Girl with a Pearl Earring (16 page)

“Cornelia said you wanted me.”

“Yes, she’s torn one of her collars and wants you to mend it. Wouldn’t let me touch it—I don’t know why, she knows I mend collars best.” As Tanneke handed it to me her eyes strayed to my apron. “What’s that there? Are you bleeding?”

I looked down. A slash of red dust crossed my stomach like a streak on a window pane. For a moment I thought of the aprons of Pieter the father and son.

Tanneke leaned closer. “That’s not blood. It looks like powder. How did that get there?”

I gazed at the streak. Madder, I thought. I ground this a few weeks ago.

Only I heard the stifled giggle from the hallway.

Cornelia had been waiting some time for this mischief. She had even managed somehow to get up to the attic to steal the powder.

I did not make up an answer fast enough. As I hesitated, Tanneke’s suspicion grew. “Have you been in the master’s things?” she said in an accusing tone. She had, after all, modelled for him and knew what he kept in the studio.

“No, it was—” I stopped. If I tattled on Cornelia I would sound petty and it would probably not stop Tanneke from discovering what I did in the attic.

“I think young mistress had better see this,” she decided.

“No,” I said quickly.

Tanneke drew herself up as much as she could with a sleeping child in her lap. “Take off your apron,” she commanded, “so I can show it to the young mistress.”

“Tanneke,” I said, gazing levelly at her, “if you know what’s best for you, you’ll not disturb Catharina, you’ll speak to Maria Thins. Alone, not in front of the girls.”

It was those words, with their bullying tone, that caused the most damage between Tanneke and me. I did not think to sound like that—I was simply desperate to stop her from telling Catharina any way I could. But she would never forgive me for treating her as if she were below me.

My words at least had their effect. Tanneke gave me a hard, angry look, but behind it was uncertainty, and the desire indeed to tell her own beloved mistress. She hung between that desire and the wish to punish my impudence by disobeying me.

“Speak to your mistress,” I said softly. “But speak to her alone.”

Though my back was to the door, I sensed Cornelia slipping away from it.

Tanneke’s own instincts won. With a stony face she handed Johannes to me and went to find Maria Thins. Before I settled him on my lap I carefully wiped away the red pigment with a rag, then threw it in the fire. It still left a stain. I sat with my arms around the little boy and waited for my fate to be decided.

I never found out what Maria Thins said to Tanneke, what threats or promises she made to keep her quiet. But it worked—Tanneke said nothing about my attic work to Catharina or the girls, or to me. She became much harder with me, though—deliberately difficult rather than unthinkingly so. She sent me back to the fish stalls with the cod I knew she had asked for, swearing she had told me to buy flounder. When she cooked she became sloppier, spilling as much grease as she could on her apron so that I would have to soak the cloth longer and scrub harder to get the grease out. She left buckets for me to empty, and stopped bringing water to fill the kitchen cistern or mopping the floors. She sat and watched me balefully, refusing to move her feet so that I had to mop around them, to find afterwards that one foot had covered a sticky puddle of grease.

She did not talk kindly to me any longer. She made me feel alone in a house full of people.

So I did not dare to take nice things from her kitchen to cheer my father with. And I did not tell my parents how hard things were for me at the Oude Langendijck, how careful I had to be to keep my place. Nor could I tell them about the few good things—the colors I made, the nights when I sat alone in the studio, the moments when he and I worked side by side and I was warmed by his presence.

All I could tell them about were his paintings.

One April morning when the cold at last had gone, I was walking along the Koornmarkt to the apothecary when Pieter the son appeared at my side and wished me good day. I had not seen him earlier. He wore a clean apron and carried a bundle, which he said he was delivering further along the Koornmarkt. He was going the same way as me and asked if he could walk with me. I nodded—I did not feel I could say no. Through the winter I had seen him once or twice a week at the Meat Hall. I always found it hard to meet his gaze—his eyes felt like needles pricking my skin. His attention worried me.

“You look tired,” he said now. “Your eyes are red. They are working you too hard.”

Indeed, they were working me hard. My master had given me so much bone to grind that I had to get up very early to finish it. And the night before Tanneke had made me stay up late to rewash the kitchen floor after she spilled a pan of grease all over it.

I did not want to blame my master. “Tanneke has taken against me,” I said instead, “and gives me more to do. Then, of course, it’s getting warmer as well and we are cleaning the winter out of the house.” I added this so that he would not think I was complaining about her.

“Tanneke is an odd one,” he said, “but loyal.”

“To Maria Thins, yes.”

“To the family as well. Remember how she defended Catharina from her mad brother?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know what you mean.”

Pieter looked surprised. “It was the talk of the Meat Hall for days. Ah, but you don’t gossip, do you? You keep your eyes open but you don’t tell tales, or listen to them.” He seemed to approve. “Me, I hear it all day from the old ones waiting for meat. Can’t help but some of it sticks.”

“What did Tanneke do?” I asked despite myself.

Pieter smiled. “When your mistress was carrying the last child but one—what’s its name?”

“Johannes. Like his father.”

Pieter’s smile dimmed like a cloud crossing the sun. “Yes, like his father.” He took up the tale again. “One day Catharina’s brother, Willem, came around to the Oude Langendijck, when she was big with child, and began to beat her, right in the street.”

“Why?”

“He’s missing a brick or two, they say. He’s always been violent. His father as well. You know the father and Maria Thins separated many years ago? He used to beat her.”

“Beat Maria Thins?” I repeated in wonder. I would never have guessed that anyone could beat Maria Thins.

“So when Willem began hitting Catharina it seems Tanneke got in between them to protect her. Even thumped him soundly.”

Where was my master when this happened? I thought. He could not have remained in his studio. He could not have. He must have been out at the Guild, or with van Leeuwenhoek, or at Mechelen, his mother’s inn.

“Maria Thins and Catharina managed to have Willem confined last year,” Pieter continued. “Can’t leave the house he’s lodged in. That’s why you haven’t seen him. Have you really heard nothing of this? Don’t they talk in your house?”

“Not to me.” I thought of all the times Catharina and her mother put their heads together in the Crucifixion room, falling silent when I entered. “And I don’t listen behind doorways.”

“Of course you don’t.” Pieter was smiling again as if I had told a joke. Like everyone else, he thought all maids eavesdropped. There were many assumptions about maids that people made about me.

I was silent the rest of the way. I had not known that Tanneke could be so loyal and brave, despite all she said behind Catharina’s back, or that Catharina had suffered such blows, or that Maria Thins could have such a son. I tried to imagine my own brother beating me in the street but could not.

Pieter said no more—he could see my confusion. When he left me in front of the apothecary he simply touched my elbow and continued on his way. I had to stand for a moment looking into the dark green water of the canal before I shook my head to clear it and turned to the apothecary’s door.

I was shaking from my thoughts a picture of the knife spinning on my mother’s kitchen floor.

One Sunday Pieter the son came to services at our church. He must have slipped in after my parents and me, and sat in the back, for I did not see him until afterward when we were outside speaking to our neighbors. He was standing off to one side, watching me. When I caught sight of him I drew in my breath sharply. At least, I thought, he is Protestant. I had not been certain before. Since working in the house at Papists’ Corner I was no longer certain of many things.

My mother followed my gaze. “Who is that?”

“The butcher’s son.”

She gave me a curious look, part surprise, part fear. “Go to him,” she whispered, “and bring him to us.”

I obeyed her and went up to Pieter. “Why are you here?” I asked, knowing I should be more polite.

He smiled. “Hello, Griet. No pleasant words for me?”

“Why are you here?”

“I’m going to services in every church in Delft, to see which I like best. It may take some time.” When he saw my face he dropped his tone—joking was not the way with me. “I came to see you, and to meet your parents.”

I blushed so hot I felt feverish. “I would rather you did not,” I said softly.

“Why not?”

“I’m only seventeen. I don’t—I’m not thinking of such things yet.”

“There’s no rush,” Pieter said.

I looked down at his hands—they were clean, but there were still traces of blood around his nails. I thought of my master’s hand over mine as he showed me how to grind bone, and shivered.

People were staring at us, for he was a stranger to the church. And he was a handsome man—even I could see that, with his long blond curls, bright eyes and ready smile. Several young women were trying to catch his eye.

“Will you introduce me to your parents?”

Reluctantly I led him to them. Pieter nodded to my mother and grasped my father’s hand, who stepped back nervously. Since he had lost his eyes he was shy of meeting strangers. And he had never before met a man who showed interest in me.

“Don’t worry, Father,” I whispered to him while my mother was introducing Pieter to a neighbor, “you aren’t losing me.”

“We’ve already lost you, Griet. We lost you the moment you became a maid.”

I was glad he could not see the tears that pricked my eyes.

Pieter the son did not come every week to our church, but he came often enough that each Sunday I grew nervous, smoothing my skirt more than it needed, pressing my lips together as we sat in our pew.

“Has he come? Is he here?” my father would ask each Sunday, turning his head this way and that.

I let my mother answer. “Yes,” she would say, “he is here,” or “No, he has not come.”

Pieter always said hello to my parents before greeting me. At first they were uneasy with him. However, Pieter chatted easily to them, ignoring their awkward responses and long silences. He knew how to talk to people, meeting so many at his father’s stall. After several Sundays my parents became used to him. The first time my father laughed at something Pieter said he was so surprised at himself that he immediately frowned, until Pieter said something else to make him laugh again.