Girl with a Pearl Earring (22 page)

Pieter the father lowered his voice. “Only that van Ruijven’s cook was saying you are to sit with her master for a painting.”

“I know nothing of this,” I stated firmly, aware even as I said it that, as with my mother, my words had little effect. Pieter the father scooped up a handful of pigs’ kidneys. “It’s not me you should be talking to,” he said, weighing them in his hand.

I waited a few days before speaking to Maria Thins. I wanted to see if anyone would tell me first. I found her in the Crucifixion room one afternoon when Catharina was asleep and Maertge had taken the girls to the Beast Market. Tanneke was in the kitchen sewing and watching Johannes and Franciscus.

“May I speak to you, madam?” I said in a low voice.

“What is it, girl?” She lit her pipe and regarded me through the smoke. “Trouble again?” She sounded weary.

“I don’t know, madam. But I have heard a strange thing.”

“So have we all heard strange things.”

“I have heard that—that I am to be in a painting. With van Ruijven.”

Maria Thins chuckled. “Yes, that is a strange thing. They’ve been talking in the market, have they?”

I nodded.

She leaned back in her chair and puffed on her pipe. “Tell me, what would you think of being in such a painting?”

I did not know what to answer. “What would I think, madam?” I repeated dumbly.

“I wouldn’t bother to ask some people that. Tanneke, for instance. When he painted her she stood there happily pouring milk for months without a thought passing through that head, God love her. But you—no, there’s all manner of things you think but don’t say. I wonder what they are?”

I said the one sensible thing I knew she would understand. “I do not wish to sit with van Ruijven, madam. I do not think his intentions are honorable.” My words were stiff.

“His intentions are never honorable when it comes to young women.”

I nervously wiped my hands on my apron.

“It seems you have a champion to defend your honor,” she continued. “My son-in-law is no more willing to paint you with van Ruijven than you are willing to sit with him.”

I did not try to hide my relief.

“But,” Maria Thins warned, “van Ruijven is his patron, and a wealthy and powerful man. We cannot afford to offend him.”

“What will you say to him, madam?”

“I’m still trying to decide. In the meantime, you will have to put up with the rumors. Don’t answer them—we don’t want van Ruijven hearing from the market gossips that you are refusing to sit with him.”

I must have looked uncomfortable. “Don’t worry, girl,” Maria Thins growled, tapping her pipe on the table to loosen the ash. “We’ll take care of this. You keep your head down and go about your work, and not a word to anyone.”

“Yes, madam.”

I did tell one person, though. I felt I had to.

It had been easy enough to avoid Pieter the son—there were auctions all that week at the Beast Market, of animals that had been fattening all summer and autumn in the countryside and were ready for slaughter just before winter began. Pieter had gone every day to the sales.

The afternoon after Maria Thins and I spoke I slipped out to look for him at the market, just around the corner from the Oude Langendijck. It was quieter there in the afternoon than in the morning, when the auctions took place. By now many of the beasts had been driven away by their new owners, and men stood about under the plane trees that lined the square, counting their money and discussing the deals that had been made. The leaves on the trees had turned yellow and fallen to mingle with the dung and urine I could smell long before I reached the market.

Pieter the son was sitting with another man outside one of the taverns on the square, a tankard of beer in front of him. Deep in conversation, he did not see me as I stood silently near his table. It was his companion who looked up, then nudged Pieter.

“I would like to speak to you for a moment,” I said quickly, before Pieter had a chance even to look surprised.

His companion immediately jumped up and offered me his chair.

“Could we walk?” I gestured to the square.

“Of course,” Pieter said. He nodded to his friend and followed me across the street. From his expression it was not clear whether or not he was pleased to see me.

“How were the auctions today?” I asked awkwardly. I was never good at making everyday talk.

Pieter shrugged. He took my elbow to steer me around a pile of dung, then dropped his hand.

I gave up. “There has been gossip about me in the market,” I said bluntly.

“There is gossip about everyone at one time or another,” he replied neutrally.

“It’s not true what they say. I’m not going to be in a painting with van Ruijven.”

“Van Ruijven likes you. My father told me.”

“But I’m not going to be in a painting with him.”

“He is very powerful.”

“You must believe me, Pieter.”

“He is very powerful,” he repeated, “and you are but a maid. Who do you think will win that round of cards?”

“You think I will become like the maid in the red dress.”

“Only if you drink his wine.” Pieter gazed at me levelly.

“My master does not want to paint me with van Ruijven,” I said reluctantly after a moment. I had not wanted to mention him.

“That’s good. I don’t want him to paint you either.”

I stopped and closed my eyes. The close animal smell was beginning to make me feel faint.

“You’re getting caught where you should not be, Griet,” Pieter said more kindly. “Theirs is not your world.”

I opened my eyes and took a step back from him. “I came here to explain that the rumor is false, not to be accused by you. Now I’m sorry I bothered.”

“Don’t be. I do believe you.” He sighed. “But you have little power over what happens to you. Surely you can see that?”

When I did not answer he added, “If your master did want to paint a picture of you and van Ruijven, do you really think you could say no?”

It was a question I had asked myself but found no answer to. “Thank you for reminding me of how helpless I am,” I replied tartly.

“You wouldn’t be, with me. We would run our own business, earn our own money, rule our own lives. Isn’t that what you want?”

I looked at him, at his bright blue eyes, his yellow curls, his eager face. I was a fool even to hesitate.

“I didn’t come here to talk about this. I’m too young yet.” I used the old excuse. Someday I would be too old to use it.

“I never know what you’re thinking, Griet,” he tried again. “You’re so calm and quiet, you never say. But there are things inside you. I see them sometimes, hiding in your eyes.”

I smoothed my cap, checking with my fingers for stray hairs. “All I mean to say is that there is no painting,” I declared, ignoring what he had just said. “Maria Thins has promised me. But you’re not to tell anyone. If they speak to you of me in the market, say nothing. Don’t try to defend me. Otherwise van Ruijven may hear and your words will work against us.”

Pieter nodded unhappily and kicked at a bit of dirty straw.

He will not always be so reasonable, I thought. One day he will give up.

To reward him for his reasonableness, I let him take me into a space between two houses off the Beast Market and run his hands down my body, cupping them where there were curves. I tried to take pleasure in it, but I was still feeling sick from the animal smell.

Whatever I said to Pieter the son, I myself did not feel reassured by Maria Thins’ promise to keep me out of the painting. She was a formidable woman, astute in business, certain of her place, but she was not van Ruijven. I did not see how they could refuse him what he wanted. He had wanted a painting of his wife looking directly at the painter, and my master had made it. He had wanted a painting of the maid in the red dress, and had got that. If he wanted me, why should he not get me?

One day three men I had not seen before came with a harpsichord tied securely in a cart. A boy followed them carrying a bass viol that was bigger than he. They were not van Ruijven’s instruments, but from one of his relations who was fond of music. The whole house gathered to watch the men struggle with the harpsichord on the steep stairs. Cornelia stood right at the bottom—if they were to drop the instrument it would fall directly on her. I wanted to reach out and pull her back, and if it had been one of the other children I would not have hesitated. Instead I remained where I was. It was Catharina who finally insisted that she move to a safer spot.

When they got it up the stairs they took it to the studio, my master supervising them. After the men left, he called down to Catharina. Maria Thins followed her up. A moment later we heard the sound of the harpsichord being played. The girls sat on the stairs while Tanneke and I stood in the hallway, listening.

“Is that the mistress playing? Or your mistress?” I asked Tanneke. It seemed so unlike either of them that I thought perhaps he was playing and simply wanted Catharina to be his audience.

“It’s the young mistress, of course,” Tanneke hissed. “Why would he have asked her up otherwise? She’s very good, is the young mistress. She played when she was a girl. But her father kept their harpsichord when he and my mistress separated. Have you never heard young mistress complain about not being able to afford an instrument?”

“No.” I thought for a moment. “Do you think he will paint her? For this painting with van Ruijven?” Tanneke must have heard the market gossip but had said nothing of it to me.

“Oh, the master never paints her. She can’t sit still!”

Over the next few days he moved a table and chairs into the setting, and lifted the harpsichord’s lid, which was painted with a landscape of rocks and trees and sky. He spread a table rug on the table in the foreground, and set the bass viol under it.

One day Maria Thins called me to the Crucifixion room. “Now, girl,” she said, “this afternoon I want you to go on some errands for me. To the apothecary’s for some elder flowers and hyssop—Franciscus has a cough now that it’s cold again. And then to Old Mary the spinner for some wool, just enough for a collar for Aleydis. Did you notice hers is unravelling?” She paused, as if calculating how long it would take me to get from place to place. “And then go to Jan Mayer’s house to ask when his brother is expected in Delft. He lives by the Rietveld Tower. That’s near your parents, isn’t it? You may stop in and visit them.”

Maria Thins had never allowed me to see my parents apart from Sundays. Then I guessed. “Is van Ruijven coming today, madam?”

“Don’t let him see you,” she answered grimly. “It’s best if you’re not here at all. Then if he asks for you we can say you’re out.”

For a moment I wanted to laugh. Van Ruijven had us all—even Maria Thins—running like rabbits before dogs.

My mother was surprised to see me that afternoon. Luckily a neighbor was visiting and she could not question me closely. My father was not so interested. He had changed much since I’d left home, since Agnes had died. He was no longer so curious about the world outside his street, rarely asking me about the goings-on at the Oude Langendijck or in the market. Only the paintings still interested him.

“Mother,” I announced as we sat by the fire, “my master is beginning the painting that you were asking about. Van Ruijven has come over and he is setting it up today. Everyone who is to be in the painting is there now.”

Our neighbor, a bright-eyed old woman who loved market talk, gazed at me as if I had just set a roast capon in front of her. My mother frowned—she knew what I was doing.

There, I thought. That will take care of the rumors.

He was not himself that evening. I heard him snap at Maria Thins at supper, and he went out later and came back smelling of the tavern. I was climbing the stairs to bed when he came in. He looked up at me, his face tired and red. His expression was not angry, but weary, as of a man who has just seen all the wood he must chop, or a maid faced with a mountain of laundry.