I looked to my brother, but he was resolutely not returning my gaze.
“Shall we return?” he asked in a dull voice. “I would need some time to warm up.”
“Your brother has offered to grace us with a performance,” the Countess said. Those startling green eyes were fixed on my face. “A selection which includes some of your work, as I am to understand it.”
“Ah, yes, the composer,” Count Procházka said. “What a rare and magnificent gift you have, Fr?ulein!”
I tried to smile, but my face felt as frozen as the air outside. “It’s not much of a gift, Your Illustriousness.”
“Nonsense,” the Countess said. “The gift of creation and genius is the only one we share with God. Embrace your talents, Elisabeth, for they are rare indeed. Now”—she glanced over her shoulder at the labyrinth—“let us get back inside quickly. It is not a night to be caught outdoors without protection.”
Josef frowned. “Protection?”
“From frostbite.” The Count gave us a disarming smile.
The Countess shook her head. “Oh, an old superstition, child, nothing more. It is Shrove Tuesday, a night of transition from one season to another. As the days of winter draw to a close, hostile forces ride about.”
This time my brother did meet my gaze. There was a question in those pale blue depths, one I did not quite know how to answer. While Josef and I had grown up on tales of goblins, Lorelei, and Der Erlk?nig, there were myths and tales we had yet to remember. The Wild Hunt. Elf-touched. Elf-struck.
The Count shivered. “Let us head inside, my dears; I’m freezing my unmentionables off.” He offered his wife his arm, not merely out of courtesy, but to help her hobble back inside.
“Otto!” The Countess gave her husband an affectionate slap on the arm, but the expression in those green eyes was anything but playful. Instead they seemed almost worried, darting back and forth from us to the hedge maze, as though she, too, could hear ghostly hoofbeats trailing us from another world.
*
Inside the house, the ball was still in full swing, the music filtering in along with the rhythmic patter of feet and the shushing swish of shoes and skirts across the floor. The Count and Countess brought Josef and me into a side gallery, away from the crowd in the ballroom, but the gallery was far from empty. A handful of guests were gathered there, drinking and smoking and laughing with the comfort and ease of longstanding acquaintances and friends. Behind their masks, there was an eerie similarity to all of them, although I did not know them from Adam. They all had the plump, placid look of those who had never known a moment’s hardship, the easy, generous manner of those who had never lacked for aught, yet there was a hunger about them, a want, a desire. My brother and I were no more than mayflies in their privileged sphere, but whenever their gazes alighted on us, they lingered with interest—with covetousness—at our bare faces. Their curiosity scratched, and I itched with discomfort.
“Where are K?the and Fran?ois?” I asked. My teeth chattered with more than cold.
“You’re shivering!” the Countess exclaimed. “Come, warm yourself by the Ofen, the two of you.”
She led Josef and me to what I had taken for a tall ceramic ornament or wardrobe set into a stone nook, radiant with heat. It looked a little like an oven, with poppies carved across its face.
“Shall I fetch you a shawl, my dear?” the Count asked me. His skull mask was perched atop his head, his cheeks red with overexertion and cold alike, sweat streaming down his temples.
“Oh no, Your—Your Illustriousness,” I said. “I’m quite all right. Have you seen my sister and our friend?”
But the Count paid me no heed. He waved down a servant and murmured something into his ear.
“Is there a place I might warm up in private?” Josef asked the Countess in a quiet voice. His eyes darted from corner to corner, side to side, taking in the number of people in the gallery.
“Of course, my child.” She gestured to another servant, who nodded his head and disappeared into the crowd. “We have a klavier in the drawing room downstairs,” she offered. “I’m afraid it’s nothing fancy; just an old harpsichord that belonged to Otto’s grandmother. Will that suffice?”
Josef looked to me, brows lifted. It was a bit surprising that the Count, a professed lover of music—my music—did not have a more modern instrument in his house. Nearly all performances were made on the fortepiano these days.
“We would have to ask Fran?ois, Your Illustriousness,” I said. “He is my brother’s usual accompanist.”
“Not you?” the Countess asked. Her tone was neutral, but she seemed surprised.
“No, ma’am.”
“But I thought you were a musician.”
I bit my lip. My brother had once called me the genius of our relationship, the creator, not the interpreter. I wrote the notes, Josef gave them life. But many of Vienna’s well-known composers performed their works as well—the late, great Mozart and this upstart Beethoven among them. I was no prodigy of performance, a fact I learned almost immediately after hearing Fran?ois play for the first time.
It was in these moments that I wished my brother would come to my defense, to speak for me, to explain our process, to be the one holding me up for once. But he stayed quiet and withdrawn, nearly invisible despite his golden curls, sharp features, and lean height.
“I am a musician,” I said quietly. “But my talents lie in the creation of music, not the execution of it. You will find my playing a very poor substitute for Fran?ois’s indeed.”
Those grass green eyes glinted—with amusement? annoyance? —as the Countess studied me closely. “Nevertheless,” she said. “You are the composer of Der Erlk?nig, are you not? It is your execution of your own work that interests me, not someone else’s interpretation of it.”
I looked to Josef again, but he was fiddling with his violin case, his feet shuffling back and forth nervously. A sudden surge of irritation burned the unease from my gut. If my brother would not speak on my behalf, then I would say nothing on his either. Fran?ois was by far the better partner for Josef; they had had months of practice together on the road, and he knew how to shape their playing into a singular performance rather than a display of individual talents.
“As you wish, Your Illustriousness,” I said.
“Please.” The Countess smiled. “We are among friends. Call me Elena.”
I tried not to let my discomfort show. “Yes, ma’am,” I said, unable to bring myself to use her Christian name.
Her eyes twinkled in the depths of her wintry mask. “That’s settled then,” she said. “Come, we shall adjourn downstairs.” Yet another servant reappeared with a tray with glasses of sherry. Or was it the same as the first? I could no longer tell. “Ah, thank you. Have a drink, my dears. It shall keep you warm as we move you away from the Ofen.”
Josef and I accepted the glasses out of politeness, but neither he nor I were much inclined to take a sip.