The Golden Tulip (75 page)

She could hear from a feminine tone intermingling now and again that Geetruyd was with them. Her voice came through again.

“As I said at the time, there’s nothing to worry about…Can’t run fast on stumps…Five women servants, including old Sara, and two men, both over fifty and no threat…No, I wasn’t including him…Leave the silencing of that fellow and the dogs to me. I’ve already made arrangements.”

Francesca, her ear pressed to the aperture, was full of fear for the safety of those at the de Veere house. It must mean that there was to be a raid on the cellar this very night and that violence would be used to get the arms away. None of those conspirators, three in charge of vehicles, would be here to delay for a day or two. She had to let Pieter know! She must slip out of the house immediately before she was called for dinner. If luck was with her it would be served late this evening, with Weintje so overworked and Geetruyd finalizing plans with her fellow traitors.

Not risking being seen in any outdoor garment, she planned to slip out into the mild, light evening, see Pieter at either his office or the Mechelin tavern and then get back before her absence was noticed. But as she reached the hall and was on the point of turning for the main door, Geetruyd emerged from the conference.

“Ah, you’re down in good time for dinner, Francesca. I was about to call you. We are dining slightly earlier this evening, for a little social gathering of my fellow regents and regentesses will take place here later upstairs in the east parlor. You shall join us as you have done on previous occasions.”

Francesca could not help but be amazed by the woman’s iron nerves. Geetruyd was carefully establishing her own respectable alibi while violence and most probably murder, planned under her own roof, would soon be taking place.

“Will the company stay late?” Francesca inquired conversationally.

“Until midnight at least. We are to have poetry reading, some singing and a little talk on a visit to Amsterdam from Heer van Golpen. Now come to the table. Clara is already there.”

Francesca had never felt more trapped or frustrated. She dare not let Geetruyd suspect for one moment that she was desperate to get away, but somehow it had to be done. Never had a meal seemed longer. There was a hitch between courses when Clara, who was always excited when a social event was imminent, knocked over a glass of wine, which spread all over the fine lace-trimmed cloth. It had to be removed immediately and plunged into cold water to avoid staining, Geetruyd doing it herself while Weintje wiped the table, spread a fresh cloth and reset the dinner service. Francesca, looking at the clock, saw that the slim chance of carrying out her wish to slip out before the regents and regentesses arrived had gone.

When dinner ended she began clearing the table and Geetruyd did not object, well aware there was a lot for Weintje to do that evening, even though she herself had supervised the cooking. Francesca, putting down some dirty dishes to be washed, just had time to speak into the maidservant’s ear.

“I must be out of the house for ten minutes this evening, Weintje. Would you help me?”

Weintje shot a wary look at the door, but Geetruyd was not to be seen. “I’ve long owed you a favor in return for a kindness you did me in not telling that my sweetheart had sat with me in the kitchen. What do you want me to do?”

“Cover for me. When it’s time for coffee and cakes to be served to Vrouw Wolff’s company I’ll come down as if to help you. That’s when I’ll go.”

Geetruyd and Clara both came into the kitchen at that moment. Weintje gave Francesca a significant nod to show she would do as she had been asked.

By the time Francesca had finished clearing the table the regents and regentesses had arrived. As Geetruyd had not finished in the kitchen, Francesca was entrusted to show them upstairs, collect their cloaks and engage them in conversation. She was aware that none of them approved of her following the career of a painter and she found their disapproval irritating. Remembering her gentle aunt Janetje, who had also been a regentess, she knew there must be many such kindly folk serving on the boards of institutions here in Delft, but unfortunately only the strictest and most narrow-minded ever came to spend time with Geetruyd.

The evening dragged. Then eventually Geetruyd jerked the bellpull for Weintje to bring the coffee and cakes. Francesca leapt to her feet. “I’ll lend a hand!” she exclaimed, and was out of the room before Geetruyd could utter a word.

Francesca had been afraid the whips would be gone, but they were still there. She flew to the kitchen. “Are the travelers still at dinner in their rooms?”

“No, they’ve finished.” Weintje gestured wildly. “Go if you’re going! I’ve a lantern ready. Here! Take it.”

Francesca ran out of the back door and into the street by way of the side passageway. Upstairs the conversation of the regentesses had turned to the weather and if there would be rain in the night. Clara obliged by drawing a curtain to inform them that the evening was still clear.

With fluttering petticoats, Francesca crossed the little bridge over the canal of Oude Langendijk and seconds later was in the market square. On she ran, her feet flying over the cobbles, until she reached the tavern. Before entering it she saw that a light was glowing in Pieter’s office window and a man she recognized was standing outside. She rushed to him.

“Gerard! I have to see Pieter! It’s vitally important.”

He wasted no words and opened the office door for her. “Go in!”

She realized he must have been on guard, for inside the office Pieter was in discussion with several men, all of them armed. He forestalled any question in her mind about disclosing what she wanted to say.

“What is it, Francesca? You may speak freely.”

“The de Veere house! The traitors are going there tonight! I can’t stop.”

Pieter turned to the men. “Get the horses!” Then he took Francesca by the hand. “I’ll go back with you. Tell me everything on the way!”

They hurried along together, speaking quietly, for there were people about. “I knew as soon as I saw the whip in the hall,” she explained, “that something was surely about to happen.”

Near the corner of Kromstraat they halted, for by then she had told him all she had seen and overheard. He pulled her into his arms and kissed her hard.

“You’ve done so well, my love,” he breathed.

“Take care!” she whispered after him. Already he had gone, running back and soon out of sight to where she guessed those who had been at the office with him would be already in the saddle, his horse brought forward in readiness.

She would have broken into a run again herself to cover the last short distance to the house, but as she turned she saw ranged ahead of her at the corner of Kromstraat the outraged faces of the regents and regentesses, Geetruyd standing with them, her expression showing grim satisfaction. Clara was there too, but looking worried. It was not Geetruyd who spoke first, but the fiercest of the regents, Heer van Golpen. He stepped forward and his voice thundered forth.

“You wicked young woman! How many times have you crept out of this good lady’s house to keep immoral liaisons with the men of this town?”

Francesca tilted her chin and approached them. Her relief that she had given the warning and that the true cause of why she had been out had not been suspected was all that mattered. She wondered why they had come in search of her and supposed Weintje had been unable to keep them at bay. But as they all parted to let her through Clara gave her the explanation.

“I saw you from the window in the light from the opposite house. Are you angry with me?”

“No, Clara.”

The little woman was suddenly conscious of the fury in the faces around her and in her nervousness blurted out, “I recognized the young man who just kissed you. It was he who gave me the posy at the kermis.”

Geetruyd grabbed Francesca’s arm and wrenched her around. “I saw him too! It was Pieter van Doorne! Were you at the kermis with him?”

“I was.”

“But that was before he began coming to Delft on business. So it has been lies! All lies!”

Francesca regarded her calmly. “Neither of us has ever lied to you. You drew your own conclusions. Release my arm. I’ll pack a few overnight necessities and go to the Vermeers’, as I wanted to do the first night I was in your home.”

She entered the house, the others following her and speaking in shocked tones among themselves. Her glance went immediately to the place where the whips had been propped. They were gone! As she reached the foot of the stairs Weintje appeared in the kitchen doorway, her face distressed.

“I couldn’t stop them,” she whispered.

“I know,” Francesca whispered back with a smile.

In her bedchamber she put a few things together and then came down to the reception hall. Dread swept over her when she saw Heer van Golpen waiting for her with two burly-looking men in gray livery. Of Geetruyd and everyone else there was no sign.

“Francesca Visser,” the regent said sternly, “you have flouted the kindly rules of this respectable home, abused its hospitality and by self-admission revealed your waywardness and defiance. I am chairman of the board of the House of Correction for young women and on Vrouw Wolff’s behalf I have ordered these attendants to take you there for your own good until such time as you have learned to mend your ways. I am accompanying you to register your name through my authority.”

“No! I won’t go! You have no right!”

He did not listen, signaling to the attendants, who took her by the arms and hustled her out of the house in his wake. Twenty minutes later Francesca was alone in a sparsely furnished room on her own. There were bars on the window and the door was locked on the other side.

G
EETRUYD HAD A
feeling that something was terribly wrong. It was early morning, neither Clara nor Weintje yet awake, but she was up in order to rumple the sheets of her fellow conspirators’ beds to deceive the maidservant into thinking they had been slept in. One man should have returned. That had been essential to the whole operation, for she was to report to Ludolf as to how well matters had gone when he came later in the day.

She drank a cup of coffee to calm her nerves. By rights she should have been in high spirits, because at last she had put Francesca where she had long wanted her to be. It was a sweet revenge against Ludolf and would thwart his marriage plans for a long time to come. She had been watching and waiting for some small error on Francesca’s part to justify an incarceration, never dreaming that it would happen with no fewer than three regents and five regentesses as witness. Most fortunate of all was the presence of Heer van Golpen, who had shouldered full responsibility and was a man of such integrity and standing that no appeal by the young woman’s father for her release, or by Ludolf in whatever high position he obtained, could release her before her morals were considered secure by the governing board. It was not unknown for incarceration to be up to two or three years in extreme cases, which Geetruyd had decided would be her personal aim as far as Francesca was concerned. Ludolf could yelp all he liked, but it would make no difference.

Although buoyed up by this thought, Geetruyd could not dismiss her anxiety. She kept glancing at the clock. It was dawn and still Gijsbert Kuiper had not returned. Where was the man? Weintje would be up soon and he should be back in his room to save arousing the maidservant’s curiosity.

Restless with apprehension, Geetruyd went to the hall window and looked out. There was a thick mist, but very early risers were about. A carpenter driving a light cart drew up and began talking animatedly to an acquaintance on foot who beckoned another over to hear what was being said. Trying to reassure herself that the talk was of nothing more than the outcome of a cockfight or some such sport, she opened the main door into the street.

“Is anything amiss, gentlemen?” she asked.

They all three looked toward her. “Quite the reverse, Vrouw Wolff,” said one, who knew her. The carpenter asserted himself as the bearer of the news.

“On my way into town I heard of an armed confrontation at young Constantijn de Veere’s country house. I don’t know yet what it was all about, but a farmer who helped catch one of the villains with a pitchfork said two others had been killed and four more arrested by the Prince’s men. The sad news, which will grieve many in the town, is that old Josephus suffered a fatal wound and died in the arms of the new young mistress of the house.”

“What had been going on?” Geetruyd asked stiffly. She was rigid with shock, but she had never panicked and she wouldn’t do it now.

“Thieving of firearms from the de Veere cellars by traitors, ma’am, so the farmer gathered, but the matter isn’t going to stop there. Others connected with the affair are to be rounded up, so he heard.”

“Dear me! What times we live in!” Her mind was racing. “Are you busy today? I have need of a light cart such as yours.”

The carpenter looked uncertain. The two men he had been talking to had moved off. “I’ve made a delivery already and I was thinking of getting back home to my workshop. What did you want transported, ma’am?”

“I would like to hire the cart itself for the day. I heard late last night that my sister is ill,” she lied, “and I want to take her some things from my house that she needs, bedding and so forth. You could collect your cart here this evening. The matter is urgent and I will pay you well.”

“Can you handle a horse, ma’am? This one can be speedy on a good road.”

“I’m well used to horses. I had to drive my late husband on many occasions.”

The carpenter thought to himself that she looked a capable woman. Nothing frivolous about her and he could do with the extra money while he did other work. It would not be difficult to get a lift back home or another into town later. “Very well. Shall I help you load up?”

“That’s most obliging of you.”

Collecting what she wanted to take with her was not unrehearsed. She had long ago made preparations for flight in an emergency, although she had never expected it to come upon her as swiftly as this. There had been no liking between her and that Utrecht fellow and even Kuiper wouldn’t be slow to give her away if put under pressure. The carpenter carried out a chest of her best linen, the table silverware, which she had always kept in a special box, two goose-feather pillows and a quilt and another chest containing her best garments into which she put an antique Chinese bowl and a valuable Delft vase to protect them from being broken. Silver pieces, such as a salver and some candlesticks, were wrapped into a velvet bag.