Chapter One
Music rose from the tall, narrow house on Getreidegasse, joyous tendrils of sound winding their way through the dim and crowded shop on the first floor, with its glass cabinets of marble mantel clocks.
A majestic grandfather clock presided over the premises, along with an intricately carved cuckoo clock, made by the great Johann Baptist Beha, that had chimed every quarter hour for nearly a hundred years.
The music rose up the narrow flight of stairs to the front sitting room with its worn velveteen sofas crowned with hand-stitched antimacassars, the heavy wooden tables and chairs, a mahogany cabinet dark with age—all of it brought from a timbered farmhouse in the Tyrol—and then back to the kitchen, with its square wooden table and blackened range.
Up another flight to the main bedrooms and then further still to the second floor, with its small attic rooms, their small windows overlooking the onion domes of Salzburg Cathedral, the ever-present Alps an indigo fringe beyond.
Music filled every room as three voices joined in sweet melody, alto, soprano and second soprano, the different harmonies mingling together in the popular folk song “Die Lorelei”:
“I do not know what it means, to feel so sad;
there is a tale from olden times I cannot get out of my mind.
The air is cool, and twilights falls…”
Then, suddenly, silence.
“Birgit, I think you’ve gone flat,” Lotte said with a kindly laugh, shaking back her blond hair, a shower of wheat-gold about her shoulders. “Or was it me?” She laughed again, smiling at both her sisters with easy joy. “Let’s try again.”
“There’s no time.” Birgit turned away quickly, hiding her expression from her younger sister’s laughing eyes.
“Father’s waiting,” she added and hurried from the back room of the shop where they’d been practicing to give their father peace from their racket; he had suffered from severe headaches ever since he’d been hit by a Romanian shell in the Battle of Orsova nearly twenty years earlier.
“Birgit…” Lotte began, her voice filling with dismay as she flung one hand out to stay her sister, and the oldest, Johanna, shook her head.
“Let her be. You know how she gets. I’m going to change my apron.” Briskly she followed Birgit out of the room and upstairs to the family’s living quarters; with a little sigh Lotte followed too, restarting the melody as she mounted the stairs, although this time her sisters did not join her.
Up in the kitchen their mother, Hedwig Eder, was fussing with the cakes she’d made in celebration of the day, her apron tied over her best dress, usually kept for Sundays.
Although she had lived in the city for twenty-three years, she had never gone to any of the events of the Salzburg Festival before, save for the free performance of Jedermann in the cathedral square that even the peasants came down from the mountains for.
The festival proper was reserved for the wealthy holidaymakers and day trippers who came from as far as Vienna, Berlin, or even further abroad—sophisticated people with sleek motor cars, arch voices, and a sly, knowing manner, or at least they seemed that way to Hedwig.
The elegants, Salzburgers called them, with either awe or scorn, or perhaps both.
Her husband Manfred appeared in the doorway of the kitchen; like her he was wearing his Sunday clothes, a suit of well-worn wool tweed, smiling at the sight of the sugar-dusted cakes filled with cream and piled neatly on a plate.
“Ah, Prügeltorte,” he exclaimed in pleasure. “My favorite.” He came over to plant a kiss on her cheek; embarrassed, Hedwig twitched away.
“I think I saw a mouse,” she told him as she clapped a net dome over the cakes. “We’ll have to get the man in again.”
He regarded her tenderly for a moment as she bustled around the kitchen, moving the kettle here or a plate there, not meeting his gaze. “Hedwig, there is no mouse,” he finally said, his tone gentle.
She shrugged. “I thought I saw something.”
Smiling, Manfred put an arm around her waist. “You’re nervous.”
“Why should I be nervous? I’m not the one singing.”
“Even so.”
She moved away from him, as she always did, even though she loved him, because his easy affection so often felt beyond her.
“They will be fine,” Manfred told her as she continued to bustle around the kitchen.
“It is more for the experience than the winning. Besides, it is not as if they will be on stage at the Festspielhaus—they are merely taking part in a competition for amateurs, at a restaurant, no less. Let us enjoy the day.”
Hedwig did not reply, because she knew she would not enjoy the day, although she would try.
Still, she managed to give her husband a distracted smile, knowing he would certainly enjoy it, before she went to the small, cracked mirror by the door and tidied her hair.
She might be a simple farmer’s daughter, but she would always keep herself neat.
“And here they are!” Manfred announced, beaming as Lotte came into the kitchen with a laughing twirl, followed by Johanna, as brisk as ever, and Birgit, who was trying not to look anxious.
They wore full-skirted dirndls with checked aprons; Lotte had laughed that they looked like milkmaids, but as the competition was sponsored by the Association of Austrian National Costumes, the clothes, made with loving determination by Hedwig, seemed more than appropriate.
It had been Lotte’s music teacher who had arranged their entry into the competition. Manfred and Hedwig’s youngest daughter had been blessed thrice over—of the three Eder girls, she was tacitly acknowledged as the prettiest, the most charming, and the most musical.
Some years ago Manfred and Hedwig had decided she should have singing lessons, something that had not been thought of for either Johanna or Birgit, for there was not really the money.
Lotte, however, had such a love of music that to deny their little lark lessons had seemed, to Manfred at least, almost cruel.
Hedwig, who managed the household purse strings, had agreed more reluctantly, but nevertheless the silver groschen and gold schillings had gone into the battered tin on the shelf above the range, day by day and week by week.
When the teacher, Herr Gruber, had suggested Lotte sing at one of the competitions for amateurs that ran alongside the famous music festival, Lotte had insisted she not sing alone, but rather with her sisters.
They could form a trio; they had sometimes sung in three parts in the evenings, with Lotte’s high soprano soaring above her sisters’ more cautious voices, although they’d never done such a thing in public.
Herr Gruber had agreed to the trio and duly entered them into a competition for folk singing.
Lotte had buoyed her sisters along with her enthusiasm, determined they would all share in this marvelous experience together, because she had never craved the spotlight, even though she seemed as if she were born for it.
“Are we ready?” Manfred asked as Lotte tied a scarf over her golden hair and Birgit fussed with her apron.
His daughters, he reflected, were all alike in their blond, blue-eyed looks, and yet they were as different as three people could possibly be: Johanna, so much like his Hedwig, with her strong-boned face and briskly capable manner; Lotte, so playful and pretty and light; and Birgit, sandwiched in the middle, quiet and shy, a bit clumsy, still struggling to find her place in the world.
“How do we look, Papa?” Lotte asked as she twirled again in her skirt.
“Like the most beautiful girls in all of Salzburg. But wait.” From his pocket he took the three sprigs of edelweiss he had picked only that morning, on his walk up the Monschsberg. He’d been surprised to find it, growing determinedly from an outcropping of limestone high above the city.
“Edelweiss!” Johanna exclaimed. “Where did you find it?”
“Growing where it always does, on the mountains,” Manfred replied with a smile.
Carefully he tucked a sprig of the flower with its yellow clustered heads and velvety white leaves into each of the necklines of his daughters’ dresses.
“Now you are not the Eder Sisters, but the Edelweiss Sisters! Soon to be a sensation.”
“What nonsense,” Hedwig muttered, but she was smiling, and Lotte laughed, the sound as clear as a crystal bell.
“The Edelweiss Sisters!” Lotte exclaimed. “Yes, indeed.”
“We’ll be late,” Birgit said, and Johanna clucked in impatience.
“Then let us be off.” Manfred clapped his hands lightly and they left the kitchen, heading down the stairs and out into the busy street, a steady stream of festivalgoers heading towards the Festspielhaus on Hofstallgasse, just half a mile away, while they were going to the Elektrischer Aufzug restaurant on Monchsberg, where their competition was to be held.
Lotte was prancing ahead, winsome as ever, entranced by the carnival atmosphere.
Many of the festivalgoers wore country costumes of leather lederhosen or dirndl dresses—while others wore sleek gowns or dapper suits.
The mood was buoyant, carrying them all along with its infectious excitement.
As Johanna paused to re-tie her apron, a sleek Daimler nosed out of a narrow side street into the square ahead of them, the pale face of the woman inside eyeing the crowd with sophisticated indifference.
“All right, Birgit?” Manfred asked with a smiling glance for his middle daughter, who as usual lagged a little behind, twisting her hands in her apron.
“Yes, Papa.” She gave him a quick smile that lit up her face and made her almost pretty. Manfred patted her arm. He had a special affection for the daughter whose soul was so much like his own.