The Golden Cross (9 page)

Aidan frowned, thinking of Lili. Faith, Lili would wet her skirts if she knew her daughter had encountered an honest-to-goodness kind and generous Rich Gentleman. She would stop at nothing in her effort to marry him to Aidan, herself, or one of the other girls ….

“I have no one; I speak for myself,” Aidan answered, “but I might be inclined to visit your house before I agree to this arrangement. Where do you live?”

“Follow Broad Street west of this place,” Van Dyck answered, pointing toward the doorway. “It’s a white house, surrounded by a wide porch. The door is painted blue, like the sea.”

He lived on the Other Side of Batavia—the place where good-wives and housekeepers scrubbed their faces and their floors and condemned to the workhouse anyone who didn’t meet their high standards of physical and moral neatness.

Aidan pressed her damp hands to her skirt, wiping away sudden drops of perspiration. “Perhaps I’ll come.” She lifted her chin and forced her lips to part in a curved, still smile. “But I don’t need a nursemaid. If you agree to teach me, I’ll work hard. I want to learn.”

“Indeed.” His eyes flashed with something that might have been admiration or humor, then his eyes fell upon the drawing on the table. “Do you mind if I keep this?” he asked.

“No, please do,” Aidan answered, amazed that he would want anything she had done.

He took the sketch, rolled it up, then stood and bowed as formally as if she were the Queen of England. A group of barmaids watching from a nearby table tittered with laughter at his dignified gesture, but Heer Van Dyck seemed oblivious of them. After saluting her, the gentleman moved through the doorway and left Aidan alone at her table.

“Got a new gentleman friend, Irish Annie?” A sailor yelled over the noise of the tavern. “I could show you a better time than that old goat.”

“You’ll not show me any kind of time, haven’t I said so before?” Aidan called back, rising from her chair. “And if you can’t tell an honest gentleman when you see one, then you, sir, don’t have both oars in the water.”

Undiluted laughter rang through the room as she walked back to the bar.

Schuyler Van Dyck,” Orabel mused, fingering the damp little card. She and Aidan were sitting in the small chamber Bram leased behind the tavern, the only place where Aidan and the other women felt they were not on public display.

“Van Dyck,” Aidan repeated. She leaned back upon one of the loosely stuffed pallets that served as a mattress. “Sort of a stuffy-sounding name, isn’t it? I imagine he’s right up there with the Vanderveers and the Van Diemens—”

“He seemed like a nice man.” Orabel pushed a pile of soiled garments out of the way, lay back, and gazed dreamily at the ceiling. “I think you should accept his offer. Even if he can only teach you for a few days, it wouldn’t hurt you to go to his house and enjoy a bit of the good life.” She turned on her side and smiled at Aidan. “Can you imagine what they serve in his house? Real tea with sugar, Aidan, and sweet biscuits. Doesn’t that sound a sight better than the gruel and ale Bram gives us?”

“I don’t know.” Aidan rolled over and propped her head on her hand. “What good will only a few lessons do? He’ll have to leave, and I’ll know a wee bit more about painting—but what good will that do me here in the tavern? I’ll still be nothing but a barmaid, Orabel.”

“Being a barmaid’s not the worst thing in the world.” Orabel’s voice was soft with hurt. “And you’re luckier than most of us.”

Aidan bit her lip, shamed into silence by her own thoughtlessness. Bram couldn’t afford to put all the girls to work in the tavern; as a favor to Lili he usually kept Aidan pouring at the bar. But Orabel, Sofie, Brigit, and several of the others had to pick pockets and beg for money enough to eat. Though they rarely spoke of it, Aidan knew they sometimes found other ways to earn their keep.

“I’m sorry, Orabel.” Aidan shrank from her friend’s wounded expression. “I’m truly sorry. I’d give anything if I had enough money to get us both out of here. I’d buy us a little house on the other side of town where we could live in peace, and we’d be genteel ladies. No drunken seamen around, no bossy Bram. No fights, no one cursing in our ears all the livelong day, no threats of the workhouse …

Aidan’s voice trailed away as a deep, painful blush washed up from Orabel’s throat and lit her face. “That would be nice, Aidan.
But I’m not expecting anything from you or anybody else. I’m fine. I’m really fine.”

Aidan closed her eyes for a moment, regretting her words. Two years before, frightened, fragile, and slightly daft from her experience on an ocean-going ship, Orabel had disembarked in Batavia. Her parents had sailed with her from England, but both had succumbed to a mysterious ague that plagued the passengers. With no protector aboard ship, thirteen-year-old Orabel had been attacked by drunken seamen and abandoned on the wharf—forlorn, orphaned, and pregnant.

Lili and the others had taken the child in. Sofie tried to teach Orabel the finer points of picking a sailor’s pocket, but the girl was too shy and hesitant to be much good at filching a man’s money belt. Orabel found herself working with Aidan in the tavern, and as the girl’s pregnancy progressed, Lili assigned Aidan to the task of caring for her.

One hot day in May, the baby came much too soon. The infant, blue and frail, spilled into Aidan’s waiting hands and died without uttering a single cry. Weeping silently, Aidan wrapped the baby in an old shawl and left it on the church doorstep, knowing the minister would give the baby a proper burial in the pauper’s graveyard.

Throughout the ordeal of childbirth, Orabel never uttered a word or shed a tear. After a week of silent mourning, she rose from her bed, dressed, and went out to the corner as if she’d been born to the role of streetwalker. With her wan complexion, petite frame, and cornflower blue eyes, “Sweet Kate” brought Bram and Lili a great deal of money.

But Aidan knew Orabel hated her life. She had not been born to play the guttersnipe; some twist of fate had simply placed her in a role for which she was disastrously well-suited.

“Well, girls, fancy finding you here when there’s work to be done.” Lili’s voice, breathless and mocking, broke into Aidan’s thoughts as the woman came into the room. “A bit soon, isn’t it,
to be resting on your laurels? Last time I checked, there was a room of thirsty men waiting in the tavern, or could I have been seeing things?”

Aidan frowned as her mother loomed over her and continued her diatribe: “How much did you earn this morning, dearies? A gold florin? A guilder? Surely a king’s fortune rests in your pockets, or you’d not be here lollygagging about when there is work to be done.”

Wordlessly, Orabel held the small rectangular card under Lili’s nose.

“What’s this?” Lili eyed the card suspiciously.

“An elderly gentleman’s calling card,” Orabel answered. “He watched Aidan draw, and he’s offered to give her lessons.”

“Lessons?” Lili cocked an eyebrow at the girl. “Aidan knows how to read and write, for all the good those lessons did her. And it’s too late for either of you to be learning anything new, haven’t I said so? You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.” Her painted mouth spread into a thin-lipped smile. “It’s nearly too late for you to be marrying, and you’ll never find a husband if you’re laying about in this room whilst the men are out in the tavern!”

“I don’t want a husband!” Aidan snapped, jerking upright. Resentment struggled with affection as she stared across the empty space between them. “Heer Van Dyck is an artist, a respectable gentleman, and he has agreed to teach me a few things about art. Perhaps it will not amount to anything, but I will never know if I don’t take the chance!”

“Teach you? About
art?”
Lili’s shook her head contemptuously. “Aidan, lassie, that’s the silliest thing I’ve ever heard. What kind of food will art put on the table? How are you supposed to clothe yourself with pictures? In faith, will paintings buy shoes for your feet? No! Only rich folk have time and money to fiddle with such things.”

“He’s willing to teach me,” Aidan repeated, plunging on carelessly. “And I trust him. He’s a good man, a real gentleman.”

“’Tis a bit strange, don’t you think, that a gentleman of wealth
and position should be taking such an interest in you?” Lili paused, her tobacco-stained teeth shining faintly in the dim light of the room. “Have you stopped to think that maybe he’s got immodest designs on you? You’re a pretty lass, in case you’ve forgotten, and I’ll not have my daughter being some gentleman’s mistress when she could win an honest husband.”

“He doesn’t want me like that.” Aidan spoke slowly, straining to hold her temper. She sat up and pushed a wayward curl from her eyes, watching as two deep lines of worry appeared between Lili’s brows. Lili loved her, to be sure, but that love was sufficient to drive Aidan to distraction. Lili loved her enough to allow Aidan to work in the tavern instead of joining the girls on the street; she loved her enough to criticize her appearance, her way of walking, her way of speech, even her way of thinking. But Lili didn’t understand her daughter. She had no idea of the passions and thoughts that burned in Aidan’s heart, of Aidan’s heartfelt conviction that she was not meant to live this life.

“I approached
him
, Mother,” Aidan said again, tucking the renegade strand of white hair behind her ear. The other girls said the singular white streak, which grew like a weed from Aidan’s left temple, was proof that Aidan had been set apart for some special destiny. Lili didn’t understand
that
either. Her own hair was still full and brown, even at her advanced age. She was always harping on Aidan, telling her to cut the white streak out, to color it with wine, to hide it beneath a cap, but Aidan steadfastly refused. The brazen mark that set her apart, that would have made her extremely identifiable if she were ever caught snitching a gentleman’s purse, only reinforced her conviction that she was different.

“Heer Van Dyck would not have spoken to me if I had not approached him,” she told her mother now. “I heard about his art, and I wanted to know more. And so I waited for him, and I spoke to him before he could slip by. And I hoped that he would listen, and would see my art. Though he can’t help me for long, he has promised to help me while he can.”

“He’s an old man, you say? Old men tend to be daft,” Lili countered stubbornly. “You are being foolish as well, lassie. You’ll be sorry when you come to harm in his house. All I have done to keep you safe and pure will be for nothing!”

Aidan’s eyes fell upon Orabel. “Then I’ll take Orabel with me when I visit his house.” She winked at her friend. “And while I’m talking to Heer Van Dyck, Orabel can look around. Who knows, maybe she’ll spy a bag of Dutch florins within reach at the front door.”

“Or a handsome son in the parlor!” Orabel added, joining in the joke.

But Lili just stared at her daughter, and Aidan could find no answering trace of humor in her mother’s eyes.

H
eer Van Dyck.” Standing in the doorway of the library, the housekeeper spoke hesitantly, as if about to say something she knew she would regret.

Schuyler looked up from his letter and saw that a warning cloud had settled upon the woman’s features. “What is it, Gusta?”

“There are two young women—slatterns, really—at the door. They say they are Aidan O’Connor and Orabel.” The housekeeper’s thin mouth drew downward in distaste. “The other woman gave no surname, of course.”

Schuyler pushed himself back from his desk, surprised beyond speech. The girl had come! He had been right to invite her; God knew she would respond.

“Ja
, bring them in at once.” Hurriedly he sprinkled sand over the wet ink that glistened on his parchment. As Gusta moved away, Schuyler shook his head and slid the letter to a corner of his desk. In spite of himself, he chuckled at the thought of his housekeeper’s dour disapproval. He would love to have seen Aidan O’Connor’s encounter with Gusta at the door. He had the distinct impression that the fiercely opinionated housekeeper might have met her match in the young artist.

The wide door creaked open, and the two young women walked in, followed by Gusta’s stalwart form. Aidan led the way, moving with the hard grace of a woman who has total control of herself, her manner as regal as any highborn woman in Amsterdam. He rested his chin on his hand, welcoming the opportunity to
examine her under the more genteel circumstances of his library. She had said she was twenty and she looked her age, though her countenance still maintained a youthful flush of innocence. She was slender, of medium height and delicate features, and from her left temple that remarkable white streak coursed through her riotous red hair like lightning through a fiery sunset sky.