I Am Rembrandt's Daughter (12 page)

“She asked me what I got from St. Nicolaes.”

“Ohhh.”

“I said I would bring the doll to school,” I say
.

He knocks on my head. “Is your brain as wooden as your clompen?”

“I can never go back to school.” I lay my cheek on my knees, facing away from him
.

He bounces his fist on my back. “Of course you can, Birdie. We have got things around here that will impress your Jannetje Zilver. Take her one of Vader’s helmets.”

“Yuck.”

“The stupid things are worth a bundle. They’re gold plated.”

“No.”

“Then take in the stuffed bird of paradise.”

“I hate that stinky thing! Besides Vader is using it in one of the pictures he’s painting now.”

“I know—take the arm in the jar.”

I scream
.

He laughs. “That would fix old Jannetje.”

I lay my cheek back on my knee
.

He thunks me again. “Worry not, my little Bird. When I am twenty-six, I shall inherit a pile of money from my moeder’s family.”

“How much?”

“A lot. My moeder’s family wasn’t poor like …”

I look up
.

“I’ll come and get you,” he says, “and we shall be rich as kings.”

“Just you and me?”

“Just you and me.”

“That doesn’t help me now,” I say, then turn my cheek to my knee.

He goes back into the house. I stay with my head down and listen to the thumping of my heart. How does it know to keep beating by itself? Could I stop it if I thought about it hard enough? My skin tingles. What if I stopped it and died?

All of a sudden I cannot breathe! I don’t know how to make my heart go!

“What is wrong?”

I sit up, startled. The Gold Mustache Man stands next to the porch. I have not seen him for a long while, unless I count the time I thought I saw him last month, when Moeder took me to the picture of the carved-open man. He spoke? He has not done so since I was little
.

“Is something wrong?” he asks again
.

Who is he? Where does he live? Do Moeder and Vader know him?

“I didn’t mean to frighten you.” He tips his hat, making the fluffy white feather on it flutter. “Good-bye, my dear.”

He is so handsome, so friendly, I don’t want him to go
.

“I told my friend I had a doll,” I say
.

He stops, pushes his hat far back on his curly gold hair, and waits
.

“A real ivory one.” I swallow. “I said I got it from St. Nicolaes.”

He smiles. “And I take it you don’t have this doll.”

I shake my head
.

He looks up at the house, then back at me. “Well, some problems have an easy solution.” He winks, then puts his finger to his lips in our signal
.

I tap my lips back. Is that all he is going to say? Don’t go! I shout in my head
.

But he turns and walks away, a trim figure in a glossy black cassock
.

Why should I have thought he could help? He is just a man who walks by our house sometimes. Simple-head, I scold myself as I go back inside the house. Next you will be hoping the ducks on the canal bring you candy
.

Chapter
14

I am in the kitchen slicing a carrot for a stew for the de noen and can think of nothing but Carel. Yesterday he called me beautiful. He is the beautiful one, with his golden curls and pale lashes and skin the color of finest wheat. His straight nose is dusted with nutmeg freckles, and oh, his lips, with the upper slightly fuller than the lower. How can I live without seeing them today?

Neel comes into the kitchen with a mug. “May I have some ale?” he says quietly. He stands before the cask, frowning.

I sweep the carrot from the chopping block and sprinkle it into the pot I have filled with water. “You know you don’t have to ask. Help yourself.” I go back to my vision of Carel, still smiling at me in the sunlight. His lips, so deep pink-brown and—

Neel pours a draft but does not leave.

“What?” He is ruining my dream.

“I saw you with Bruyningh.”

Just hearing the name makes me smile. “Yes. So?”

“Yesterday, by the canal.”

“We were walking. Have you an objection?” I rub my hand, my only concession to my desire to hug myself with glee. Neel Suythof ‘s soberness will not frustrate me today.

“Cornelia, I found your vader’s painting in the kitchen. Bruyningh brought it back, didn’t he?”

I look away.

“I put it in your vader’s studio, where it was before you took it.”

What does he want from me? “Thank you,” I say stiffly. “As the old saying goes, I have been cast in a barrel before a whale and have escaped harm—I am lucky this time.”

Vader calls from his studio. “Cornelia?”

I move more quickly than is my custom to the hallway, anxious to get away from Neel and his seriousness. “Yes, Vader?”

“Would you and Neel please come up here?”

“Yes, Vader! He wants us to go up.”

“I heard,” Neel says.

“What if he has noticed the painting was missing after all? He’s crafty like that. Plays as if he doesn’t know, then ah-ha, he makes his move.”

“Then you shall deal with it,” Neel says.

“I don’t know how!”

“You can learn.”

“Cornelia? Are you coming?” Vader calls.

I trudge up the stairs, glad that Neel is behind me, even though he is in an unusual bad temper.

“What is it?” I ask when we arrive in the studio. I see that the rolled-up canvas of the family group has been neatly placed along one of the cracking walls. Next to it, a breastplate of armor lies on its side, making me think of an empty sea turtle shell.

“I need models for the couple.” Vader nods at his unfinished picture. Nearby is Neel’s own easel, which Vader has allowed him to set up with the straw dummy before it.

“Us?” I ask.

“I don’t know why I didn’t think of it sooner,” Vader says. “The two of you have got just the right proportions together. Neel, would you mind?”

“I shall be honored, mijnheer.”

Vader rubs his hands. “Good. Good. Stand over there. Cornelia, you, too.”

I take my place next to Neel. We stand apart.

“Now Neel, take her hand and look in her eyes.”

“As in, say, the Arnolfini portrait by van Eyck?”

I roll my eyes. That old thing? I’ve seen the copy Vader has. The little dog in the painting looks more lively than the newwed couple it portrays. Neel the Serious would think the picture was the image of romantic passion.

“Rather a stiff presentation,” Vader says, “but yes. For now.”

“Is this necessary?” I say as Neel floats his long-fingered hand in my direction.

“Completely,” Vader says.

“Oh, all right.” I glare at the rolled-up canvas. If I had known how much trouble that foolish picture would cause me, I would have never taken it.

Neel closes his hand around mine. It’s surprising how warm it is, and large. My own hand feels quite small, protected, almost, within his.

“You children are going to have to look at each other,” Vader says. “My subject is love, not revulsion.”

I do as ordered, but I do not have to look happy.

The faintest pained smile appears at the corners of Neel’s plain lips.

Vader begins dabbing the canvas with his brush. I want to wiggle my hand, to look away.

“Mijnheer,” Neel says to Vader but still facing me. “May I speak?”

“Certainly. I’m not working on the heads today.”

“Then why must we gape at each other like two lovesick doves!” I exclaim.

“Positioning,” Vader says.

I let my hand go limp and give Neel a look that assures him that I would rather be emptying chamber pots than continuing to contemplate his serious countenance.

Neel holds my hand, unperturbed. “Mijnheer, I am thinking of putting aside the picture on which I am working to pursue a Prodigal Son.”

“A subject I once explored with great relish.” Vader adds a stroke to his canvas. “I had a wonderful time painting that picture, though Saskia did not entirely approve of the project. She objected to dressing up like a whore, though she got her fringe benefit. That painting resulted in our first Cornelia.”

“Vader! How can you speak like thus before Neel and me?”

“What?”

“What you just said!”

“Child, must you always have such a burr up your arse?” Vader rests his leg on his stool and sighs. “Saskia. What a delight she was.”

I am so mortified before Neel that my next thought pops out unbidden. “You loved her more than my mother.” I glance at Neel, my face reddening.

Vader has the nerve to act surprised. “Why would you say such a thing?”

I try to pull away from Neel, furious with myself for revealing too much in front of him, but Neel won’t let me go.

“What indication did I ever give that I favored one over the other?” Vader says. “They were entirely different. I loved them both.”

“Never mind,” I mutter.

“I have found,” Vader says, “that it is possible to love more than one person with all your heart. I might even admit that it is possible to love more than one at the same time.” He sighs. “This lesson comes not easily.”

Neel be damned. “You could have made her happy,” I say. “But you didn’t.”

“How do you mean? I cherished the woman.”

I glance at Neel, then whisper harshly, “Then why didn’t you marry her?”

Assurance bleeds from Vader’s face, leaving behind a weary old man. “I wanted to, Cornelia.”

“What stopped you?”

Vader opens his mouth, then shuts it again. His face is as gray as the walls.

Neel squeezes my hand. “Mijnheer, about this Prodigal Son painting I wish to pursue …”

Vader looks at him as if he’d forgotten he was in the room.

“I am not sure how to stage it,” Neel says.

“Just take your time with it,” Vader murmurs.

“I am interested in forgiveness, in its healing powers.”

“What?”

“The healing powers of forgiveness.”

Vader’s smile comes in slow degrees, like a man swimming from the depths of the ocean to the surface. “And you wish to portray this in paint?”

“Yes, mijnheer.”

“Good boy.”

“How long will this take?” I exclaim.

“Take?” Vader says.

“This standing here for your picture!”

“Months,” Vader says.

“Months? I cannot bear it!”

“You cannot bear what, Worry Bird?” It is Titus, in the doorway, looking dashing in a new black satin doublet. I jerk free of Neel and run to him.

“What a greeting!” Titus pulls back from my hug.

“You never come.”

“Well,” he says, brushing off his sleeves, “soon you shall have me for hours on end. I’m here to ask you to dinner on Sunday. You, too, Neel, if you’d like.” He smiles brightly, as if the invitation weren’t really an afterthought.

“Thank you,” Neel says, “but I think I am engaged.”

“Too bad. Vader? How does dinner Sunday sound? We’re having calf ‘s foot and tripe with green peas, a roast beef with butter and cheese, and all the trimmings.”

“Bringing out the fatted calf,” Vader says.

“What?”

He winks at Neel. “Nothing. Nothing.”

“We have a new cook. Cornelia, you will have to tell me what you think of him.”

Titus knows that my experience with food has been mostly limited to cabbage soup, bread, and cheese, but I am willing to play along with him. “We’ll see.” Carel must know about fine food, coming from a wealthy family as he does. I must learn my way around it.

“So how much did you get for your picture, Vader?” Titus asks.

“What picture?”

“The family group,” Titus says.

“I told you, I wasn’t selling it.”

Titus squints at me.

“He said he couldn’t sell it,” I say pointedly. “Remember?”

“What’s going on here?” Vader says. “I saw that youngster who works for van Uylenburgh prowling around here yesterday, but I thought he was just keen on Cornelia—girl as pretty as her, suitors are bound to come sniffing about. Is there more to the story than that?”

Vader called me pretty? “No, Vader,” I say. “We just took a walk, that is all.”

“What does he want?” Vader says. “Who put him up to it?”

Neel watches me intently.

“No one, Vader!”

Neel clears his throat. “Excuse me, Titus, but I think perhaps I might be available Sunday for dinner after all. Is the offer still good?”

Titus shrugs. “Certainly, Neel, come on if you will. I’ve got a new cook from Leuven,” he says. “He claims to know both French and Flemish cookery. He did not come cheaply, I shall tell you that. Do you know the price of cooks these days?”

Neel listens soberly as Titus carries on about the expense of being the master of the House of the Gilded Scales, but not before he has cast a questioning glance at me. I rub my hand. I can still feel the warm strength of his fingers. And Vader said we would be modeling for months.

Well, I have no choice in the matter but to suffer with Neel.

Chapter
15

Saskia as Flora
.
Ca. 1634. Canvas.

I have just awoken and am scratching my fingernail through the frost furring the window when Moeder calls from the kitchen
.

“Neeltje! Please go out and get the milk.”

I pad through the front room and entrance hall and tug open the heavy wooden door. I have started toward the milk the dairyman has left on our stoop in a tin can when I see something propped against the step
.

I crouch down. A breeze plucks at the locks of real brown hair glued to the head of an ivory-faced doll
.