CHAPTER 7

Zoltán returned just at that moment, before I could collect myself enough to ask the maestro anything else.

“Are you prepared?” Zoltán asked me. “Kapellmeister, I have an engagement with Fräulein Schurman, if you would excuse me from the symphony rehearsal?”

“Of course, of course,” my godfather replied.

At first my thoughts were so confused by my god father’s revelation that I wondered, prepared for what? Then I remembered that Zoltán had said he would take me to the place where they had found Papa. I gathered up my cloak and gloves. I supposed I was as ready as I could be. I nodded.

“I will see you tomorrow then, as arranged?” Haydn’s tone held something desperate in it. I still couldn’t quite understand why weak eyesight could not easily be overcome with a little assistance. But I was happy enough to help him, after all he had done for us, and hoping that spending time with him would give me an opportunity to ask him everything he knew about my father.

Zoltán did not speak to me until we reached the kitchen courtyard of the palace when he gave me a black mask to hold over my face. No one in our class of society ever wore masks in public—they were mainly for the well-born who wished to disguise themselves while meeting a lover, or to avoid the anger of the populace after the passing of an unfair tax that benefited the nobles. “What’s this for?”

“It would be best if you were not recognized where we are going,” he said.

“Who would recognize me?”

“It is for the best.” Zoltán turned away from me and strode off, clearly not wanting me to ask any more questions at the moment.

An icy wind had come up. I pulled my cloak around me more tightly as I followed him to a carriage stand. He spoke to one driver, who responded by shaking his head emphatically. Before I caught up with Zoltán so that I could hear what he said, he had moved on to the next driver. This fellow gave a more halfhearted refusal, and I saw with dismay that Zoltán fished a silver coin out of his bag and gave it to him. Surely we could not be going anywhere so far as to require such handsome payment. But what ever our destination, the second driver agreed to take us there, and Zoltán handed me into the carriage as though I were a fine lady.

I found myself inside a small space that smelled of old sweat, despite the cracks in the leather hood that let in the wind and would certainly not provide shelter from a driving rain. Fortunately it was too cold for that. And the close space meant that we had to squash together to fit. I was both grateful that I could take a little of Zoltán’s warmth from his nearness, and afraid that it was somehow unseemly to do so. I wondered what he was thinking. I glanced quickly toward him, hoping he would not notice.

I caught him looking away from me, scanning the houses and farms we passed. His expression was not kind and gentle. Instead the lines of a frown creased his forehead, and the corners of his lips were drawn down. I began to feel distressed that I had asked him to perform this service for me, especially if it was going to cost him money and cause him pain.

We took a direction that led us out through one of the city gates. Very soon we were crossing open country. The roads, well packed and cleared closer to Vienna, became rutted, and the cold weather had frozen the ruts so that we were jostled severely from one side to the other, even though we went at a walking pace. My hood fell back and my cap was pushed askew. I tried my best to adjust it, but as I was doing so, another jolt tossed me into Zoltán’s side. He took hold of me and steadied me. His touch was comforting, but as soon as the road became less rough, he let go, and I felt cold.

We entered a forest glade, mostly tall pines. The darkness around us created a false nighttime. I peered out the unglazed window and thought I saw a group of men through the trees, watching us pass with casual interest. “Where are we going?”

Zoltán reached across me and lowered the shade. “I think now would be a good time for you to put on your mask.”

Between the mask and the lowered shade, my sense of where we were became confused. From quiet countryside we passed into some kind of settled area, a village perhaps, or a small market town. I heard the ringing of a blacksmith’s hammer on an anvil, and voices calling out their wares in a mix of a coarse Austrian dialect and some other language. By the light I figured that we had emerged from the forest. I had no clear idea of how much time had passed before I heard the coachman call, “Hold up there!” to his horse.

We climbed down from the carriage and approached the settlement. As we neared it, Zoltán pulled my arm through his and kept me tightly at his side. He, too, wore a mask and drew his hood down so that it hid his face. The cold afforded us ample excuse for covering ourselves. Through the tunneled vision of the piece of velvet-covered stiff paper I could see that I had guessed correctly about coming to a village of sorts. But the sight of the Danube stretching away like a gray satin ribbon through the hoary landscape took me by surprise. And I saw that not far down was the island of the Prater, the pleasure ground where people went for picnics in the summertime. I had pictured us winding deep into the countryside, not circling back toward the busy trade route—which at this time of year was considerably quieter because of the ice patches here and there that could damage the smaller boats.

“The place I want to show you is just down there, but we need a reason to pass that way at this time of day. Give me your muff.”

I could not imagine why Zoltán would deliberately take my warmest item of clothing away from me, but I complied, not enough possessed of my wits to ask a question just then.

To my complete amazement, he glanced around quickly and, seeing that no one paid us any heed, tossed my only fur muff down an embankment onto the sandy edge of the river. It landed but a pace away from the icy water. “What have you done!” I exclaimed, and before he could stop me, I picked up my skirt and petticoats and scrambled as best I could down to retrieve it. Zoltán was close behind me.

“Why did you do that?” I whispered. He put his fingers to his lips.

“Here it is, Liebchen. Quite undamaged,” he said aloud, clearly more for the benefit of the curious onlookers who had gathered to see the commotion than for mine.

His words had the desired effect, and the odd assortment of people, clustered near to what I now saw were crumbling piers, went back to their business. I had not had the opportunity to fully understand where we were until that moment. The huts and lean-tos that made up this village by the banks of the Danube were of the flimsiest construction, some no more than heavy canvas stretched over wooden supports, and in many cases attached to wagons. Despite this, they were decorated with brightly colored silk banners and had chains of shiny metal discs draped upon them, so that I imagined the wagons would make a cheerful sound when they were driven across the countryside. Horses and goats wandered freely through the makeshift lanes—only an ill-tempered-looking hog was penned apart from the people, who numbered something above a hundred. Among them were children, their feet wrapped in cloths against the cold ground, wearing short cloaks pieced together of colorful patches of wool, silk, cotton—any scrap of this or that. Not a single brick house was to be seen, and there were no smartly clothed ladies wearing high headdresses and Brunswick capes.

“We are among the Romany people,” Zoltán whispered into my ear.

Gypsies! Had it been they who fell upon my father and robbed him? I began to tremble.

“They will not harm us,” Zoltán continued. “Fine folk come here all the time to stare at their foreign ways. They are splendid musicians. Your father knew them, and on Christmas Eve bid us meet him here for some spirited music-making after the concert.”

“But Maestro Haydn said he did not play in the concert.”

“Nor did he. I’m afraid I was not entirely candid with you the other night. I’m sorry. There was no arrangement to meet at the tavern, either, but I couldn’t explain it all then. We—Heinrich, Jakob, and I—were concerned when Antonius failed to take his place in the orchestra that night. We decided we had best come to look for him here as arranged, thinking perhaps he had prepared some surprise.”

We strolled as though admiring the river view, but stayed close to that one spot. “Did my godfather know about the arrangement to visit this camp?” I asked.

“I do not know what your father may have told the maestro. In any case, when we arrived, the Gypsies were in a festive mood, celebrating midwinter. Torches blazed, and everyone was wearing their finest costumes. They welcomed us and gave us wine when they discovered we were musicians. But your papa was not among them.”

“Then what happened?”

“The time grew late. Heinrich had had a skinful and then some. He staggered off to—you know—and tumbled over the edge of the embankment in the dark. We went looking for him, and that’s when we found Antonius. Here.”

He stopped by the carcass of a skiff, now more a loose collection of blackened boards than something that had once plied the river bearing people across to the Prater. I could see no evidence that a body had lain there, but the ground had been frozen for some weeks, and would not have yielded easily to his weight. I turned and slowly took in the embankment. It would have been difficult to scramble up quickly if one were being pursued. Some way down, boulders had been set into the earth to act as steps, but in the dark, without knowing they were there, Papa would never have found them.

“And then?” I asked. I needed to know more. With every word, every fact I discovered, a picture was beginning to take shape. As yet it made no sense, but I believed that if I could get enough of it, it would soon point me in some direction.

“We raised the alarm. The Roma men came down. It was their black blanket we used to wrap him, and their leader’s son, Danior, drove us in his cart back to your house in Vienna.”

“Where is this Danior?”

Zoltán looked up toward a wagon a small way off from the center of the village. I thought I saw someone vanish inside. “We promised we would not bring soldiers to the camp, vowing that we would try to avoid any implication of the Romany in your father’s death.”

“Do you believe they did not do it?” I could not imagine what else might have happened. It was clear: Papa had come to take part in their music and been killed for his bonus—and his violin. I wondered if a search of this Danior’s hut would lead us to the Amati.

“I am certain they did not. What would have been their reason?”

“Surely the money …” Though it suddenly occurred to me that if Papa had not been at the prince’s palace on Christmas Eve, perhaps he had not received his bonus after all. “When were the musicians given their Christmas pay?”

“Immediately after the concert.”

Zoltán led me toward the stone steps, keeping his hands on my waist as he pushed me up ahead of him. He had large hands for a violinist, but then I remembered he played the viola and cello, too. My mind was swirling. The sensation of Zoltán’s hands confused me, and I could not focus on the matter of my father. I wanted the climb up the bank to last forever, but it didn’t. And when we reached the top, he let go of me, and I was able to concentrate again. If Papa did not have his bonus money with him, why would he have been attacked?

Our hired coach was where we’d left it, at the edge of the village. Zoltán bought me some roasted chestnuts from a vendor. I could tell everyone was staring at me and I began to feel a little frightened. A toothless old woman approached, coming quite close to me, and pointed at my breasts. She gabbled something in a language that was neither German nor French nor Italian, the languages I understood. I looked down, and noticed that the gold medallion lay outside my dress, just visible where my cloak hung slightly open. I tucked it away quickly.

“How very odd,” he said. “She called you chey, ‘daughter.’ ”

How did he know? Zoltán was Hungarian. As far as I knew, he did not speak the peculiar language of the Gypsies. And what was it about the medallion that would make her call me “daughter”?

Despite the many questions I still had, we barely spoke all the way back to Vienna. I went over and over the events of the day. My head hurt with the effort to comprehend what they all meant. But I couldn’t help returning to one instant in particular. Liebchen, Zoltán had said. Beloved. I knew he’d done it so that it would appear that we were a young couple on a jaunt for the thrill of saying they had visited the Gypsy camp, but in the desolate landscape of my present life, I held that word in my heart and vowed I would never forget it.