I Am Rembrandt's Daughter (4 page)

With a start, I recognize the eyes.

They are Titus’s.

Chapter
4

Two Moors
.
1661. Canvas.

The snow comes down, muffling the cheerful tune of the carillon bells of the Westerkerk as I run home from school. The snow catches on the holly bushes, putting soft caps on the hard green leaves, but I only want Moeder. A girl in my class, Jannetje Zilver, has yelled at me for using her handkerchief, but I didn’t know it was hers
.

I fly across the bridge and up our steps. Moeder is not in the front room. She is not in the kitchen, nor cleaning, nor in the back sleeping. I take the stairs up two at a time
.

Moeder is not in Vader’s studio either. But Vader is there, behind his canvas. I shrink back when I see the two men bunched together before him like doves on a windowsill. Tijger winds between their feet as if claiming them for himself
.

Vader looks over his shoulder. “Cornelia. Say hello to the gentlemen. Cornelia is six this year.”

Vader is not mad at me for coming upstairs?

I know I should run before he shouts, but such a pair of men I have never seen. Vader has painted many different things in his studio, the strangest of which was a whole skinned ox, fresh from the butcher, but this pair, these men—their skin is the color of the chocolate Jannetje Zilver brings in her basket for her de noen. They are beautiful
.

The taller man hides behind the littler one, his chin hooked on the little man’s shoulder. His eyes are open but they don’t seem to work. They are as blank as the floorboards, as if a thousand Jannetje Zilvers have shouted at him and he cannot take it anymore
.

But the shorter dark man stands up straight. He is dressed in a king’s gold clothes and like a king, holds his head high and has his hand on his hip. What I like best are his eyes, gray and shiny like the inside of an oyster, but brighter, like a candle burns from within him. When he turns them to me, they are so kind I burst into tears
.

Moeder trudges up the stairs behind me. “Neeltje, when did you come—Why, you are crying! Come here, my pretty puss.” She gathers me to her and takes me down to the kitchen
.

She is giving me a dipper of water when Vader comes in. “I need some ale for the gentlemen,” he says. He sees me. “What’s the matter with her?”

“Can you not see? Your ‘gentlemen’ have scared her.”

“Scared her? She is six, too old to be scared by such things.” He leans toward me, bringing his gray bristly eyebrows close. “Cornelia, are you scared?”

I cry louder. I cannot stop. I wouldn’t have used Jannetje’s handkerchief if I had known it was hers
.

“Why must you paint such terrible men?” Moeder says. “The Trip brothers have decided to let you paint the portraits of their parents and you put them off to paint these, these—”

“—these men I must paint!”

She takes a short, angry breath. “But Rembrandt, you were so glad when the Trip brothers finally came to you. It was your chance to show up van der Helst and the lot. Why must you be so willful when we need the money?”

“I am not being willful, Hendrickje. I know this will sound strange—it does even to me—but I think God is speaking through my hands. Did you see the light I have captured in the little man’s eyes?” He looks at his paint-speckled hands in wonder. “I don’t know how I did that.”

I had seen the light in the man’s eyes in Vader’s painting. Tears come down as I hold out the empty water dipper
.

Moeder takes it, then puts her arm around me. “You are upsetting everyone,” she tells Vader
.

He looks at Moeder. “Are you sorry you chose me? Or do you wish you had chosen the man who owns men rather than paints them?”

“What has that to do with anything? And besides, Nicolaes owns the ships that carry them, not the men.”

“What is the difference, Hendrickje? Whether he owns them or ships them, he’s still got a hand in their misery, and no amount of money is going to wash that hand clean.”

She presses me to her bodice. It smells of dried sweat. “Just give your people their ale.”

After Vader is gone, I start to tell her about Jannetje
.

“Is that what you are crying about? A handkerchief?” She puts her hand to my cheek. “It is snowing out. Go play.” She gives me two pats
.

But when I go outside, the sun is shining on the bare trees along the banks of the black canal. The snow is gone. I am too late
.

A man comes over the bridge. When he tips his hat at me, I see his mustache in the shade of his brim. It is as gold as the coins Moeder keeps hidden in a leather pouch in the back of her cupboard
.

He taps his finger to his lip. “Shhhh.”

“Shhhh,” I say back, tapping my mouth
.

It is our game
.

I’ve seen this man before. He is tall and has curly gold hair down to his shoulders and gold hairs over his mouth
.

He smiles, then goes on his way without another sound, as he always does. He is just a nice neighbor man. I want to ask Moeder who he is, but she is never outside when he passes
.

I crouch at the edge of the canal and throw in a stone
.

Chapter
5

Vader roars from his studio, “TITUS!”

I turn the page of my book and stir the cabbage, Tijger rubbing against my stool, as the wind rattles the rose vine outside the kitchen window. It is the third of March, three days since the wedding, and the old man cannot get it in his head that Titus is gone.

“TITUS! COME QUICKLY!”

Why should I tend to a stubborn old man who cared so little about me that he tossed a secondhand name my way when I was born? Cornelia was the name of his first two daughters by Titus’s mother. Both died young, within days of their birth. Though it is customary to name girls after their grandmother, after the second death, one would begin to think about the luck that name carries. I do.

The front door opens. I hide my book under my apron. With Titus gone, it could only be Neel. Sure enough, he leans his head into the kitchen.

A grimace of apology flashes across Neel Suythof’s long face before it resumes its somber appearance. “Hello, Cornelia.”

It would not put him in the grave to smile once in a while. If he did, the faded marks left on his neck by a childhood case of the pox would be almost unnoticeable. He might never be as handsome as the golden-haired boy at the wedding, but then, who is?

“Hello, Neel.”

Tijger strolls over to him to beg a petting. Neel bends down to stroke him. “Have you heard from Titus yet?”

“No, and I do not expect to.”

He regards me soberly over Tijger’s loud rumbling. “How was the wedding?”

I shrug. Maybe it hasn’t gotten around yet how Vader brought bad luck upon his own son’s marriage.

There is a look of sympathy in Neel’s plain brown eyes. It makes me uncomfortable.

“You miss Titus,” he says.

“Why would I miss him? He is a grown man. He is supposed to be wed. And Magdalena was quite the catch.”

A roar comes again from upstairs: “TITUS!”

I roll my gaze to the ceiling. “Apparently, someone
does
miss Titus.” I untie my apron and slip out from under it with my book still hidden, leaving both on my stool. I ladle soup into a cracked bowl. “Here, take him his dinner, would you?”

“TITUS, LAD!”

Neel looks up, too, as if he could see Vader through the ceiling. “Does he not know Titus is not here?”

“The question is, has he ever figured out that I
am
here?”

Neel gazes at me.

I should have never spoken out. Neel Suythof needs not know what goes on in our family. Let him be starry-eyed over his hero. He might be the last person in Amsterdam to admire Rembrandt van Rijn.

“Just take him his dinner, please.”

Neel’s hand brushes mine as he takes the tray from me. I rub my hand as he leaves the kitchen, Tijger following after him. Of course Neel’s touch is warm—he is alive, isn’t he?

A few moments later, Neel plods back down the stairs to the kitchen. “Your vader said the soup needs salt.”

There was a reason I had skimped on salt—to put a name on it, poverty—but I cannot tell Neel this. If he realized how low Vader’s star has sunk, he might quit his lessons, then where would we be? Neel’s measly stuivers mean bread on the table.

I hand him the saltcellar. “Be careful not to spill it,” I say, as if I were the adult and he the child.

“As you wish, madam.”

I look at him and see a hint of a smile in his eyes. His lightheartedness surprises me. “Vader’s waiting for his salt,” I say gruffly.

The cheer goes out of his face. “Of course.”

I frown at my apron on the stool as he goes back upstairs. Why must I always do the wrong thing, like pretending to look at an old lady when the handsome boy caught me staring at him at the wedding? Neel the Serious almost smiled and I struck him down.

I hear the front door open. Titus bounds into the kitchen.

“Worry Bird!” He grabs me and swings me around until I knock over my stool. My book flaps to the floor. He beats me to picking it up. “
The Marriage Trap
?”

“You should read it,” I say, blushing fiercely. “To see what a predicament you are in. What are you doing here, anyway?”

“Bird, you are harsh. And why would I not be here? This is my home.”

“Was your home.”

He puts on a mock-sad face. “I am not welcome here, and apparently, I am trapped in marriage. Whatever am I going to do?”

The crabbiness in which Neel has left me only deepens. I shall be as much of an ogre as Vader before too long. “Don’t laugh. Soon Magdalena will insist on having all of her friends over for chocolate and you will be required to stay and entertain them.”

“I like chocolate.”

“And then she’s going to spend all your money and make you turn to drink.”

“Oh, good, then I shall come see you on my way to the tavern.” He lunges forward to pinch me.

I dodge him handily. “I don’t believe that. It has been ages since you’ve been back.”

“Bird, it has been three days. I just was wed!”

“See? She owns you now. Just like the book says.”

Neel returns to the kitchen. He stops upon seeing Titus.

“Neel, how are you? Paint anything good lately?” Titus raises a brow and smiles.

“I am learning,” Neel says.

Titus lowers my book, smiling, and waits for more.

A spot of red creeps up each of Neel’s cheeks. “Your vader asks for ale,” he says to me. Neel is just five years younger than Titus, but he acts as if my brother bewilders him.

I pluck my book from Titus’s hands, shove it under the clothes to be ironed that are piled on the table, then pour ale from the jug. I hold out the pewter mug to Neel.

“Let me know when you have a painting you would like me to sell,” Titus calls after him as he walks away. “Just as charming as ever,” he says with a grin.

“We cannot all be as charming as you,” I reply, surprised by a jolt of sympathy for Neel.

“Oh, hush,” Titus protests, but I see him glance at his own reflection in the window. “Neel’s a good enough fellow. A bit serious, perhaps …”

I pick up an unironed collar from the table, pretend to fold it, then throw it down. “I cannot stand it around here. Vader is going crazy. He keeps calling for you, when he has to know you are gone.”

Titus pulls back in surprise. “He does?”

“All the time.”

“He never used to be confused,” says Titus. “Tactless and absurd, yes, but not confused. Maybe I should call a physician.”

“No!” I say. Doctors cost money. “Maybe it’s not that bad.”

“TITUS!” Vader yells from upstairs.

Titus looks at me. “Is that what he’s been doing?”

His worried face alarms me. Maybe Vader is worse than I feared. Maybe the eccentricity that has always shamed us has tipped more deeply into madness than I had thought. “Neel must have told him you were here.”

“TITUS!”

Titus races from the kitchen, then leaps up the stairs three at a time, with me trailing after him. He has Vader in a bear hug before I reach the studio.

“Papa!” Titus looks at Vader tenderly. “Did Neel tell you I was here?”

Neel, holding Vader’s mug of ale, shakes his head no.

Vader’s saggy cheeks, shadowed by white stubble from not shaving since Titus’s wedding day, rise in a joyous grin. “A wonderful surprise!” He embraces Titus and thumps him on the back. “How are you, lad?” he cries in his throaty voice.

Titus pulls back. “Papa, I heard you call me. Do you not know I have left? I am married now.”

“Of course I know,” says Vader. “To Saskia’s cousin. Lovely girl.”

“Then why do you do it? Cornelia says you shout after me all day long.”

Vader shrugs merrily, a paint-splotched St. Nicolaes. All he needs is presents for the little children. “It makes me feel better to pretend you are here.”

Titus and I exchange a look. Perhaps he is just being a nuisance after all.

Titus sucks in his breath. “Papa, Cornelia will take care of you now.”

“Cornelia?” Vader squints at me like a blind man.

“When you call for me knowing I am gone, it scares her,” Titus says. “It scares me, too.”

“You children scare too easy. Neel, where is my ale?”

Neel steps forward with the mug. He glances at me as Vader guzzles. I make my face as blank as possible. Neel need not know how worried I am about Vader.

“What I am saying, Papa,” says Titus, “is that when you need something, call Cornelia.”

“I will, I will.” Vader takes another deep draw from his ale. “I never worry about Cornelia.”