Nightingale (23 page)

"Bonicke? Good God! How did that miscarriage of justice happen?"

"I didn't know how long I would be sick. I was very bad for several days, and during that time I relinquished Roxanne. I had no wish to injure Herr Gassmann, or even Frau Bonicke, by playing dog in the manger. Gassmann has always been kind to me."

They were out of their seats and moving slowly down the corridor which led to the stairs, amid a babbling, gesticulating crowd. Klara leaned close to Anna. "Our gentlemen don’t seem to have particularly angered anyone. Everyone's talking about the next opera."

After slow inching forward, they at last found themselves face to face with Wolfgang and Akos, who were arm in arm, wearing gay, innocent smiles. Papa Mozart appeared behind them and clapped a proprietary hand upon his son's shoulder. He didn't seem upset, but in a good humor, so Klara concluded that he'd secured the commission from Count Sarkozy and had probably not seen Wolfgang among the rival claque. After many bows and an invitation to dine from the Lange's, the Mozart father and son departed.

"Most agreeable to have met you, Herr Almassy." The gentlemen politely bowed to each other.

"My pleasure, sir."

"Please call any time." Anna added as Almassy bowed over her hand.

"When you are free of your duties for Prince Vehnsky, perhaps you can come to see my new play.There will be seats for you."

"I would be delighted." Almassy smiled. "Your Hamlet was brilliant. I count it a great stroke of luck that I was in Vienna to witness it."

"Well, this is another by the same Englishman, bloody and true as that Hamlet was.
‘Tis Julius Caesar, a pure marvel to play."

The Langes were left behind, swept up by a throng of admirers. Almassy and Klara found blockage at the door, as people needed room to toss cloaks about their shoulders. The ladies were being helped into calashes, structures of wicker and fabric which sheltered their expensive wigs. Small black servants wearing Turkish turbans, laboring under boxes of confectionery and arms filled with lap dogs, followed their owners out.

Klara put her hand on Almassy's arm and they began to work toward the door. The sooner they got outside, the sooner they could be alone together. One glance of his expressive eyes told her that he was anticipating this as much as she was.

***

Outside the wind was bitter. Torches along the path sent a fitful, garish light. Klara hugged her cloak tightly, but in her great skirts, she was like a ship in a gale. Although she had covered her wig with a furred hood, wind still managed to thrust icy fingers down her neck. They hastened through slush along a side street where their carriage was supposed to be waiting.

"I hope you were discreet, sir," Klara said, by way of making conversation, although her teeth were starting to chatter.

"To the best of my ability, although it was difficult to restrain the exuberance of our young genius. How do you hide a child Lucifer in a beautiful Italian suit?"

"It seems you found helpers."

"Well, we came upon partisans of Herr Gassmann and so it was easy. Signor Broschi was up front, you know, and he was angry as a wet hen. Still, it was more than time for such mediocrity to be disposed of."

"Oh, where can the carriage have gone?" Klara squinted into flying snow. Vehicles were passing them now, and with carriage traffic and other walkers blundering along, she and Herr Almassy found themselves pushed toward the street's icy gutter.

When a huge gust of wind blasted them, it caught her hood like a sail. "Ah!" Klara tried to hang on, but the wind had purchase, and in an instant her wig was ripped away. Akos both made a laughing grab to save it.

"Thank
you for saving that!" She pulled the hood of her cloak up close over her head. "Now, where do you suppose Hermann has got to? It's not like him to fail me."

"Perhaps here." Akos indicated the door of a full-to-bursting tavern. "Come," he said, taking her hand. "Surely we'll find him here."

Just as they reached the overhang of the roof, there was a crack and a splash. Over their heads, an ice clogged gutter let go, sending a cascade of icy, leaf-filled water down onto their heads.

Klara screamed and ran. Almassy cursed in Hungarian and ran with her, but they were both drenched. The very next gust of wind that came down the street took the bite of winter directly against their wet skin.

"Fraulein Silber!" A loud shout came from behind them. "Is that you, Mistress?"

"Hermann! It's about time! Where have you been?" Klara whirled around to face her servant, who was trying not to let a stupid grin at their predicament overwhelm his bearish face. Even in the strong wind, she could smell alcohol.

"Hurry, damn you!" Almassy stepped up and shook Hermann’s shoulder. "Singerin Silber must get warm immediately!"

Chapter
13

Hermann and the ordinarily reliable coachman were drunk, for the two of them had been taking turns getting something beyond comfortable in the tavern. It had been Rolf the Coachman's turn to watch and he had seen Klara come out, but, he hadn’t been able to move the coach through the crush to the prearranged meeting place.

Drenched, frozen and miserable, as much as Klara wanted to scold, it seemed best simply to get home as quickly as possible. Almassy offered to drive for the inebriated Rolf, but the coachman said, "The horses know their way home." Opera to apartment and then to their warm stable was a routine on winter nights, so he went to huddle and shiver in the coach beside Klara.

"At least I have an excuse to hold you." Klara clung silently to his hard body, but she was too cold and wet to get much pleasure, even so close against his chest.

Liese was shocked when they came in. Klara's beautiful dress and fur-trimmed cape were drenched and stained.

"Oh, Liese! Look at me!" Klara had been evolving a plan as they'd driven home, one which required that she enter the apartment playing at high distress. "Herr Muller! Herr Muller! Get up! Make hot water! I'm like to freeze where I stand! Get a fire going in the parlor and build up the one in my bedroom. Oh, and my yellow dress! My beautiful wig! Ruined! All ruined!"

Liese, adding her cries for Herr Muller to those of her mistress, moved like a whirlwind. Later, Klara and Almassy sat before a roaring parlor fire, sipping hot milk and brandy. Klara was now wrapped in her familiar burgundy gown. Akos wore a long black banyan which the Count kept here, for although Max had yet to stay over at her apartment, he wasn't the kind to leave anything to chance. When Klara had protested, saying the assumption the servants would make was embarrassing, Max had simply pinched her cheek and told her that she'd have to put up with it.

"It's good military practice to leave a cache of supplies concealed in any territory you wish to hold."

"Max, you know it will lead to servant's tittle tattle."

"Put it in a trunk, then. Perhaps when I return, I shall initiate the practice of visiting you in this maidenly bourgeois bower of yours. I hate the idea that there is a place on earth where you are safe from me."

Oh, he’d said it playfully, a caress accompanying the words, but she had recoiled, recognizing a threat when she heard one. Exactly as Max divined, Klara treasured the privacy of her bedroom, a sanctuary never yet violated, a room unstained by shame.

After returning from a night with Max, spent in the sumptuous hidden room of his townhouse, beneath a ceiling decorated with nymphs and fauns all nakedly disporting, the simple white and pink floral embroidery of the curtains which shielded the alcove in which she slept made Klara feel as if she had returned to reality from some wanton dream world. She would sit, knees up, in a small tub and wash carefully, head to toe, using lavish amounts of water. She would brush out her shining hair, rub her skin with a salve of rose petals, a country good wife's beauty recipe she'd learned to make at Saint Cecilia's.

After drying herself with a large, fresh towel, she'd light a votive before the carved wooden shrine of the Blessed Mother that hung upon the wall and say many, many rosaries. As she did so, Klara prayed to be purified, to become the innocent convent girl she once had been.

Now, thinking of all this, it was unsettling to see Almassy in Max's robe, but not as disturbing as she might have imagined, for it suited him. With his black hair down and in the sable robe, he looked more than ever like some legendary Magyar hero.

As they warmed themselves before the fire, Liese bustled back and forth, steadily clucking. "Are you sure you are not still chilled, my
Liebchen
? And your lovely dress! I fear 'tis ruined, and your best wig full of leaves and dirty water!"

"Well, I shall miss the dress." Klara was genuinely rueful. "Perhaps enough can be saved to piece together a jacket."

The yellow silk was hopelessly stained by dirty water. Akos, who had been standing further out in the street, had fared better. One side of his heavy traveling cloak had taken most of the punishment. With sponging and drying, the clothes he'd worn underneath would be good as before.

"The Count will be furious when he finds out what Hermann and Rolf did."

"I think it's best not to tell him, don't you?" Klara wondered if such forbearance might encourage these two relentless spies to relax their vigilance a little.

Muttering imprecations at the well-known thoughtlessness of men, Liese settled in to brush Klara's hair. It wasn't long before she had a new complaint.

"It cannot be proper for the Herr Concertmaster to see you in undress." Her thick hand momentarily stopped moving upon the loose ruddy locks.

"He saw me this way for the first three weeks we knew each other. You act as if I were bare-breasted."

"Fraulein Silber! And Concertmaster Almassy is is – oh, goodness – undressed, too!" Liese flushed.

"Spare us, Liese," Klara said, waving her hand. "Go and see if the
chamomile is ready. And while you're in the kitchen, make sure that Muller hasn't hung the Concertmaster's cloak too close to the stove."

When the door closed on her agitated form, Akos moved onto the sofa beside Klara, where they shared a lingering kiss. "And shall this regrettable accident end in my staying the night?"

"Of course," Klara replied, her lips deliciously close to his, so close that they could breathe the intoxicating scent of the other. "You will sleep here, and Liese will insist upon locking us in, but I have a way around it."

Akos smiled, a charming, bad boy smile, and kissed her again. "I appreciate your naughty plan with all my heart, but Nightingale, is it prudent?"

"Not really, but I think we’ll be safe. Liese thinks she has the only key, but I've had a master made. I wasn't going to tolerate Max locking me in whenever the mood took him."

"Does he do that?"

"Yes, damn his black heart. Two years ago, he kept me locked up in the country and then here for most of the winter season. I went between the opera house and his townhouse." Klara shook her head, attempting to rid herself of crowding memories, sinister, debauched – and yet undeniably erotic. "I got busy as soon as he went away. It took me months of planning, but I managed to steal her key and secretly make a copy. He'll never lock me up again."

***

After they had drunk their tea, just as Klara predicted, Liese insisted upon locking the Concertmaster into the parlor. Almassy submitted meekly, accepting the blankets and pillow offered. Then Liese herded Klara before her, into the bedroom. Behind them, Akos began settling for sleep upon the sofa.

Klara, however, didn't mince words as Liese prepared to lock her door.

"You were just born to be a jailor, weren't you?"

"Mistress! You know the rules."

"Ah, the Count! And how much extra does he give you for keeping me like his harem girl? Wicked, wicked creature!"

Klara snatched a fan from a table and made as if to throw it. Liese, who had been assailed by her mostly docile mistress several times during the last two stressful years, made a dash for the entrance.

"You had better lock them all!" Klara shouted scornfully. She slammed the bedroom door shut, then, tossing her mane back with one hand, she regarded the door with a scowl. "Why that awful Hungarian could sneak past Hermann in the entry, around the back, up the alley stairs, then past Muller snoring in the kitchen and past you too and climb right into my bed!"

Then she smiled, listening
to Liese fumble with the keys. A bolt had been put on the inside of Klara's bedroom door as well, ostensibly for her privacy. More likely, she'd thought at the time, because the Count had been thinking about his.

"Don't say such cruel things, Mistress
," Liese spoke beyond the door. "I only do what is best for my Klara, to keep her safe. You know that’s true."

For a reply, Klara shot the bolt on her side of the door with a vengeance.

"Oh, Mistress Klara, don't do that! I shall have to knock and wake you in order to bring your tea. You know how cross that makes you."

"Well, then, don't knock too early!"