CHAPTER 15

When I awoke the next morning, all the bells in the city were ringing to announce the new year. I felt as if I hadn’t slept at all. I had had such vivid dreams I thought they were real. Zoltán stared down my uncle, who backed off and fell into the river. My mother rose from her bed looking well and had a healthy, rosy baby in her arms. Haydn sat at the keyboard directing his orchestra with confidence, a huge smile lighting up his face. I felt I had not rested much, but somehow my dreams had made me less anxious and worried. There had been a lot of snow overnight. The world outside my window had been transformed, and the light that reflected off the new snow even under a cloudy sky shed a soft, pure glow that always raised my spirits. What ever difficulties lay ahead with my uncle, that night I would attend my first ball, wearing clothes I never dreamed I would own. For one night, I would feel like a lady.

I sprang from my bed and dressed, emerging before Greta had even finished laying out the rolls and cheese for breakfast. I ate a little, but my stomach was too unsettled and nervous to take much in the way of food. As I was tying on my cloak, Toby wandered in still looking as though he were deep in slumber. “Come Monday,” I said, “you will be awakened at dawn to work. You had better get used to it.”

He shot me a hurt look, and indeed I wondered why I was being so unkind to him. So far he had done nothing but help me, keeping his promise to be quiet about leaving him for so long at the tailor’s and letting him walk home by himself. I know he felt just as wretched as I did about Papa. I could hear him through the thin wall that separated our rooms crying softly as he fell to sleep at night. Although he did not have the same feeling for music as I did, he loved to make things, and Papa had already taught him a great deal about the construction of a violin. His room was littered with all the bits of wood he had carved into whistles and toys with his skillful fingers. He would make an excellent luthier, I had no doubt. But that would be many years in the future. The time of apprenticeship stretched cruelly ahead. I knew he was clever enough, but I wondered if he would be strong enough to withstand the long hours of backbreaking labor.

I was suddenly struck with an idea. “Toby, would you like to come with me today? I’m going to see Godfather Haydn, and then there are some errands I must run. I will take you to a café for some chocolate and a cake.”

His face brightened immediately. “May we play in the snow on the way?”

I mussed up his hair in response. “Eat quickly and then go and dress. I’ll wait for you.”

Within the hour we were skipping merrily through the fluffy, new snow. I had almost forgotten the joy of scooping up handfuls of the stuff and forming them into balls to throw at my impish brother’s back. He flung one at me that hit my hair and undid what little of a coiffure I had made for myself. I was not worried. I could tidy up at Haydn’s house, and in any case would have my hair completely rearranged for the ball that evening. I wondered if I would be the only young lady there who had spent the earlier part of her day hurling lumps of snow at her brother.

Our games made the walk pass quickly, and soon we arrived at my godfather’s apartment. Just as I was going to knock at the door, it opened to permit a lady all dressed in the latest fashions to emerge. She took one look at our unkempt state and turned away with a frown on her face. The maid behind her stifled a laugh. “Come in, Fräulein Schurman,” she said, leaving the door open wide for Toby and me. I glanced quickly and noted that the lady, whom I knew to be Haydn’s wife although I had never seen her up close before, was climbing into a crested carriage stopped a little way down. My mother had told me that she carried on affairs so publicly that it was a disgrace. No doubt this was some lover’s equipage, come to take her to a rendezvous. I seethed for my kind godfather.

I sent Toby off to the kitchen for treats, shed my snowy cloak, and rushed directly into the parlor to get to work before I noticed that Haydn was not alone. Zoltán stood gazing into a crackling fire that looked to have been newly laid. He and Haydn both wore serious expressions. I stopped in my tracks and curtsied.

“Sit down, Theresa,” Haydn said. “We must talk a little before we get to work.”

It passed through my mind that he was not happy with what I had done so far. But he would hardly have asked Zoltán to stay to witness my dismissal as his scribe—he was not so unkind.

“Zoltán tells me that you have visited the Romany, and that you know something about our cause.”

Their cause? “I really know very little, except that you are sympathetic to the difficulties the Gypsies face, and that you admire their music. I also know that my father had some dealings with them, but I have not yet been able to discover exactly what they were.”

The two men exchanged looks. I thought I saw Zoltán nod very slightly.

“It’s all related to the publishing contract I told you about yesterday.”

Now my head began to spin. What could Haydn’s publishing have to do with Zoltán’s family, the serfs in Hungary, and the Gypsies who roamed the countryside everywhere?

“Prince Nicholas is a very powerful man,” my godfather said. “He is liberal in most respects, treats his serfs with kindness and consideration, and values his servants—especially his musicians, even his Gypsy musicians. But he fears—as do most Hungarian nobles—the consequences of giving serfs their freedom. He also knows that where he leads, others will follow.

“He guards his family’s traditions very closely,” Haydn continued, beginning to pace slowly about the room, as if it helped him organize his thoughts. “I have long wanted to lay my music before a broader public than the prince’s invited guests, but he feared that I would be lured away to some other court, and so has not permitted it. Not until I gave him my word that I would never leave his service so long as he lived would he finally agree to let me publish my compositions. Hence my recent contract with Artaria.”

This still wasn’t making any sense. I looked to Zoltán.

“What the maestro is not telling you is that he also agreed to give all the proceeds from this contract to a fund that is being used to argue the legal position of the serfs in the Austrian and Hungarian courts, a fund that your father helped to establish. The prince does not know this, and we thought Artaria did not either. But it seems that someone has discovered it and started to make trouble for the maestro. This same person may have substituted several clauses in the contract so that it appeared that the maestro agreed to terms he never even imagined.”

“That’s an outrage!” I said, rising from my seat and placing my hand on my godfather’s arm. He patted it and nodded.

“In short,” Haydn continued, “if I do not hold to the contract, its terms and my intended use of the money will be laid before the prince. Not only will I lose my position, but he will ensure that no one else ever hires me again. And the cause will be lost for lack of money.”

I no longer wondered that my godfather was so distressed about his poor eyesight, and that the loss of parts from the previous day had put him into such a state. I did feel a little appeased to know that the money had not actually gone to buy gowns for his unfaithful wife. “But what about my father? You believe his death has something to do with this, don’t you?”

“In order to build a case and put it before the empress, we have had to amass more than money. It was necessary to gather information about the lords who were mistreating their serfs, who have been selling them like slaves and … taking the virginity of their daughters.” Zoltán paused as if the mere mention of such atrocities took away his breath. “The Gypsies have helped, reporting what instances they have witnessed. But their word is not admitted to carry any weight. Your father had a keen ear, as you know. He possessed the ability to hear what people were saying from very far away. He acted as a spy for the cause, and when he could, he wrote down conversations he heard and also copied out any documents the Gypsies managed to find. Then he hid them in the case of his violin so that he could get them from Esterhaza or the Gypsy camp to Vienna, where they could be transferred to those who were assembling evidence.”

“So perhaps it was not the violin that was stolen for itself, but the case.” The pieces of this bizarre puzzle began to fall together for me.

“It was more complicated than that,” said Zoltán. “Your father would take the documents to Danior, who would then put them inside his violin, and that way get them into the hands of the right people, through the good offices of my sister, Alida. The final transfer of some very important documents containing irrefutable evidence was to take place at a ball this evening, where a high-ranking official in the empress’s court was to receive them under cover. I had convinced Prince Nicholas that it would be to his glory to lend out his orchestra to play.”

“Where is this ball?” I asked, not daring to make the connection that seemed all too obvious at that moment.

“It’s at the assembly rooms. A councilor by the name of Theobald Wolkenstein is the host. He has been the most outspoken defender of the rights of the nobles, and has enriched himself with the bribes they paid him to put their cause before the empress.”

My uncle? In the pay of the Hungarian nobles against a cause my father embraced? And yet... I smiled. “Why, that’s perfect! Don’t you see? I am going to this ball.”

Both my godfather and Zoltán looked at me with skeptical expressions on their faces.

“But it’s true! Councilor Wolkenstein is my uncle, my mother’s brother, and he has agreed to take me to the ball and begin the process of finding me a rich husband.” I could not look at Zoltán as I spoke, but the flicker of sadness in the maestro’s eyes was painful enough to see. “I don’t want him to find me a husband,” I said hurriedly, stealing a glance at Zoltán, “but I promised my mother I would see him. He is a horrible man. He bought me clothes, and has asked me to be nice to a particular gentleman. I don’t trust him, though, which is why I’ve brought Toby.”

Zoltán strode over to the writing desk and helped himself to a piece of paper and a quill. He scratched out something quickly, then folded and sealed it. “Do you have a servant who could deliver this to my sister at the Hofburg?” he asked Haydn.

Without answering, my godfather rang a little bell. The maid entered, and he instructed her to ask one of the stable boys to take the note, giving her a Pfennig to pay him.

“I believe Alida can also arrange to be at the ball,” Zoltán said. He still had not looked at me. “I have asked her in this note to keep a close watch on you. I shall be in the orchestra. You are walking into a very dangerous situation, Rezia. I was not aware of your kinship to the councilor.”

But I wondered if my uncle, far from being ignorant of my family’s activities in recent years, actually knew a great deal and had deliberately set up this evening’s events to entrap the others who were trying to help the serfs. So far all I had seen made me believe him capable of it. And now that I knew he had taken the opposite position from my father with regard to the serfs, it seemed too likely to be coincidence.

“Now I must ask you to help me once again with my music, Theresa,” Haydn said. “Zoltán will let you know later what to do at the ball to preserve yourself from harm.”

Zoltán bowed to Haydn, then approached me and took my hand. He bowed over it and brushed it with his lips. No one had ever kissed my hand before. His gesture made me gasp a little and he at last looked into my eyes. “Mind you take care, Rezia,” he said, and increased the pressure on my hand just a little before he released it. He left quickly, practically running from the room, I thought. I, on the other hand, hardly dared move.

When I finally recalled where I was, I cleared my throat. “Shall we continue?” I asked, but not before noticing the little smile on my godfather’s face. For the next hour, I had trouble concentrating on the notes my godfather sang, and had to ask him to repeat himself several times.