to find within religious orders as without, that we humans take our natures with us wherever we go. I’m going to meet with him tomorrow. He would like you, but he’d want you to become a holy sister, and I prefer you remain in the world to save me when I’m in despair.”
“Are you in despair now?”
“I was, a little, but you’ve made me laugh. You know, we might have a happy marriage when you’re a little older, but perhaps we’re better friends. I do believe in falling in love. Perhaps it’s like believing in angels; you hope they’ll come. I think perhaps you can go upstairs now to your room. Your sister must miss you.”
“She’s not home. She’s gone to visit Aloy—”
“Never mind, I should be able to bear to hear that name now. Good night, dear Sophie. Once more you stumbled upon me in a bad time and cheered me. Now go up before your reputation’s compromised.” He kissed her cheek and hands, then opened the door for her, and she slipped up the stairs.
Her disappearance was discovered the next morning. Maria Caecilia and Constanze, back from Aloysia’s, hurried through the rooms calling her name, reading and rereading her note in astonishment. They never really believed Sophie would return to Mannheim to join the beloved convent of sisters there, as she always said she would. Later they learned that Father Paul had been departing to that city; Sophie had confided everything to him that morning before daylight, and he had taken her with him.
The Franciscan monk was waiting for Mozart in a priest’s study in the rectory of Stephansdom. A forlorn Christ of old German wood hung from its cracking though polished Cross, and shelves held antique books, some handwritten, in worn, plain, thick vellum bindings. It had snowed six days after Easter; heaps of it lay piled on the cold windowsills, and in the cathedral yard.
Mozart stood by the window looking at a dog that barked below, then whined as an old bent woman shuffled toward it with a bowl of scraps. He heard the soft slippered feet of a servant closing the heavy, creaking door.
“But is there truly no chance for an opera of yours to be presented here?” asked Padre Martini. “It’s difficult to believe what Haydn told me before he left the city with the Prince, that someone else’s will be given for certain. He said it’s a loss to music. He thought this Thorwart might have spoken for you, and now Haydn tells me Thorwart stopped by Prince Esterházy’s mansion and said there was nothing he could do for you.”
Mozart sank into one of the high-backed, leather-upholstered chairs. “What can we do?” he murmured, his hands to his lips. “No libretto I found was good enough, and while I tried somehow, in the past few days, my chance eroded. I still live from hand to mouth. I can’t remain in Vienna; I’m going to London. The soprano Nancy Storace and her brother said they’d write me introductions to musical circles there, and some people they know recall my name. I speak enough English to do it, and I learn quickly. Georg Händel did well there. Perhaps I would have been better to wear some prince’s livery like that great and kind Joseph Haydn instead of insisting on my freedom.”
He looked up, biting his lip, left hand drumming some melody fragment on his knee. “You will not ever tell him I have said this? My thanks. I’m not sorry I left the Archbishop, but I’m sorry my father and sister, who depend on me, have been made to suffer. I must do better for them. I must put all my own hopes aside until that’s done.”
“When do you leave Austria?”
“I’ll stay here a few weeks more, and then be off.”
“Amadé, is there no way to persuade Orsini-Rosenberg to give you the opera commission?”
“He hasn’t answered my letter, and when I went there this morning they said he was out, but I heard his voice. What more can I say? My hopes were too high for an opportunity that was not meant to be mine. You’re returning to Bologna soon? Then I would have been without your company even if I had remained. Give me your blessing, Father.”
The cathedral loomed above him when he left sometime later, and a few men were clearing the snow from the courtyard with large, scraping brooms. There was no sign of the empty bowl or the dog in that