The Golden Tulip (62 page)

When she sensed that Pieter had begun to look at her more than at the view, she turned her head to meet his eyes, the pupils of her own softening and dilating with love. Gladly she lay down with him on the ancient, grain-strewn floorboards and he groaned aloud in an excess of passion for her.

When they left the mill, which had been their haven for a little while, they traveled on until, the hour becoming late, Pieter took a short detour to a village tavern, where they dined. Only the last lap of the journey remained. Delft came into sight when they reached the bridge where Constantijn had suffered his terrible injury and Francesca’s thoughts went to him and Aletta. She believed that Aletta, although not yet realizing it, was in love with Constantijn. Perhaps their first meeting at the Exchange, brief and inconsequential though it had been, had instilled a sense of destiny in Aletta when she had seen him again in such tragically dramatic circumstances and she would never be free of it.

It was dark when Delft was reached. Pieter left the horse and cart at the end of Kromstraat and took advantage of the lack of any street lamps there to escort Francesca to her door.

“I don’t want to leave you in this house,” he said uneasily.

“You mean you don’t want to leave me at all,” she whispered teasingly.

“That’s true, but you must take care.”

“I will. You really must go now.” She took her hand baggage from him. “We have had such a perfect time together.”

“There will be other such times, my darling.”

They exchanged a bittersweet kiss of parting. Then he stood back in the darkness while she opened the front door into the candlelit reception hall and went in. Nobody came to meet her. She took her hand baggage to her room but did not stop to unpack. In an upstairs parlor she found Clara with her foot on a stool, nursing a badly sprained ankle.

“It was such a foolish accident,” Clara explained, wincing as she adjusted her foot slightly. “I tripped on a loose cobble in the street and went flying. See!” she added, pulling up her sleeve to reveal a badly grazed and bruised arm. “I hurt myself everywhere. Geetruyd was cross with me for not looking where I was going.”

“Where is she?”

“She’s gone to a musical evening, which is why we dined early, but some dinner has been left for you.”

“I’m not hungry, but I’d like some tea. Shall I bring you a cup?”

“That would be very pleasant. Bring yours too, and we’ll drink it together.”

“Are there any travelers staying at the moment?”

“One. I don’t like it when they’re here.”

“Why not?” Francesca asked.

Clara had a ready answer, wagging a finger importantly to emphasize her words. “Geetruyd’s never herself, always on edge, and then she snaps at me.”

Downstairs again Francesca went along the corridor to the kitchen, where she found Weintje lolling against the courtyard door and giggling at something said by a young man making his departure. At her step the maidservant turned with a guilty start, not being allowed any dalliance during her hours of duty, but Francesca took no notice and ignored the evidence on the table of a meal for two having been eaten there. The young man went on his way and Weintje came at once to see what was wanted.

“Would you make a pot of tea for Juffrouw Clara and me?” Francesca requested. “I’ll get the tray ready.”

Weintje set about hurriedly as if expecting a reprimand at any moment, but when the tea was ready Francesca only thanked her and carried the tray away.

She had almost reached the stairs when the front door opened and the traveler entered the house. He was in his mid-thirties, thin and of average height. Francesca thought how easy it would be to sketch his features in a series of horizontal and vertical lines—straight mouth, brows and eyes, a nose sharp as an arrow and a square chin. He regarded her alertly, bowing slightly in greeting, but without a smile.

“Good evening,” she said. “This tea is freshly made. Would you like a cup?”

“I thank you,
mejuffrouw,
but no.” He unlocked the door of his room and went into it.

Francesca and Clara drank two cups each of the tea. As always when Geetruyd was not present Clara chatted almost without drawing breath. She fired questions at Francesca about her time in Amsterdam and asked about the betrothal party. Francesca, who had expected this problem, immediately launched into a detailed description of Sybylla’s dress and style of hairdressing, by which time Clara’s interest had waned and she began recounting all the mundane little things that had happened during the period of Francesca’s absence. Her talk hopped from one subject to another and she returned again to Geetruyd’s attitude toward her when anything went wrong.

“When the traveler who is staying here now arrived two days ago, Geetruyd became sharper than ever with me, because I can’t do anything to help at the present time. I don’t know why she bothers having any guests, except you, of course, Francesca, for it isn’t as if she needed the money. She has an income from some other source, but what it is I don’t know and wouldn’t dare ask.”

“She certainly likes the best of everything,” Francesca said, thinking of the good wines, the food and the quality of Geetruyd’s clothes and footwear.

Clara was enjoying herself. The opportunities for confidential chit-chat were normally denied her, as her benefactress’s long-held threat of sending her to an almshouse if she gossiped had always had the double effect of keeping her silent and making her fearful of having friends in case she made a slip of the tongue. The fact that Francesca lived under a similar shadow of possible incarceration for any indiscretion made Clara feel there was a bond between them and because of that she could speak freely.

“I’m not stupid,” she stated rebelliously, “even if Geetruyd should think so. When I first came to live here she was filling the house with anybody who could afford to pay for a good bed and wholesome food, but it was still a struggle for her to make ends meet. We had to observe countless small economies. She even sold kitchen scraps to a pig breeder and woe betide me if I threw away as much as an apple pip. We didn’t live well in those days, but I made no complaint then and none now. She did what she could for me.” Clara lowered her voice conspiratorially, although there was nobody except Francesca to hear. “If Geetruyd only made a modest living with a house full of guests, how is she able to live well—even extravagantly—by letting a room occasionally?”

“I think it proves your point that she has another income.”

Clara looked triumphant. “Right! I believe Heer van Deventer made an investment for her when they met again after some years and now it’s paying off on a grand scale.”

“Then why does she still have the inconvenience of lodgers in the house? Is it to maintain a front of genteel poverty?”

“I suppose so, but there’s something else too. She likes to talk to them about their travels, however often they come. I think it’s because she’s never really been anywhere herself.”

“How do you know this?”

“She has told me. I once dared to say to her that it was indiscreet to stay talking to men on their own when she took in their meals. She pointed out that she always left the door slightly ajar and anyone could hear it was only an interesting and respectable interlude.”

Francesca, remembering how Geetruyd had raised her voice on that one occasion, thought how at that hour Clara and Weintje were both in their beds and out of earshot. “Have you ever met any of those travelers?”

“I’ve bidden them good day or good night, but nothing more.” Clara wanted to finish with that line of conversation, because she had a question pent up in her that she had long wanted to ask Francesca. She had never had a romance herself, although she had come near it once with a quiet-natured carpenter who had been repairing windows and replacing rotten shutters on the house. They used to talk, she indoors and he on his ladder outside. Then he made the mistake of bringing her a posy of flowers from his garden one day and asking her out. Geetruyd had dismissed him, saying his work was not good enough, and another carpenter had finished the tasks. As if that were not enough, Geetruyd had poured scorn on Clara that she, at the age of forty, should have behaved like a lovesick girl. The flowers had been tossed away by Geetruyd, who had failed to notice that one pansy had fallen to the floor. Clara had retrieved it and pressed it in her bible between two pieces of paper, where she had it still. The carpenter had died of lung trouble eighteen months later and it was her heartfelt regret that she had not been his wife to nurse him gently to the end. She felt that disappointment in love increased the bond between her and Francesca. “Were you very sad, Francesca, when you were banned from seeing Pieter van Doorne?”

Francesca looked down, smiling inwardly. “That’s months ago now. So much has happened since.” There was only one way to stem any more such questions from Clara. She looked up again. “Has Geetruyd not told you what she must surely have heard from Ludolf van Deventer? It is that my father has promised me in marriage to him.”

“That can’t be true!” Clara’s face had become a mask of almost panic-stricken dismay.

“It is, and nobody wishes more than I that it was otherwise.”

“But Geetruyd will go mad if she finds out! You must never let her know all the time you are staying here.” Clara was highly agitated. “She’s expecting to marry him herself!”

Francesca stared at her incredulously, not through any question of why Geetruyd should wish to marry again, but because it was a revelation that the relationship between Ludolf and Geetruyd was close enough for the woman to have considered the possibility. “She is far more suited to him than I am, but how do you know her feelings?”

“I know her so well that all the signs are clear. I remember her excitement when they met again after a number of years when he had been traveling abroad. After that it was never quite the same, maybe because he married someone else, but she loves money and he has plenty. It’s very important to her and recently, since he became a widower, she has let slip a word or two without realizing it that shows she doesn’t expect it to be long before she’s living away from here and in luxury.” All Clara’s agitation returned in full force. “So don’t, I beg you, tell of this marriage that has been arranged for you. She will make the rest of your time unbearable with every kind of pettiness. It is how she treats me whenever she is under strain or something has gone against her.”

“What of you when I have left here?”

Clara let her hands rise and fall meekly. “She needs me in the house, because she never likes to be wholly on her own.” She winced as she lowered her foot from the stool to the floor. “Would you help me to bed now, Francesca? I’m in such pain that it wearies me.”

Francesca helped her hobble into a smaller and less used parlor where a temporary bed had been made up on a day couch to save her the extra stairs. They bade each other good night and Francesca went to her own room. It saddened her anew that Clara should lead such a bleak life. How often gentle people fell under the control of bullies, either in marriage or in business as well as in other spheres. In return they gave loyalty and sacrificed themselves.

Before undressing, Francesca drew the face of the traveler, capturing his likeness in a minimum of lines before putting the drawing away with other work for the studio. She was in bed when she heard Weintje go up to her attic room. Not long after, Geetruyd came home. As Francesca had expected, she opened the door to look in on her and check that she had returned on the day arranged.

“So you’re safely back from Amsterdam, Francesca. Did you bring me a letter from your father rescinding any of my rules of chaperonage?”

“No.”

“There! What did I tell you? He has your well-being totally at heart and knows, as I do, that a strict hand is all-important until a daughter is wed, whether or not there is a young man on the horizon. Now good night to you.”

In the morning Weintje escorted Francesca to Mechelin Huis. The maidservant was very amiable and seemed to think she should reciprocate the good turn Francesca had done her by ignoring her dalliance the previous evening.

“Now if there is any letter you want posted, or if there’s anyone you want to meet on your way to or from the studio, you can trust me not to say anything.”

“That’s very obliging of you, Weintje, but—no.”

“Well, remember what I’ve said. I’d have lost my free time indefinitely if you had told Vrouw Wolff about my beau.”

“Are you going to marry him?”

“He hasn’t asked me yet, but I’m hoping.”

Jan and Catharina Vermeer welcomed Francesca back and the younger children were as excited to see her again as if she had been away for months. Jan looked through all her sketches with her and together they decided which she should extend into a painting. She returned to him the portrait of the unnamed model, and he took the “tronie” away to his gallery. Before restarting her own work she studied his painting of the local woman by the virginals and saw that during her absence he had completed only one small section of the heavy lace on the woman’s sleeve, but each precise stroke had been done meticulously to emphasize its silky texture. Then she cut a length from a roll of canvas for herself and began to thread it onto a wooden stretcher.

With Clara still unable to walk, Weintje accompanied Francesca when she took her first opportunity to see Aletta a few days after her return to Delft. At the gates her sister turned a key in the lock to let her in, but shook her head at the maidservant.

“I’m sorry, Weintje,” Aletta said, “but I have only gained permission to admit my sister and nobody else.”

“That’s all right,” Weintje replied cheerfully. “I’ve friends at a farm only a quarter of a mile away. I’ll come back whenever Juffrouw Francesca wants me to be here.”

It was agreed that she should return in three hours and she went off with an eager step. Francesca laced her arm in Aletta’s as they crossed the forecourt of the house together.

“This is indeed a concession, Aletta. Is Constantijn being kinder toward you?”

“He’s still extremely difficult,” Aletta admitted, “but he took notice when I said I would go into Delft for a whole day once a week to be with you if he didn’t permit me to offer you hospitality the next time you came. He can’t bear the thought of my being away from the house, because he is afraid that I won’t come back. He has also finally agreed to see his parents for the first time since he shut himself away here.”