Anyone seen von Höllner?” he called out. “We’ve been searching all over the palace for him.”

“Off with his wench in Vienna,” one man called out, waving his beer stein.

“Or with his wife,” someone muttered, sniggering, close by Carlo.

Stifled laughter sounded. It was cut off hastily, though, as Anton Esterházy turned to that corner of the room, his face taking on a chill that made the resemblance to his cousin suddenly inescapable.

“I didn’t hear that piece of idiocy,” Anton said. “And I trust that no one else did either.”

A dead silence greeted his words. He raised his eyebrows, waiting, then shrugged. “Good enough. I’m giving up on him for the night. Who’s for a game of billiards?”

Carlo turned back to Monsieur Jean as the byplay ended. The expression he saw on his companion’s face made him blink. It cleared away instantly, and Monsieur Jean smiled winningly, his face open and trustworthy. Carlo hadn’t merely imagined that look of narrow-eyed calculation . . . had he? He set down his beer, keeping his own expression bland. Perhaps he’d drunk enough for one evening.

“A pretty performance, that, was it not?” Monsieur Jean said. “I always enjoy visiting the soldiers’ tavern to watch the drama, particularly as the night goes on. Much like stags fighting over dominance in the wild, I think. Fascinating for any student of human nature and philosophy.”

“If you find such conflicts fascinating, perhaps you should spend more of your time in Prince Nikolaus’s court.” Carlo narrowed his own eyes, searching the other man’s face. “There is surely more primitive jostling for precedence and domination in a royal court than anywhere else on earth.”

“And if you do not share my fascination for the subject, signor, perhaps you should spend less of your own time in royal courts.”

“A veritable point, monsieur.” Carlo gave a half-laugh. “But not the key to a brilliant career for a musico. For that, one must play the nobles’ game.”

But never be accepted as one of them.

He bit his tongue at the memory of Baroness von Steinbeck’s horrified expression. “The Prince is a gentleman.” And Carlo was not. He lifted the beer stein to his lips and took a long, burning draught that emptied the stein.

Monsieur Jean signaled to a barmaid, and replacement beer steins arrived at the table.

“Tell me,” Monsieur Jean said, “what brought you to accept the Prince’s invitation to Eszterháza? Surely, there were other invitations. Other courts, other kingdoms . . .”

Carlo shrugged. “I’d never been to Eszterháza. And the Prince’s musical establishment is famous throughout Europe. The chance to meet Herr Haydn in person was not to be brushed aside.”

“And others in the court?”

“Pardon?” Carlo met the other man’s gaze. His fingers tightened around the handle of his beer stein. “I’m afraid I don’t take your meaning, monsieur.” The Baroness’s light brown eyes looking up at him through the darkness outside the opera house . . .

“Surely you’d met one or two of the gentlemen at this court before your arrival,” Monsieur Jean said easily. “Was this not an opportunity to renew any old friendships? Or, at any rate, acquaintances?”

“Not at all.” Carlo’s shoulders relaxed. “No, I’d never met any of Prince Nikolaus’s courtiers before.”

“Or his other guests?”

Carlo frowned. “You seem remarkably interested in my acquaintances, Monsieur Jean. Are you compiling a list?”

“You are too quick for me, signor.” Monsieur Jean’s face broke into a grin. “Indeed, I’m certain I could sell off such a list for hundreds of ducats to connoisseurs. The private acquaintances of Europe’s most celebrated musico . . . Alas, you’ve found me out in my dastardly plan.”

He leaned forward, his eyes sparkling. “Tell me, though, man-to-man. In strictest confidence: with whom would you wish to become more intimately acquainted, here at Eszterháza? For the palace is filled with a multitude of beauties at the moment. His Highness’s own niece is a fine figure of a woman, as are a number of the singers in his opera troupe.” He lowered his voice. “With all due respect to our fiery young lieutenant across the room, I wouldn’t mind spending an hour or two alone with the lovely Sophie von Höllner, myself.”

Carlo sat back in his seat, shaking his head. “You are asking the wrong person to share in your game of what-if, monsieur,” he said dryly. “Did not you hear the soldier who greeted us? An ‘it’ can hardly even fantasize of such things.”

“Perhaps an ‘it’ may not, indeed. But we are men of the world, you and I. And I know a fair bit more than our charming guardsmen about the astonishing reputation of the musici across the courts of Europe, and of how well a few of them have deserved it.” Monsieur Jean added, smirking, “I heard, as well, that the noblewomen of this court were fairly swarming around you after your performance a few nights ago.”

“Not all of them,” Carlo said. He looked into the murky depths of the beer, but did not see it. “Even men of the world must accept their own limits, one day, and give up on impossible dreams.” His fingers tightened around his beer stein, and he bit off his words with careful precision. “Eventually, no matter what our preferences might be, we must all learn to play the roles in life that were assigned to us.”

“Perhaps you are right,” Monsieur Jean murmured. But the tone of his voice contradicted his words. Rich satisfaction rippled through it.

Carlo glanced up quickly, searching the other man’s face. Monsieur Jean smiled back sunnily and lifted his own beer stein.

“To the theater of life, signor!”

“To the theater,” Carlo echoed, warily, and drank.

Alone in her grand salon, the Princess Esterházy sat by the window. Darkness filled the room, unlit by a single candle. Her pet dog snored on her lap, and she stroked his white fur absently with her bejeweled fingers as she gazed through the arched window into the darkened gardens outside.

The still water in the fountains gleamed in the darkness, reflecting pale moonlight. No figures moved across the manicured lawns that lay between the palace and the tall hedges beyond.

But the Princess’s searching gaze moved restlessly across the view for hours yet, before the night was done.