wound several times around, sniffed suspiciously at them, as if he had heard Josefa’s scathing words. Candles flickered before statues here and there, but the air was not still. Cold as it was, it reverberated from the sounds of the organ that someone was playing from the loft high above, with the great clunk clunk of the working bellows.
They took seats toward the back, holding hands. The castrato, a man of nearly seventy with his face like an old wrinkled apple, again glared at them. Beggars huddled in corners, making themselves as small as possible. By the back door behind the gold altar a small line of poor people gathered, waiting for alms. “We could have given them our uncle’s pork pies,” Josefa said almost to herself. “That is, if you wouldn’t have eaten them all at once like the piggy you are.”
They hardly noticed when the organ ceased, leaving a great hum in the air for a moment, and when footsteps sounded on the steps descending from the loft; they did not know their father’s friend Mozart was approaching them until he touched their shoulders and bowed.
They had seldom seen him since he had come that Thursday night with the song Aloysia sang at sight. They had heard he was visiting great houses outside the city to play. Once they had noticed him in the market, and he had waved to them. Now he looked as he did when he had ceased playing the clavier that first night at their house, half in another world, small and neat, with his natural light brown hair uncurled and fastened with ribbons at the back of his head. He said, “Mesdemoiselles Weber, what is it? Why are you huddled here? You look as though something has troubled you. May I sit with you?” With that he took a place courteously beside them.
Aloysia’s eyes filled with tears. Her life, which she felt ready to spring out to magnificence, had retreated since that magical night when she had stood among a pressing, admiring group of friends and family and sung his lyrical song on first sight. The music now lay under some other things, and she could not bear to look at it. It reminded her of how, in the openness of her heart that evening, she had agreed to secret meetings with Leutgeb, and how, during them, she had allowed him to put his hand where no good woman should. She should never have given so much; the faithless horn player had abruptly returned to Salzburg and, in spite of his heated promises, had never written a word to her. She had said nothing of this to anyone, of course, because she was ashamed, but now with her unhappiness over that and the lost Swedish opportunity combined with the rejection of Uncle Joseph, she blurted the story of her family’s misfortunes. She said more than she would have otherwise as she tore at her handkerchief and wiped the corners of her eyes.
Josefa only nodded grimly. This young composer from Salzburg for all his kindness and her father’s favor toward him was not one of them, and she had her mother’s horror of showing their dirty linen to a stranger. Her mouth compressed tightly, and she felt as she had in the carriage when she had tried to hide in the shadows. Once she nudged her sister sharply to stop the flow of her grieved, high voice.
As Aloysia spoke, Mozart looked at the shivering girls as intensely as he had looked inside himself in the loft the hour before, searching for a fugue by the lamented Bach, which he had heard once years before. His eyes filled with compassion at their faces reddened by the wind, their wind-loosened hair that fell in strands down their necks, their chapped lips, and their pale clasped hands. He thought of his mother’s neat gloves. The smaller girl shivered spasmodically, and flung her arms about her chest.
“Mesdemoiselles Weber,” he murmured. “You honor me to trust me with these confidences. Believe me, I won’t betray them. There’s little work for musicians here but for the orchestra. My mother and I are thinking of leaving when she returns from her visit to my father and sister in Salzburg. Still, there must be some way to take your family from its difficulties. You sing charmingly, beautifully. You yourselves are charming and beautiful.” He caught at their hands in both of his, chafing them, rubbing his supple fingers over them. “Go home