Mozart and the Lost Tomb

By Thomas Holliday

The sham magus and master poisoner Cagliostro schemes to establish world domination with his "Egyptian Rite of Freemasonry," using drugs and sex to lure influential supporters; and murder, to eliminate composers, writers, architects, and painters who refuse to glorify him as the order's "Grand Copht."

In the dead of the winter of 1769-1770, on the cusp of turning fourteen, Papa Leopold and I, your humble servant Wolf Mozart, seek court appointments and commissions in Italy. On the road to Milan, Giacomo Cavanaso, an old soldier on Cagliostro's payroll, causes a falling tree branch to crush my skull. I hover between life, death, and the angelic presence Maria Anna, who shows me how composing my most beautiful music will reverse the damage, and heal my wounds and the world that Cagliostro seeks to manipulate. Maria Anna gives me extrasensory powers, and a giant she-wolf familiar, Friede, to unmask my assailants and stop Cagliostro's wanton abuse of humankind-ness.

For weeks in Milan, I live on a broad-arcing pendulum between terror for my life, and survive many more exotic attempts to kill me. I incur the animus of MIlan's fanatical Cardinal-Archbishop Pazzabenelli, who petitions the Roman Inquisition to prosecute his claims of miracles and witchcraft that underpin my admittedly dazzling gifts. Nonetheless, I realize my dream of a first opera for Italy, to be premiered in eight months.

In addition to arranging this commission, a new human patron, Governor-General Firmian, piques my interest in one of the ancient world's unsolved mysteries: the lost tomb of Etruscan king Lars Porsenna, reputedly located in the countryside near our next destination, Florence. Continuing to elude Cagliostro's minions--including vicious Giovanni Pirani and his supernatural creature Bahar--the English violin virtuoso and composer Thomas Linley and I find the lost tomb at Monte Morello--only to discover it in use for Cagliostro's latest initiation ceremony--with us as impromptu sacrifices.

At the last moment, Tom, a handful of allies and I neutralize our persecutors, and launch into an improvisation that turns the crowd against the charlatan magus. As we descend from the mountain, Giovanni attacks me, cutting off my breath--and thus my ability to summon Friede. Tom sets the murderous boy's hair ablaze, a vengeful Bahar slaughters Giovanni for his failure, Tom and I hold up magic bells from the tomb, and the spontaneous music destroys Bahar.

On the next adventure!

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Mar 18, 2024
• ISBN: 9798350943603

Thomas Holliday

Thomas Holliday has been a published writer for a half-century, in conjunction with his varied career as an opera stage director, librettist, translator, educator, and lecturer. He has a background in instrumental and vocal music. His work includes productions of over 50 operas for companies in Europe and America; seven original scripts and librettos; 25 English performing translations; supertitles for 14 operas; unpublished fiction and poetry; and annotations, articles, and essays for such publications as Lyric Opera of Chicago's Season Companion and The Opera Journal. His first and well-received full-length published book is "Falling Up: The Days and Nights of Carlisle Floyd," the authorized biography of America's greatest and most prolific composer of opera (Syracuse University Press 2013). Learn more about Thomas at www.thomasholliday.com.

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This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously; and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2023 by Thomas Holliday

ISBN (Print Edition): 978-1-73450-760-7

ISBN (eBook Edition): 979-8-35094-360-3

Table of Contents

Cast of Characters

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Appendix

Coda (Author’s Afterword)

(To) Entertain

From French, entretien. (To provide) pleasure, delight; the reception of a guest; a feast, a banquet.

From Latin, intertenere. To hold intertwined; to keep a person in a a certain state of mind; to hold engaged.

Oxford English Dictionary, Second Edition, 1989

This is for my life partner and Muse,

Sheila Smith,

without whom this would never have made it past the title.

Mozart’s music is so pure and beautiful that I see it as a reflection of the inner heart, of the universe.

Albert Einstein

He was music’s genius of light and love.

Richard Wagner

It is impossible to imagine what a world without Mozart would look like.

www.Mozart.com

Cast of Characters

(in alphabetical order)

(Most of the following are comprimari, or supporting players in the story. I include everyone, in case you run across the name fifty or a hundred pages later and don’t remember them. Also, it should give you an inkling of how dense and in constant motion Wolf Mozart’s life was. The most important characters are presented below in bold. From author to reader: I would suggest placing markers here and in the glossary at the end for easy reference while reading.)

Affoglii, Peppe, 58: librarian and trombonist at Milan’s Ducal Theatre; also a Cagliostro Watcher.

Alfonso, Brother: priest at the church of San Marco, Milan, who acts as host to the Mozarts in their quarters at the attached monastery.

Amati, Guarnieri, Stradivari: Italy’s famed builder-families of stringed instruments, their activity centered in Cremona.

Anselmo: Milanese apothecary.

Aprile, Giuseppe (1732-1813): renowned Italian castrato singer.

Averardo, Count, Duke of Salviati: Tuscan Grand Duke Leopold’s Chamberlain.

Bach, Johann Christian (1735-1782): the eighteenth child—and youngest son—of Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750). J.C.’s operas were popular in Italy and England, where he settled, encountering and mentoring Mozart during the family’s visit to the latter country in 1764-65.

Bahar: an ageless infernal presence.

Barisani, Silvester (1719-1810): personal physician to the Archbishop of Salzburg. His family and the Mozarts were socially friendly. Wolf was especially fond of their lively daughters.

Barsanti, Francesco (1690-1775): Italian composer and wind instrument performer who emigrated to London in 1714.

Beccaria, Marchese Cesare (1738-1794): Italian criminologist, jurist, philosopher and politician, renowned for his 1764 treatise On Crimes and Punishments.

Bernasconi, Antonia (née Wagerle, 1741-1803): German soprano, stepdaughter of Italian composer Andrea Bernasconi. Created the role of Aspasia in Wolf’s Mitridate, Re di Ponto in 1770.

Boccherini, Luigi (1743-1805): classical composer known chiefly for instrumental works.

Bongiovanni: Cavanaso’s horse.

Borgias: Italo-Spanish family prominent during the Renaissance. Their most notorious members were Roderigo, who ruled as Pope Alexander VI, and his illegitimate children Cesare and Lucrezia. Among other crimes, the family was credited with adultery, incest, and especially murder by poisoning.

Borromeo, St. Charles (1538-1584): Church reformer, Archbishop of Milan for the last twenty years of his life; canonized in 1610.

Boyce, Dr. William (1711-1779): eminent English composer, teacher of Thomas Linley.

Broschi, Carlo, aka Farinelli (1705-1782): a castrato superstar.

Cagliostro, aka Giuseppe Balsamo (1743-1795): also uses the alias Francesco Alberti: Mozart’s principal enemy. Founder and Grand Copht of Egyptian Freemasonry, his own gloss on traditional Masonry. His agents Worldwide are called Watchers. In 1768, he met and married the seductive blonde, blue-eyed Roman beauty Lorenza Feliciani, fourteen at the time, hence eleven years his junior, whom he afterward christened Serafina, seraphim.

Castiglione, Count Federico: Director of Milan’s Ducal Theatre.

Cavanaso, Giacomo, aka Scaler: At 39, a former soldier and senior Cagliostro Watcher, tasked with killing Wolf Mozart any way he can.

Charles V (1500-1558): Holy Roman Emperor.

Chiaveri, Gaetano (1689-1770): Italian Baroque architect.

Clavering-Cowper, George, 3rd Earl Cowper (1738-1789): former Grand Tourist and unofficial host to English visitors to Florence.

Clement XIV, Pope (1705-1774): born Giovanni Vincenzo Antonio Ganganelli, he bestowed the Papal Order of the Golden Spur on Wolf.

Coltinelli, Mario, 13: footman at Palazzo Melzi, a Cagliostro Watcher. Dubbed The Willow by Firmian.

Corilla Olimpica, née Maria Maddalena Morelli (1727-1800): famed poetess, especially prized as a poetic improviser by Florentine society.

Da Vinci, Leonardo (1452-1519): arguably Italy’s greatest Renaissance artist and polymath.

De Maio, Gian Francesco, Ciccio (1732-1770): Neapolitan composer friendly with and appreciated Wolf Mozart during their stay in Naples in 1770.

De Sousa Tavares de Silva, Antonio: noble Portuguese shipping magnate.

D’Este, Beatrice: owner of Palazzo Melzi, Milan, leased to the Governor-General of Lombardy, Karl/Carlo-Joseph/Giuseppe Firmian.

D’Este, Maria Beatrice, b. 4/7/1750; daughter of Ercole III, Duke of Modena, and granddaughter of Francesco III d’Este, Duke of Modena, and his second wife, Renata Melzi (see above). Maria B. was another of Wolf’s most ardent admirers and patrons.

D’Ettore, Guglielmo (c. 1740-1771): Italian tenor; created title role in Wolf’s Mitridate.

Di Antonio Aglio, Andrea Salvatore (1736-1786): Italian painter and sculptor.

Di Medici, Maria (1575-1642): For her wedding to King Henri IV of France in 1600, one of the entertainments was the earliest opera whose music has survived, Peri’s Euridice.

Emilia, 12: a colomba or dove in Cagliostro’s initiation ceremony on Mount Morello.

Ferrando and Guglielmo: liveried servants at Palazzo Melzi.

Flaminio: palace guard at Poggio Imperiale, Florence.

Friede: spirit wolf assigned by Maria Anna to protect Wolf in moments of dire need.

Gabrieli sisters: Francesca Adriana, who sang as Ferrarese del Bene (c. 1755-1799) and Caterina (1730-1796) were renowned divas of their day.

Gavard des Pivets, Giuseppe Maria: Tuscan Grand Duke Leopold’s Finance Director.

Gellert, Christian Fürchtegott (God-Fearing) (1715-69): German poet/philosopher, with whom

Leopold Mozart corresponded for some years. His religious Odes reflect that middle name, and Leopold fervently hoped that Wolfgang would adopt a similarly serious spiritual discipline.

Germani, Fernando: Count Firmian’s Chief Steward. He and his wife Therese were Viennese Italian, and especially generous to the Mozarts.

Germara, Giorgio, 22: Cagliostro’s principal Watcher in Florence.

Giambologna, born Jean Boulogne in Douai, Flanders, today France (1529-1608): mannerist sculptor prominent in service to Medici family in Florence.

Gluck, Christoph Willibald (1714-1787): Bavarian composer with major successes in Austria, Italy and France, a seminal figure in the development of opera.

Goldino, Gianni, 38: Cagliostro’s Watcher in Lodi, Italy.

Grappa, Wenzel, 43, and Ponce, GianLuca, 18: security officers at Firmian’s Palazzo Melzi, Milan.

Habsburg family: Austrian and Holy Roman Emperors from the late 13th century until 1918. During Mozart’s lifetime, the principal rulers were Maria Theresa (1717-1780), the wife and successor of Emperor Francis I (1737-1765, House of Lorraine); and her sons Joseph II (1741-1790); Leopold II (1747-1792); Grand Duke of Tuscany, 1765-1790). The couple’s other children important to this series were Maria Antonia, aka Marie Antoinette (1755-1793, married King Louis XVI of France, executed in the Terror following the French Revolution); Maria Carolina (1752-1814; married King Ferdinando of Naples (Borbone) in 1768); and Ferdinand (1754-1806), Governor of Milan/Lombardy, 1765-1796, and eventual spouse of Maria Beatrice d’Este.

Hagenauer, Lorenz, b. 8/10/1712: The Mozarts’ landlord, friend, financial guarantor, and greengrocer-spice merchant in Salzburg.

Hanot, François (1697-1770): French composer.

Hasse, Johann Adolph (1699-1783): German composer especially beloved in Italy, where they called him Il caro Sassone, the dear Saxon.

Incontri, Francesco Gaetano (1704-1781): Archbishop of Florence.

Jacopo: alcoholic Florentine Jew.

Juan Bautista, Brother: Cagliostro Watcher in Cuba.

Kaunitz, Count Joseph Clemens (1743-1785): Austrian Imperial Chamberlain, son of Count Wenzel Kaunitz (1711-1794), Chancellor of State. The entire Kaunitz family were Wolf’s enthusiastic fans.

Keyssler, Johann Georg (1693-1743): German writer whose Travels through Germany, Bohemia, Hungary, Switzerland, Italy and Lorraine guided generations of travelers—including the Mozarts—through Europe.

Linley, Thomas, The Younger, b. 5/5/1756. Composer-violinist from a musical family in Bath, England. He and Wolf, born seven months apart in the same year, form a brief but intense friendship in Florence in 1770, and subsequently maintain their connection through correspondence.

Livy (Titus Livius, 64 or 59 BC-AD 17): famed for his monumental history of Rome.

Luigi: Florentine police officer.

Malaponte, Renzo, 27: baby-faced Hercules, not the brightest candle in Cagliostro’s Candelabra of Watcher in Florence.

Malvezzi, Vincenzo (1715-1775): Cardinal/Archbishop of Bologna.

Mann, Sir Horace (1706-1786): British Envoy Extraordinary to the Tuscan Court.

Manzuoli, Giovanni, aka Vanni (1720-1782): famed castrato singer, Wolf’s voice teacher during the London visit.

Maria Anna: timeless, ageless agent of Heavenly Grace. This is Wolf’s name for her presence, an unsurprising determination, considering the number of significant women of this name in our protagonist’s life.

Maria Luisa, Infanta of Spain (1745-1792): wife of Tuscan Grand Duke Leopold.

Martini, Giovanni Battista, Padre Martini (1706-1784): a Franciscan priest since 1729, the most famous musical theorist and composition teacher of his day. Besides Mozart, his pupils included Grétry, Myslivicek and J.C. Bach.

Melzi, Renata: Duchess-Princess of Modena, House of Este, b. 3/8/1721; Step-Grandmother of Maria Metastasio, Pietro (1698-1782): Born Antonio Domenico Bonaventura Trapassi, he was the eighteenth century’s most popular and often-set librettist. He specialized in Opera seria, grand, solemn heroic opera, most of which is based on ancient Greek and Roman sources.

Mesmer, Dr. Anton (1734-1815): physician and pioneer of animal magnetism and hypnotism.

Mola, Francesco, 65: parish priest, Lodi.

Monteverdi, Claudio (1567-1643): Italy’s composer-genius of the late- and post-Renaissance era. His settings of the Orpheus legend and the historical tale of Roman Emperor Nero and his love Poppea are among the earliest works in the current repertoire.

Mozart Family: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Austrian nickname Woferl, and simply Wolf in these stories (b. 1/27/1756): our protagonist-hero, the greatest natural musical talent to ever have incarnated on Planet Earth. He and his father, Leopold Mozart (b. 11/14/1719) made three trips to Italy from their home in Salzburg, Austria, for three years, between the Decembers of 1769 and 1772, for Wolf to honor his commissions to compose three grand operas for Milan’s Ducal Theatre. He and his father—especially Leopold—were hoping to secure appointments in some royal Italian establishment. The two Mozart ladies are Maria Anna (Mama, born 12/25/1720) and Anna Maria, Nannerl in Austrian dialect (b. 7/30/1751).

Mozzala, Caretino, aka Tino: 31, Captain in the Vatican’s Swiss Guard.

Nardini, Pietro (1722-1793): eminent Italian violinist, composer and teacher in Florence.

Orsini-Rosenberg, Franz Xaver (1726-1795): High Steward to Grand Duke Leopold of Tuscany.

Pallavicini, Count-Field Marshal GianLuca (1697-1773): Genoese diplomat in Austrian Imperial Service. He, his wife and musical son Giuseppe Maria (1756-1818) were generous hosts to the Mozarts at their estate outside Bologna. His cousin Lazzaro Opizio (1719-1785) was a Cardinal and State Secretary in Rome.

Patrasso, Pietro, 10: lay brother at San Marco, Watcher-in-training.

Pazzabenelli, Giovanni (1737-1783): Cardinal-Archbishop of Milan.

Pergolesi, Giovanni Battista (1710-1736): popular and particularly influential composer in the development of comic opera, despite his short life.

Piccinni, Niccolò (1720-1800): popular Italian opera composer, with later successes in France.

Pirani, Giovanni, 11: deaf servant and Cagliostro Watcher.

Pliny the Elder (AD 23-79): Roman historian and natural philosopher.

Porsenna, Lars: Etruscan King who waged war on Rome, c. 500 BC. His colossal tomb was described by classical writers as a veritable World’s Eighth Wonder, in or around his capital of Clevsin/Clusium. Although the present-day Tuscan city of Chiusi is built on Etruscan foundations, base, the tomb remains to this day (spoiler alert) undiscovered.

Ralda, Rocco: 38, innkeeper, Aquila Nera, Florence.

Recolledo, Jacopo: parish priest in Mantua, Italy.

Riconsi, Neri Maria (1685-1770): Secretary in charge of Roman Inquisition.

Rovesca, Ermanno: café waiter in Fiesole, suburban Florence.

Salvadori, Erico, 28: official in the Finance Ministry of Lombardy Province, seated in Milan.

Sammartini, Giovanni Battista (1700-1775): Italian composer known principally for his graceful instrumental works.

Sartoretti family: During their two-week stay in Verona, spanning December 1769 and January 1770, one of their hosts was Tommaso Sartoretti. His wife Margherita gives Wolf a hand cream to combat the wintry weather’s assault on his skin.

Schrattenbach, Count Siegesmund: b. 2/28/1698. Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg beginning in 1753.

Schobert, Johann (date of birth given variously as 1720, 1735 and 1740!): popular German/Alsatian composer who, together with his wife, one child, a maidservant and four acquaintances died in Paris in 1767 after eating a batch of poisonous mushrooms.

Seixas, Carlos (1704-1742): prominent Portuguese composer.

Signacanti, Vittorio: Cagliostro Watcher in Torino di Sangro, Italy

Tartini, Giuseppe (1692-1770): renowned Italian composer, especially for virtuoso works for violin.

Teles de Meneses, Joao Afonso, Count of Barcelo: heir once removed from Portuguese throne.

Tiepolo, Giovanni Battista (1690-1769): Italian painter.

Toppansi, Cardinal Giovanni Francesco (1695-1774): Riconsi’s successor as director of Roman Inquisition.

Torpesellini, Seppe, 47: Florentine painter.

Torre Brothers: murderous innkeepers in the town of Voltri.

Troger, Leopold (1725-1780): Karl Joseph Firmian’s secretary.

Varro, Marcus (116-27 BC): Roman scholar and writer.

Verdoux, Henri, 27: Cagliostro Watcher in Paris.

Vialy, Louis René (1680-1770): French painter

Von Firmian family: Karl Joseph Firmian (Carlo Giuseppe in Italian): b. 8/6/1718. Governor-General of Lombardy Province, and Wolf’s most enthusiastic and influential patron. His elder brother, Franz Lactanz (1712-1786), was the Salzburg Court Chief Steward, who supervised secular matters for the Archbishop, including the Court’s musical establishment.

Von Ligniville, Marchese Eugenio, Prince of Conca (1730-1778): Grand Duke Leopold’s Court Chamberlain and Music Director.

Von Mölk, Waberl (b. 1752—so four years or so older than Wolf at this period): daughter of the ennobled Salzburg family of Franz Felix Anton von Mölk, Chancellor and later Councillor of the Archbishop of Salzburg’s court. They offered the Mozarts a genuine friendship and mutual respect, or what passed for it, owing to the disparity in social classes. In any event, Wolf was generally enraptured with Waberl, Austrian dialect for Maria Anna Barbara.

Von Podstatsky, Count Leopold Anton: Dean of Cathedral and University Rector in Olmütz, Moravia. He enabled the Mozarts to escape to his outlying estate the smallpox epidemic—Wolf caught the disease anyway—during their visit to Vienna in 1767. During Wolf’s convalescence from the disease, the Count engaged an instructor who taught him to fence.

Winckelmann, Johann Joachim (1717-1768): German art historian, archeologist, and Enlightenment avatar, whose 1764 History of Ancient Art prompted the cultural re-evaluation and assimilation of Etruscan, Greek and Roman antiquity’s legacies.

Part I: Milan

1.

Wednesday, June 8, 1768

6:15 A.M., Osteria Grande, Trieste, Italy

Cagliostro and Winckelmann

Perched on his favorite surface, a hotel bed with plump down pillows and comforters, Cagliostro stretched, yawned, sipped coffee that bit back. He scratched his chest’s hair-mat through the open linen shirt and scrutinized his older traveling companion and special new friend: Johann Winckelmann, sitting at the desk by the window, making the most of the early morning light, scribbling words for his new edition of that History of Ancient Art.

Cagliostro embellished his silent monologue: Not bad-looking, with his receding dark hair on high forehead, triangular face, sharp chin. Everyone said he was brilliant. Stupid pedant would have used his time better by staying in bed with me.

The Sicilian magus, born Giuseppe Balsamo, twenty-five years and six days earlier, was passing the week as Francesco Alberti, a cook from Vienna. His Watchers had alerted him to Winckelmann’s travel plans, which made their meeting in the coach from Austria appear coincidental. Cagliostro had his own pressing reasons for glorifying the ancient Etruscans, an elusive, intriguing race.

He checked the dagger at his waist, set his cup down, rose, and sauntered over to read over the scholar’s shoulder. His German was awful offal—but he babbled anyway, For a man of your years, I’m surprised you don’t need glasses.

Hmm? Winckelmann continued in the lovely highest Sienese Italian, Oh. Well, I’m only fifty.

Cagliostro chuckled. Despite relief at speaking his first tongue again—I can practically feel this femmy prick looking down on my Sicilian accent—him and his perfect Tuscan lilt. His endless series of portraits painted in floor-length, fur-and-feather- trimmed gowns.

He tried humor—rarely a strong suit: Fifty’s a meaningless number. Not as ancient as the art you write about, eh? He picked up one hefty manuscript and moved to the next window to scan its contents—and attuned to the current version of Winckelmann’s Etruscan observations. A tenth of the space he’s allotted Egypt alone—much less Greece and Rome. So you refuse to reduce the space you’ve devoted to these intolerable Egyptians and Romans, and give the Etruscans a bit more of their due?

My dear, it’s all a matter of balance. The Etruscans made some lovely art, but it wasn’t exactly high. Or, for that matter, in good taste. Their sculptures were daubed in such garish primary colors—they lacked the purity of white! So much of their world was destroyed. How are we to comprehend their true natures?

A golden opportunity to right history!

In schoolmasterish accents, Winckelmann turned, demanded, What stands behind that assertion?

Cagliostro returned the manuscript to its shelf and stepped back to the bed, faced away from his new and oh-so-celebrated friend, and fought his inner war-in-progress. He extended his arms, willing himself the transmitter of a god’s voice rumbling from its shrine: Have I not emphasized the gratitude you would earn from a numerous community of like minds? By doing your job, by adjusting your famous balance?

Winckelmann blinked over his chair’s back, "This isn’t some gossip broadside, Lieber; sighed, and continued jotting in the margins of whatever proof this was. Besides, what does a cook know about painting and sculpture?

He shouldn’t have said that. Cooks were canny. Cagliostro was equal to any assault, spiritual or physical; but his indomitable vulnerability shamed. He flashed back to a fall evening six years ago: While nosing around Vienna, he posed as a valet at the Imperial palace at Schönbrunn. Snot-nosed six year-old Wolfgang Mozart was playing for the Royal Family. He had the balls to hop up into the Empress’s lap and give her a wet smack on the cheek, telling her how much he loved her. As he played his concert, the nobility swooned, called him a wizard.

Later, Mozart slipped and fell on the polished floor. Archduchess Maria Antonia rushed over and helped him up. What does the arrogant piece of boyshit say? You’re so kind. When I grow up, I think I’ll marry you.

And that was but Cagliostro’s introduction to Mozart. His anger grew as only lust can channel: He had stepped in to get Mozart away from Antonia. His irritation must have shown, because the bastard boy jumped up on his own and kicked him in the shins. Scarring him for life.

Cagliostro ground his teeth as he considered his options if Winckelmann remained on his high horse about the Etruscans. He opened the bedside table’s drawer and withdrew a pre-tied silken noose.

And lurked.

Winckelmann stood, Your approach to this Etruscan business is so one-sided, so ill-informed.

Cagliostro seethed, worked the silk cord behind his back.

The historian knelt and reached into an open trunk. Your attitude suggests you consider me a lesser sort of arbiter that Empress Maria Theresa, who awarded me this gold portrait medallion of herself, and this silver one of her son Joseph, the next Emperor. He held the treasures as high as his arms would reach and swung them like pendulums, ’For highest services to the fine arts,’ she said.

Cagliostro strode across the room, towering over Winckelmann. In a voice he would have to remember for future solemnities, he declared, This could have been so much nicer, slipped the noose over the historian’s neck, pulled it tight.

Medallions clattering to the floor, Cagliostro threw Winckelmann onto them, straddled his torso and pinned his arms, keeping the noose maximally tight. He was amazed that the man had so much fight in him. Winckelmann hacked, spat, pounded the floor with his heels.

Since you insist, Cagliostro snarled. He pulled the dagger and made of Winckelmann a pincushion, stabbing him five times, across his torso. This is for the Etruscans, you arrogant pig! Learn the Will of Cagliostro.

He rejoiced at the blood soaking into cracks between floor-boards.

His head blew open, and a sensation of nameless dread enveloped him, accompanied by the reek of spoiled olive oil and rotten fish guts. He fell back, grabbed his stomach and retched all over Winckelmann’s spasming body and across the room. He scrabbled crabwise back toward the bed, began to shiver, and tried to crawl under it.

Footsteps pounded up the stairs. A dining steward burst through the door, What’s all this noi-? Who—? You—?

With gory hands, Cagliostro pushed past the man and vaulted down the stairs two and three at a time, in his rush toward the port.

He should have felt triumph on such a glorious warm morning, rather than tremble from the dread and horror that ancient sensory attack had summoned up. It was Winckelmann’s own damn fault for choosing poorly. No time to waste now in beating a path north to Leipzig, where Cagliostro would enlist the German writer Christian Gellert to write a cycle of laudatory odes for the Egyptian Rite of Freemasonry, and himself as Grand Copht.

2.

Sunday, January 21, 1770

7 A.M., Southeast of Cremona

Wolf and Leopold

The first rock flew by my face so fast, its faint whistle moved the air. The street boys paid us no particular attention, but our brand-new two-wheeled carriage, our sedia, was an inconvenient obstacle between rival gangs. A second missile bounced off my carriage-side, barely missing my left temple. I threw myself against Papa’s shoulder.

What did we ever do to them? I asked.

Woferl—those urchins? You should—you need— Papa paused, chewing the inside of his cheeks.

What?

We left them a quarter-mile behind. Papa gasped and sighed it out, "You’re old enough now—nearly fourteen—almost a man—to hear and learn, for God’s sake, learn, what I’ve known forever: There are wicked people everywhere, biting flies on humanity’s skin, who would harm you simply because they can. Some—could be many—will want you dead."

That took my breath away for a few seconds on incomprehension.

Papa went on, Those ragged boys probably felt nothing more sinister than poisonous envy of a shiny new carriage—but who can tell?

And others?

Everywhere we go, at home, abroad, court musicians lurk behind columns, faces slit-eyed with envy and hatred. Italians are the worst, they’re convinced they invented music, and that we Austrians are shit-stained peasants!

Why?

It’s complicated. Let’s say that being Austrian in Italy doesn’t do us any favors—not till we get to a place where patronage offers protection.

"All I do is make music! Is that so threatening?"

"No. I am a musician; you, my son, are a miracle. Angels and saints in church are fine in stone or paint. Being one in the flesh, especially young as you are, makes you a target."

As we rattled over ice-mud ruts in the road out of Cremona, I sought refuge in the safe chamber of my private kingdom, where I composed and stored music. Only now I couldn’t find it, which scared me far worse than Papa’s warning. I usually didn’t notice the cruel punishment the roads inflicted on our bodies on these trips. This time my teeth rattled. I replayed what Papa had said, over and over, and grappled for a clearer view of my life and friends and family. Papa’s face was twitching, nose running. He wanted better, more chastening words. The sedia provided a flimsy enclosure for the two of us, with its delicate body of wood and leather, suspended on leather straps. It had a canvas roof to repel some water, of which we’d absorbed more than our share so far, as rain and snow.

The cab’s snugness was lost on me now, as nothing repelled the cold from which there was no escape.

Colder, terror: people wanted to kill me.

Twenty minutes later, I prayed for a change of subject. The weather was good for that.

Papa, will it ever be warm enough to fold the top down?

He grunted, projecting a feeling of sickness from breakfast. The front was open to winter winds, water in any form, and the smells of horse dung and pig wallow at each farm we passed.

To protect my sensitive hearing from the air’s noisy rush, I wore heavy flaps of wool over my ears and under my hat. We also had foot-bags, a cross between shoes and gloves, and much warmer than the heavy leather boots we wore on the road. Tied above the knees, they were lined with, of all things, wolf fur; and excellent mittens, also fur-lined, protected my precious hands.

Before we set out this morning, our breakfast waiter was Austrian Italian, and spoke German with us, offering news we’d missed.

Papa asked, Who died lately?

The poet Christian Gellert, last month in Leipzig.

Papa shook his head sadly, A great man. Sublime poet. Thank you for telling us. He reminded me, He was one of my correspondents, a few years older.

The waiter shook his head and plodded off to get our food. Six years ago, a friend had given me a copy of Gellert’s Sacred Odes and Songs, and Papa kept egging me to set some to music.

As the English would say, not my cup of tea. Too stuffy, too pious. Gellert’s animal fables were more to my taste.

Now, though, it was Italian opera for me, or nothing.

Gellert didn’t bother me; but something felt off about his so abruptly up and dying. Anyway, off we drove. Papa muffled me in a wool broadcloth suit, neck scarf, fur-lined cloak, and tied a wool stole over my head and ears and under my chin. I pitied his cracked, bleeding fingers and hands. The cold wind was burning my own skin dry and red.

Papa said I was turning into a red-faced soldier at winter encampment.

I swerved to lovely female shapes, the memory of smells and touch ravishing my awareness, trumping physical discomforts. This was happening more and more. Music made me neglect the most basic needs: eating, washing, or less sanitary bodily functions; but now, I was having highly-charged images of certain girls back home in a new and different light.

Like I knew what explicit involved. Yet.

Papa dabbed at his runny nose with a cold crunchy handkerchief and coughed, cocked his head back and pierced my interior world, the interruption as sharp as the icy gale blowing into our faces. He pointed, Woferl, look there.

I slipped a fermata above my fantasy of Waberl von Mölk’s lacy bodice, Where?

See that row of maple trees?

They stood as ancient sentinels beside the road. So?

Papa elaborated, Monteverdi and the best violin makers, the Amati, Guarneri, Stradivari, they all came from Cremona. They used only the finest maple for their incredible instruments, from such trees.

As we passed beneath the looming monoliths—

An eight-foot branch thicker than a wrestler’s leg crashed down onto my side of sedia. Its top was ruined.

Mine too.

I’m assaulted by a single blinding flash of light. With the sense of being observed, and yet observing myself, my life blows out like a candle. Hundreds of pounds of wood have caved in the left side of my skull and eye before rolling off onto the ice.

The branch, not my eye. The horse bucks in its traces, and the vehicle slues on the ice.

Jesus, Mary and all the Saints! screams Papa, Woferl! He pushes my limp torso back against the seat with his left hand, and pulls the carriage over an outside rut with his right, panting, You stay there!

He then performs a theatrical but unintentional double-take, realizing what I have become. His anguish is a twisting, searing knife.

It was odd yet perfectly natural that within seconds that can only be called Eternity, I regard what’s happening from a hover-spot twenty feet above and in front of us.

It isn’t cold.

It isn’t much but pure awareness.

Underlying it all is a dull but constant vibration that words cannot describe. I feel a kind of inner shredding, with a wash of resentment.

I mourned not being able to get that effect on paper in its time.

Papa jumps down, runs around to my side. Blood seeps from my broken skull, and my left eye is crushed to jelly. What’s left of my consciousness—the part that we believe and in fact is the higher self—confirms without pity or pain that that boy down there is stone cold dead.

And somehow, close, present, with the growing certainty of observation, examination, testing. What the hell?

From somewhere—inside? outside?—comes a woman’s lilting voice made of high bells and glass harmonica, No, Wolf, "What the Heaven."

Papa trembles so fiercely, his teeth approach shattering against each other. At least he and the horse are unharmed. The carriage can be driven.

To the undertaker.

Papa lurches in circles, slipping and righting himself between each step on the road’s uneven slick surface. He babbles as a madman—which he is at this moment, and executes a bizarre new step. A mortuet! What better name for a dance of death? The twitch at the corner of his right eye, which betrays fear or any degree of untruth, is greater than I’ve ever noticed it. Somehow, with a desperate need for involvement, he staggers toward the branch and back to the sedia, a pendulum losing its suspension.

At that moment, I learn what it means for a heart to ache for someone. In the effortless awareness of this intermediate state, I can move at will, up, down, sideways. I’m tempted for a moment to fly back to Salzburg; but I can’t leave Papa, who appears more and more ready to join me on this conveyance to the other side.

My sight is pure, I release any need to interpret. This is True Observation, an adjacent channel of the unhinderable flow of information I have with music.

In the field behind the maple trees, I’m drawn to a retreating set of footprints in the snow—which lead to a squat man running in the same direction we were headed, north toward Milan.

I won’t forget his shape and bulk. He’s dark-complected, heavily and often scarred. Battle wounds? An old soldier? Why not?

As usual, I’m getting ahead of myself.

That bell-infused voice: Look there, Wolf.

My vision expands to a closer view: the man is bow-legged, compact, round. Bull-necked, -armed and –legged. That doesn’t come from sitting on your ass all day, so the soldier angle gains weight.

Papa criticized me for thinking the best of everyone I meet. From bitter personal experience, judging someone by appearance alone is a dangerous and fault-prone activity. I’ve sworn off that. Many think me simple and helpless because I’m so short—but I have a powerful intuition here, thanks to the fact that I’m bodiless and apparently omniscient:

The person before me is perfectly consistent with what’s been done.

In an instant I soar back to our snorting, pitifully neighing horse. With one hand that’s only invisible vapor, I stroke his shoulder and neck, Be calm, sweet fellow. Despite my lack of substance, he does. Animals know.

I reach out to Papa as well, but he remains snagged in shock approaching despair. I float back across to the fallen branch and notice saw marks to a depth of five inches, and a length of rope tied to it. Someone has gone to all this trouble to make it fall, exactly as Papa had described, in an attempt to kill us.

Probably just me—but two Austrians gone are always better than a solo.

Alas, with this soloist, they have succeeded.

Papa, poor Papa, turns and twists out there in the frozen road, a demented marionette chattering to itself. He lives with such anxiety for me. He finds threats everywhere.

As it turns out, some are real.

I grow aware of a pulsing ball of light off in the snowy fields. Papa can’t see it, and keeps stumbling across the ice. First he falls, then crawls to the sedia, pulls himself up and drapes himself across my corpse. His wracking sobs shake us and the carriage.

Despite the season, the road is heavily traveled in both directions. The countryside is open, snow-covered fields, with the occasional farmhouse or church in the distance. A single horse and rider, hoofbeats muffled by the white frozen blanket, now approach from behind and pull up. Papa spins around. The man tips his hat and asks, May I be of assistance to you gentlemen?

That’s the first time anyone called me, or the boy-shaped bundle, the new now me, a gentleman.

Papa can’t form the words to answer. The gentleman jumps down and gives the branch and rope a close scan. His mind is easier to read than a roadmap: Assassination!

Papa is the moment’s prisoner. The man steps to the sedia and fixates on the bloody mess that I am. Both horses stand absolutely still in the presence of death.

Papa finds his voice, in a hoarse monotone devoid of his usual pointed animation, turns to the new arrival, "Signor—"

Erico Salvadori—who doffs his hat, bows, at your service. God grant you, and, er, this poor boy—

Salvadori hands his reins to Papa, and reaches out to my rapidly cooling body. He removes his glove and places one hand in front of my mouth, and another on my neck. He closes my intact eye and crosses himself.

Papa faints in the roadway. Salvadori’s horse comes up to me and nuzzles. God, I love animals!

Salvadori kneels beside Papa and raises him up against his leg.

Whom should I notify of this horrible accident?

Papa sobs, choking, Murder.

Salvadori stands. Yes. My impression as well. I’m headed to Milan, and will report this to the highest authorities. And sooner, at the next post station.

Papa makes no response, staring at the ice beneath his flowing nose and eyes. His shoulders heave.

Salvadori helps him stand. "Signor—?"

Papa produces a strangled whisper, Mozart.

Ah, the musicians?! And this— He scans the child-sized slab of broken flesh wedged into the carriage seat. "My God, Signor—I can’t imagine—what? But here, at least let me get you on your way. If you stay here, you’ll freeze to death in an hour."

Yes. I might prefer that.

Sir, you owe it to your boy to get him properly, uh, cared for.

Salvadori gets Papa up into the sedia and wraps him—and me, which is absurd under the circumstances—in our blankets, and places the reins into Papa’s hands.

He jumps back into his saddle and gallops off, calling back to us, I’ll report this to Governor-General Firmian as soon as I arrive.

Papa sits there, staring off into the void for seconds. I have to enter his tortured brain, not a nice place at the moment, to get him to flick the reins. His motion is so feeble, I’m surprised the horse notices; but animals don’t enjoy being around carrion any more than we do.

Kind Mr. Salvadori vanishes into the distance, and Papa rattles off across the ice in the same direction. The sedia’s wheels slip-dance between the road’s frozen peaks and valleys before settling and gaining forward motion.

Milan is about forty-five miles ahead; Lodi, about thirty. At the pace Papa’s going, he’ll be lucky to reach that Dorf by nightfall.

The Roadside, out of time

As we crash over the frozen muck, I enjoy the novel experience of feeling nothing but emotion purified of will. I float a few feet over myself, studying my remains through the sedia’s roof. My weather is perfect, neither warm nor frigid.

If I weren’t dead, I could get used to this.

After a quarter-mile, a hovering light off to the side, having kept pace with us, draws closer, revealing the disembodied bell-voice’s feminine presence. I fly to her through Papa, pitying the charred meat of his torment.

Before me hovers the most beautiful presence I’ve ever beheld. She resembles Mama as she was before I was born. Where did that come from? All the women in my immediate family are beautiful and called Anna Maria or Maria Anna, and the latter is what I name the shimmering divinity before me. She is wrapped in a veil of pure translucent light, in the cut of an embroidered silk court dress. Her solar aura is too bright to confront full-on.

Hello Wolf.

Her voice speaks in a chiming orchestra of all timbres and pitches, easy to embrace as music itself.

She is music itself.

Hello.

We don’t speak aloud, but I hear her words as I did from the minds of Mr. Salvadori and Papa.

Am I dead?

Her

Reviews for Mozart and the Lost Tomb

[marianabanana83 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A terrific and inventive series! Suitable for young adult readers.