The Golden Tulip (47 page)

He then explained his predicament. Normally she would have invited him to stay without hesitation, but she had gained special permission from Geetruyd for Francesca to stay the night and she was uncertain about having two people passionately in love with each other under her roof at the same time. She knew if she and Jan had been spending the night in the same house during their courtship days nothing would have kept them apart. Then the solution came to her.

“I’ve thought of something.” She left him for a matter of minutes and then returned, her crescent smile wide. “I’ve spoken to my mother without Francesca hearing and she is willing that you should stay at her house, where she has plenty of room.”

“I’m most grateful.”

“Now I’ll tell Elizabeth to show you where you can wash and tidy up after your journey. Meanwhile I’ll organize everything so that all the party can join in your surprise arrival, just as it was last year in Amsterdam. Francesca told me about the hyacinth!” Although they were on their own she whispered to him as to how he should make an entrance and he agreed willingly.

After washing, he changed into a clean shirt from his saddlebag and put on a fresh cravat of plain linen. Having already removed his riding boots, he put his feet into buckled shoes. He flicked a speck of dust from his sleeve and was ready to play his part in Catharina’s reorganization of his sudden appearance at the St. Nicholaes’s Night celebrations. Elizabeth was to give her mistress a prearranged signal.

At the party Aletta and Francesca were sitting on the floor playing a game with the children in which a ring was passed secretly from hand to hand while the child in the middle, who happened to be Beatrix, tried to locate it. She was quite wild with excitement. Looking around the circle on the floor, Beatrix pounced on Francesca’s hand like a boisterous puppy. “You have it!”

She was right and it was the moment Catharina had been waiting for. “That means Francesca must pay a forfeit!” she announced merrily, clapping her hands to make herself heard above the mirth. “She shall be the first to be blindfolded in a game of chase-and-capture.”

Francesca submitted willingly to having her eyes bound with a clean kerchief by Jan. Then all the children joined in spinning her around until she lost all sense of direction. They were nimble and dodged her. She was certain she almost had someone within her grasp when lace flicked across the tips of her fingers as she had her arms stretched out before her. Too late she realized the trick that had been played on her as she felt the cooler air of the adjoining room on her face and the communicating door slammed behind her, muffling the sounds of the party. Laughing, she fumbled at the knot at the back of her head.

“Let me do it for you,” Pieter’s voice said, releasing it.

The blindfold fell away and her delighted eyes absorbed the sight of him for no more than a matter of seconds before she was in his arms. It was the hammering of the children on the other side of the door, demanding her return, that eventually brought an end to their kissing.

“This time I’m able to join the party,” he said as he led her to the door.

Catharina watched them enter together. She saw how they looked at each other with the eyes of lovers for a brief moment before they turned simultaneously to smile at those in the room, and she thought them more blessed than they probably realized. Only those who had experienced the constant threat of being parted forever, whether by parental opposition or any other kind of catastrophe, fully appreciated love and life together when eventually it was achieved. Jan was already welcoming the new arrival. What a perfect evening it was turning out to be!

Aletta had gone forward eagerly to greet Pieter, who kissed her hand and her cheek. Catharina, still watching, saw something in Aletta’s face that might have been love too, but it was only there for a fleeting moment and was gone almost as soon as it had appeared.

When the party was over Pieter and Francesca had a little while alone to exchange their gifts and make their own loving farewell. He gave her a necklet of pearls, which was of the fashionable length to be worn high about the throat, a single drop pearl hanging from it, and he fastened it on for her.

“It’s beautiful,” she breathed, looking at her reflection in a mirror. “I’ll treasure it always.”

She had a gift for him. It was a small painting of the view taken from the sketch she had made on the August day they had shared together. Within its frame he saw again the canal asparkle with sun-diamonds, the cornfield and the windmill beyond.

“It’s splendid, and you’ve signed it!” He peered closer at her signature. “There’s a tulip within the signature. How apt!”

“Jan gave me permission to sign it. As my master everything I paint belongs to him and he has sold most of my work, but he allowed me to keep this one for a token sum, so it’s not a costly gift that you have received.”

“You’re mistaken.” He looked fondly at her. “It’s the first painting of yours that I’ve ever owned and that makes it beyond price to me.”

From the entrance hall Catharina called tactfully through the door that was standing ajar. “My mother is ready to leave, Pieter.”

At Vrouw Thin’s house he was given a good bed in a warm room. In the morning, although he rose at an early hour, the servants were about and he was served a hearty breakfast.

“Snow is on the way,” a manservant warned while pouring out steaming coffee for him. “I was born on a farm and I know all the signs of bad weather. It’s my belief that a blizzard is not far distant.”

A few flakes were falling when Pieter went to collect his horse at the stables, but there was no wind and it was less cold than on the previous day. He covered the many miles back to Haarlem without any delay, relieved that the forecast had so far not proved to be right.

Haarlem Huis was always at the center of activity, even in winter. The most constant chore was that of cosseting the orange trees, a careful check on the lamps thrice daily ensuring a steady temperature, whatever the degrees of frost might be outside the orangery. Pieter was planning to build another such orangery very shortly, for this expensive tree was much in demand.

Whenever business elsewhere caused him to be absent from his bulb fields more than he would have wished, at least he could be sure that all would be efficiently run while he was away, for he had an excellent manager, who lived on the site in the old farmhouse. It had been the van Doorne family home until Haarlem Huis had been built on the profits of the short, sharp spell of tulipomania, from which Pieter’s late father had emerged successfully.

Pieter, well satisfied with his own investments in cargoes, was able to follow the latest shipping reports even from Haarlem Huis, for Holland had more newspapers in circulation than the rest of Europe put together. He was reading one of several that he took regularly when Gerard called in at Haarlem Huis to see if there was a letter ready for him to take to Delft.

“Not this time,” Pieter said after they had settled at the fireside, each with a glass of wine. They had been friends since their school days and were totally relaxed in each other’s company. “Neither Francesca nor I expected you to be going there again before Christmas and what we would have written is to be said instead when we see each other very soon now in Amsterdam. I’m banned from calling at her home, but we shall meet at my house.”

“How did your trip to Delft go?”

“Extremely well.”

“Good fortune must be smiling on you.”

“I’ll drink to that,” Pieter replied firmly and raised his glass while Gerard did the same.

But the toast was to no effect. Neither Pieter nor Francesca was able to get to Amsterdam for Christmas. A great blizzard swept across Europe, blocking roads and causing many of those trapped by it to freeze to death.

Hendrick, looking out the window at the driving flakes, which made it impossible to see across to the houses on the other side of the canal, was selfishly thankful for the storm. He had dreaded meeting Francesca face to face. She had the uncanny ability to see through him at times, being much like Anna in that respect. Not only would she have challenged him about the restrictions of Vrouw Wolff’s chaperonage, but she would have gone up in the air about his treatment of Aletta.

He was not without shame at his harshness toward his second daughter, especially when he had heard how narrowly she had escaped injury in the accident, but he did not want her home again. For a while after she had left, Sybylla had been sulky, saying he had driven her sister away, but she had soon recovered from that phase and was full of life again, happy in her favorite game of playing off one would-be suitor against another. He knew she was a little minx, but she had been spoilt since birth through being the youngest and it was too late to change that now. It would be a dull house when she finally settled on a husband and moved into her own home, which was why he was in no hurry for her to marry. When she did it would leave him with only Maria’s gloomy face at mealtimes, for the old woman missed sorely both Francesca and Aletta and her main pastime was the same unceasing bickering with Sybylla.

At the present time he was painting Maria. He was like Rembrandt in finding old faces interesting subjects. She came daily into the studio to sit for him, ensconced in a comfortable chair, and he had thought to capture the sad look that had settled in her eyes since the departure of Aletta, but that had not been possible. Instead she had fixed him with a fiercely resentful gaze that pleased him better, for those who viewed the portrait would interpret the look as that of a still young spirit trapped in an ancient body instead of a pent-up grudge against him for causing further emptiness in the house.

Hendrick did not know if Ludolf would like or want the finished work, but freedom in the studio was all that was left to him, for his patron could not dictate subject matter even when holding jurisdiction over everything else in his life. Mercifully Ludolf had been absent from Amsterdam for quite a time, away on business in Antwerp, where he had shipping interests. Before he had left, Hendrick had had an ignominious summons to Heerengracht.

“I’ll probably be away through the rest of my period of mourning,” Ludolf had said, seated grandly in a gilded chair while Hendrick stood like a schoolboy in disgrace with no invitation to sit. “Naturally I shall make a point of returning in time for Christmas, when Francesca will be home. As I said to you previously, I intend to start my courtship then.”

Recalling that haughty statement, Hendrick watched the snowflakes being hurled with increasing force against the windowpanes and he smiled grimly. No doubt Ludolf had expected to sail home to Amsterdam from Antwerp, but no ships were putting out of harbor into the present rough seas and the roads were impassable. It was a true saying that it was an ill wind that blew no one any good.

I
N THE NEW YEAR
there was no return of what had been termed everywhere as the Great Blizzard, but heavy falls of snow continued to make traveling hazardous. Traffic was much easier on the frozen canals once they were cleared of snow, and the air rang with the tinkling of bells on sleighs and sledges. In the de Veere house Constantijn was making steady progress. It was said that when he had recovered enough to realize his legs were gone he thought the amputation had been done only recently, for in the hazy coming and going of his senses he had still been able to feel his legs and even his toes. He had not wept or cried out when he had faced the awful truth that he would never walk again, but a terrible anger had possessed him and showed no sign of abating.

Aletta understood that anger. It was in her too. He had lost his legs and she her painting.

Constantijn, propped up by pillows and wedged in by them in the four-poster bed with its rich brocade curtains, did not open his eyes when he heard his mother enter the room. Another meal of slops, he thought. It would be easy to believe that everyone from the kitchen staff to his mother was trying to finish him off with steamed fish or coddled eggs or gruel. It would make an interesting inscription on the stone under which he would lie in the New Church with his forebears.
Constantijn de Veere, who died of a surfeit of curds and whey.

Then a tantalizing aroma reached him. It was vaguely familiar and he was reminded of moments of rich living, intimate dinners with a beautiful woman, carousing with riotous friends in celebration when a match had been won and even family feasts on special occasions.

“What have you brought for my noon meal today?” he asked, his eyes still closed. “It smells like real food.”

“It’s broth made from a recipe left with me on St. Nicholaes’s Eve. A whole jug of it was brought for you, but I only gave it to you once.”

His eyelids lifted and he regarded her with weary astonishment. “You had it in the house and didn’t give me any more of it?”

“The doctor happened to call at the time and thought it too rich.”

“Ah, I might have known. Why has it been made again for me now?”

“Your diet is to be strengthened. You’re to be allowed red meat and red wine from now on.”

“May heaven be praised,” he said drily.

She set down the silver platter with the bowl of broth on it. “It was a young woman who originally made the broth for you. She is temporary nursemaid to the Vermeer children and sister to Master Vermeer’s female apprentice.”

She had told him all this when she had put a spoonful of the broth to his mouth on St. Nicholaes’s Eve, thankful to see him take every drop, but he had forgotten so much from that time when it had been uncertain whether he would live or die.

“I’ve seen her.”

“When?” She wondered if he had retained some image conjured up by her words at the time.

“At least I think it must be her. A young woman pulls the curtains back every night from the window level with mine across the square. Only for a minute or two. Then she closes them again.”

“As you should have yours closed,” she said brusquely, not quite sure what to make of his observation.

He guessed what was going through his mother’s mind. “She’s in full attire.”