Masks and Shadows (7 page)

“What proof is there, monsieur?” Haydn demanded. “Who was this witness?”

“I received a note.” Monsieur Delacroix slipped it from an inner pocket and waved it threateningly at the young singer. “You took horses from the stable. You were seen!”

Haydn interposed himself between Herr Pichler and Delacroix. “But who wrote the note?”

“That, Herr Haydn, is none of your concern. The Prince is satisfied, and that must be enough for all of us.” Monsieur Delacroix shoved a tall soldier forward. “Arrest him! You have your orders!”

“My apologies, Kapellmeister.” The lieutenant sighed and held out his warrant. “The Prince's orders are clear.”

The other two soldiers marched forward and took hold of Pichler's arms, their expressions stony.

Panic showed at last on the second tenor's face. “There must be some mistake,” said Herr Pichler. “I never—I swear—!”

“And what exactly is your word worth, sirrah?” Monsieur Delacroix spat upon his feet. The other singers drew back in horrified silence as the old man sneered up at him. “Aye, you'll have your due now. The bastinado awaits your bare back.”

The soldiers marched him out silently, ignoring the young man's babbling protests. Monsieur Delacroix followed, beaming with triumphant glee. Nausea twisted Carlo's stomach as he watched them go.

“Is it likely that they're correct?” he asked the kapellmeister, once the door had closed behind them.

“Likely?” Haydn shrugged, his expression sorrowful. Behind him, one of the younger women had begun to weep quietly. Madame Zelinowsky stared down at her clenched fingers. “Perhaps, perhaps not. But they'll catch Herr Antonicek and Madame Delacroix by tonight, signor. That, at least, is certain.”

Chapter Five

“...Seven . . . Eight . . .”

Franz wept, spread-eagled on the public whipping block, and saw only fire in his vision.

“. . . Nine . . .”

The bastinado crashed down again, hard wood-and-steel rod against bruised and bleeding skin. The bones of his back would surely never stand such assault. They would shatter and leave him broken, useless.

“. . . Ten . . .”

Bloody useless
waste
. Him. Antonicek and Madame Delacroix. Everything.

He'd thought he'd pay Delacroix back, strike for justice. Have a laugh at the old sot's expense.
Useless
.

“. . . Eleven . . .”

Flame arced down his back as new skin broke open. Franz screamed, uncaring of Delacroix salivating over his pain, that filthy bastard, or Herr Rahier, the Prince's administrator, watching coldly to see that every stroke of the bastinado landed on target.

No good, no good, no good . . . Franz had tried everything, but no pleas, no amount of desperation, could ever have been enough to change the Prince's mind. Cold as aristocratic ice, ordering this torture.

Franz broken, Antonicek and Madame Delacroix dragged back to suffer more, and bloody Delacroix soaking the whole mess up . . .

“. . . Twelve!”

The heavy bastinado smashed down one last time, and something cracked in Franz's back.

He convulsed, spitting and crying. In the red haze, he barely noticed strong hands removing the straps from around his wrists, throwing a shirt across his mangled back, and finally carrying him across the courtyard.

He'd meant to spit at Delacroix's feet as he passed. But he couldn't even open his eyes against the pain.

They deposited him in a cold, dark room. He crumpled onto the floor when they let go of his arms. Voices spoke, but Franz couldn't make out the words. Only the closing of the barred door sounded clearly through his haze. He was alone.

Shivers racked his body until at last, mercifully, he lost consciousness.

When he awoke, a candle stub flickered at the far end of the room, next to a bowl of water and another filled with bread.

“Naught but bread and water for one week's imprisonment,” the Prince had pronounced, with that Godalmighty aristocratic chill.

Franz began to laugh, although it hurt his throat.

That bread might as well be on the far side of the world, for all the use it was to him. What good would any finer food do him? For he could surely neither drag his burning body across the floor to take it, nor swallow any food without vomiting it back up again.

Laughing, he laid his face down on the cold stone floor and fell willingly back into sleep.

When he woke again, he blinked against the total darkness. The candlelight was gone, yet he could feel the presence of another person in the room.

He hurt too much to feel any fear. What more could be done to him?

“Franz Pichler,” a man's voice said coolly, beside his ear. “You'll need water. Your jailers say you haven't drunk yet.”

Franz couldn't answer. His throat was too dry. But when he felt the rim of the water bowl at his lips, he managed to tilt his head back and suck down the cool, stale water. If his eyes hadn't burned dry, he would have wept again, in gratitude.

“Now,” the voice said, once Franz had finished. “You're to be kept here for a seven-night, I hear—which time you'll need to heal yourself. But in the meantime, I want to give you something to think about. You are no friend, I think, to your director, Monsieur Delacroix?”

Franz snorted, painfully.

“I thought not. Nor, dare I say, to our esteemed local despot, the Prince?”

Franz swallowed. If this was a trick . . .

No
. Prince Nikolaus Esterházy ruled with a grimly paternal certainty. He would punish, aye, and care nothing for his victim's agony, but then he'd consider the debt discharged. Not for him the creeping paranoia that would send spies into the darkness of his own prison cells.

So Franz licked his dry lips with his swollen tongue and told the truth to the voice in the dark.

“
Never
.”

“Ah,” said the voice. Franz could almost hear its smile. “In that case, I have a proposition to lay before you . . .”

Violins twined around each other, rising, pleading. Flutes seconded them below, adding soft voices to the plea. The cellos and basses pushed the harmony achingly wide, until Charlotte's whole body vibrated with the need for release. They were about to resolve—they must resolve—

But no, for each seeming resolution revealed itself to be only another twisting turn in a string of modulations, stretching the tension tighter and tighter yet. The sweet voice of the horns drove forward a tone that turned more dissonant with every beat until—

Pain stabbed up through Charlotte's fingers, wrapped so tightly around each other that the knuckles had gone white. She released them with a gasp and returned her attention to the orchestra just in time. Herr Haydn's violin bow swept high to lead the rest in a final, sweeping downbeat of resolution so sweet and right that it brought tears to Charlotte's eyes.

She clapped enthusiastically, ignoring the lingering remnants of pain in her fingers. Herr Haydn led the orchestra in a bow to the Prince, in the center of the music room. Charlotte flushed in pleasure as his bow took in her seat, only three chairs distant from the Prince. This glorious music was worth anything.
Everything
.

“Take care, Baroness,” Signor Morelli murmured. “I fear you may be losing your seat.”

It was true; she teetered at the edge of her chair. She righted herself, relieved to see no mockery after all in the castrato's dark eyes.

She smiled at him, this time without the tightening in her chest that she'd felt before him earlier in the evening. “Herr Haydn's music is marvelous, is it not?”

Sophie and the Prince were murmuring together already, while the Prince's niece chimed in with a sardonic tone that brought them all to easy laughter. In the sudden din of conversation, Charlotte found herself unexpectedly grateful to be seated by the one other person who might feel all that she did.

“I'd never seen such concerts in my life before I came here,” she said.

Signor Morelli's eyebrows rose. “Not even in Vienna?”

“Oh, our parents are not at all musical, I'm afraid. And of course I moved to Saxony upon my marriage, many years ago.”

She fixed her eyes back on the orchestra, hungrily observing the preparations for the violin concerto that would follow. The marble walls of the music room were ornamented with rich gilding, at what must have been a fabulous expense, and the musicians took visible care as they shifted their chairs for the new configuration.

“I've heard that even in Saxony, fine concerts do occasionally occur.”

Charlotte laughed. “Not in the depths of rural society, signor, I assure you.”
Though I cannot imagine you ever finding that out for yourself
. The idea of the sophisticated castrato, in his fashionable, expensive Parisian clothing, wandering the grass-covered roads of her husband's estate and attracting the wide-eyed amazement of Ernst's stuffy neighbors, was an absurdity that appealed to her strongly. She curbed her smile with an effort, and returned her focus to the conversation. “But I have been playing Herr Haydn's keyboard sonatas for years. I've even read through the arias from his operas, although I've not the voice for them.”

“No?” His eyes lit with sudden interest at that, and he leaned forward slightly. “You are a . . . soprano, Baroness?”

“Hardly. An alto, if you please, signor, and a remarkably poor one.” She dared a flash of humor and met his eyes as she added, “Even my music master never flattered me on
that
score!”

“Indeed.” The interest flickered and faded, and he leaned back. His high, unearthly voice was cool again. “Apparently, not all of our fellow guests are such music lovers as yourself, madam. Neither of my traveling companions seems to be in attendance now, although I saw both here at the start of this concert.”

“So they've abandoned their posts? How shameful of them.” Charlotte kept her voice light with an effort. Foolish and beyond foolish to feel hurt. Music opened her too wide and vulnerable for the easy parryings and dishonesty of courtly conversation. For a moment, she had believed it to have opened him, too.

“It is a remarkably fine performance, especially as it was arranged and rehearsed at only the last moment.” The castrato leaned back to wait for a pause in the Prince's conversation. “Have you had any news of the two, ah, fugitives, Your Highness?”

The sudden sound of hard rain on the windows covered his words so that he had to repeat them. Once made clear, Prince Nikolaus's frown resolved into a stern nod.

“No word yet, signor, but have no fear. My men will bring them in before the night is out.” His fierce eyes narrowed, focusing into the empty air. “I have no doubt of it.”

Thunder rolled outside, in the distance. Inside the warm room, Charlotte shivered and wrapped her fingers around the bare skin of her forearms.

It would be a black, cold night to be afraid and in flight. She would not wish it on anyone.