I Am Rembrandt's Daughter (19 page)

T
HE
D
UTCH
E
AST
I
NDIA
C
OMPANY

Not the Trippenhuis. I sag against a hitching post. I will never find Carel. I was foolish to even try. I drift on in the same direction, wondering if I will ever be able to find my way home, when I absentmindedly touch my hair.

My red ribbon is gone.

I am looking for it over my shoulder when someone cries, “Griet! You’ve come for me!”

An old man reaches out to me from where he sits in the shade of a covered passageway, his knees covered with a hairy blanket. There are other old men, too, sitting on benches, staring blankly.

The old man struggles to his feet and toddles forward. “Bless you, Griet, child!” he bleats, then clings to me with the brittle brute strength of an ancient vine.

I am struggling like a snared rabbit when a firm hand takes my shoulder.

“I am sorry, old friend. Griet has to go now.”

I turn and find my face inches from a clean-shaven ruddy jaw. I gasp. Nicolaes Bruyningh?

“Griet!” the old man yelps as Mijnheer Bruyningh untangles me.

“Do not worry, good fellow,” Bruyningh says with a tip of his hat, “I shall take good care of her.”

The old man nods doubtfully. Mijnheer Bruyningh guides me toward the corner from which I came, his hand like a rock at the small of my back.

“Thank you, mijnheer.” I find myself embarrassingly near tears, whether they be from terror or relief or both.

“Poor fellow, I believe he thought you were his daughter.” Gently, he asks, “What are you doing here, my dear?”

I swipe at my eye with my knuckle. There is no use in pretending. “I was looking for Carel.”

He pushes his hat far back on his head, a gesture that is somehow familiar and comforting. “I see,” he says. When he connects with my gaze, I gasp in sudden recognition. Nicolaes Bruyningh is the Gold Mustache Man.

He smiles mildly, not acknowledging my shock. “Unfortunately, it seems our poor Carel has been chained to the desk by his vader. My dear brother has decided Carel must give up his dreams of painting to take up the family business.”

“B-but—” I stammer, “Carel is good at painting.” Mijnheer Bruyningh acts like I have not recognized him from the past.
Is
he the Gold Mustache Man? Besides no longer having his mustache, he is heavier and much more weathered looking.

Mijnheer Bruyningh gives me an easy grin. “Carel does like to paint. Have you seen his work?”

“No. But I am sure—”

“He was learning, I suppose. One does not master these skills overnight, does one? Though your vader showed his promise early enough.”

“Did you know my vader in those days?

He raises eyebrows that glint like golden wires against his reddish skin. “In your vader’s youth? Heavens, no.” He taps his hat back over his brow. “Do not age me, child—I am your vader’s junior by twenty years.”

“I am sorry—”

“I met your vader later on.”

“Vader did your portrait.”

“Yes, he did.” I am close enough to see his glance at my beads. “I knew your moeder, too.”

I don’t know what he wants. Helplessly, I say, “She died six years ago.” If Bruyningh is the Gold Mustache Man, why did he never stop at our house if he knew Moeder and Vader? Why did he just pass by with only a tap to the lips?

Mijnheer Bruyningh gazes at something behind me. I cannot help noticing how much he looks like Carel now that I know them to be related—the iris-blue eyes, the golden hair, the handsome lips. How did I never recognize this before? When he returns his gaze to me, he is smiling. “Well, would you like to see if we can shake our Carel free?”

“Yes, please, mijnheer,” I say, though I am so bewildered by Mijnheer Bruyningh’s behavior, my only desire is to go home.

“Perhaps it would be best if we went to my house and awaited him. I can send a servant to fetch him.”

I slow my pace. Do I know Nicholaes Bruyningh well enough to go to his house without a chaperone? He knows my vader, my moeder, and Titus and Magdalena, and though odd, he seems kind enough. And … he is rich.

He turns to me with a schoolboy’s grin on his weathered red face. “What would you do if I told you I was the one who ordered your vader’s picture recently?”

“You?” I stop. “You ordered the family portrait of the van Roops?”

“Surprised?” He laughs. “Forgive me, but I had to see what your vader was selling these days.” He sighs. “I wish it were something closer to what I am collecting.”

“I feared it would be too rough,” I murmur.

“Truly, he has gotten a bit carried away with his paint.” “Too bad, seeing him squander it all away.”

I find myself bristling. “His pictures have a depth you cannot find in other artists’ work. He uses the paint for texture.”

He regards me for a moment. “I’m sorry, that was thoughtless of me. I should not speak to his daughter in such a way.”

I wince. I have spoken out to an important man. What is to become of me? God help me, I am truly my vader’s child.

“I just happen to prefer his earlier work,” Mijnheer Bruyningh says. “I was hoping he was selling something from his older holdings. Does he keep much stock at home?”

I think of the unsold gallery of paintings crowding the walls of our front room. “Some.”

“He used to have all manner of art hanging around his house during the months I came to sit for him,” he says. “Mostly his own work, though in his cabinet upstairs he kept copies of the great ones.”

Titus had told me Vader was forced to sell everything he owned when he went bankrupt—everything, that is, except for a few precious paintings that he hid from the creditors. It was the collecting of great paintings, rich materials, and natural rarities that drove Vader to bankruptcy, Titus said.

“He’s got some pictures,” I say.

“Well, if he should ever wish to unload one of his own older biblical scenes, I would be willing to pay a great deal—if it is the right one for me. I understand that you deal for him now.”

I draw back. Because I am a girl and young, I had not thought of myself as Vader’s dealer. Perhaps taking the van Roop family portrait to van Uylenburgh qualified me as such. If I am never to paint, maybe I should look into being Vader’s dealer. Someone has to take care of our family.

Just then I hear my name being called. I look up.

Carel pushes aside a bunch of herbs and waves from an open window. “Cornelia—is it really you? Hallo!”

My insides leap. The joy and shock and sheer delight on his face is everything I hoped it would be. “Carel!” I wave madly.

“Wait! I shall be right down.”

He pops back through the window. Grinning, I remain gazing up at the fine tall house with its rows and rows of freshly painted green shutters. There is a bunch of lavender hanging in every window. So this is where Carel lives. I shrink back in embarrassment when I find Nicolaes Bruyningh watching me.

“Well, now we won’t have to fetch the lad, will we?” he says, ignoring my peasant behavior. He bows gallantly. “It was a pleasure speaking with you, my dear.”

Suddenly, it comes to me. Before I give it another thought, I put my finger to my mouth and, eagerly watching Nicolaes Bruyningh’s hard face, tap my lips three times.

Other than a blink of golden lashes, his face is coolly blank.

Heat leaps to my cheeks. He must think me mad, tapping away at myself like a monkey with an itch. “Excuse me, mijnheer. I thought—It’s just that …”

He smiles, but there is a chill in it that warns me to continue at my own risk.

I want to slump to the bricks. How had I ever thought Mijnheer Bruyningh could be the Gold Mustache Man? The Gold Mustache Man disappeared with the plague—probably one of its victims, like so many others. And now here I am, ruining any chance of the good opinion of Carel’s esteemed uncle. I sink into miserable silence until Carel comes bounding out the door and breaks our awkward quiet. Still, as Carel leads me away, chatting about events in his day, I cannot but wonder how much damage I have done.

Chapter
26

The July sun beats down upon us as we walk along the Street That Is the Name of Money. Though people crowd the spotless brick walkways, it is strangely quiet. Ladies, sniffing silver pomander balls filled with rose petals and herbs, stroll by with a faint swish of silks, their barefoot African servant boys waving ostrich-feather fans behind them. Into their rose-scented wakes stride men in groups of two and three, speaking in hushed tones. Meanwhile the water in the canal discreetly laps the stone banks as boats, filled with money-making cargoes, sail solemnly by. Only a man in daffodil satin breaks the hush, with the spritely clopping of his dapple gray mount. My street on the Rozengracht, with its oily smell of pancakes and its din of jolly organ music and shouting people, though less than a mile off as the rook flies, is a world away.

Carel is spreading his hands in disbelief. “Vader lost the whole stake he put into my apprenticeship. Two hundred fifty guilders—and he did not bat an eye! He told Bol I was joining the family business and that was that, no matter what I said. I told him, ‘Very well, Vader, but why did you not say this before I’d spent three years learning the craft?’”

I pull my gaze away from a small African boy struggling to keep a fan nearly as large as he is aloft over a pinch-faced old woman in a wagon-wheel ruff. Though slaves are not allowed in Amsterdam, Africans still find their way into households as servants. I think of the several thousand African slaves Carel said were lost at sea on his family’s ships. With a sigh, I force the terrible image away. Carel no more represents his vader than I do mine.

Carel looks at me expectantly. It is my turn to add to his conversation. “Why did your vader change his mind about your painting all of a sudden?” I ask.

“He said he thought I’d grow out of my whim to be a painter, and now that they need another hand in the business, he wasn’t waiting any longer. It was time I did something practical.”

I could not argue with that. How many times did I feel the pinch of Vader following his art? But if Carel gave up painting, would he also give up me?

“What if you practiced painting in your spare time?” I ask.

“What spare time? Vader’s worse than Bol. He works me to a nub—without pay.” He looks over his shoulder. “Just you wait—he’ll send his man out after me in a moment. I’m sorry, but I won’t be able to walk you home.”

“No matter, I can find the way.”

He sees my face and laughs. “Don’t look like that—I want to walk you! I just can’t.”

“I know,” I murmur, though I cannot help but doubt him. I look back over my shoulder at the banks of green shutters on his princely house. Why has he never taken me there? Even now, he leads me away from it. I pull him away from my house because I am ashamed of Vader, but does Carel pull me away from his because he is ashamed of me?

“There must be some way you can keep painting,” I say, ignoring the hollowness in my gut. “It is your dream.” And his only tie to me.

He touches my hand. “Only you acknowledge that. What would I do without you?”

When I search his eyes, he will not look away.

“Don’t worry,” he says, “I’m still coming to see you, no matter what they say. Vader sends me on errands—I’ll sneak out then.”

“If you do come—”

“Not if. When.”

“When you do come, you can paint at my house. We have everything you need. You don’t have to give it up, Carel.” Nor me.

He kisses my hand. “This is why you are so special to me.”

My head seems to be floating as I gaze at the golden down above his upper lip, then up into his laughing blue eyes. I will do anything to keep you, Carel Bruyningh. Anything.

Though almost suppertime when I return home, everything is as it was when I left, except that Vader’s cheeks are already peppered with white. He is in his studio, standing before his would-be portrayal of Tenderest Love.

“Hallo, Vader.” I try to hide the smile that has been on my face since I left Carel.

He glances over his shoulder, then back at the painting. He doesn’t ask where I’ve been.

“I’ve been out getting some cheese for supper.” I put the tray I had quickly made up for him on his worktable then retreat toward the window. “Eat.”

He lifts his hands. “Why do you abandon me, God? I studied Titus and Magdalena all afternoon and still you gave me no sign. Where were you leading me when you gave me this idea? I am lost now.” He goes to the table, tears off a chunk of bread, and chews absently.

I scan his table with its clutter of pig bladders filled with paint, hog-bristle brushes standing in jars, and dirty paint-knives. It would be easy for me to tuck a few things in my apron for Carel to paint with when he next comes. Maybe I should start collecting things gradually—a bladder of bone-black paint here, a paintbrush there. Then I would be ready when Carel comes, giving him a reason to return, for surely his family will not make it easy for him to visit. Just the thought of Nicolaes Bruyningh’s cool face when I tapped my lips makes me cringe.
He
will not encourage his nephew to mix with me. Whatever made me make that silly sign? Now I will never be able to prove to him that I am good enough for Carel.

I draw in a breath. “Vader, you knew Nicolaes Bruyningh. What was he like?”

Vader swims out of his fog. “Bruyningh?” His pale green eyes bore into mine. “Why do you want to know?” he says sharply.

Blood rushes painfully to my cheeks. “He’s Carel’s uncle.”

Vader crosses his arms. “Oh, this is about the nephew, is it?”

I dust off the windowsill with a corner of my apron.

“I had hoped this would resolve itself on its own, but evidently it has not. I am going to have to ask you to stay away from the nephew, Cornelia. I know he’s been lurking around here off and on for the past few months, but I can no longer cast a blind eye to it. If he comes, you aren’t to see him, do you understand?”

I gape at him in disbelief. After years of neglect, he advises me now? “You cannot tell me this!”