The Golden Tulip (33 page)

While all the guests had made their departure, Ludolf remained alone in the apartment. The one question that was still causing him anxiety was who had entered the room and moved Amalia’s body from the couch to her bedchamber. It was greatly to his relief when Dr. Mattheusz returned and explained what he had done.

“I knew you would be puzzled when, in time, your wife’s maid told you she had left her mistress on the couch in a very weak state, virtually unable to have moved to her bedchamber alone.”

Ludolf was all gratitude. “A most kindly thought, Doctor. I thank you with all my heart. Apart from what my dear wife would have felt, had she known, it would have been a terrible thing if those three young women had entered the room and seen my wife lying dead. The shock would have been most distressing.”

Once alone again Ludolf, with his hands on his hips, surveyed Amalia’s dayroom. When a suitable time had elapsed he would have the whole decor changed here and the rooms refurnished to become integrated with the main house again instead of being a separate apartment. The Pieter de Hooch painting caught his eye. It had been wasted hanging here. He would have it rehung in a drawing room where it would be better displayed. Naturally he would have to play the role of a grieving widower for a long time to come. Yet he knew to the very day what length that period should be and, as it was already into the early hours of a new day, it would date from tomorrow.

H
ENDRICK FELT SOMEWHAT
uncertain about keeping an appointment in a house so suddenly tipped into mourning, but no message was sent to cancel it and so he set off for the van Deventer house in good time. The manservant who admitted him had bunches of black ribbon on the shoulders of his livery and two maidservants, hurrying across the reception hall, wore black lace aprons. This place of hushed voices was in sharp contrast to his own home, where friends and neighbors were calling in all the time to wish Francesca well with her apprenticeship and hand her little gifts.

Ludolf was waiting to receive him in a room where they had first played cards with Claudius and Otto. Hendrick thought it a poor choice of venue, considering the reason why he was here, but perhaps it had been deliberately selected. The new widower was in unrelieved mourning attire, even to plain black buckles on his shoes.

“It is most courteous of you to see me on such a sorrowful day,” Hendrick said after uttering conventional condolences in the sepulchral tones reserved for such times. He had taken the seat that had been offered him, although Ludolf chose to remain standing, resting a hand against the rose marble canopy of the Delft-tiled fireplace, as if showing from the start he intended to dominate this interview.

“There are matters to be talked out that can’t be delayed,” he began without preamble. “I want to marry Francesca.”

Shock and disgust shook through Hendrick. “You dare to stand there in the raiments of bereavement with your late wife barely cold—”

“This is no time for sentiment,” Ludolf broke in, his expression hard. “I have set my period of mourning for the minimum six months. After that I shall court her.”

“You take a great deal for granted!” Hendrick snorted, outraged.

Ludolf continued as if there had been no interruption. “During those first months I’ll not see her at all, except when she is at home on a visit, and then you will invite me there at all times to enable me to start my courtship without giving rise to public gossip.”

“That won’t be often,” Hendrick retorted with grim satisfaction. “Apprentices are only allowed to visit their families at Christmastide or in an emergency.”

Ludolf snapped his fingers contemptuously as if those conditions could easily be overcome. “I’ll not interrupt her apprenticeship, knowing how important it is to her, and my one aim is her happiness, but at the end of it she shall become my wife.”

“I’ll not give my consent!”

Ludolf regarded him with mild surprise, much as if a tiny gnat had dared to sting him. “What is your objection? Is she promised to someone else?”

“No.”

“Has she spoken of wishing to be anybody else’s wife?”

“No. Quite the reverse.”

“Well, then?”

Hendrick rubbed his hands uneasily over the arm ends of his chair. “She doesn’t want to stay in Holland once she has been granted membership of the Guild of St. Luke. She aims to go to Italy.”

“I’ll take her.”

Hendrick shook his head stubbornly, finding this whole interview far more difficult than the one conducted with Pieter, which had been without selfish demands. Neither had he come prepared for this sudden development. The sooner it was nipped in the bud, the better, because he had come to talk over his debts and he wanted to get on with that quickly. “Francesca is set against marriage. She wants to be an artist first and foremost with no hindrances, emotional or otherwise, to hold her back.”

Ludolf left the fireplace and strolled across to the nearest window and stood looking out into the street. “Would you prefer that I make her my mistress?”

Hendrick sprang from his seat with a huge, vibrating roar, shaking his fist. “You dare to say that to me! Her own father!”

Ludolf moved to lean back leisurely against the windowsill and folded his arms. “To whom else should I make my intentions known? They are honorable, are they not? I was simply pointing out that I intend to have her either way.”

“Damnation to you! I’m going!” Hendrick started for the door, but he did not reach it, for Ludolf had drawn the promissory notes from his sleeve.

“Aren’t you forgetting something?” Ludolf inquired drily, flicking them to and fro in the air.

Hendrick’s heightened color took on a grayish hue. “That’s a different matter altogether,” he spluttered. “My debts are between the two of us. Nobody else comes into them.”

“That’s not entirely correct. I’ll remind you that you said on oath that I could have any collateral that I required and I’ve chosen Francesca.”

Hendrick became desperate. “You surely didn’t imagine I had included my own daughter?”

“Why should I suppose otherwise? Women are men’s chattels. You have every legal right to dictate whom your daughters should marry.”

“But I have never held that attitude toward them. I’m a freedom-loving man myself and when Anna was first pregnant she and I decided that our sons and daughters should be brought up on an equal footing. We had no boys, except the stillborn infant who cost her life, but our girls have grown up with independent spirits and been encouraged to have opinions of their own!”

“But Francesca will obey your will.”

“She would never be forced into anything! You know nothing of her if you haven’t discovered that!”

“Why not try persuasion? If she should have to be told what the alternative to marrying me would mean for you and her sisters, as well as that old nurse of whom she is so fond, I can’t see her refusing me.”

“What alternative is that?” Hendrick queried cautiously, slack-mouthed with fear.

Ludolf slowly paced the room as he answered. “I would drag you through the public debtors’ court into bankruptcy and claim everything you own from the roof over your family’s heads to your paintings of Anna. You’d languish in prison, because that’s where I would put you, and your womenfolk would be confined to an almshouse for the poor.”

Hendrick dropped back into his chair and began to weep abjectly. “Merciful God! What have I done!”

Ludolf came to stand nearby and allowed time for the wretched man’s misery to sink deep into his body, mind and soul. The only sounds in the quiet room were of Hendrick’s distress and the subdued noises from the street outside. Then Ludolf spoke again.

“Take heart, my friend. I’ll be a good husband to Francesca when the time comes. There’s not another father in Amsterdam who would not jump at the chance of giving a daughter as a bride to me. She’ll want for nothing and if my generosity to her should spill over to you and her sisters I’ll raise no objection. What’s more, I’ll make a marriage gift to her of the promissory notes and she can tear them up in front of you.”

Hendrick, his face sagging like a hound’s, his eyes red-rimmed, gave a choked appeal. “As I said once before, I don’t want her or her sisters to know of my losses. That must never be!”

“Then I’ll give the notes to you. Think of it! From this day forward your debt to me is in abeyance and you may continue your life as if nothing had ever been amiss. On the day that I wed Francesca you can rejoice as you burn these scraps of paper. Your future will be assured and secure as you wish it to be. By that I mean that never again would I step in to save you from your own stupidity.”

“I’ve learned my lesson.” Hendrick bowed his head brokenly.

Ludolf eyed him cynically. Gamblers always made such vows, but at least it was certain that never again would the artist be such a fool as to go to stakes that were beyond him. A few paltry guilders would be all he would allow himself from now on. “Then it is agreed?”

“It is.” Hendrick’s head sank still lower and his voice was slow and heavy. “At the end of Francesca’s apprenticeship, and if she has not already agreed to marry you, I will inform her that she must become your wife.”

“By then my courtship will have taken full effect and I’m confident that it will never be necessary for you to make such a stipulation. Now we shall sign the marriage contracts. A lawyer was here early this morning and I had them drawn up while he was dealing with Amalia’s will and other papers as well.”

Dull-eyed and full of loathing, Hendrick looked up to see his patron take two documents from a drawer, for they would each keep one of them after signing. What sort of a man was this who could callously engage a lawyer to handle his late wife’s estate, whatever was left of it, and prepare contracts for a new marriage at the same time? Hendrick was aware of not being particularly perceptive in everyday life when his “inner eye” was not in use as when he was painting, but he knew that here, in this room in private interview, he had seen a side of Ludolf’s character that was not normally revealed. The lawyer, whose discretion could be relied upon, would have seen it that morning, but the rest of the world had no inkling of a heartlessness beyond measure.

Listlessly Hendrick took the contract Ludolf handed to him and read it through. While this was happening Ludolf flicked open the lid of a silver inkwell in readiness and tested one of the quill tips against a finger.

Hendrick looked up with a questioning frown. “Who’s this widow mentioned here?” He peered closely at the name again. “Vrouw Geetruyd Wolff?”

“I investigated the family Francesca was to stay with and considered the atmosphere there to be too lax. Therefore I’ve canceled her going to that house and arranged for Vrouw Wolff to meet her off the stage wagon tomorrow and take charge of her. One thing further.” Ludolf placed another sheet of paper before Hendrick. “This is a letter to Vrouw Wolff setting out the rules that Francesca is to obey. I wish you to copy it, so that the woman knows it comes with your parental authority. I shall see that she receives it by a special messenger, who is waiting to depart.”

As Hendrick’s eyes followed Ludolf’s writing, he gave a mirthless and exasperated laugh. “What’s this condition of Francesca being chaperoned unless she is with her sisters, or me, or with you and also being forbidden to be alone in male company at any time? My daughter is going to Delft to work. Not to jeopardize her chances by dillydallying with young men!”

“She must be protected at all times.”

“So,” Hendrick said bitterly, “you couldn’t have done all this today. You’ve been working on this agreement for some time. If your wife hadn’t died last night it would have been a bill of sale awaiting your receipt that I’d be holding now instead of a more honorable marriage contract.”

“That’s correct. I actually had one ready, but there is a clause in it that if I became a widower in the interim of three years, then Francesca would marry me as we have arranged.”

Hendrick could contain himself no longer. “You ruthless bastard!” he yelled with all the power of his lungs, shaking the contract that he held. “May you rot in hell!”

Ludolf sneered at him contemptuously. “I thought you’d come to that kind of verbal abuse sooner or later, but let there be no more of it if you want me to continue as your patron. Finish reading what has been written, copy and sign it, and then we will complete the contracts.”

There was nothing more Hendrick could say. His eldest daughter had been trapped even before marriage became possible. It had always been his hope that when she had achieved her ambition of becoming a master of a Guild, she would find happiness in marriage with a man of her choice, supposing that otherwise she might be tempted to take a lover when she was a mature woman. But this coercing of her while still a girl was the other side of the coin entirely. In this case he must be thankful she was to become a wife and nothing less, and even then he had his doubts that Ludolf would allow her to complete her apprenticeship but might attempt to buy off Vermeer.

He copied the letter and then went with it to the table where the marriage contracts had been laid. Both he and Ludolf signed the documents and duly exchanged them. Hendrick left the house immediately afterward. As he walked homeward through the busy streets, he was too wrapped up in mulling over what had happened to be aware of the passing traffic, the shouts of the peddlers or the clash of cymbals for a dancing bear. He hoped that Francesca’s apprenticeship would be blissful and carefree. In spite of all Ludolf’s promises of what she should have as his wife, it was unlikely that love and happiness would ever be hers.

When he reached home he could tell by the chatter in the parlor that still more company were gathered there and the stack of gifts on the table in the reception room had increased during the time he had been out. He went straight to Anna’s portrait in the studio and stood before it, wanting her forgiveness and understanding of what he had done. As he studied her laughing face, set off by the swirl of her gleaming hair, he realized that Ludolf’s threat of annexing her portrait had affected him more deeply than having to accept the fate that had been allotted to Francesca. He had thought his heart must stop.