I Am Rembrandt's Daughter (25 page)

“He was taking me?”

“I told him I would destroy the painting. He said it did not matter, the Bruyninghs had the power to sway the judges, and mark his words, he would do it. He would take away his child. And then he left.”

“But he said he would take me?”

“Yes. But not your moeder. It would have killed her.”

“Why did you not marry her then, make your own claim and become my legal vader? It was Saskia’s will that stopped you, wasn’t it? You would have lost Saskia’s money if you married.”

He blew air between his lips. “I could have cared less about the money! I thought I could always make more of it painting. I’d been successful before; I thought the wheel would turn back for me. No, it was Hendrickje’s wish that we did not marry. She didn’t want to do anything to inflame Bruyningh into taking you.”

“She didn’t marry you … because of me?”

He shakes his head slowly. “She didn’t want to lose you, Cornelia. Neither of us did.”

I bow my head, unable to comprehend.

“What that woman had to endure,” Vader says. “She was called to the church court three times and made to confess her sin of living with me outside of marriage. My patrons treated her like dirt. ‘The painter’s whore,’ they called her. How they smirked. I lost all my wealthiest patrons, but I didn’t care. Not if they insulted her.”

“Why didn’t he—?”

“Take you? I don’t know. We saw him roaming by our house. The threat was always there. I think he was holding out hope that she would return to him.”

I open my mouth, then shut it. He wasn’t holding out hope. He would have never risked being cut off from his money. If he couldn’t be happy, he wanted to be certain my moeder wasn’t, either.

Vader rubs his forehead. “Later, much later, by memory, I finished her face in the picture. I painted the look of resignation she had worn the day he’d left. Her sadness burned itself on my soul. It haunts me still. I think, Cornelia, that she loved your vader more than me.”

I draw in a breath as if stung. My vader. Who is my vader? Bruyningh, the man who gave me life? Or Rembrandt, the one with whom I’d lived it?

There is a light knock on the door frame. Vader looks up.

Neel stands in the doorway, his hat in his hands. “How does he fare, mijnheer?”

I gaze at Neel’s face. His true concern for Titus, for our family, is writ all over it. All these months I have turned him away, ignoring his friendship, while pining for a boy who shut me out when he heard my brother was ill. How could I not see what a treasure Neel’s goodness and honesty have been? But it is too late for me to tell him this, to ask for his friendship. The best I can do is to lessen his chances of getting ill.

“Neel, please, you must go,” I say. “You will get the contagion.”

His face, always an open book, becomes a study of hurt and concern. “But I have been with him, same as you. If I have got the sickness, it is already upon me. Why will you not take my help when you so need it?”

Next to me, Vader gets up wearily, an old soldier rising to yet another battle. “Let him help, Cornelia. Don’t you know? God protects saints and madmen.” He smiles sadly. “Perhaps they are the same.”

Chapter
35

The groans of the four ragged men manning the ropes are lost in the sounds of the city around us. Over the cries of peddlers and the clopping of horses, I barely hear the thud of the wooden casket bumping against the dirt walls as it is lowered into the grave. There is a final thud, one last murmured prayer. The preacher turns to shake our hands, just Vader, me, and Neel. No one comes to the funeral of a plague victim, not even, it seems—as Magdalena remains with her kin—one’s wife.

Now Vader and I trudge through the Westermarkt, having parted with Neel in front of the church. Even with Vader at my side, I am completely alone; the everyday sounds of people shopping and selling exist in a separate sphere. They have nothing to do with me. It is as if I have died with Titus. If only I had.

“Do you hear them?” Vader says.

I fight my way through invisible walls of sorrow to look at him. I notice his cheeks and chin are bristly with stubble—I’d not thought to shave him since Titus fell ill. Ah, well, what does it matter now.

“The bells,” Vader says.

I close my eyes, willing myself to go back into the world around us, if only for a moment. I hear the death bells of the Westerkerk.

“The bells must be for Titus,” Vader says wonderingly. “Though I don’t know how.”

They cannot be for Titus. Vader has no loose stuivers, not even for Titus’s grave. Magdalena’s family had to rent it. They say later they will move the body to their tomb in the church, when the plague has passed.

My gut tightens. Could Nicolaes Bruyningh have paid for them? Could he have heard about Titus’s death and made this gesture of claim upon me?

Vader plods on, the bells tolling, tolling behind us. I move to catch up, when I think, He is not blood. With Titus gone, Rembrandt and I have no connection. Will he want me to remain? Do I want to remain with him?

I gasp when Neel jogs up behind me. Vader moves on as I stop to catch my breath now that even breathing is a chore.

“Sorry to frighten you,” Neel says, his plain face drawn with concern. “May I accompany you home?”

I gaze at him, the bells still bellowing overhead. “I don’t know where home is.”

His expression is so full of pity and sorrow that it makes me almost laugh in spite of my misery.
Oh, Neel. You are the true Worry Bird. I know, now, I would cherish even the slenderest of friendships with you, should I remain in Rembrandt’s house
.

Rembrandt is already shut up in his studio when we arrive at the house on the Rozengracht. I go to the kitchen though I don’t know what to do there. The stacks of dirty pots, the pile of soiled linen—all look strange. I hear Neel upstairs, knocking on the studio door.

“Mijnheer? May I come in?”

I look out the kitchen window to the courtyard, where the rose vine climbs, fragrant in its second bloom. The roses Moeder planted for Nicolaes Bruyningh. Had she ever stopped loving him? I shall never know.

The death bells stop. Over on their step, the van Roop girls play with dolls. The youngest one hugs her doll to her chest and rocks it back and forth. When I turn away from the window, I hear Neel’s muffled voice upstairs. I am so overcome by loneliness that I trudge upstairs to join them.

“Please, mijnheer,” Neel says as I enter the studio. “You must paint. That will be your cure.”

Vader sags on his stool, his hands in his lap. “I just do not feel like it.”

Neel nods, then turns his hand to grinding a chunk of pigment. I sink onto the stool next to Vader’s abandoned canvas of Tenderest Love. Six days of watching Titus slip away has left me as empty as a bell. I rest, thinking of nothing in particular, until I begin to notice the scraping sound of Neel’s paint trowel as he mixes the light ochre pigment with linseed oil. I hear the cooing of doves on the windowsill. The ridiculous tootling of the organ in the New Maze Park. Tijger strolls in, climbs onto a pile of canvas, and begins to take a bath, his tongue lapping noisily.

Neel glances from Vader to me, then loads a dab of yellow onto his palette. He mixes some of it with other small dabs he has placed beside it, then lifts a canvas to an empty easel. It is the picture of the Prodigal Son.

The painting has been worked on since I noticed it last. Most of the figures have been fleshed out, especially the vader and the son. Neel once said he painted
The Prodigal Son
because he was interested in forgiveness, in its healing power. If only forgiveness could heal wounds like mine. If only simple forgiveness could make me know who I am and what I should be.

Now Neel adds a stroke to the picture, to the hands the vader has placed on his kneeling son’s shoulders. He adds another one, then stands back. “I cannot get it, mijnheer. It needs your eye.”

Vader gets up with a heavy sigh. With dragging steps, he comes to Neel’s side and wordlessly takes the brush. Silent tears flow down his bristly cheeks as he paints the penitent kneeler.

Suddenly, he stops. He gives Neel the brush. “I cannot do this anymore.”

“Mijnheer.”

“My art—what good has come from it? All my time, all my love, everything I have poured into it while my dear ones pass through their lives. Then they’re gone, and I have nothing. Nothing.”

I turn away from the sounds of whirring duck wings as they land upon the canal. “Vader,” I say, surprising even myself. “What about me? Will you care when I am gone?”

Neel puts down his palette and comes to me. He puts a protective hand to my shoulder, then bends over me. “Shh, Cornelia,” he whispers in my ear. “Do you not know? He values you above all else, but he does not know how to tell you. He’s a man of paint, not words.”

A lump swells in my throat. Could it be true? Could Rembrandt really love me? Could he think of me as his own, even though I am not? Even though I am Bruyningh’s? I glance away with stinging eyes. Neel squeezes my hand.

Vader looks up. He gazes sadly at us. Then, suddenly, his eyes widen.

“Vader? What is wrong?”

“Cornelia! Oh! Be still. Neel, please do not move.”

Neel and I exchange puzzled glances.

“No! No! As you were!” Vader rushes to the canvas of Tenderest Love with his palette. “Thank you, God,” he whispers, “thank you.” He sketches an outline in black paint, his eyes wild.

There is a knock at the door downstairs.

I move to get it.

“No!” Vader cries. He shouts toward the open window, “Come upstairs! We’re busy!”

Is it Carel at the door? Nicolaes? To my surprise I find myself dreading both. I cannot be a part of their world of ships and power and selfishness. I do not want to be. I look at Vader painting, his sleeve jangling with energy as he works. A sudden surge of pride in him, in his work, in his unfathomable friendship with God, tells me all I need to know though I’ve been too stubborn to see it: I have paint running through my veins. I am Rembrandt’s daughter, even if he never acknowledges me.

Slow footsteps sound on the risers. At last someone appears at the door. A small boy.

He draws back from the three intense stares boring into him.

Neel lets out a breath as if relieved. I glance at him, wondering who he thought the visitor might be.

“Oh,” he says. “Hello, lad. You came from the church.”

“Please, mijnheer,” the boy says to him. He holds out a little pouch. “You gave us too much.”

Neel frowns.

“For the bells, mijnheer.”

“Keep it for yourself,” Neel says. He glances at me. I stare back. He paid for the bells?

The boy’s eyes grow large. “Really?”

I gape, not only at the boy, but at the outrageousness of it all: Neel cares for me, for my vader, and he is still here in spite of my foolishness.

“Cornelia,” Vader barks, “you have completely lost your expression!”

Neel waves the boy to scoot.

“Thank you, mijnheer!” The boy clatters down the stairs.

Slowly, as if fearful of what he does, Neel slides me a small, tender smile. For the merest moment, I smile shyly in return. I glance away, wondering at such sweetness in such a time of sorrow.

“Oh,” Vader cries, “that is perfect. Perfect! Hold it! Cornelia, girl, what would I do without you?”

And then, for one breathless moment, my eyes meet Vader’s. Before I can ponder it, before I can resist, something swims up from the depths of each of us, and sliding along a slender tendril of hope, touches.

“Brilliant,” Vader whispers, and then the moment is gone.

For many hours after that, I hold my pose. His sleeve waggling, Vader paints onto his canvas, his strokes slowly becoming my face, the face of his daughter. And Neel, my good Neel, holds my hand, steadying me for my journey ahead.

Chapter
36

The small, plump man shakes me from my reverie with his peevish voice. “We have looked around, young lady, and we’d like to make a few offers. Could you relay them to your agent?”

I look out onto the murky green water of the canal, where a pair of ducks drift, their ducklings darting after them. Godspeed, friends. I close the window and catch the lock. “Relay the offers to me, please. I am in charge here.”

Big Baby puffs his lips in indecision. “I suppose she could be,” he says as if I am out of hearing. “I did hear that Rembrandt has no survivors. His son and his son’s wife died, all in the space of a year.”

At least the Stork has the good sense to know that they might be offensive. He turns away his lanky form to whisper, “I think there might have been another daughter. By his—”

They turn and look at me
.

They have no power to hurt me now—we are going to a new land, where we can start out fresh. “What items are you interested in?” I ask
.

Big Baby holds up a tall framed picture
.

I wince. He would pick that one
.

“I’m sorry, that’s not for sale.” Neel comes across the room and kisses my cheek. Even though we have been wed for nearly three weeks, the feel of it still thrills me. “Sorry, gentlemen,” he says. “I am keeping that one. It has special significance to me.”

When Big Baby continues to hold on to it as if in defiance, Neel walks over and gently prizes it out of his hand. “I’m sorry, mijnheer, but it was a new artist’s first painting. It will be valuable someday. You understand, don’t you?”

Big Baby crosses his arms and begins to make a fuss, but Neel pats him on the back and escorts him to the door. “You still need to pack your books, Cornelia,” Neel says over his shoulder. The Stork puts down the old helmet with a last longing look and follows
.

As Neel ushers them to the stairway, I place the painting he has saved next to the canvas my vader painted of Tenderest Love and stand back to judge it. The painting of the crane is not one of technical genius, but I am learning. I am learning
.