Chapter 11

It is a rare bright day in March. The sun shines into the water of the canal, giving it the brown and cloudy look of beef broth. I slog over van Uylenburgh’s bridge with Vader’s quickly unfurling canvas. What a sight I must be—the canvas is as heavy as a calf and as hard to hold as one, too, and the linen strips I hastily wrapped around it before I stole it out of the house are unwinding like bandages from a neglected wound. Curse you, Titus, for suggesting I bring it here. We do not need the money this badly. I would rather starve than have Carel come to the door and find the madman’s daughter wrestling with this flapping beast. A well-bred girl my age is supposed to trip daintily down the street with her maid by her side, not haul ungainly wares across town like a dockworker.

I knock, praying for the maid to answer or another student or even van Uylenburgh himself—anyone but Carel.

The door creaks open on rusty hinges. Carel Bruyningh stands in the entrance in his shirtsleeves. “Yes?”

The minute I see his handsome face, I know I was the dullest of simpletons to think that if I brushed my hair, put on a clean cap and collar, and cleansed my teeth with a piece of straw, I would be presentable enough for the likes of him.

“I am Cornelia, daughter of—”

“I know who you are.”

I hold back my groan. Of course he does. Everyone knows the daughters of madmen and criminals.

Well, now that I have made a sight of myself and ruined the chance I never had with him anyway, I might as well get on with business. “My brother said Mijnheer van Uylenburgh had a buyer for this picture.”

“Here, that must be heavy.”

He is taller than me—Titus’s height, but more well muscled. I dare not look at his golden curls as he takes the canvas from my arms, but oh, I can smell him. Salty bread, green leaves, and soap. I breathe deeply.

“Are you well?” he asks.

A startled snort escapes me. “Yes.”

“I thought maybe you had a cold.”

“No. I am fine.” Why can I not behave like a normal girl? Why must I always be my vader’s coarse daughter? I might as well scratch my armpits and spit.

He folds back a corner of the canvas that has flopped open. “Which picture is this?” He speaks as if we were two respectable people in the habit of discussing art.

I compose my voice. “It is a family group, as Mijnheer van Uylenburgh requested for his buyer.”

“Really?” He catches at the canvas as it slithers onto the stoop. “Van Uylenburgh found someone?” he says, scrambling to pick it up.

The painting appears not to have been hurt. I bob in a flustered curtsy. I am going to kill Titus. “I am sorry to trouble you. I must have misunderstood. It must have been another dealer—”

“Hello?” It’s a man’s voice. “Is that Rembrandt’s girl?”

Gerrit van Uylenburgh comes to the doorway. Without his large hat, he is a whole other creature, like a snail without its shell. He is just a mite of a man, with dark-lashed blue eyes, a turned-up nose, and little hair on his narrow head. What remains of his locks starts just above his ears and hangs to his shoulders in a wispy black veil.

“Is this the family group Titus was telling me about?” he says.

Titus, the brother I’m going to murder? “Yes, mijnheer.”

“Come in. Let me see this thing. It was a private deal,” he tells Carel when he sees Carel’s look of confusion.

Silently cursing Titus, I step inside the entrance hall and look around as Carel lets the canvas slump to the floor and van Uylenburgh gets on his knees to examine it. Though the blue and white floor tiles glisten and the dark wood of the walls gleams, the air seethes with the scent of boiling mutton and onions. Through this sheep-scented miasma, I see the walls are hung with paintings of historical subjects rendered in smooth, bright colors. They will sell fast, no doubt. From what Titus tells me, such paintings are all the rage, though to me, they are as empty of emotion as a China plate. In spite of all their roughness, I prefer Vader’s paintings—perhaps because of it. Somehow, through those slashes of paint, the inner person comes to the surface. How does Vader do it? How does he make Baby van Roop and all the love he feels for his moeder—the same deep love Titus feels for Vader—come alive in dabs of pigment arranged on the canvas at my feet?

I notice Carel watching me. Shame, then anger wells up inside me. I must be a curiosity to him, like the arm in the jar in Vader’s studio.

Gerrit van Uylenburgh stands up. “I saw you at the wedding,” he says, brushing off the knees of his black breeches. “You are all grown up now. How old are you?”

“Almost fourteen.” Just give me the money and I shall leave.

He nods. “Well, I suppose the old man keeps you busy.”

“Yes, mijnheer.”

“He hasn’t changed a bit, I see. Does what he pleases when he pleases.”

“Yes, mijnheer.” I glance at the door.

“Well, we aren’t here to disparage your father, are we?” He fluffs back the remains of his hair. “As I told Titus, I might have a buyer for this piece. How much does your vader ask?”

I look at him stupidly. “I can’t say.”

“He sent you here with a painting to sell and you don’t know the price?”

Tears of frustration burn at my throat. It was all I could do to lug the canvas out of the house while Vader was on a walk along the river. I was so occupied with getting away with the painting while not sweating onto the fresh cap I had donned in case I saw Carel that I had not thought of the selling price.

“Cagey as ever—my vader warned me about him,” van Uylenburgh says. “Doesn’t want to limit his offer, does he? Well, this kind of rough thing doesn’t fetch much, no matter what kind of game your vader wants to play. But the buyer did ask specifically for this picture.”

“May I ask,” I say, “who it is?” Titus would want to know.

“He wishes to remain anonymous.” Van Uylenburgh glances at Carel. “At least until after the purchase is made. Then he will reveal himself.” He holds open the door. “I shall send word of his offer. Thank you for bringing the painting. It must have been a beast to carry.”

I cannot move. As eager as I was for buchts, I had not thought of the possibility of returning home without any. Stupid! Had I not heard Vader complain a thousand times how slow buyers were to pay? Now I have nothing with which to calm Vader’s temper when he finds the picture missing.

“I have got other clients coming soon.” Van Uylenburgh looks over my head in case I had not caught his meaning.

“Dank u wel.” I bob my good-bye and hasten away.

Outside, the fishy smell of the canal quickly overtakes the sheepy odor of the house of van Uylenburgh. I am thinking how Vader is going to roar, when I hear someone call, “Cornelia!”

Carel strides toward me, the tassels of his collar bouncing on his taut chest. He has run out without his cassock. I touch my cap, then my throat. Why had I not worn Moeder’s red beads? I had them in my hand, but I am so stupid about them. I’ve done nothing wrong, I can wear them all I want. Now I look but plain and young.

“I’m glad your vader’s picture has a buyer,” he says.

Vader again. I start walking along the canal.

He falls in stride beside me. “I could not get it out of my mind after I saw it,” he says. “It was almost as if you could feel what was inside of each person.”

I glance at him.

He looks over his shoulder. “I had to get out of there. I am apprenticed to Ferdinand Bol, who has got a studio in van Uylenburgh’s house, but van Uylenburgh thinks I am his errand boy. He works me to the bone if I let him.” When he smiles, the sunlight catches his golden lashes. His eyes are the bright blue of a jay’s wing.

My gaze dives for the bricks of the walkway. “How soon will van Uylenburgh pay? Not that it matters.”

“It might be weeks. Buyers are notorious for not paying until their arms are twisted. I don’t know who this one is—some are worse than others. The richer they are, the slower they pay.”

“That’s not fair.”

“That is the way it is.” We stop at the bridge. A brisk March wind blows his blond curls off his forehead. His skin is tawny, almost as golden as his hair. At that moment, the death bells of the Westerkerk sound, their deep ringing almost as loud at this remove as at home.

“Someone has died again,” he says.

I notice the sprinkling of golden freckles on his face when he frowns. “Yes.”

“Does it seem to you that they have been ringing more than usual these days?”

I thought only I noticed them. “Are they?”

“I don’t know. I suppose I could count them. I don’t remember them going so often, not since the beginning of …” He scowls and takes a breath.

His frown dissolves like sunlight in the murky water of the canal. “Guess what?” he says, smiling. “I know someone who has met you.”

Something twists in my stomach. Has someone been saying bad things again about my family? “Who?” I say, too fast.

He holds up his hands in innocence. “Just my uncle! I saw him at the shipyard after you came to van Uylenburgh’s last week. He said he knows you.”

“He does?” Carel has talked about me to his uncle? I pull my cap down over my ears. I should have taken the time to wash my hair. I should have ironed my apron. I should have worn the beads. I should have done everything differently. “I must have been too young when we met—I don’t remember him. But Titus does.”

Carel laughs. “You must have been the freshest infant. Uncle Nicolaes is a hard one to forget. He’s quite charming.”

We walk to the top of the bridge. Carel picks up a stone and drops it into the canal. We watch the rings spread across the water.

“So you want to be a painter?” I ask.

“I have known it since I was little. After Vader would take me to our shipyard, I would come home and draw ships all over his ledgers. He didn’t thank me for that.”

“I suppose not!”

“I did make a mess of those ledgers. But they were some pretty good ships.” He smiles when I laugh.

“My vader said painting was not a profession worthy of someone of our sort,” he says. “But I am not doing it for the money. The family business will provide me with enough of that.”

I frown at the windmill on its mound at the end of the street, its white cloth sails turning briskly in the same breeze that is ruffling Carel’s curls. Handsome and rich. Why is it that those who least need more blessings are the ones who get them?

“I think I shall be admitted to the guild early,” he says. “At least I hope so. My masterpiece is nearly ready. Not bad for a sixteen-year-old.”

Sixteen. Two years older than me. Two years from now, both of us will be of marrying age.

“What kind do you do?” I ask.

“Kind?”

“Of painting—still life, landscape, genre?”

“Oh. Still life. I can do a half-peeled lemon that makes you think you should finish peeling it. I do good bread, too—do not laugh!”

“I am not,” I say, laughing.

“It is glass that is tough. I am just figuring out how to capture light on the surface. It’s very difficult, you know.”

“Light is always the hardest thing to get right. We take it for granted, but in painting, it is everything.”

“True, light does affect everything—color, shape, depth.” He lays his hand on the stone wall of the bridge. The sunshine lights up the tiny golden hairs on his knuckles. “This same hand held just so would be painted differently depending on whether the scene was indoors or out. If outside, the time of day and amount of shade would affect it. If inside, whether it was lit by daylight or candle. One hand—many kinds of light.”

“My vader once painted a hand with candlelight shining through it. You could faintly see the bones within.”

He stares at me. “That is brilliant. Was it beautiful?”

I lean over to look at the water. “Actually, it was frightening.”

“Frightening?”

“It reminds you that there is a whole other being inside you.”

I can feel him watching me as I push away from the wall. “I have never talked to a girl about such things,” he says, following me down the slope of the bridge. “The girls I’m introduced to know nothing but gloves and gowns and necklaces. You know about things that matter.”

I risk pausing to look back at him. Our eyes meet. We glance away quickly, but when we resume walking, the air around us is different. Lighter. Though merchants and maids and housewives rush by us, their capes snapping in the wind, we float forward in our own special bubble.

We come to the end of the bridge. “I have to go back,” he says.

I cannot speak. Anything I say can burst our delicate sphere.

“We shall talk again,” he says.

I listen to his footsteps on the bricks until I hear them no more, then run, holding in great whoops of joy.

Neel is in the crowded front room, one of Vader’s straw figures before his canvas. “There you are. Your vader has been searching all over for you.”

“Hello, Neel!” I want to kiss his sober old face. I hang my cloak on a peg and dance toward the kitchen.

Neel follows. “Mijnheer’s family portrait is missing. The one Titus claimed yesterday to have a buyer for.”

My breath stops. “Does Vader know it is gone?”

“No, I don’t think so. Cornelia, tell me you do not know where it has gone.”

Relief pours through my veins. “Hungry for some cheese, Neel?” I open a crock, searching for one of those balls of Edam Titus had brought.

“Tell me you did not listen to Titus. That painting is worth more than just some guilders.”

I tip the lid of another crock. “How much is it worth, do you think?”

“Do you not understand? Its worth cannot be measured by gold.”

“Neel, please, calm yourself. They’ll cart you off to the Dolhuis.” I chuckle at the thought of Serious Neel surrounded by the raving inmates of the asylum.

“This is no jest, Cornelia. That picture should never be bought or sold. It is bigger than that.”

“Nothing is bigger than money.”

“You don’t know what you’re saying.” Neel crosses his arms as I brush by him to look on a shelf. “You would do well to be more of your father’s daughter.”

Thank you, Neel Suythof, for thinking I am not like my vader. But when I turn around, he looks so serious that I laugh. “I suppose you, too, believe it was painted by God.”

“Have you really looked at that painting, Cornelia?”

I frown. If only he knew how much I had. “Yes.”

“How else would you explain the truth of emotion in that picture? Is it so impossible for God to have guided him? Have you another explanation?”

I pull a cloth off a lump next to the spice grater. “Ah, here’s the cheese! Would you—”

Neel is gone.

Oh, well, I think as I pare the green rind off a wedge I have cut. I shall eat alone. There is more for me this way. But the cheese loses its savor as I chew it, alone in the damp kitchen. How does one explain how Vader perfectly captured a child’s love for his parent on canvas? It seems beyond a regular mortal, let alone one as gruff and crude and palsied as Vader. How did he do it?