be trusted. She distorts stories to suit herself, then changes them the next day. The same unfortunate characteristic of my dearest sister Elizabeth. I don’t know if she herself knows truth from lies, and she’s so tall and ungainly. I dare not tell anyone the size of her feet. I have begged our shoemaker not to reveal it. Perhaps she will have to sing for a living, for it’s unlikely she’ll find a husband at all.”
“God will provide, as He always has. Will you pinch out the candle, dear? I’m quite tired, and have lessons to give in the morning.” He kissed his wife’s fragrant cheek, touched her full breast under the wool nightdress, then, with much tenderness, took her in his arms.
Three days before Christmas, Maria Caecilia was baking alone in her kitchen, the apron that sloped down from her ample breasts covered with flour and egg. No one else was home.
Their Thursdays had been canceled for a few weeks because of the great many performances all musicians played in Mannheim during this brief season. Sophie was at her Latin lesson, and Constanze was copying music at the house of a friend. The two older girls had sung several times in private houses, as they were doing today, and Maria Caecilia was grateful she did not have to go. If truth be told, she was not musical. She liked a few old country tunes, but to anything more complicated, she was quite deaf.
All morning she had combined eggs, flour, and spices, grinding ginger and nutmeg, whisking brandy with sugar. Now she had already baked a great deal, and the water was boiling. She listened once, and then again, wiping the eggshells and the sharply odorous gingerroot away from the table. The first batches of cakes lay cooling on trays by the window.
She had just brewed coffee in the iron pot when Johann Franz Thorwart knocked on the door.
He came into the kitchen in his customary high, gleaming English boots with their clanking spurs, and removed his hat. He was a well-built man of medium height, his graying hair in two rolls on either side of his head and the rest in a neat pigtail down his back. Carefully he placed the sword by the cupboard of dishes. “Ah, the scent of coffee and baking!” he said, kissing her cheek. “Sometimes great dinners (and, my dear, I have sat at some great dinners these years!) can disappear, for all I care, when one can have coffee and cake. No, don’t think of removing us to the parlor! This warm kitchen is the finest place in the city! Better than a palace! Yes, I am cheerful! Business is good; business is very good.”
Maria Caecilia took down two of her best small plates and wiped them on her apron.
Both she and Fridolin knew Johann Franz Thorwart from their hometown of Zell; his family had lived across the courtyard from hers, and it was Thorwart who had introduced her to Fridolin when she was seventeen. She found him entirely admirable. From humble beginnings, he had risen steadily. He was a factotum, secretary, and bookkeeper; served wealthy men in private matters; and discreetly moved money from this pocket to that. When he walked down the street, he hummed buoyantly, and wore an English-style frock coat that was all the rage, and those boots with spurs. His waistcoat pocket was filled with neatly folded papers, any of which he could find at once. His hands were wide and very clean. He was a man of business, and she trusted business far more than music. Two years ago he had appeared in Mannheim, and the Webers had taken him happily into their family circle.
She said, “You will have extra cream with your coffee as always?”
“As always, Maria Caecilia.”
She dusted the best cushioned chair for him, and he seated himself, laying his hat on his knee and taking up a book that he saw on the table. “This can belong to no one but Josefa, for only she would be reading Rousseau,” he said, frowning at the title, then reaching carefully into his pocket for his reading spectacles. “Dangerous stuff,” he said. “Here the writer goes on and on about the rights of the poor. The poor, as Christ said, are always with you! They crowd the streets of Paris like vermin. I saw them on one of my journeys and prayed for them. It’s obvious they are wasteful and spend their earnings in drink.” He tapped