I drifted in and out of sleep. Days melted into one another. I had difficulty understanding what happened around me, except that the date to perform for the princess and prince—to deliver the volume of music to them—came and went. Papa and Woferl attended without me.

Sometimes I thought I saw Papa standing near my bed, talking in hushed tones with my mother. Other times Woferl’s face appeared, tragic and fearful, and tried to speak to me. I recalled his soft hands in mine. I thought I heard him say, over and over again, that he was sorry, that he didn’t know what to do or say. That he had no idea.

I would turn my face away whenever he was near. I couldn’t bear to look at him.

I don’t know whether Woferl protested to Papa about what he had done with my music. It was difficult for me to recognize when I was awake and when I was dreaming. But no one in our family spoke about it, at least not to me. I did not even question it. I knew the reason why. To my father, it must have seemed like a simple and obvious decision.

We needed the money, Woferl would be unable to finish the volume in time, and here were a dozen finished pieces of music written by me that could never be published under my own name. Of course my father wouldn’t hesitate to sacrifice my work this way.

As the weeks dragged on, my sickness grew worse. I began to have nightmares several times a day, thrashing in my sleep, and Mama and Sebastian would come in and murmur comforting words to me. My father prayed at the foot of my bed. I saw my mother had a pair of faded wings on her back, and her feet appeared molded to the floor as if she were the faery trapped in the kingdom’s underwater grotto. She would linger there and cry. My brother squeezed my hand and asked me questions that I couldn’t understand. The floor of my bedroom swayed with a blanket of edelweiss, and strange mosses and mushrooms covered my bedposts. Two moons, not one, would illuminate the floor from my window, their positions growing steadily closer together in the night sky.

Sometimes, I saw Johann sitting at my bedside, his face grave. Are you happy? he’d ask me. I would open my mouth and say nothing at all.

My thoughts grew muddied and confused. At times I couldn’t remember why I was so angry, exactly what had cut into my chest and pried my ribs open, letting my soul leak away.

One night I saw the dark, shapeless figures float past my window, the hooded ghosts from the castle on the hill with their twisted hands and tattered cloaks. I wanted to make them disappear, and bring more candles into my room like I’d once done for Woferl when he had fallen ill. But no one was in the room with me. So I simply stayed there and watched the shapes with growing fear, helpless until the dawn finally chased them away.

On a particularly bad night, I stirred awake with Hyacinth’s name on my lips. I had been calling for him in my sleep. The shadows of my room sighed and breathed. I waited in my delirium, dreading, anticipating his return.

* * *

As I continued to deteriorate, news came to my father that my six sonatas had been well received by the Princess Carolina, and that everyone marveled at the miracle of Woferl’s ingenuity. The Dutch envoy that had pursued Papa from London to France dined with my family, Mama later told me, and during the lunch thanked my father for making his decision to come on such short notice.

Papa returned, his pockets heavy with coin.

Mama did not speak to me about my misfortune, not directly, but she came the closest, telling me the story of the Dutch envoy with pauses and hesitations. She would not have wanted to add to my pain, if I had not specifically demanded to know.

Later that same night, Papa came to see me in my bedroom. I thought he should have looked happier, for the princess had paid him well for my music. Instead his eyes appeared hollow, his brow furrowed. He came in with a hunched back and settled himself down in the chair next to my bed, and took one of my hands in his. I could barely feel it through my haze of fever, but I remembered how cold his skin was.

“You must be brave, Nannerl,” he said. “I know your fever must give you much suffering.”

I tried to focus on Papa’s face, but my vision blurred and worsened my headache. “Am I dying?” I said. A part of me even hoped, bitterly, that it was true, if only to see whether my father would wince.

Papa continued to hold my hand. “The princess sends her sympathy and well wishes. She told me she will pray for you. Woferl tells me repeatedly that you will get well soon. He tells me he has seen to it.” He smiled at the thought, and then shifted, somehow uncomfortable. I wondered idly if the chair hurt his back. After a moment, he spoke again. “I do not like to see you in such a state,” he said, more softly this time. “I’ve grown used to Woferl’s bouts with sickness, but I am not used to you . . .”

The part of me that was my father’s daughter wanted, in spite of everything, to tell him I would be all right, to not worry. But I only lay there and looked at him, unwilling to give him this relief, wishing I could cause him even more pain.

He looked at me for a long time, studying my face. I wondered if he would say anything to me about what had happened, if he would finally acknowledge it. I waited, watching the room grow hazy and sharp and then hazy again, struggling to focus on my father’s expressions.

He prepared to say something, then spoke as if he had changed his mind. “Woferl has said to me many times that he wants to stay by you. Why have you not asked for him?”

I did not speak. What was there to say? My father had taken my music and handed it to my brother, yet I was the cruel one who did not ask for him.

“Do not be angry with him, Nannerl,” Papa said. His eyes were solemn, but not stern. I thought that he even pitied me a little—or perhaps he meant the pity for Woferl. “He loves you and worries very much about you.”

When I still did not speak, my father had the grace to look down, embarrassed. After a while, he finally rose and left, shaking his head and muttering something under his breath that I could not hear.

I started to weep. I wept in earnest, silently and bitterly, unable to hold back my grief any longer. I could not stop. My tears formed rivulets down the sides of my face, wetting my cheeks and my ears, soaking my already damp hair. They spilled onto the pillows, forming dark circles.

He tells you to play, so you play. He tells you to curtsy, so you curtsy. He tells you what you are meant to do and what you are meant not to do, so you do and you do not do. He tells you not to be angry, so you smile, you turn your eyes down, you are quiet and do exactly as he says in the hopes that this is what he wants, and then one night you realize that you have given him so much of yourself that you are nothing but the curtsy and the smile and the quiet. That you are nothing.

* * *

Days passed, then weeks. We left The Hague for Lille, even though it took all my strength just to sit up. I could feel myself slipping away. My breathing became raspier, my coughs more frequent, as if I could not lift a terrible stone from inside my chest. I could see the knuckles and bones of my fingers very easily now. Woferl would stand and wait by my bedroom door, looking on with large, tragic eyes. Mama wept several times when she came to sit with me. She held my hand, speaking so much to me that sometimes I did not have the energy to understand it all.