The Golden Tulip (40 page)

I have seen Pieter several times,
Aletta continued.
Whatever has made you change your mind about seeing him in Delft? I have no idea what you wrote to him, but whatever it was he is far from pleased over it. Your letter to us was most welcome, although I have to remind you on Sybylla’s behalf not to forget to describe Vrouw Vermeer’s clothes next time. Our neighbor Heer Zegers will be delivering this letter when passing through Delft, but will have no time to delay. I hope next time we may find a bearer who will be able to collect a reply from you. We all miss you, especially Father, who was morose and irritable for days after we heard from you, which is a sure sign that your well-being is much on his mind.

Francesca sat meditatively when she had finished the letter. So her description of the caged goldfinch had made its mark on Hendrick and her message had gone home. How long would it be before he had a change of heart toward her circumstances? She dropped her head in her hands as she anguished over Pieter’s disappointment in her. Somehow she
must
get in contact with him. Perhaps the solution was to tell everything to Aletta and let her inform him. But she could not be sure that Aletta would hold back from taking up arms on her behalf against Hendrick, and the last thing she wanted was to create strife in her home during her absence. Yet this seemed to be the only path open to her. Although the hour was late she wrote to Aletta at once, impressing on her not to rile their father in any way and to call on Sybylla as a last resort.

She was about to get into bed when she heard a knocking on the entrance door of the house. Her window was open and she looked out in time to see a traveler admitted. There had been several comings and goings during the weeks since her arrival, but only once had she come face to face with one of the overnight guests. The man was from Utrecht and they had had a short conversation in the hall when leaving the house at the same time, she to go to the Mechelin Huis escorted by Clara, and he to catch a stage wagon to continue his journey. Although Geetruyd liked to emphasize her modest means, her way of living did not match her words, and it seemed to Francesca that the widow liked to pretend genteel poverty while actually having a good income, or else her visitors paid her exceptionally well for their accommodation. The former seemed the most likely. It would explain Geetruyd’s fine gowns, good wines and rich food. Only when she attended one of her charity meetings did she dress in plain gray or black and even then the fabric was of the very best.

Francesca would have gone to sleep without another thought for the traveler if the muffled sounds of a quarrel had not reached her from one of the ground-floor rooms. Since she was two floors above there should have been no chance of any noise reaching her, but this was an old house and she supposed some hollowness in a wall, or perhaps a deep crack in the plaster somewhere, was funneling the disturbance through to her. More than once the banging of a door in that downstairs room had made her sit up in bed or look toward her door in the momentary illusion that it was close at hand. She could not distinguish the words of the quarrel and neither did she want to, but there were the unmistakable shrill tones of Geetruyd and the angry rumble of a man’s reply. Perhaps he had left last time without paying his bill and was about to be shown the door. Then as Geetruyd’s voice rose to a piercing note a scrap of what she said came through. “…she’ll remember your face, you fool!” After that there was six or seven minutes of sustained quarreling in lower tones before Geetruyd left the traveler and came up to bed, the sharp tap of her heels seeming to convey that her anger was unabated.

Normally Francesca would not have looked out of the window when she heard a guest departing early in the morning, but this time she did. As he crossed the street and hurried away she saw to her surprise that it was the man from Utrecht to whom she had spoken on his previous visit. He was either catching an earlier stage wagon than before or else he could not get out of the house quickly enough. Not that he would have avoided meeting Geetruyd again, for she was always dressed and downstairs to receive her travelers’ payment before they departed.

Francesca pondered over what she had heard. Why had Geetruyd been so furious about someone remembering his face? Surely the widow could not have been referring to her? Why should it matter in any case? If Geetruyd, for some obscure reason of her own, wanted her guests to have the ultimate privacy at all times, she should not have had an apprentice to stay in her house, for the odd chance of meeting was always there. One thing was clear. If this was a typical incident, she was on far more familiar terms with her travelers than she had admitted. Francesca frowned. Since Geetruyd had not been present when she had had her conversation with the man from Utrecht, Clara must have reported it. Unfortunately it put Clara in a new light as Geetruyd’s spy, something that Francesca had not considered before, and she supposed that everything she told the little woman about her work and her home was reported back to build up some kind of casebook about her. What a mercy it was that she could forget everything connected with this house at the Vermeers’!

Before leaving for the studio Francesca went across to the fireplace, which was the source of the voices and sounds that had reached her. Careful examination revealed that at some time the fireplace had shifted slightly, leaving a gap between itself and the paneling, which was not unusual in a house of great age. Putting her hand to it, she could feel a draft, showing there was a definite funnel somewhere from the room two floors below. She had some spare paint rags and she stuffed them into the aperture, not wanting to overhear any more conversations not meant for her ears.

A
LETTA WAS ON
her way to see Pieter. She was anxious not to delay in telling him of the restrictions being placed on Francesca’s freedom and correspondence, which she had read about with shock and dismay in the letter received only an hour before. She knew where to find him, for only yesterday he had told her that the flagstones for Ludolf’s paths were being delivered and laid this morning and he would be there to oversee the work. She did not think she could just go through to the garden without making her presence known, and duly presented herself at the entrance door to the house.

“Is Heer van Deventer at home?” she inquired when it was opened.

The manservant recognized her as having been at the banquet with her father and sisters. “No,
mejuffrouw,
Heer van Deventer is away from home for several weeks.”

“Oh, I am sorry to have missed him. I also want to speak with Heer van Doorne, who I understand is to be here supervising the work in the garden this morning.”

The manservant smiled obligingly. “Heer van Doorne has been here for some time. If you will follow me I will take you through to the garden.”

He showed her through to the drawing room, where doors opened out onto the terrace. There Aletta paused to gaze appreciatively down the stretch of the beautiful garden. She had no idea of how it had looked before Pieter had refashioned it, for it had been dark on the evening of the banquet when last she was here, but it was now a vista of parterres and lawns with a little avenue of newly planted half-grown trees that carried the eye forward to a glade with a fountain and the promise of more secluded areas of peace and charm beyond. She thought sadly how it would have enchanted Ludolf’s late wife. She could not see Pieter, but his gardeners were everywhere. As she was about to go down the steps in search of him a woman’s voice spoke to her.

“Juffrouw Visser.”

Aletta turned to see a fair-haired woman in a white cap and black gown that proclaimed her to be a servant of the van Deventer household. “Yes?”

“I heard what you said at the door.” The woman bobbed to her. “We have not met, but I’m Neeltje. I was the late Vrouw van Deventer’s personal maid until her tragic death. Would you mind if we went down to a sheltered seat that is hidden from the house? My master has gone away, but I should not be seen idling and I have a warning to give you for your sister, Juffrouw Francesca.”

Aletta, her curiosity aroused, went with her down the stone steps and along to the seat. There they sat down, turned slightly toward each other. “What is it you wished to say to me?” Aletta prompted.

But Neeltje was not to be hurried, and she began to tell Aletta about herself. “I was orphaned when I was twelve and had to get work wherever I could. My only asset was my ability to sew and eventually I obtained regular employment with a seamstress making garments for well-to-do women. It so happened that I was given the task of making a wedding gown of blue satin for my late mistress’s second marriage, this time to Ludolf van Deventer. When I heard that her personal maid had no wish to move with her to Amsterdam after she was married I went specially to ask her to let me become the replacement in her service. That same evening I was able to move out of the hovel where I had lived into the home that had been hers and her first husband’s. I finished the wedding gown there.”

“I’m sure it was the beginning of a much happier time for you.”

Neeltje’s eyes became hard and glittering. “It would have been if I had not seen her married to that monster!”

Aletta drew back startled. “What are you saying?”

“Van Deventer is a liar and a hypocrite! As soon as I can find other work better than that of linen maid, which I have become, I shall leave. I tell you that Juffrouw Francesca is in danger from him!”

“You must be mistaken,” Aletta exclaimed. “She is working in Delft and will be there for a long time yet.”

“Van Deventer’s hand can reach out anywhere!” Neeltje made a grabbing gesture in the air. “Did your sister tell you that she would have been subjected to indignities by him if I had not entered the room in the nick of time?”

Aletta felt chilled. She guessed why Francesca had said nothing, wanting to spare her a revival of memory that still brought on the occasional nightmare. “When did it happen?”

“On the day of the banquet. Only hours before his wife—died.” Neeltje had almost said “was murdered,” because she was sure it had not been a natural death. Weeping with grief, she had laid Amalia out, in spite of the pain of her cracked ribs at the time, for she had been determined that nobody else should perform this last service to the woman who had always been good to her. It was then that she had seen a faint bruise at the jawline and almost under the ear. In addition, three fingernails were broken. A terrible suspicion had seared through her. At the first opportunity she had secretly examined the couch and found clawed threads in the silkwork. There was also the smear of carmine on the cushion consistent only with Amalia turning her face fully into it. In her own room she had held a cushion over the lower half of her face before a mirror and seen where knuckles of a hand holding it down with force might well have caused such a bruise as she had seen on her mistress. Her conclusion had made her shake so much that it was as if an ague had come upon her. She knew the identity of the murderer as surely as if he had confessed. When the doctor came to see her again, in order to make sure her breathing was not affected by the state of her ribs, all she had intended to say to him about the conclusions she had drawn was silenced by his first words.

“You were the last to see Vrouw van Deventer alive, Neeltje. How exactly was she at that time?”

Immediately she had seen that if foul play did come to light, she would be the first to be accused. No one would suspect Ludolf with his constant show of devotion that she knew to be totally false. So she had held her tongue while burning with rage and hatred against him. He had twice brought devastation into her life, even though he probably did not remember the first time, but that was something she had long kept to herself and was not to be divulged to this gentle-faced girl. “I would not wish van Deventer as a husband for my worst enemy and it is my belief that he means to have your sister as his next wife.”

“She would never marry him! Neither would my father permit it! Your fears are groundless!”

“That’s as may be. I tell you that van Deventer is a man easily obsessed by violent ambitions and at the present time he wants your sister above all else. He is besotted by the likeness of her as Flora. It draws his eyes as if he were magnetized by it and thus it was when she was in the house. He guarded himself when others were present and even when she looked directly at him—until that last time when they were alone. I had long observed him with her from the shadows and my own watch points in the house, and I saw such lust in his face that I trembled for her safety and I still do.”

Aletta could see that the woman meant every word said. “Why should you take such a risk yourself to tell me all this? How do you know that I will not speak of it and bring about your banishment from this house sooner than you anticipate?”

Neeltje was unmoved by this testing. “Because I have heard your sisters speak of your love of family and your integrity. Both of them, especially your younger sister, brought such happiness to my late mistress in the last weeks of her life that I’ll always feel indebted to them. It is for that reason that I am asking you to let Juffrouw Francesca know that her whole future might be hanging in the balance.”

Aletta felt sick with dread. This well-meant and yet awful advice coming on top of her learning of the restrictions on Francesca’s freedom, even though her sister had emphasized all that the Vermeers had done for her, made it easy to believe some disaster lay ahead. “I must tell you there is one person in whom I feel it is essential to confide all that you have told me.”

Instantly Neeltje was wary. “Who is that?”

“Heer van Doorne, who has redesigned this whole garden. I know he is in love with Francesca and should some threat be leveled against her he is the one best able to deal with it. He will respect my confidence and I trust him completely.”

Neeltje gave a nod. If the Visser family trusted him that was good enough for her. “Inform van Doorne by all means. I have done all I can for your sister by telling you what I believe. It is up to you, and those you can rally to help you, to see that what I fear never comes about.” She rose from the seat to go back into the house.