I Am Rembrandt's Daughter (15 page)

There’s a man over by the corner of the Town Hall. Though his face is hidden by the shadow of his hat, he appears to be staring at us through the crowd. Magdalena’s beauty must be attracting him. She is probably used to such attention.

“Those are pretty beads,” Magdalena says, pointing at me with her feather. “Coral, are they?”

“I think so. I don’t know.” I touch the strand around my neck. I had taken them out from under my pillow, where they’d been hiding for years, and had thrown them on this morning at the last minute, after I had looked in the mirror and seen the pale brown ghost standing before it. I needed something to brighten me up, and the necklace was the only good piece I had.

“Coral is sweet,” Magdalena says. “I had several stones set in a collar for my dog. The brown and white of his ears are so pretty against the red.” She blinks as she smiles, indicating that only a hound would be caught dead wearing the stones.

The man by the Town Hall has left his post and is picking his way through the crowd. He’s moving in our direction. Does he know Magdalena?

“I prefer pearl,” Magdalena says. “Titus gave me these for our wedding.” She pushes back a mass of shiny ringlets with her feather. “Are they not pretty?”

I pull my gaze from the man to look at the pearl drop, large as a chestnut, dangling from her thin earlobe. How nice for Titus to have wed so well. A few months ago he couldn’t even afford bread.

Magdalena lifts her chin and smiles. “Do you know this man?” she says out of the side of her dainty mouth.

The man from the Town Hall steps in our path. He holds his thick but upright frame, suited in fine black wool, in the easy way of a man used to being admired. A friendly grin creases the coarse red flesh of his clean-shaven lower face—his skin has the look of someone fond of his ale, or perhaps too long at sea. Still, there is something boyishly handsome about the jaw visible beneath the wide brim of his hat. Even without seeing his eyes, I can tell he’s a man’s man, and a woman’s man, and he knows it.

“Good day, mevrouw.” He sweeps low in a bow to Magdalena and removes his hat, revealing stray filaments of gold in his graying mass of curls, then replaces it before I can take measure of his face. “I hope I have not alarmed you. I am an old friend of your husband.” He takes her hand. “Nicolaes Bruyningh.”

I stifle a gasp. Carel’s uncle.

He does not notice me. “Congratulations on your marriage,” he says to Magdalena. “I saw you and Titus at the jeweler’s shop several weeks back, when I was at the goldsmith’s next door, but did not want to disturb you, especially if Titus was on the brink of making a purchase you greatly desired.” He smiles, then kisses her hand. “It is good to make your acquaintance at last.”

Magdalena laughs. Her cheeks are tinged with the palest pink as she flutters her feather. “The pleasure is mine.”

He turns to me. “And this is—?”

I strain to see into the shadows of his hat. There is something quite familiar about him.

“This is my sister-in-law,” Magdalena says, “Cornelia.”

He takes my hand in his own, which is surprisingly dry and hard, as if his insides have solidified into stone. “So this is the famous Cornelia. I have heard about you from my nephew Carel.”

“You have?”

Magdalena laughs fondly at my clumsy response, as one would at a trained monkey.

“Oh yes,” says Nicolaes Bruyningh. “All good things, I assure you. He says you have an eye for art. You must get that from your vader.”

I glow from within. Carel spoke of my talent? “Yes, mijnheer.”

“You and he must be very close.”

Does he mean my vader or Carel? I try harder to see under his hat to determine whom he might mean, but he pulls back.

He eases the brim of his hat down farther over his face. “It is good,” he says suavely, “to keep family ties.”

I know enough from reading
Maidenly Virtues
to nod politely, though I have no idea what he is trying to say.

“With my brother living next door, I have been able to watch Carel and his brothers and sisters grow up right under my nose,” he says. “I heard them cry when they were hungry, laugh when they were playing, whimper when they were sick. It was almost like raising them myself—without the sleepless nights, of course. Carel is the baby of the family, you know.”

I strive for the tone of a merchant’s well-bred daughter. “He speaks most admiringly of his older brothers and sisters, mijnheer.”

“Yes, well, perhaps I should have you and Carel around for dinner sometime,” he says. “An old bachelor like me could use some lively company at table.”

“Oh,” Magdalena says, “that would be most kind, would it not, Cornelia? Titus and I just had her dine with us ourselves. She is a complete delight.”

“I imagine she is. My nephew was not born a fool. Well, I must not detain you ladies from your business.” Nicolaes Bruyningh bows. “Good day.”

“Imagine that,” Magdalena says as soon as we have walked a sufficient distance away from him. “Young Carel is speaking of you. When he gets a little older, he will be quite the catch, you know. The Bruyninghs are wonderfully wealthy. All those ships.”

I shiver with excitement as I picture myself dressed in glossy silks and drinking a cup of chocolate in a stately mansion. But such joys would not be half the pleasure of just being the wife of Carel Bruyningh, and having his iris-blue gaze upon me each morning … and each night. My knees buckle with momentary weakness.

“I tell you who you must watch out for,” says Magdalena as we continue across the square, “is that apprentice boy your vader keeps, Ned, Will …”

“Neel?” I look over my shoulder. Nicolaes Bruyningh stands where we left him, though housewives and carts and groups of men cross before him. When he sees me looking, he tips his hat. I turn back around, blushing. I have seen him before. I know I have.

“I suppose that is his name,” says Magdalena. “The boy who came to dinner on Sunday. Rather a serious young thing. Anyhow, do you know if he has money?”

“Neel? I don’t know. Enough to pay my vader. Why?”

“Because the boy is obviously smitten with you.”

“Neel?” We round the corner onto a narrow street lined with neatly kept step-gabled houses. I laugh even though my feet are threatening mutiny in my moeder’s shoes.

“Oh, yes, my dear, your Neel. He could not keep his eyes off you.”

“If that’s true, it would be only because he had no other place to look.”

“Sister,” she scolds, “you know that’s not true.”

It appears she is not jesting with me. “Neel could not care about me in a romantic way. I have given him no reason whatsoever to have such feelings.”

Now it is Magdalena’s turn to laugh. “Dear sister, since when has that stopped a boy from falling in love with a girl?”

Just then, her little fingers dig into my arm.

“What is it?” I ask.

She stabs her feather at a blue-shuttered house just ahead. The blue of its door has been slashed with a red-painted
P
.

She tugs me back in the direction in which we came. “I had hoped the contagion would visit only the poor this time. The rest of us now know well enough to keep clean and free of bad vapors. But this is a good street—I have a wine merchant down here. These persons should know better.”

Like a corpse in a canal, a red-painted
P
floats to the surface of my memory. I remember hands upon my arms, pulling me back. I hear a little girl crying …

“Fortunately,” Magdalena says, “I know a different way to Mijnheer Brower’s establishment.” I hurry after her on pained feet as she retreats to the Dam, then sails down another side street. We dash this way and that down several passageways, arriving at last at a snug brick shopfront.

“Here we are!” she says.

I enter the store, newly aware of my shoddy brown dress as a stout man with a thin smile comes around the counter to greet us.

“Magdalena Jansdochter!” he cries, using Magdalena’s familiar name.

He takes her hand and bows, exposing the gray wisps of hair that escape like smoke from his shiny pate, while equally as cozily, she coos, “Jan Pieterszoon! Johanna says you have some wonderful new stock. My sister-in-law and I wish to look at it.”

As if appraising a milk cow at sale, he surveys my shoes, gown, and collar, pausing a moment on my beads. His blink tells me he would not collar even a dog with such lowly stones.

“Oh, look at this brocade!” Magdalena has seized a bolt of the richest turquoise and gold. “Jan Pieterszoon, this is heavenly. Where is it from?”

“India.” Mijnheer Brower abandons his scrutiny of me to rush to her side. He brings out bolts of velvets and silks and lengths of shimmering satins. Magdalena exclaims over each as I keep watch on the door, praying no fine customers will come.

The clock in the church outside has rung after two rotations and my feet have settled into a low roar of pain when at last Magdalena returns to the brocade that had caught her eye when we first arrived. She lowers her small nose to the heavy bolt of turquoise and gold. “Odd smell.”

Mijnheer Brower rubs his hands. “Silkworms. They have their own odor. It is the mark of quality.”

“Oh, I have smelled silkworms before. This is different. It smells dirty.” Magdalena sniffs. “Like slaves.”

“I can assure you, Magdalena Jansdochter, this cloth was never on a slaver. It was carried on a good clean ship. One of the East India Company boats.”

“That’s what it is!” Magdalena exclaims. “Indian curry! The smell of the brown little men you trade with. It will not wash out, you know.”

I cringe at her cruel words, expecting Mijnheer Brower to protest, but he only sighs. “What price, mevrouw?”

She twirls her feather between her fingers. “One guilder a yard.”

“But it is worth nine!”

“And garlic.” She sniffs. “Is that garlic I detect?”

“Mevrouw, even six guilders a yard would be a loss for me. This is the most precious silk.”

“Very well, mijnheer. I understand.”

“I knew you would, mevrouw. A man must cover his expenses.”

“Yes, of course.” She rubs her pearl earring. “Well, Cornelia and I must be off now. We hear Mijnheer Hogestyn has a new shipment of silks and we’re in a bit of a hurry. But perhaps I should take a quick look at your remnants. Poor Cornelia’s gown was caught out in the rain. We slipped in here incognito, but we must have something made up quickly. Show me what you have in reasonably priced remnants.”

I glance at her, taken in surprise by her story about my tatters. Are all of her words more subject to her fancy than the truth?

Another turn of the clock, and we are leaving with an agreement that Magdalena’s servant will be picking up two lengths of material in the morrow, one of serviceable dark blue bought at one guilder for the lot, the other turquoise and gold, bought at the price of three guilders a yard. Though I slink out of the shop in shame for her meanness, she trips down the porch step, waving her feather in victory.

Dutifully, I say, “Thank you, Magdalena—”

“Sister.”

“—s
ister
, for the cloth. It has been a lovely day.” I sigh, dreaming of the moment I can release my feet from the torture of my shoes and my head from the agony of listening to her manipulations. Not long now, I tell myself, not long.

“Do you think we are going home?”

“I—I thought you might be tired.”

“Tired? Me?” She flicks her feather in protest. “Not at all! Such a day invigorates me. Oh, no, no, no, we must go to the dressmaker and get you fitted first.”

“But I cannot afford—”

“Hush. Like the cloth, this is my treat.” She wrinkles her little nose in a conspiratory smile. “You must look pretty should Mijnheer Bruyningh come through on his offer for dinner.” She sees me bite my lip in fear. “But do not worry. Frankly, it was probably just talk. Most of what people say is just talk. Have you not found that to be true, sister?”

She does not wait for my answer.

“You cannot imagine the bargains I make with the dressmaker.” Magdalena’s laugh is as sweet as the scent coming from the flowerseller’s stall. “She knows she must deal or she will not get paid, and something is better than nothing, is it not?”

Chapter
20

Hendrickje at an Open Door
.
Ca. 1656. Canvas.

The bells of the Westerkerk have long since rung nine o’clock and crickets chirp into the warm May dark as I trot home from Jannetje Zilver’s house. Moeder is in the kitchen when I arrive, peeling away mushy brown layers of rot from an onion by the smoky light of an oil lamp. “I was beginning to worry about you!” she says. “You really should not be out. You avoided any of the streets with
P
’s on their houses, didn’t you? Mevrouw Bicker says she’s heard of two new cases on the Bloemgracht today. That is so close.”

“Jannetje Zilver’s street is nice,” I say with a sniff as if it were mine. “Jannetje Zilver’s moeder says people don’t get the plague around there.”

Moeder stops peeling for a moment, then with a sigh, continues again. “Are you hungry? I am just getting dinner—I have been waiting for your vader.”

“I ate at Jannetje’s,” I say, watching her pare the remains of the onion into see-through slices. “We had expensive white bread, mincetart, and asparagus.” I look down my nose at the loaf of coarse rye on the table. “Have you ever had asparagus?”

“No. Will you get me the crock of butter, pretty puss?”

“Do not call me pretty puss.”

She looks up, surprised, then gets the crock herself. “Will you fetch your vader at the tavern in the park? He must be hungry. Anyhow, curfew is coming, and they are more strict now with the contagion afoot. He should not be out after ten. We don’t want any more trouble with the warden.”

I skip out into the dark, gladly exchanging the stink of rotting onions, smoke, and paint for the comforting smell of fishy water and wet stone. As I trot over the bridge, a peacock screams from inside the park; something drops into the canal with a hollow plop. Inside the hedges, a fountain sings its watery tune. If only I could find three stuivers, I could go with Jannetje into the maze and finally see that fountain. Moeder is not going
.