LITMIR.BIZ

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rinsing, boiling and wringing before hanging things to dry and be bleached in the noon sun, another day ironing and mending and folding. At some point I always stopped to help Tanneke with the midday meal. Afterwards we cleaned up, and then I had a little time free to rest and sew on the bench out front, or back in the courtyard. After that I finished whatever I had been doing in the morning, then helped Tanneke with the late meal. The last thing we did was to mop the floors once more so that they would be fresh and clean for the morning.

      At night I covered the Crucifixion hanging at the foot of my bed with the apron I had worn that day. I slept better then. The next day I added the apron to the day’s wash.

      While Catharina was unlocking the studio door on the second morning I asked her if I should clean the windows.

      ‘Why not?’ she answered sharply. ‘You do not need to ask me such petty things.’

      ‘Because of the light, madam,’ I explained. ‘It might change the painting if I clean them. You see?’

      She did not see. She would not or could not come into the room to look at the painting. It seemed she never entered the studio. When Tanneke was in the right mood I would have to ask her why. Catharina went downstairs to ask him and called up to me to leave the windows.

      When I cleaned the studio I saw nothing to indicate that he had been there at all. Nothing had been moved, the palettes were clean, the painting itself appeared no different. But I could feel that he had been there.

      I had seen very little of him the first two days I was in the house on the Oude Langendijck. I heard him sometimes, on the stairs, in the hallway, chuckling with his children, talking softly to Catharina. Hearing his voice made me feel as if I were walking along the edge of a canal and unsure of my steps. I did not know how he would treat me in his own house, whether or not he would pay attention to the vegetables I chopped in his kitchen.

      No gentleman had ever taken such an interest in me before.

      I came face to face with him on my third day in the house. Just before dinner I went to find a plate that Lisbeth had left outside and almost ran into him as he carried Aleydis in his arms down the hallway.

      I stepped back. He and Aleydis regarded me with the same grey eyes. He neither smiled nor did not smile at me. It was hard to meet his eyes. I thought of the woman looking at herself in the painting upstairs, of wearing pearls and yellow satin. She would have no trouble meeting the gaze of a gentleman. When I managed to lift my eyes to his he was no longer looking at me.

      The next day I saw the woman herself. On my way back from the butcher a man and woman walked ahead of me on the Oude Langendijck. At our door he turned to her and bowed, then walked on. There was a long white feather in his hat – he must have been the visitor from a few days earlier. From the brief glimpse I caught of his profile I saw that he had a moustache, and a plump face to match his body. He smiled as if he were about to pay a flattering but false compliment. The woman turned into the house before I could see her face but I did see the five-pointed red ribbon in her hair. I held back, waiting by the doorway until I heard her go up the stairs.

      Later I was putting away some clothes in the cupboard in the great hall when she came back down. I stood up as she entered. She was carrying the yellow mantle in her arms. The ribbon was still in her hair.

      ‘Oh!’ she said. ‘Where is Catharina?’

      ‘She’s gone with her mother to the Town Hall, madam. Family business.’

      ‘I see. Never mind, I’ll see her another day. I’ll leave this here for her.’ She draped the mantle across the bed and dropped the pearl necklace on top of it.

      ‘Yes, madam.’

      I could not take my eyes off her. I felt as if I were seeing her and yet not seeing her. It was a strange sensation. She was, as Maria Thins had said, not as beautiful as when the light struck her in the painting. Yet she was beautiful, if only because I was remembering her so. She gazed at me with a puzzled look on her face, as if she ought to know me since I was staring at her with such familiarity. I managed to lower my eyes. ‘I will tell her you called, madam.’

      She nodded but looked troubled. She glanced at the pearls she had laid on top of the mantle. ‘I think I shall leave these up in the studio with him,’ she announced, picking up the necklace. She did not look at me, but I knew she was thinking that maids were not to be trusted with pearls. After she had gone her face lingered like perfume.

      On Saturday Catharina and Maria Thins took Tanneke and Maertge with them to the market in the square, where they would buy vegetables to last the week, staples and other things for the house. I longed to go with them, thinking I might see my mother and sister, but I was told to stay at the house with the younger girls and the baby. It was difficult to keep them from running off to the market. I would have taken them there myself but I did not dare leave the house unattended. Instead we watched the boats go up and down the canal, full on their way to the market with cabbages, pigs, flowers, wood, flour, strawberries, horseshoes. They were empty on the way back, the boatmen counting money or drinking. I taught the girls games I had played with Agnes and Frans, and they taught me games they had made up. They blew bubbles, played with their dolls, ran with their hoops while I sat on the bench with Johannes in my lap.

      Cornelia seemed to have forgotten about the slap. She was cheerful and friendly, helpful with Johannes, obedient to me. ‘Will you help me?’ she asked me as she tried to climb on to a barrel the neighbours had left out in the street. Her light brown eyes were wide and innocent. I found myself warming to her sweetness, yet knowing I could not trust her. She could be the most interesting of the girls, but also the most changeable – the best and the worst at the same time.

      They were sorting through a collection of shells they had brought outside, dividing them into piles of different colours, when he came out of the house. I squeezed the baby round his middle, feeling his ribs under my hands. He squealed and I buried my nose in his ear to hide my face.

      ‘Papa, can I go with you?’ Cornelia cried, jumping up and grabbing his hand. I could not see the expression on his face – the tilt of his head and the brim of his hat hid it.

      Lisbeth and Aleydis abandoned their shells. ‘I want to go too!’ they shouted in unison, grabbing his other hand.

      He shook his head and then I could see his bemused expression. ‘Not today – I’m going to the apothecary’s.’

      ‘Will you buy paint things, Papa?’ Cornelia asked, still holding on to his hand.

      ‘Among other things.’

      Baby Johannes began to cry and he glanced down at me. I bounced the baby, feeling awkward.

      He looked as if he would say something, but instead he shook off the girls and strode down the Oude Langendijck.

      He had not said a word to me since we discussed the colour and shape of vegetables.

      I woke very early on Sunday, for I was excited about going home. I had to wait for Catharina to unlock the front door, but when I heard it swing open I came out to find Maria Thins with the key.

      ‘My daughter is tired today,’ she said as she stood aside to let me out. ‘She will rest for a few days. Can you manage without her?’

      ‘Of course, madam,’ I replied, then added, ‘and I may always ask you if I have questions.’

      Maria Thins chuckled. ‘Ah, you’re a cunning one, girl. You know whose pot to spoon from. Never mind, we can do with a bit of cleverness around here.’ She handed me some coins, my wages for the days I had worked. ‘Off you go now, to tell your mother all about us, I suspect.’

      I slipped away before she could say more, crossed Market Square, past those going to early services at the New Church, and hurried up the streets and canals that led me home. When I turned into my street I thought how different it felt already after less than a week away. The light seemed brighter and flatter, the canal wider. The plane trees lining the canal stood perfectly still, like sentries waiting for me.

      Agnes

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