The Dutch Girl (15 page)

Anna reluctantly turned her gaze from Gerrit's likeness. There was a companion picture beside his, and the lady had to be his wife, because the two portraits faced each other and had the same classical backdrop: a fantasy setting of stone pillars and red curtains with the fields of Harenwyck and the sparkle of the Hudson visible beyond.

Gerrit's wife was everything Anna was not. Raven-haired, petite, and fine-boned—so delicate in fact that it seemed like the breeze ruffling the curtain behind her ought to blow her away. The sort of woman Fragonard always painted sitting in a swing.

Anna wondered that the family had not taken these portraits down. She could not imagine the old patroon leaving up his renegade son's portrait, but perhaps Andries was cut from finer cloth. He was raising his brother's daughters, after all, even while that same brother robbed his coaches and stirred discontent among his tenants.

And there was no portrait of Andries himself. A second son, not destined for the patroonship, would not merit the expense. One might think that a usurper would rush to acquire the symbols of legitimacy, but Andries Van Haren had not.

The floor of the front hall was real marble, and there were four grain-painted doors framed by elaborate
carvings. Three were open, revealing carpeted parlors and a dining room lined with a fancy painted floorcloth.

The fourth door was closed, and Anna could hear raised voices coming from inside.

The patroon, speaking Dutch, fast and angry: “He has our butter and our beef, and if he is backing Gerrit, then he has our gold as well,” said the patroon.

“General Clinton is using your brother to force you to choose a side.” Ten Broeck's gravelly voice was lower and more reasonable. Anna was glad to know he had been released safely.

“Then he could have spared me the trouble of driving the Harenwyck herd to market and just had his Skinners and Cowboys rob me here.”

“Obviously he preferred to save
himself
the trouble of having to milk your cows and churn your butter. And he still hopes you will choose the side of government.”

“When the government is backing my brother's attempt to overthrow me?”

“They will disown and discard Gerrit the minute you let them station a British garrison here. All they want is Harenhoeck. They do not care who gives it to them.”

“You know I cannot do that, Theunis.”

“What I know,” the older man said patiently, “is that though you may believe in the American cause, our supposed allies have given us no powder, no shot, and no muskets with which to defend the estate if Clinton runs out of patience. We have had nothing from them. And our stores are running dangerously low. If either army
were to invade in force, they would take us easily. And if the tenants should rise, we are virtually defenseless.”

“It isn't polite to listen at doors.”

Anna whirled to find two girls watching her from the parlor across the hall. They were twins, and looked identical, dressed alike in robin's egg blue silk gowns. Anna had been told that the girls were eleven, but they were tall for their age, as so many Dutch children were. They would have looked at home in any New York parlor—if not for the mud caked to their hems and the grass stains on their silk slippers. Both girls wore their blond hair loose down their backs, long tresses woefully in need of a brushing.

“It isn't polite to spy on people either,” said Anna, guessing that the girls had been watching her for some time. “But I won't tell if you won't.”

The girls looked at each other. When they turned it was possible to see that they were not quite identical. One was slightly taller and had a small scar above her right eyebrow. She spoke for both of them when she said, “That seems fair.”

The smaller girl took a step forward and scrutinized Anna. “Are you the teacher Uncle Andries brought up from New York?”

“I am.”

Excitement lit the girl's face. “Did you bring any novels?”

“Grietje,” warned the taller girl.

“Yes,” said Anna, “but my baggage has not yet arrived.”
Because your father stole it from me.

They were Gerrit's daughters. Anna supposed that explained his strong feelings about her choice of embroidery subjects, but it did not help the fact that he had deprived her of all her school equipment.

“You mean you will let us have novels?” asked the taller one, who must be Jannetje.

“As long as you do your other reading and advance in all of your subjects, I see no reason that you should not read novels.”

“Reverend Blauvelt says they give women ideas.”

“Well, someone has to,” said Anna.

The door opened behind her. She was glad she had taken a few steps closer to the dining room while talking to the girls, so it did not seem quite so much like she had been eavesdropping.

“Miss Winters,” said her employer. Anna turned to face Andries Van Haren.

Last night she had been too exhausted, and it had been too dark, for her to study him. Now she saw what she had missed in the moonlight. He was handsome. Not like Gerrit, who would always be the standard by which she judged masculine beauty, but like the rest of the Van Harens, who were tall and blond with laughing blue eyes, only his did not appear to be laughing right now. If she was trying to capture their likenesses, she would have to render Gerrit in the rich pigments of oil paint and Andries in the delicate coloring of pastels.

She saw something else as well. It was only a suspicion for now, but a heartbreaking one, the sort better kept to oneself.

“Mr. Van Haren,” she said. As a child she had been told to always curtsy to the patroon. She refused to do so now, though her knees itched to bend.

“I see you have met Hubble and Bubble.”

Behind her the girls giggled.

“Yes. We were just getting acquainted.” If a backdrop of mutual blackmail could be called “getting acquainted.”

“Excellent. What sort of lessons do you have planned for today?”

He asked in the manner of a man who does not particularly care to listen to the answer, but who does want credit for asking the question. She gave him the answer that his hauteur deserved: “Our lessons today will have to be improvised. Your brother stole all of my school equipment.”

“That's all right,” said Jannetje. “We don't like lessons very much anyway.”

The patroon had the good grace to look embarrassed. “Make a list for Mr. Ten Broeck. As soon as certain matters are taken care of, he will have everything that was stolen replaced.”

“What matters?” The question bordered on rudeness, but she was not a servant or a child, and she needed to establish that she would not be treated like one.

Ten Broeck appeared in the door. When he saw Anna he came forward and took her hands. “Miss Winters, I am so relieved to see you safe. I must apologize. I fear I did not acquit myself particularly heroically last night.”

“You have nothing to apologize for, Mr. Ten Broeck. The bandits outnumbered you ten to one. I'm afraid the patroon's gold was as good as lost from the moment our escort abandoned us, along with all my school equipment and personal possessions. I hope you will be able to send someone to New York today.”

“Not today, Miss Winters,” said the patroon, in a tone that was meant to dismiss her and her concerns.

“But I
will
send a man tomorrow,” said Mr. Ten Broeck, who was obviously used to his employer's imperious manner and understood the need to temper his dicta. “There is no one to spare at present. Our kidnappers were busy last night, and the patroon's coach was not their only target. They stole a flock of sheep from one of the tenants. This afternoon the outlaws were overheard boasting of their plan to drive their stolen sheep to Wyckoff's ferry.”

“With a little luck,” added the patroon, “we will catch our bandits tonight and have the gold, my carriage, and your possessions, of course, back by morning.”

“You say ‘our bandits,' but you mean
our father
,” said Grietje, who obviously did not like that idea at all.

Neither did Anna. If Gerrit was captured, the first thing that he would tell his brother was that Harenwyck was sheltering a murderess.

“Come, girls. Let us see what sorts of books the patroon keeps in his library,” said Anna.

“It's not a very good library,” vouchsafed Jannetje, as she led Anna up the stairs.

“There aren't any novels,” explained Grietje.

There weren't any novels. There was, however, an atlas. It was not Anna's trusty English
Universal History of the World
by Bowen. It was a Dutch atlas, printed in Amsterdam and written in French. It was the very book that had opened a door for her all those years ago, had shown a provincial little Dutch girl that there was a world beyond the borders of Harenwyck. She had not been able to read it then, of course. She had not known French. Gerrit had smuggled it out of the house in his coat one winter morning and hidden it in the barn for their afternoon meeting.

He'd been late that day—delayed by his father after church—and she had found the book herself, buried in the hay. She'd been disappointed at first. Usually he brought her plays or poems or novels or, very occasionally, books of engravings. Anna had not known what to do with maps. They were just so many lines on paper—until Gerrit showed her how to read them. He had lain down with her in the hay and explained the points on the compass, latitude and longitude, the prime meridian, and the use of the key—and they'd adventured together through that ocean of pages like Henry Hudson on the Halve Maen. She'd lost track of time that afternoon, so that the sun had set while she was still in the barn with Gerrit and she was forced to run all the way home to get there before supper.

That was the day Anna's mother first became suspicious about how she spent her Sunday afternoons. The meetings in the barn had ended too shortly after that—after Gerrit had shown her the world.

“That is one of the boring books,” announced Grietje, breaking in upon Anna's thoughts.

“Not if you know how to read it. I'll show you.”

Both girls gave her a dubious look.

“I promise that if you give it a chance, this will be your favorite book by morning.”

“But it's in French,” said Jannetje. “You can't teach us French in one night.”

“You don't need French to enjoy this book.”

Jannetje eyed her suspiciously. “There's a trick to it, isn't there?”

“There may in fact be a trick,” admitted Anna. That was the magic of education. Learning one new thing could change how you saw the whole world.

Clearly intrigued, despite themselves, by this unexpected confirmation of their suspicions, Jannetje and Grietje flopped on the damask sofa. Comportment was going to have to be tomorrow's lesson.

“Don't sit, girls,” said Anna. “We're going on an adventure. We're going to travel the world, without ever leaving this room.”

Jannetje raised a skeptical eyebrow, but Grietje was standing up and peering round at the parlor. “How?”

“Look at the sofa. Tell me, what is it made of?”

Jannetje remained resolutely silent, perhaps not sure she liked the flavor of this “trick.”

“Wood,” said Grietje. “And silk.”

“Where did it come from?”

“New York?” asked Grietje.

“
Everything
comes from New York,” said Jannetje.

“Everything comes to Harenwyck
by way of
New York,” said Anna, “but the mahogany for the sofa came first from the Bahama Islands.”

Jannetje perked up. “You mean where they have pirates?”

“Yes,” said Anna. “Where they have pirates. How far do you think that is?”

“I don't know,” said Jannetje. “Farther than New York,” she said, putting her eleven-year-old reasoning skills to work. “Two times as far,” she decided. “At least twice as far as New York.”

“About
ten
times as far,” said Anna. “The Bahama Islands are more than a thousand miles from here. Would you like to see?”

Jannetje streaked across the room to look as Anna opened the atlas on the tea table. “Here is New York,” she said, pointing at the dot and label.

“And here are the Bahamas.” She dragged her finger across the page.

“Where is Harenwyck?” asked Grietje.

“Right here,” said Anna, finding the place on the map.

“Why isn't it marked?” asked Jannetje.

“Because it isn't big enough.”

Jannetje took that in, just as Anna had all those years ago.
Harenwyck is not the world.
Grietje was also
fascinated, puzzling out the key and tracing the current outlines of the colonies on that antiquated French map.

“Now,” said Anna, looking around the room, “what about the jars on the mantel?” There were five of them, two beakers and three vases with covers, prettily decorated with pink and red flowers and collared by painted gold grilles. The rich burghers in New York all had sets like it.

This time Grietje shrugged. “They've
always
been there.”

“Grandfather bought them,” said Jannetje. “In New York.”

“I've no doubt he did,” said Anna. “But they weren't made in New York. The designs were drawn by a Dutchman in New Amsterdam and sent by the Dutch East India company to China, where the porcelain was fired and painted. Then it went to New York, probably by way of the Netherlands.”

“How far is China?” asked Grietje.

“Oh, I should say about ten times as far as the Bahamas. Maybe ten thousand miles?”

“Show us,” said Jannetje, hooked at last.

Evening fell while they were still exploring. From China, they went to India by way of the contents of the tea caddy. They visited France via the wallpaper, England via the silk draperies and ingrain carpet.

When Mrs. Buys interrupted with a tray of cookies and a pot of chocolate they journeyed onward to the kingdoms of the Aztecs and Spain, and the twins would not let the cook go back to the kitchen until they had
interrogated her about everything on the plate. They even made an expedition to Pulau Run when Mrs. Buys admitted that there was nutmeg in the
koekjes,
and they returned to the West Indies through the sugar dish.