Read Online The Musician's Daughter by Susanne Dunlap - Free Book Online Page B

ready to marry. I had no doubt that I could run a house hold as well as the next girl, but to do only that, and have babies until it was one childbirth too many and I died from it—surely life held more for me. I could not have been born with the ear and the hands I possessed only to use them to listen for an infant’s cry and to knit stockings.
    I looked with longing at the empty table in my room. Only Papa would understand how I felt, the emptiness that engulfed me when I realized I no longer had an instrument to act as my voice. “Oh, Papa!” I said aloud to my room. “What happened? Why did you leave us?”

    I soaked my pillow with tears that night, and dreamt of my father, smiling and playing in an orchestra that poured out glorious music. But the music was not in Prince Nicholas’s palace; it was outdoors, in the countryside. And the orchestra was not the one in which he occupied the first chair. All the musicians looked dark and wore tattered clothes, like the Gypsies, and all of them wore gold medallions around their necks, similar to the one the apothecary’s wife had found on my father’s body. The concert was magnificent, and the brilliant green leaves and bright flowers rustled and nodded in time to the music. I could smell the sweet fragrance of the country in my sleep. I awoke feeling cleansed, and more determined than ever. What could my mother do, after all? I had money from Haydn so I would not starve even if she refused to feed me, which I knew she would not. She could talk to the matchmaker, and once I had satisfied myself concerning what had befallen my father, I would sit with her and go over the list of candidates, no doubt old widowers who wanted a young bride to keep them company and nurse them in their dotage. For no one else would take me without a dowry. Even though I had not met him, I knew that Uncle Theobald would never come through and fulfill his promise.
    Still, I wondered about my wealthy uncle. His actions did not seem very honorable to me. Just because my mother’s family could claim ties generations back with minor nobility seemed no reason to cut off a sister who married beneath her. She could see what her brother could not, that a musician who entered the right circles with a wife who was capable of looking and acting the part might rise and achieve more than any other tradesman, the fashion for music being such a craze among the nobility and royalty. Mama was an impressive sight when she dressed in her finest open gown and ribbon-trimmed petticoat, put on her one miniver-trimmed mantelet, and had her hair piled high into a sugar-water-stiffened mountain with bits of lace and velvet ribbon. We were none of us as good as Mama at appearances. I wondered how long it would be until she rose from her bed and made her own dignified way to the house in the Graben where her important brother lived. I hoped I could see it. I feared that she would be unable to manage it until after the baby was born, and I did not know how long it would take her to recover from the birth.
    I tried to imagine myself turning my back on Toby because he had chosen a bride I did not approve of. Apart from the fact that the idea of little Toby married was so absurd it made me smile, I could never see it. If he needed something from me, he would have it no matter whom he married.
    After devouring two fresh rolls Greta had baked because Mama was eating again, I put on my long wool cloak and mitts, readying myself for the long walk to my godfather’s apartment in the Marienhilf suburb, outside the city wall. That morning it snowed halfheartedly; heavy, wet flakes that soaked into my cloak and chilled me through. By the time I arrived, my teeth chattered.
    “Come, come, come!” Haydn said, leading me into a small parlor with a blazing fire in the grate. His house-keeper took my cloak and spread it over two chairs to dry. “Please forgive my wife for not being here to greet you. She could not delay a previous