Mozart's Last Aria by Matt Rees

Author:Matt Rees [Rees, Matt]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Mystery, Historical, Music, Adult
ISBN: 9780062015860
Publisher: Corvus
Published: 2011-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 20

I awoke before dawn, stiff and cold in the armchair, my hand locked in a claw around Metastasio’s book. I trembled to see the night lingering outside. It hid the men who had tried to kill me and it shrouded the vicious secrets of Vienna that Prince Lichnowsky had warned me of.

I rolled my neck and told myself not to be afraid of the coming day. At this very window, Wolfgang must have yearned to see a new morning begin, pleading with the Lord to let it come, as he felt the poison work its destruction on him. He was close to me always now, whether in the light of day or in the furtive, threatening night. I decided to welcome the dawn and to pray for his soul at early Mass.

Gathering my cloak and gloves, I crept toward the door. The clock on Wolfgang’s desk showed five-thirty. Constanze sprawled across her bed with the dog curled beneath her arm.

Karl sat up in his nightshirt. His dark eyes were sad, his face as pale as the glimmers of moonlight outside. I put a finger to my lips and went through the kitchen, past the sleeping maid, and out into the freezing end of the night.

At St. Stephen’s, my candle flickered away into the vaults of the ceiling, beyond the ornate copper lanterns hanging from their long chains. I had grown accustomed to the intimate village church at home in St. Gilgen. The unlit spaces high above me in the cathedral felt heavy and crushing.

I took my place in the shivering crowd of worshippers. Dropping a little wax onto the back of the pew before me, I jabbed the end of the candle into it so that it’d stand.

The clergymen passed down the aisle singing a Latin antiphon and swinging incense on a jangling chain. Two of them helped the oldest priest to his knees, so that he might reverence before the altar, and then they lifted him into a chair. They draped him in his vestments, and he announced the name of the Trinity. His thin voice proclaimed our gratitude for the Lord bringing us out of another night.

I closed my eyes, thanked God for saving me from my attackers, and prayed for Gieseke’s safety.

The priest sprinkled holy water on the air before him. In Greek, we asked Our Lord for His mercy three times: Kyrie, eleison. Kyrie, eleison. Kyrie, eleison.

“The Kyrie was, I thought, the most impressive part of Maestro Mozart’s Requiem.”

Shadows obscured the face of the man who spoke to me from the aisle. I stared at him in confusion.

He removed his hat, laid it on the bench, and sat beside me. With a gentle touch of his periwig to be sure it sat straight, Count Pergen turned his secretive smile on me. His eye wept a little from the cold wind outside. A tear traced over the broken veins in his cheek.

I was as surprised to find that his eyes could cry, even if only from the cold, as I was to see him at my side.

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