Wings over Delft (3 page)

‘Miss Eeden, surely you don’t want to be cooped up in here with a mad old painter and his imbecile apprentice! Look, the sun is splitting the skies.’ He made a vague
gesture
with his palette. ‘Wouldn’t you prefer to be out there? Come back some other day when – ’ A sharp cough from the boy in the corner cut him short; the Master turned and glared at the him and then snapped: ‘Get on with your work.’

‘Oh no, I
want
to be here,’ Louise assured him. ‘I really do. This is far more interesting.’ Her answer appeared to
surprise the painter, and his eyebrows shot up, nearly disappearing under his hat.

‘Oh indeed?
Interesting
. Do you hear that, Pieter?’ he said, turning to where the boy was working, jutting a defiant chin at him. ‘And there was you wanting a day off so you could go chasing young maidens through the meadows. Here is a lesson for you, a young lady who is actually
interested
in our work!’

Louise felt a blush mounting. She hadn’t meant to get the boy into trouble. But the Master was smiling now, as if he had settled a small score. He pretended to flex the
paintbrush
in his hand like a rapier. Then, in another sudden change of mood, he put down his palette, dropped the brush into the jug, and turned to her. She noticed that his smile crinkled his eyes into a thousand bright lines.

‘So, I am to paint a portrait of Miss Louise Eeden?’

‘Yes, Master, please. That is my father’s wish.’

‘But it is not yours?’

‘Oh yes, it is,’ she said.

He bowed in acceptance. Louise was relieved that he was being serious; it made it easier. She had rehearsed this bit, because she had her own ideas of how she wanted her portrait painted. ‘Master,’ she said, ‘I am familiar with your pictures. That is why I wanted to come to you. I am no grand lady, nor do I have the looks to … to be admired. I just want to be painted as I am.’

‘But, my dear, that is what a portrait is.’

She felt panicky now; it was difficult to explain. She knew what everyone expected – it was part of the conspiracy – the
portrait of an heiress on the eve of her marriage. She couldn’t tolerate that, but how could she say this without giving offence?

‘Of course, Master, but, how can I put it … I don’t want to be painted like a grand lady – looking as if I had a lemon in my mouth.’ His eyebrows were rising again, so she hurried on. ‘You remember your portrait of the Beggar at the
Begijnhof
gate? That old man, I love him, he lives. I want to live in my portrait, too. Let me be painted playing my lute, or looking through the telescope Father and I are building. Nobody wants to look at Miss Louise Eeden sitting stiff as a stuffed parrot. Let me just be “Girl in a green dress”.’ Louise was running out of words. He
had
to understand. But he was laughing at her.

‘No, no, no, my child. That’s not a portrait you are
talking
about; it is a tronie. It’s the sort of picture we paint when funds are low. Pieter and I painted that picture of the beggar together, didn’t we? What did we pay him, Pieter? A few stuivers to sit for us in the studio here, and then we hunted his fleas for a fortnight. The people who buy tronies want the beggar without the fleas. Your father is the finest potter in Delft,’ he bowed, ‘a member of the Guild of St Luke. He would never accept a mere tronie of his daughter. There is custom and practice in these things. We all know why a father wants his daughter painted at a time like this. This is a moment to stop the world, to show it that he has brought up a girl of beauty and fashion. Can you imagine him accepting a picture showing, “Miss Eeden dressed as a bargee’s daughter on the occasion of her engagement to –”’

‘No!’ Louise shouted, surprised at herself. ‘On the occasion of nothing!’ She half rose, taking breath. She had to kill this off once and for all. But a change had taken place in the Master; he was leaning forward, one hand held out as if to stop her. The paintbrush, which he had been holding, went skittering across the floor. She wondered if he was ill, having a seizure? But he was whispering at her, a hoarse, urgent sound.

‘Stop! Don’t move!’ She realised that he was trying to
prevent
her getting up. She deflected her protest by swivelling away from him. She looked up and found herself staring straight into the eyes of the boy with the blue stone. For what seemed like an eternity, none of them moved.

Tap tap … tap tap. Tap tap … a pigeon had landed on the windowsill and was pecking at the glass. The sound broke the spell. The bird cocked its head sideways and peered into the studio expectantly. The Master sighed.

‘Pieter, feed our friend, will you.’ Louise watched the boy cross to the window, open it and shake some grain on to the windowsill. There was a soft
froo froo
and the hollow peck of a beak on the wood. Louise stared at the bird, her thoughts confused. What had she said? You don’t argue with a master of his trade. You don’t tell him how to do his job. He was coming towards her now, a polite handshake and it would be over. To her surprise she felt his fingers, gentle on her cheek, and he turned her face towards him.

‘Come, my love. I will paint you as you wish.’

‘Like the beggar at the Begijnhof gate?’

‘So that you live, my heart, and will live as long as paint
and canvas last.’ She looked up into the old man’s face, a creased conflict of lines. ‘It will hurt us both, you know. You don’t become a beggar from sleeping in a feather bed.’

‘And you, Master?’ She asked, worried at the pain in those deep-etched lines. He smiled, but as he turned away she caught the words: ‘Me? … me it could destroy.’

He bent to pick up the brush he had dropped. ‘In a
moment
, Miss Louise Eeden,’ he said as he straightened up, ‘we will begin again. I have seen the beggar in you, but I will have to wake him. Listen to me now, because we have just one chance to find him. If I call out for you to hold your pose again you are to do so, and you will not move an inch nor twitch a muscle. If you move once it will be over and I will paint you with eleven lemons in your mouth and marry you off to Pieter here!’ He flexed his brush and made a pass at the boy; the clown had returned. 

‘So, I am to paint Miss Louise Eeden as we painted the beggar at the Begijnhof gate,’ the Master said, gazing up at the ceiling. ‘It makes me itch just to think of him. But how about your father? If his daughter refuses to sit for me as the young lady he might expect, will he approve of her as a beggar, and more importantly, will he pay?’

‘Oh he will pay, and I’m
sure
he never meant it to be a formal portrait. I think he only thought about a picture of me when he bought the silk for my dress.’

‘Ah! The famous silk dress. Come, let us see it. Your father told me, and I’m afraid my heart sank.’ He came over to her. ‘Your cloak … if I may help?’ Louise stood up. She loosened the clasp and he lifted the cloak from her shoulders and stepped back. The captive silk cascaded around her with a whisper.

‘Aah!’ The Master sighed, and the sound of grinding stopped. He walked around her, breathing heavily through his nose. ‘Green silk from China … silk of Cathay! Bought from the very ship, your father says. Do you see it, Pieter? A challenge, eh! Your father did not exaggerate. But do you know how difficult it is for us to paint in green? There is no
such thing as a green paint to match this, no green that we can pound up and smear on our palette. The colours in this dress will have to be built up layer upon layer. Pieter, bring over a piece of the lapis lazuli you are grinding.’ He waited while the boy came across the room and opened his hand. There it was – the brilliant blue she had seen that moment when she had come into the room.

‘Beautiful,’ she whispered.

‘Don’t you ask why we use blue and not green?’ the Master queried.

‘You have already said, Master, that there is no green paint you can use, so that means you must use blue and
yellow
. But to grind up jewels is beyond belief, and how do you mix them? The yellow that you use must be clear and translucent for the blue to shine through.’

‘Listen to her, Pieter.’ Master Haitink said with unfeigned surprise. ‘The young lady knows more about our business than is safe. Perhaps she is a spy sent by that rogue Fabritius to learn our secrets. We must take care.’

‘You forget, Master,’ reminded his apprentice, ‘that you have not told even me how you compound your yellows. It is your last secret.’ The boy tossed the blue stone in the air and walked back to his corner.

‘Last secret indeed! The day you get your indentures back, Pieter, I will tell you.’ He stepped back, looking at Louise in admiration. ‘Oh, Miss Eeden let me paint you standing there. I will put a crown on your head and a
sceptre
in your hand.’

‘And all eleven lemons in my mouth?’ laughed the girl.

‘Sit, child. Let me prepare you; I have a vision to capture again.’ Louise sat, while his hands flew over her, detached and professional, arranging the folds of the dress, fluffing out the white linen sleeves of her blouse where they emerged from the stiff, half-sleeved bodice. ‘So this is the latest fashion?’ he said, as he lifted the white linen cloth from her head and explored where Annie had rolled her hair at the back. She had bound the roll of hair with a
double
strand of seed pearls. ‘With your permission …’ he undid one of the strands so that it could hang free. ‘Now, see, it frames your face.’ He stood back then and frowned.

‘Pieter,’ he said. ‘We have too much light in here.’ He tapped his foot impatiently while the boy crossed the room and drew the curtains against the morning sun. The stream of yellow light was snipped off and the room darkened. The boy joined his master, and they both stood staring at the dress.

‘Surely you want all the light you can get?’ asked Louise, disappointed and uncomfortable under their joint scrutiny.

‘Oh no, it is not quantity, but quality of light that we need. Look down at your dress, to where I am pointing, and you will understand what I mean. Tell me, what colours do you see?’

Louise looked and was puzzled. ‘Colours…? Well, green …?’

‘Ah yes, green, but what green? How many greens? Look, here within the folds.’ He pointed to a deep fold that opened from her right knee. ‘See … down in here, where the light is less, the green is darker. Now we rise towards
the light.’ As Louise followed his finger, it was as if she was watching a magic brush trailing a continuum of different shades of green behind it.

‘Yes, Master, I see!’ she said delightedly. ‘Why did I never notice? There are thousands of greens here.’

‘Ah ha! People just don’t
see
. And look, where the light from the crest of this fold is reflected into the almost black shadow of the fold next to it? Here we have reflected light. That is why Pieter closed the curtains. Now, with light
coming
just from the windows facing north, no one colour dominates. Each colour, while subdued, is correct in
relation
to the colours around it.’

‘Father says that all the colours in the world are hidden in a single beam of light. That a rainbow isn’t painted onto the sky but is made from the way light shines on the rain.’ She was beginning to enjoy herself. Men – other than Father, that is – never talked to her like this. She wanted to ask him about the other colours, but then she realised that he had backed away from her. She looked up; he was observing her with his head cocked to one side. The look went on and on. Then he said, almost to himself:

‘I see you, child. You are like a sneeze that will not come.’ In a normal voice he said: ‘Tell me about your father. There are some in town that are suspicious of people who delve into mysteries like the nature of light. Some people believe that we should leave the heavens to God and let him paint the rainbows in the sky. Your father is a freethinker?’

Louise nodded enthusiastically. ‘Father says we must
question everything. He plans to introduce philosophy in the school if he is elected to the Town Council.’

‘Does he, indeed?’ The Master was looking at her again; his eyes were narrowed this time. He picked up a slender paintbrush and idly fingered the bristles as if they made the point of a sword. ‘You say he is building a telescope?’

‘We
both
are!’ Louise corrected, but added, a little lamely, ‘Well, actually the cooper from the pottery is making the tube for us.’

‘Your honesty is commendable, my dear, but that will not protect you from error.’ He dropped the brush back into its jug and squared up to her, hands on hips. ‘I suppose you support this newfangled idea that the earth spins about the sun?’

Louise was taken aback. Did anyone still believe that the earth stood stationary, and that the sun moved around it? She glanced across at the apprentice; he half-smiled and dropped his gaze. The Master, who had seen her look, growled. ‘Get on with your work, Pieter, you won’t
understand
our learned discussion here.’ She felt indignant for the young man; there was nothing she could do for him, but she could challenge the Master.

‘Can it really be, sir, that you think that the sun spins about the earth?’ she asked.

‘Of course it does. Use the evidence of your eyes. The sun rises in the east – or it did when I last looked – it traverses the heavens, and then it sinks in the west. It doesn’t achieve this by standing still, my dear.’

‘But, Galileo –’

‘Galileo be damned,’ he interrupted rudely. ‘If the sun did not move, then the earth would have to spin like a top to compensate. You, my dear, would be thrown off it, so too would every movable object. Pigs would fly; even Pieter would be snatched from his just deserts at the gates of hell. Look what happens!’ To Louise’s alarm, the artist began to spin. ‘Watch my sleeves,’ he shouted as he flashed around. ‘See how they fly out! You, my dear, would be spun off the globe and would crack your head on the floor of heaven before you could say lapis lazuli.’ Here he lost balance and collapsed onto the low chair behind his easel where Louise could only see his legs. ‘Give up, my dear. You may not have heard of Aristotle, the Greek
philosopher
, but he got it right; we have no authority to change our minds … ’ Then he groaned, ‘Lord how the room swims.’

Louise smiled. Serve you right, she thought, but she was relieved that he hadn’t done himself an injury. Nevertheless, she resented his presumption that she had not heard of Aristotle.

‘You mean Aristotle’s crystalline spheres, I presume?’ she said, and cocked her head, waiting for his response. Slowly his head appeared around the edge of the canvas. ‘Pieter,’ he said humbly. ‘Miss Eeden knows her Aristotle. We must look to our laurels.’

‘Eight spheres,’ Louise said, conscious that she was showing off. The Master rose carefully, holding on to the edge of the canvas to steady himself. He began to incant, his voice taking on a dreamy, inward sounding tone.

‘At the centre lies the earth, changeable and corruptible;
about this circles the moon, a celestial orb, perfect and incorruptible. This is the divine plan. Then come the eight crystalline spheres slipping past each other, each with its own heavenly burden: one for the sun, and seven for the planets. Then comes the outer firmament, in which are embedded the fixed stars, the stars that do not change.’ As the Master spoke he used his hands, eloquently describing the spheres for Louise in the air in front of him. She was moved, and a little ashamed at having shown off. It was indeed a beautiful concept, and it had a divine simplicity, but she had to respond.

‘Master, I would like to think that you were right, but with our telescope we will see things that I’m afraid prove beyond doubt that these beautiful crystal spheres cannot in fact exist. How will you explain the movements of the four moons that circle Jupiter? How can these circle the planet if Jupiter is set in crystal – frozen as if in ice?’

‘The answer, my dear, is simple; they cannot, therefore there is no point in looking!’

‘But –’

He held up his hand. ‘No
but
, my dear. You have described it perfectly. If you look through the clear ice of a canal in winter you will often see a fish that has become frozen into it. If I were to tell you that smaller fishes could be seen swimming through the ice about it, you would
dismiss
me for a fool because fish can’t swim in ice, no more can moons orbit in crystal. It is therefore a waste of God’s time to look.’

Louise was dumbfounded. She shook her head; he
really meant what he had said! Speaking as clearly and
precisely
as she could, she said: ‘On the contrary, Master, I would look and, if they did move, I would tell you that you were mistaken. That the fish could not be frozen in the ice as you thought, just as I tell you now, Jupiter cannot be set in crystal.’

‘But, child, what arrogance! Don’t you know in your heart that supreme concepts are greater than mere facts? That the sacred Aristotle’s model of the universe must
outweigh
the observations of a sixteen-year-old girl with a telescope? Your telescope lies.’ Louise’s head was
beginning
to swim. She wasn’t sure whether to laugh or to cry. What made it worse was the realisation that she liked this cantankerous old man. She wanted his approval more than anything, but he belonged in the past. What could she do? She felt the blood surging into her face, a sure sign of danger. When she flared like this with Annie she usually said something that she regretted. But truth would out.

‘Sir, how can a telescope lie?’ she demanded. ‘When we get our lenses I will show you, and you will see with your own eyes.’ She looked up at him. She was pleading, but it was no use; he had clapped his hands over his eyes.

‘No, I will not look. There is no need. It is not for me to change; it is your belief in your instrument that is at fault.’

Louise had had enough. She gathered herself for a final thrust, then she would go. ‘If Aristotle had had a telescope, Master,’ she said, ‘he would have looked, but unlike you, he would have changed his mind. Respectfully sir, you are two thousand years out of date.’ She leant forward, preparing to
rise and leave this place. She was bitterly disappointed. She had won the argument, but at what price? She even felt the victor’s burst of compassion for the vanquished. It was then that she looked up.

Everything in the studio seemed to have changed. The apprentice was bent towards her, gripping the sides of his grinding block. The Master had his hands held out to stop her, freezing her in her place. In one all-encompassing instant Louise Eeden realised that the victory was not hers, but his. She had fallen into a trap. She could hear him shouting as he scrabbled for a stick of charcoal. His voice seemed to come from a distance.

‘Nay, nay child, don’t move!’ But he had opened her like an oyster, she had no wish or mind to move. She froze for him, and she held that pose, it seemed forever.

Pieter hadn’t been listening, his mind had wandered; their argument meant little to him. For a while he had tried to see in the girl the look that had so intrigued him when she came in, but it was gone. He concentrated on scrutinising each chip of lapis for traces of the grey limestone from which it had been chipped. The smallest trace would cause the paint to sicken and fade. He began the cautious business of grinding. Then suddenly he heard the Master shouting, and looked up, startled.