I Am Rembrandt's Daughter (24 page)

“You ran,” I say.

He takes another swallow of wine. “Hardly admirable, I admit. It was the shock. I was coming to claim my woman and my child. As you see, my timing has always been execrable.”

My heart pounds as I look at the hardened but handsome man in the velvet doublet, sitting in his leather chair, the smoke of his pipe curling from his hand. My vader, Nicolaes Bruyningh.

All these years I have suffered without him. I should have never had to worry about my next meal. I should have never had to wear rags. I should have never been burdened with the shame of being a crazy man’s bastard. I catch my breath. But now I’m this man’s bastard. Moeder had not married him, either. What does it matter whose bastard I am? I will always bear the shame of not belonging.

Nicolaes Bruyningh sucks on his pipe. “I couldn’t believe it when I heard of you from Carel. God will have his jest! My nephew was falling in love with his own first cousin, and he did not even know it. And then I thought—of course. Cousins can marry. They do it all the time to keep wealth within a family. Why not bring you into our fold, not for the money, of course, but for my own satisfaction? God knows I’ve paid for it.”

He takes a small sip. “Ironic, isn’t it? Through Jan’s own son you will enter into the family.” He half smiles. “Jan will get over it. He will have to, now.”

My heartbeat quickens. Carel had shut the door in my face. Even if he had his family’s blessing to wed me, would he want to? Think of it if he did: a handsome husband—a fine house—ships!—all mine. Me—a Bruyningh two times over, through blood and marriage. I would never be in want again.

“Look at your reflection in that mirror.” Mijnheer Bruyningh points with his pipe to a round mirror in a gilt frame hanging on the leather-paneled wall. “Oh, I know your coloring is different—there you are your moeder’s daughter—but have you honestly never noticed? That is not van Rijn’s small eyes or pudgy nose—you have my features, the Bruyningh nose. Carel’s got it, too.”

I lean toward the mirror and frown at the image that has given me so much dissatisfaction over the years. There, under my cap, is my moeder’s red-brown hair, which is given to waves. There are her large brown eyes.

I glance nervously back at Nicolaes Bruyningh, who holds his face still as if daring me to compare it to mine, then return my gaze to the mirror.

Before my frightened eyes, something strange begins to happen. Up onto the cheekbones I had thought all these years to be like Moeder’s, wells the imprint of Bruyningh’s own bones. My eyes, though brown, begin to bear the unmistakable stamp of Bruyningh’s. Even my nose reveals itself to be a small, neat copy of his. It is as if empowered by the truth, the thing that has lain coiled quietly inside me all these years has crept silently to the surface.

Bruyningh laughs at my expression. “You see? You cannot deny it—you’ve Bruyningh written all over you. How it must have tortured your—” He frowns slightly. “—Rembrandt.”

I swing my horrified gaze back to Bruyningh. “He knows?”

“If Hendrickje tried to keep it a secret, it wouldn’t have lasted long after you were born, not with that face. But that wouldn’t be like Hendrickje. She was too honest. She would have told him.” He sucks on his pipe. “I hope it burned his soul.”

Memories of Vader shunning me in his studio, of giving away my doll, of never painting me, tumble through my brain. How he must have hated the sight of me, another man’s child, another mouth to feed when he could hardly feed his own. Why did he not turn me out, me and Moeder both? Why did he not let us go to Bruyningh? We could have been rich. He could have had his memories of his dear Saskia and Titus all to himself.

Titus
.

I jump up. “I must go.”

“Where, my dear?”

“To Titus. I’ve been gone too long.”

His cool fingers brush my arm when he reaches out to me. “Is that wise, my dear? You could become ill yourself.”

I shudder, thinking of Carel shutting the door on me upon hearing of Titus’s distemper. To save his skin, he turned me away in my hour of need. But I can’t think of that now. I must help Titus.

I look toward the door. “I really must go. He’s so very ill. I can—I can come back.”

“No. What can you do for him? You’re not a physician. Let me send a servant around, make inquiries as to his progress. It’s safer that way.”

“But what about the servant?”

He frowns, puzzled. “What about him?”

“He could catch the contagion.”

He shrugs. “He’s but a servant. What do we care? Now, now, don’t pull that look. He’s a sturdy enough sort. He will be fine.”

I remember Carel mentioning the loss of thousands of slaves as if they were just another cargo. Slaves, servants,
my moeder
—whomever the Bruyninghs deemed inferior mattered less than little to them. Then I think of Vader, with his respect for the man with the pearl-gray eyes; for Mijnheer Gootman, the cobbler whom he painted as a king; for a woman carrying a child that wasn’t even his. Moeder. My heart goes out to him—and then I remember he has thrown me out, too.

I take a painful breath. I cannot sort this out now. Titus needs me.

I start toward the door.

Nicolaes Bruyningh puts down his cup and stands up to block me. “Titus is not even your blood, Cornelia. Why are you risking your life for him, when you can stay here safe with me?”

How can he ask? The reason is so clear. “Because he loves me. And because I love him.”

He lays his hand to my wrist with fingers hard as stone. “As your vader, I am afraid I cannot stand for this foolish reasoning.”

I draw back. “For going to my brother?”

“For fighting for a lost cause.”

I stare at his hand, then up at his face. What gives him the right to stop me now when he abandoned me all these years? “You never came for me.”

“I couldn’t. Did you want me to lose everything? What good would I be to you without my money?”

I try to picture myself as his well-dressed daughter, living in luxury, drowning in guilders.

“We can start fresh, Cornelia. You’ve been given this chance. Take it.”

I see the face of my dear brother, his jaw clenched in quiet agony, and of Vader, unshaven and frightened, fretting over him and growling to his God. Blood kin or not, for richer or poorer, through bad times and good, I find that I love Rembrandt van Rijn in spite of all of his imperfections. Perhaps, I think with wonder, because of his imperfections. I pull my arm free.

My footsteps ring from the polished tiles as I run. “Do you know what you are doing?” he shouts after me.

I do not, not entirely, as I wrestle open the door. But of one thing I am certain: Though I may have the Bruyningh blood, I do not have the Bruyningh heart.

Chapter
34

Vader is sponging Titus’s brow when I return to the House of the Gilded Scales. Though it has been but an hour or two, it seems as if time has stopped. Perhaps it has, between Vader and me. I stare at him as he tenderly ministers to Titus, touching his son’s brow as if it could break, and wait for him to shout me out of the house.

Vader frowns when he sees me watching. “You’re back,” he says in his guttural growl.

I go to my brother, expecting Vader’s protests. I can feel Titus’s heat when I lean over him. He does not open his eyes.

I swallow back the burning coal that chokes me. “Where is the physician?” I whisper hoarsely to Vader.

“Gone.” Vader looks down at his son, then lovingly touches his cheek. “He sleeps now like a baby.”

My chest is painfully tight. “Where is Magdalena?”

“She and her moeder have left for relatives in St. Anna-parochie.”

How like Magdalena to think only of herself when her husband is in such danger! “How can she leave him like this?” I cry, expecting Vader to rebuke both Magdalena and me.

Vader shakes his head. “Do not judge her ill. She is with child. It was the right thing to do.”

“Right thing.” I kick my heel against the floor. So he does not throw me out. Yet. Maybe I wish he would.

Vader turns to look at me, then draws in a breath. “What is the matter, Cornelia?”

I break free from his gaze and glance at Titus. “Not now, not with Titus—”

“He’s exhausted. He will sleep.” Vader sinks wearily onto a stool, the sponge still in his hand. “So out with it. You have the look of a cat ready to pounce.”

I straighten myself. All these years he let me live a lie. I try to swallow but my mouth has gone dry. “I know who my real vader is.”

He inhales sharply, then slowly lets it out. “So you talked to Bruyningh.”

“Yes.”

He sighs heavily. “Did he tell you everything?”

“Yes.”

“Then you shall hear everything from me as well.” He dumps the sponge on the table next to him. “I wonder how well our stories will match.”

“Go ahead,” I say grimly.

He rakes his fingers through his sparse hair, leaving it sticking up. “I don’t know where to start.”

“What about the picture?” I demand.

“What picture?”

“The one in our attic. Of Moeder in her …nakedness.”

“Oh. That one.” He touches Titus’s cheek.

“Why did you make Moeder model naked for it?” I whisper harshly. “She didn’t model before then. He said so.”

Vader sits up sharply. “Nicolaes Bruyningh” he snarls, pronouncing the name as if it were poison, “does not know everything that goes on around here. But yes, he is right. She did not model naked for me before then. Nor did she after.”

“So why did you make her? Did you not know that if anyone ever saw the picture she would be reviled?”

“I never intended for anyone to see it.”

“Then why would you paint it?”

“It was an act of love.”

“An act of love!”

“Yes, if you can believe that.”

“I don’t know what to believe anymore.”

He smiles bitterly. “You have no idea how much I loved your mother.”

“You had some fine way of showing it.”

“I ask you to listen.”

I fold my arms and wait.

He shakes his head. “You don’t know. From the moment she stepped foot in the house as a sixteen-year-old, I was drawn to her.”

“You were an old man!”

“Don’t you think I knew that? A ridiculous old widower. I kept my distance from her. Still, I couldn’t keep my mind from her. Just being in the same room with her made me giddy. When I wasn’t painting, when I
was
painting, she was all I could think about.”

I think of my yearnings for Carel, how such an attraction can drive all sense from one’s head. But this is not about Carel and me. “Why did you not just marry her, then? It was because she was your maid, wasn’t it?”

“That did not help matters, but no, it wasn’t because she was my maid. I was still getting over my loss of Saskia, and Hendrickje was twenty years my junior—I felt repulsive to her. So I kept my distance. I hardly spoke to the girl.”

This rings true. Nicolas Bruyningh had said there had been no improprieties.

“Then why didn’t you just let Nicolaes Bruyningh have her?” I demand. “He was more her age. He was rich, too.”

“Bruyningh. I didn’t like him chasing after Hendrickje, but I let him have his chance. Looked the other way for three whole years. Gad, the boy was slow.”

Titus stirs. I take up the sponge and wipe his face with it. “Titus?” I whisper.

He does not open his eyes. I lay my hand on his burning cheek.

“Bruyningh was not so slow, however,” Vader says, his lips curled with disgust, “that he did not eventually get her with child.”

I glare at Vader as I sponge Titus. “You knew this when you painted her?” I whisper angrily. “How could you have taken advantage of her like that?”

“Just listen, would you? I’d seen her crying. So I asked what was wrong. When she told me the cad had left her in a state, I told her I would take care of her.” A young man’s fire smolders in Vader’s watery eyes. “I wanted to kill him.”

I cannot keep the bitterness from my voice. “So you take care of her by making her model naked.”

“You make it sound evil, but it was not. When she turned to me in her grief, I could no longer hide my feelings. I was ready to shout from every bridge in town of my love for Hendrickje Stoffels. I promised her I’d care for her …” He gazes at me with a tenderness that confuses me. “And you.”

“If you loved her so much, why did you not marry her then? Make me your legal child? Did you not think how much not doing so would hurt me?”

“I haven’t finished telling the story! I was going to marry her. We planned to publish our first banns that Sunday. I was so in love, Cornelia. I wanted to breathe your moeder in, meld her soul to mine—oh, she was a wondrous girl!” He closes his eyes, his old man’s face wreathed in a smile.

He opens his eyes. “It was her idea for me to paint her. Her gift to me, and mine to her. A sacred act. She knew how much I worshipped her, and she loved my painting. Back then, like you, she seemed to understand it. So that Saturday morning, a day I had no pupils, and after Titus left for his uncle’s, I shut the studio door behind us and bade her to sit. She placed herself upon a drape and, turning her head away, gave up her body to my artist’s brush.

“I had prepared the background in advance, so I was able to begin painting her figure at once. The work went quickly, spurred by both passion and the tenderness of her sacrifice. Do not judge me—I am speaking the truth about the woman I loved! The moment I laid brush to canvas I knew it would be a masterpiece, yet I planned to never show a soul. It was between her and me. All morning long I painted in our private ecstasy, until—he burst in.”

“Nicolaes Bruyningh.”

“I’m sick of that name! Yes. It was an ugly scene. He shouted at Hendrickje. She wrapped herself in a drape and cried. I threatened him with a paint trowel. He went away, but not before he shattered Hendrickje’s world with a threat.”

We stare at each other.

“What?” I ask.

“He said he was taking away his child because its mother was a whore. He said the courts would be on his side—the picture would be his proof.”