I thought of my father up late at his desk, his sleeves pushed up to his elbows. Would he linger there tonight, long after we’d all gone to bed?

“Perhaps you should have a talk with him,” Mama was saying. “The archbishop can be a reasonable man.”

“He is still skeptical of Woferl’s talents. He says that we have no reason to be running around the courts of Europe with what he deems a—a”—even the mere thought made Papa’s cheeks redden in anger—“a traveling circus.”

“What does he want?”

“Proof.” Papa’s face darkened even more. “As if he has not already heard Woferl perform, and Nannerl accompany. As if he has not already witnessed their miracles for himself! And he calls himself a man of God!”

“Leopold,” Mama said sharply.

Papa knew he had spoken too much, and his voice hushed immediately, his eyes darting once to the window, as if the archbishop could hear his insult all the way from the court. He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “I have agreed to his request.”

“What kind of request?”

Papa looked to my brother. He seemed almost apologetic. “The archbishop wants to commission an oratorio from our Woferl.”

Mama studied her husband’s face carefully. “This is good news, isn’t it?” she asked, knowing it wasn’t.

“He wants it in a week,” Papa said.

A week. “It’s impossible,” I whispered out loud before I could catch myself. Impossible, even for Woferl.

Across the table, Woferl stared intently at Papa, the circles dark under my brother’s eyes, his face like a burning wick with the hope of pleasing our father. “I can do it,” he said in the silence. “Please. I already have the most wonderful harmony in mind.”

Mama didn’t answer or disagree. We all knew that there was no use in it. Papa had not even mentioned a payment from the archbishop for the oratorio. It meant that the payment would be Papa being allowed to keep his salary.

As if he’d heard my thought, our father turned now to look at me. In his eyes, I saw the same light as on the day when he’d returned with the finished, bound volume of my music, ready to deliver it to the Princess of Orange.

I didn’t know what came over me then. The spirit of Hyacinth stirring in my thoughts, perhaps, or the memory of what I had demanded from him. The recklessness of already having lost and knowing I could not lose more.

Anger that had been waiting in some corner of me, waiting for the right time to emerge.

I tilted my chin high, my eyes on my father’s, and held his gaze like a challenge. He raised an eyebrow in surprise, but I did not back down. What could he do to me now, anyway? I’d been through the worst already. My life was charted before me, and there was little I could do to stop it. What difference did it make now for me to push back?

So I did not lower my stare. With it, I said, You know what you want to ask of me. And if I help him, you will have to acknowledge my music, my true talent.

You will have to admit what you did.

My father looked away first. Mama tried to console him by putting her hands on his shoulders and whispering something close to his ear. He would have none of it. “I am retiring to our room,” he said. Before Mama could respond, he had brushed past her and hurried off in the direction of their bedchamber, his dinner forgotten.

Later that night, Papa called me into the music room and whispered to me by candlelight. “Nannerl,” he said, his voice strangely subdued. “Woferl cannot finish such a work in eight days.”

“I know,” I replied, because it was true, and sat calmly with my hands in my lap, a shawl draped about my shoulders. I could tell my father wanted me to offer my help willingly, suggest that I work with my brother.

Instead, I was silent. My eyes stayed level with his, willing him to ask first. I had summoned the strength to challenge him earlier—I could not back down now.

Papa hesitated, his hands fidgeting restlessly. He was weary, the lines on his face pronounced tonight. He kept searching for the right words to say. I watched his eyes settle again and again on the window. Even though I knew he could not possibly be seeing Hyacinth, I still felt the hairs rise on the back of my neck, could sense the faery’s presence in the room.

Finally, I said, “What does this have to do with me, Papa?”

For an instant, my father’s eyes softened at me, and with their softness I felt myself lean instinctively closer to him, trying to remember this rare moment.

“You write in a style not unlike your brother’s,” he replied at last. His words were not stern, but reluctant, as if he was voicing a thought he had kept quiet for a long time.

The silence in the room weighed against us. I stayed frozen, unsure how to respond. His words echoed through me like a bell. This was it, his admission of what I’d done.

I wrote like my brother. I wrote. It was an acknowledgment of my volume of sonatas. Papa was telling me, without saying it directly, that he knew that music was mine. The quiver of candlelight trembled against my folded hands, disguising the shudder that coursed through my body.

“How do you know this?” I asked him quietly.

“Nannerl,” he replied. His eyes fixed on mine. “You know how.”

You know how. I looked around the music room, its shadows stretched and shaking from the candles. Any doubt I might have felt over what had happened now fell away. Here, at last, was his admission that he had indeed taken my music with intention, had put my brother’s name on my work and published it.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I said.

“Would it have made any difference?” he mumbled. “Except to make you miserable sooner? Would you have fought me? It is the way it is.”

He did not like coming to me like this, vulnerable in admitting to me the truth. I found myself thrilled by his discomfort. For once, I was not the one apologizing to my father, seeking his approval, trying to find a way to appease him. Now it was his turn. I let him shift, his eyes first meeting mine and then darting away in frustration, trying to settle on anything else but my unspoken accusation.

“Why do you do all of this, Papa?” I asked. “Our lessons. Our tour. Sacrificing your own standing with the archbishop. What is the reason for it? I know it is about the money. But that cannot be the whole of it.”

His posture was stiff and hunched, his fingers woven against each other. I waited patiently until he finally found his response.

“Do you know what I thought I would become, Nannerl?” When I shook my head, he said, “A missionary. My parents thought me a future priest, that my calling was a divine one.” He was silent a moment. “For a long time, I thought that my entire purpose in life had been to become a missionary, and that I had failed it. Music and composition? I am good at it, but I am no lasting figure.” He looked down at the creases in his hands. “Then I heard you and your brother at the clavier. I knew what God had put me on this earth to do. In a way, I have become a missionary. There is no greater purpose for me than to ensure that you are heard by as many as possible.”