Woferl scooted closer to me, buried his head in my pillow, and pointed toward the clavier. I followed his hand until my eyes rested on my notebook. It was closed.

“What is it?” I asked.

“The notebook is singing,” he whispered. “I can’t sleep.”

I turned my head quickly back to the clavier. We fell silent. I heard the sound of a late-night coach from the streets below, the whisper of wind, Papa’s gentle snore, a trickle of water from some mysterious place. I did not hear the music.

“Are you sure?” I whispered to Woferl. “What do you mean?”

He wrinkled his nose at me. “Nannerl!” he exclaimed in a quiet hiss. “It is singing right now—you can’t hear it? It is very loud.”

It must be Hyacinth. He has done something to my notebook. He is here.

I waited for a minute, forcing my breathing to stay even, until Woferl began to squirm. Then I swung my legs over the side of the bed, rested my feet on the floor, and slowly made my way to the clavier. Still I heard nothing. The floor numbed my feet. I took care not to tremble.

I should be in bed, I thought. Our performance.

When I had moved close enough, I picked my notebook off the clavier’s stand and clutched it to my chest. Gingerly, I made my way back to bed.

Woferl sat up straighter, eager to see. “It keeps repeating the same lines,” he insisted. “Over and over and over.”

My skin tingled. We both froze for an instant as Papa stirred. I kept my eyes on him until he turned away from us, and then I relaxed my shoulders. I opened the notebook quietly. “What does it sound like?” I whispered.

Woferl hesitated for a moment. “Like this.” He hummed a few notes as softly as he could.

I swallowed hard. My initial excitement, my sudden thoughts of the princeling, all vanished. Woferl must have discovered my secret composition, I thought, the little wisp of music I’d written down several days ago. I felt an abrupt rush of anger. “You’re making it up,” I whispered harshly. “The notebook is not singing at all. You are.”

Woferl burst into a fit of giggles. He threw himself facedown into his pillow. I closed my notebook in disappointment and hid it inside our blankets. His quiet laughter stung. “This is my notebook, Woferl. You shouldn’t take what’s not yours. You aren’t going to tell Papa, are you?”

His giggles died down. He looked at me solemnly. “Well, why are you hiding it? It’s beautiful.”

His words were so serious, said so truthfully, that any anger I might have had flitted away. “Young ladies do not compose,” I told him.

He shook his head. “Why?”

I took his hands in mine and squeezed them once. How much and how little he understood of my life. “Please, Woferl, let it be our secret. Promise me you won’t tell anyone else.”

It was Woferl’s turn to look upset. “But who will hear it, then?” he whispered, horrified. “You’re not going to let it stay there forever, are you?”

“Yes, I am.” I gave him a firm look. “If you love me, then promise me.”

Woferl stared at me for a long time. When he knew that he could not sway me with his defiance, he flopped back down in bed. “I do love you,” he declared grudgingly. “So I promise I will never tell.”

I settled down into bed. We drifted into silence, but Woferl’s teasing brought back the undercurrent of fear, my muted excitement from when I wrote the music down. What was Hyacinth up to, coaxing me into this? God will punish me for hiding such a thing from Papa. It would mean that I was the kind of girl who disobeyed her father, who would go on to disobey other men—her husband—in her life. So many stories already circulated about us. What would this story become, if it began to spread?

They would say that she was the kind of girl who did not listen. She was the kind of girl who had her own ideas.

I pulled my blankets higher until they reached my chin, and then imagined the princeling turning his head this way and that, his bright eyes watching me from the other side of the room. I hoped he was.

I clutched my notebook closer to my chest and stared, searching the darkness, until I drifted off to sleep with the image still branded in my thoughts.

THE PRINCELING IN THE PALACE

The next morning dawned with a flurry of activity.

I forced myself to nibble on some bread while Woferl played with the cut meats on his plate. After our quick breakfast, we hurried to the tailor shop to collect our new clothes. I sucked in my breath as my mother helped me pull the boned corset of my new gown tight until I could barely breathe. When she finished, my waist tapered thin and straight in the mirror.

Beside me, Woferl shrugged on his new coat and shoes. We looked less like the brother and sister who arrived to the shop huddled and whispering together, and more like the rumor of us that had been circulating the city. We looked like the Mozart children, musical prodigies. Fit to play for a king.

By the time we arrived at the Schönbrunn Palace, I was trembling slightly from my nerves, and a cold sweat had dampened my hands. The palace stretched for what looked like miles in each direction, white and gold, with countless rows of framed windows and stone pillars. A guard greeted us at the front of the courtyard. I walked carefully, so as not to ruin my new gown, but Woferl flitted in front of us like a restless bird, chatting with the guard, asking him his name and how long he’d worked at the palace, until Papa finally gave me a stern look and I hurried over to pull Woferl back to my side.

We walked through halls of towering pillars and carved banisters, walls covered with sheets of gold. The ceilings were painted in every room, and in every room, I felt as if God were looking down at me, laying bare my secret page I’d written. I kept my head down and hurried forward. My leather shoes echoed on the marble, and I felt oddly embarrassed. My steps did not sound graceful. I reached for a moment into the pocket of my petticoat, where I’d stashed my pendant. My fingers found its smooth surface. I tried to let it reassure me.

Finally, at the last doorway, we paused to let the guard walk ahead of us. He bowed to someone I could not see.

“Your Majesty,” he said. “I present Herr Leopold Mozart and Frau Anna Maria Mozart, and their children, Herr Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Fräulein Maria Anna Mozart.”

The first thing I saw when I entered the chamber was the clavier.

Larger than ours in Salzburg and certainly larger than the one from the inn, it had white keys instead of dark and was covered in baroque art. It looked like the clavier I’d seen in the trinket shop, surrounded by a cavern of moss. The sight struck me so dumb that I nearly jumped when they announced my name.

My eyes swept the room. The marble floor was decorated with thick rugs, and the half a dozen men who comprised the emperor’s council sat facing the clavier, with the emperor and empress themselves centered between them.