I Am Rembrandt's Daughter (17 page)

“Uncle Nicolaes and my vader had to track down a man who rented nineteen of our ships and disappeared. Seems his cargo died on all of his ships. He had to throw the entire load overboard.”

“Oh, how awful. Cattle or sheep?”

“Slaves. All four thousand sixty-eight of them.”

I gasp.

Carel shakes his head. “This man had no insurance to cover his losses and could not pay us, so he skipped off with our ships.”

“But—what about all those people?”

“What about them?”

Something inside me snaps to attention.

“Vader and Uncle Nicolaes went to Africa,” he says, “thinking their man was hiding there. They were right. Found him roistering on the Gold Coast. They picked him up and a shipload of ivory and tiger skins, too, so they came out for the best. He goes before the magistrate this Friday. I hope he hangs.”

I remember the black man Vader painted when I was little. I can still see his peaceful oyster-pearl eyes, his solid calmness. For just one man like him to go down with a slave ship, let alone thousands of other men, women, and children. I take a breath, then ask, “Does your family often deal in slaves?”

“We don’t deal with them at all,” he says, pulling back. “That is illegal in Amsterdam. The man who tried to skip from us was English. We just own the ships.” He looks at me. “Did you think we would own slaves? That would be so wrong.”

“But you own the ships.”

“We are not responsible for what our clients put on them. What they carry is on their conscience, not ours.”

I shake my head. “I don’t understand.”

“There is nothing to understand. It’s business—just ledgers and abacuses and that sort of boring thing.” He smiles. “That is my Cornelia—always thinking of things in an unusual way.”

“My Cornelia.” He takes my hand, driving all other thoughts from my head, and one by one, laces his fingers between mine. I look up by degrees, past the ebony buttons of his doublet, past his open white collar, past the smooth skin of his neck. His eyes await mine. I swim into their warm blue depths.

Too soon, he says, “I must go.”

“But I’ve hardly seen you.”

“Now that Vader is back, there is much to do. I haven’t been to van Uylenburgh’s in weeks. Bol has probably gotten another apprentice to replace me.”

We start back to the house. The weight of my gown is nothing to me now. “Where do you live?” I ask.

He looks puzzled.

“If I am not to see you for a while, I want to picture where you go.”

He laughs. “On the Kloveniersburgwal, then.”

“The Kloveniersburgwal?” Moeder’s voice drifts into my memory:
It is the name of money
. “I think I was there once with my moeder.”

“We are two doors down from the Trip house. Uncle Nicolaes’s house is in between. It’s not that far from here.”

I would not know. The daughter of a bankrupt has no business in that district.

We speak no more. At my stoop, he bends forward to kiss my cheek. My heart roars so loudly in my ears that I cannot hear.

“I will come again,” he says into the mad pounding. “Soon. I promise.” He picks up the bundle of lavender and places it in my hands. “Hang this in your window. For me.”

When he is gone, I wander back to the canal, swishing my bunch of flowers. I spread open my arms. “Hallo, good ducks!”

The moeder steers her ducklings away with a quack. I laugh out loud.

Humming along with the music of the organ, I pluck a leaf from our tree and throw it onto the brown water, where it is grasped by the current and slowly borne away. With a sigh, I turn to go in. There is movement in the studio window. This time, I see who it is.

Neel.

Chapter
22

Hendrickje
.
1660. Canvas.

I am just a little child, but I made her sick. I made her so sad, I made her sick. I wanted to be at Jannetje Zilver’s house. Every day that I could, I left Moeder at home so I could see the stained glass windows in Jannetje’s front room. I left Moeder at home so I could run my fingers over the twenty-seven sets of collars and caps in Jannetje’s linen press. I left Moeder at home so I could play with Jannetje’s dolls, her dollhouse, her china tea set. Angry at Moeder for being like Vader, I left her at home, so when the plague came upon her, she was too sad and lonely to chase it away
.

“It’s pretty puss,” I had said when I came home from Jannetje’s. Moeder lay on her bed shivering under both my feather bag and hers even though it was July. “Moeder, it’s me.”

She had opened her eyes, then closed them
.

“Moeder, are you ill? Where is Vader? Where is Titus?”

She did not answer. She chattered her teeth and made a noise like a frightening humming
.

“Moeder!”

I prayed for her to open her eyes and reach out to me the way Vader had painted her once in a picture, her face so patient and good and forgiving, even after Vader had spent his last guilder on another helmet and I had hounded her without end for a collar like Jannetje’s
.

But she did not open them
.

“Water,” she whispered
.

A dipper of water was on the floor. I put it to her cracked lips, but the water dribbled down her face. I put my arm around her head and, trembling from the effort, lifted her up. The covers fell from her neck
.

Under her ear, straining with all its might to free itself from her skin, was a dark purple goose egg
.

A high-pitched scream came from inside me, scalding my throat, deafening my ears. Hands drew me away, and through a red fog of fear, I looked up and saw Vader
.

Chapter
23

It is the fifteenth of July, Vader’s birthday, but more importantly, two months and ten days after Carel returned to me. Outside the open studio window, the linden tree shimmers in a mild breeze that smells of the sea. The ducklings in the canal have lost their yellow fluff and chase their moeder and each other in their soft new suits of brown as the crane watches them soberly from the bank. Across the way, a plump young moeder holds onto the reins of her toddling baby in his padded hat, while her older son runs along with his pinwheel whirring. All this I can see from where I stand in my colossal gown of vermilion, which now smells distinctly of linseed oil and me. Chiefly me. I can concentrate on none of it. Almost daily Carel has come to see me—Bol has kept him on, thank goodness—though it be for just a few stolen minutes, when he is out purchasing pigments or brushes, delivering pictures to art dealers, or on his way home for the weekend. Even if he could spend hours with me, it would not be enough. I could never get my fill of gazing at him, at the brown-pink swell of his upper lip and the golden hairs on his strong wrists. I am drunk by the sight of him, and now I’ve been three days without him. I am sick with longing.

“Do I hold your hand too tight?” Neel says.

“What?”

“You looked pained.”

I shift under the weight of my skirt, my daydream ended. “It is this gown. I must get my mind off it. Tell me a story, a jest—anything.”

“Mijnheer?”

Vader’s gaze wanders from his canvas to Neel.

“Does it bother you if we speak?”

Vader slumps back on his stool. “No.” He frowns at the ceiling as if directing his complaint to his Friend above. “It seems I have been abandoned, which is rather cruel, it being my birthday.” He moves his frown to me. “But keep your pose.”

Neel and I glance at each other. Vader has not added a stroke to his painting in two days—he has hardly made progress in weeks—yet day after day we are commanded to remain as statues. How much longer must we wait before he gives up this foolish project? Capturing the essence of tenderest love on a canvas—even as God’s own pet, he has asked too much, though his choice of models cannot have helped. If it is burning love he wishes me to demonstrate, he should have Carel holding my hand, not Neel. Now
that
would be a project I could look forward to each morning.

Neel smiles shyly, thinking I am smiling at him. “You really wish to hear a story?”

“Yes. I do.”

His face grows serious as he thinks. Tijger strolls in, winds in and out of Neel’s legs, then sits at my feet.

“Anything, Neel!” I exclaim. “A tale about wicked stepmothers or talking beasts or the poor growing rich—just tell me something before I go mad!”

“Very well, I have a tale.”

“Tell it!”

“It is a true tale.”

“Would you tell any other kind, Neel Suythof?”

He grins. “No.” In the past few months Neel has lost some of his shyness with me. With Carel visiting so often, I think Neel has given up on whatever interest he had in me, which for some ridiculous reason, makes me sad.

“Well, please get on with it. This dress does not get lighter.”

“Very well.” The wide golden sleeve of the costume Vader has bid Neel to wear swings as he changes his grasp on my hand. He takes a deep breath. “There once was a blacksmith.”

I groan. “A blacksmith?”

“Yes. His name was Quentin Metsys. He was quite skilled at the anvil, skilled enough to leave his home in Louvain for the big city of Antwerp, where he produced intricate works of iron.”

Ironworks? He is murdering me. My mind strays to the two wood doves that have landed on the windowsill outside. One plucks at the other’s neck. Do birds mate for life? Tijger gets up and stalks toward the window.

“Cornelia?” Neel says. “Are you listening?”

“Yes.”

He frowns as if not convinced, but carries on. “Then one day, Quentin delivered one of his finely wrought gates to a stately home on the River Schelde. There, he met a beautiful young maiden. She was the daughter of an artist.”

My gaze leaves the doves.

“It was love at first glance. From then on, he could not eat or drink, but would dine on a diet of her smiles.”

I look at Neel with interest. A love story?

He stares right back. “He wished her hand in marriage, but her vader would not give his consent. You see, the vader was an artist, a painter of the highest quality, and Quentin was just a lowly blacksmith.”

Vader regards his canvas as Tijger sits below the window, his tail swishing. “I believe I have heard this one before.”

“What did Quentin do then?” I ask. I think of Carel. “I hope he just carried the girl off.”

“No,” Neel says pointedly. “He was an honorable man. He would have never gone against the vader’s wishes. He decided he would make himself into a man of whom the vader would approve. He would become a painter.”

“I thought you said this was a true story,” I scoff. Why is Neel telling this?

“It is.” Neel looks at Vader, who nods slowly.

“Day and night,” Neel continues, “whenever Quentin had a moment’s rest from earning his daily bread, he worked with brush and paint, learning from the masters, teaching himself their art. Not a spare moment went by that he did not have his brush in hand, practicing, practicing, practicing.

“Then one day, as he visited the maiden in her vader’s studio, he became so intent in their talk that without thinking, he painted a fly on a canvas that the vader had left to dry. Two days later, when the vader returned to his work, he saw the fly, sitting on his canvas.

“‘Shoo!’ the Vader cried, whisking at the tiny translucent wings. But it would not move. So he shouted again, ‘SHOO!’ But the fly would not budge. The vader bent closer to the painting.

“‘Who has done this thing?’ he roared.”

“Did the maiden tell him?” I cry, then draw back into myself. But who could not help but root for Quentin?

Neel gives my hand an almost imperceptible squeeze. “Her heart breaking with sorrow, for surely the vader would banish Quentin, she answered, ‘’Twas the blacksmith.’”

“Oh, no!” I exclaim.

Neel catches my eye. “Oh, yes. The vader reared back and roared, ‘You tell me the blacksmith painted this?’

“‘Yes, Vader,’ said the girl.”

Just then Tijger jumps, sending the wood doves whirring.

Neel does not see him, keen on his telling. “‘Then show me the man,’ the vader said. ‘I wish to shake his hand. For as surely as I stand here, the man is a painter.’

“And soon after,” Neel says quietly, “the two were wed, their hands brought together in marriage by a painted fly.” He gazes between Vader and me, then lifts his chin. “That is the end of my tale.”

Vader laughs. “Well told!”

Tijger sits in the window and licks his paw as if nothing has happened, but something has, something important and unspoken, for Neel is watching me, waiting for a response.

“You expect me to believe this?” I say. I pull to free my hand.

Neel hangs on. “With my own eyes, Cornelia, I have seen Metsys’s face carved in stone, along with an anvil and a palette, on the wall of the cathedral in Antwerp. There is an inscription under it that reads, ‘’Twas love that taught the smith to paint.’ “He lets go of my hand. “Make of it what you will.”

I tuck my hands under my arms. “I never knew you were such a storyteller.”

Vader puts down his brushes. “‘Twas love that taught the painter to tell stories, I would say.”

“Vader!” Sweat springs to my brow. “No one is in love here.”

Neel’s expression loses none of its dignity though his face has turned as red as my dress. “Mijnheer,” he says, “I hope you enjoyed my tale.”

“Oh, I have, I have, though I am not the one who needs convincing.” Vader tosses his palette and brushes on a table. Startled, Tijger stops licking midpaw. “I’m going out,” Vader says. “Neel, would you mind cleaning my brushes?”

I follow Vader downstairs, not wanting to be left alone with Neel. “Where are you going?” I demand. Neel has not lost interest in me, why I do not know, and it seems the two have joined against me, in spite of my loyalty to Carel.

“To Titus’s. It’s my birthday and I wish to see him.”