Chapter 33

Through rotted-cherry tendrils of pipe smoke, I look at my soap-chapped hands, now clenched on my lap. These are Bruyningh hands. A rich man’s blood runs through them. Ship-owning blood. Who is this girl called Cornelia? She is a stranger to me.

I hear the glug of wine as Nicolaes Bruyningh refills his goblet. “Do you not remember seeing me as a little one?” he asks as he pours. “I would walk by your house, just to get a glimpse of you.”

An image fights its way into the turmoil in my brain. I see the Gold Mustache Man, pushing back his hat to listen to me, the bristly gold hair of his mustache shining in the sun. My heart swells. How I wanted him to be my friend, to be my vader. The being inside me had yearned for him, blood calling out to blood, knowing something that I did not.

Now the image of the younger Gold Mustache Man dissolves into the present Nicolaes Bruyningh, clean shaven, hard faced, and with his head cocked as if listening for my thoughts. He smiles as if he hears them. “You liked the doll, didn’t you?”

Even as I picture my precious ivory-faced doll, my mind wanders to another place. I am feeling the rain soaking my hair and beads pressing into my palm as my insides roil in misery. I see the Gold Mustache Man, slipping on the bricks, running away.

“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.