“Wait a minute.” Her father prodded at the paper with a finger. “This is not what we discussed. Salomon said this was the version I should sign? What a whore’s son. Did he think I wouldn’t notice?” Frans de Grebber snapped the paper in the air and folded it closed. “I see what they’re doing,” he continued. “Two birds with one stone. I’l l be damned, though.”
Maria sucked in a breath, surprised at the strong language. The messenger raised his eyebrows but said nothing.
“What is it, Father? What do they want?”
He shook his head, his eyes still on the letter.
“A silly thing. No, quite important. But not as important as this,” he punched the paper again with his finger, “would suggest.”
The messenger took a step back, as though to disassociate himself from the letter, and held his hands clasped in front of him, waiting.
“We were aiming,” her father said, “to retrieve the Guild’s holy relic of St. Luke. You wouldn’t have seen it, Maria. It was gone before your time. An ornamented silver box holding sacred bone and a carved bronze reliquary.” He paused, glanced at the messenger, and pursed his lips. “I had it in safekeeping some years back, during some tense times with the Calvinists, and I gave it to a priest headed for the southern Netherlands. The Catholic parts. For safekeeping! I knew the Church was strong there. Here, the Reformed Church might have destroyed the thing.” He crossed himself. The messenger kept his expression still.
“Now a few of the other Catholic officers of the Guild want it back. I couldn’t agree more. But this. This! They’ve written the letter to indicate I will be the one delivering this same letter to Bruges. That’s where Father Cloribus is. Or he was. But no, we had not discussed any travel, not by me. It’s absurd. They’re only trying to take me out of the market for a while.” He tapped his finger to his temple, a gesture that often left his curly gray hair tinted with paint.
“Take this back as it is. Salomon doesn’t need an answer tonight, no matter how much he says he wants one. Yes, tell him that. We’ll discuss how to proceed.” Her father nodded, satisfied. “And Maria, this is for Judith.” He held up a second letter, which she hadn’t seen. He must have noticed the curiosity in her eyes, for he smiled. “That’s right. They’ve approved her request to apply for master status. With my endorsement, of course.” He waved the letter, and Maria took it. The wax seal made the paper sag, and she clutched it to her chest.
“Go on, then,” her father said, his face serious again. Maria bowed her head and escorted the messenger out of the house. She ran upstairs to see if Judith had returned, but their room was still empty. Maria hesitated, then placed the letter on the blankets smoothed over Judith’s tidy bed. Her friend would want to learn of the news as soon as she returned.
Maria tugged the linens on her own bed straight and then descended back to the first floor. Outside, voices jumbled into a drinking song and, nearby, a donkey brayed. She wanted to learn more about that relic, which seemed like a hint from God. Her sacrifice had failed, yet here was a hint of a real martyr. She went to her father’s study, but his door was closed. She knew better than to knock.
Chapter 12
JUDITH PULLED THE DOOR OF the De Grebber house closed, and she rubbed her cheeks, stiff from the cold. She hung her cloak on a hook near the door. The streets outside were muddy from yesterday’s crowds, and a few merrymakers still lingered today. She pulled the notice announcing her permission to apply to the Guild from inside her linen shift, where it nestled warm against her breast. She opened it again, but the thrill had soured. This morning, she had gone to share her excitement with Abraham. She had crossed town to the docks and then again to the poor district in the south.
“Judith,” Maria called from the landing one flight up. “There you are!” She ran down the stairs. “I need—wait, what’s wrong? You look pale.”
“I think Abraham had some trouble. He’s gone.” She reached out to lay her fingers on Maria’s wrist, as if the touch might bring her unmoored thoughts back to shore.
“What do you mean?”
“I’m not sure, but I think he’s left the city. I went to that wretched manure pile of a boarding house of his, and the landlord said he packed a bag, paid up his bill. ‘Actually paid,’ he said, as if it were a miracle. Then Abraham ran right out of there. As quick as a mouse with a cat on its tail, is how he put it. Maria, how could he have left? Without telling me.” She wasn’t sure if she wanted to yell or cry.
Maria wrapped her friend in a quick, tight embrace, then held Judith at arm’s length. Judith looked at her friend’s feet, so small in her slippers.
“After our parents left,” Judith continued, her voice hardening, “running away like they did, I never thought Abraham would do the same. He isn’t like that.”
“It must have been something serious, whatever happened. Maybe someone was trying to hurt him.”
“I’m sure something happened.” Judith picked at paint dried onto one of her knuckles.
“He would have told you if he could,” Maria said. She brushed a strand of hair behind Judith’s ear. “I know he would. I envied the two of you, you know that? How you held to each other like wreckage in a shipwreck when your parents left. You knew neither of you deserved that abandonment, and you clung to one another. When my mother died, my brothers stayed away from me. As if they could see her features in my face, and the pain at seeing her reflected would harm them.”
Maria looked away, toward the floor, and seemed to hold her breath for a moment. Her words were like a blanket thrown over the embers of Judith’s distress. He had broken the most important covenant between them, and he had taken her money as he did so. When she needed the coins most. But Maria was right, in a way. Surely something had happened. Abraham did love her, and he needed her, as Maria had said. Judith squeezed Maria’s forearm, and then stepped away.
“You were about to say something, Maria, when I started in on all that.”
“Yes.” She reached up to touch her dark hair. “Can you come with me? Now. I need your help.”
Judith examined her friend, who was looking fixedly out the window behind her. “Of course. Are you going to tell me what it is?”
“As we walk. Come on.”
Judith pulled on her cloak, still warm from her furious walk through town, and she waited for Maria to do the same.
Out in the street, a light mist fell, and Judith rearranged her white cap.
“Do you remember Samuel Ampzing? The poet?” Maria kept her voice low, and Judith thought she saw a hint of flush rise to her cheeks.
“How could I forget? He was so generous with his praise.”
“Generous, yes,” Maria said, and her whole neck grew pink. “He’s expressed some interest in me, and he’s back in town now. That’s where we’re going. But I can’t tell Father.” She bit her lip anxiously.
“Maria, really?” Judith grinned and nudged her friend’s arm.
“No, it’s not like that. I can’t return his affection. I don’t. He’s not Catholic, and he wanders so much. I don’t know how to tell him, but I have to make that clear.”
“It’s too bad, Maria. I think he’d be a good match. So what if he’s not Catholic? Most people aren’t.” Judith smiled again, but it melted away when she saw how preoccupied Maria looked. They stepped out of the way to let a horse and cart pass, then continued walking. “I understand. I’m sure you can find a way to tell him gently.”
Maria shook her head. “He’s ill. I don’t want to make it worse.”
They said nothing else until they reached the door of the house where Maria said Samuel was staying. The shutters were recently painted white, and a bunch of freshly cut rosemary hung upside down on the door.
Maria knocked, timidly at first, and then more loudly.
A round woman wearing an apron opened. “Yes?”
“We’re here to visit Samuel Ampzing,” Maria said. “At his request.” She clasped
her hands at her heart, as if in supplication.
The servant simply nodded. “I’ll see if he’s awake. Come in, it’s damp out there.”
“Awake?” Judith asked, when the servant walked away. Inside, the house smelled spicy and sweet, like cinnamon cookies, though it shouldn’t have been the time of year for speculaas. Judith’s mouth watered.
“He’s ill. Perhaps it’s worse than I thought,” Maria said, her eyebrows raised in worry.
“Do you know whose house this is?”
“No. Only that it’s a friend of his. He doesn’t have the money to stay in his own house anymore.”
They stood silently, and Judith’s eye wandered to the walls. The house’s owner had hung a few pictures, including one of a laughing boy that looked to be by Frans Hals, judging by the loose brushstrokes and bright expression. The other two paintings, still-life portraits of irises, roses, and carnations, she did not recognize. Perhaps he had purchased them in Amsterdam or Den Haag. A wooden shelf held a pewter pitcher with a graceful curved handle, and a row of hand-painted blue and white tiles ran around the edge of the floor. The owner had some interest in spending money, it seemed. Perhaps when she earned master status, such a man might look kindly upon her own colors and figures.
The servant returned, her face gray. “He isn’t well,” she said. “Are you sure you’d like to see him? I’ve asked the Over merchant, Willem van Dielen that is, and he says if you wish to trouble yourselves, you’re welcome to visit his friend.”
Judith looked over at Maria, who was biting her fingernails, a gesture Judith had not seen since they were teenagers.
“I must,” Maria said finally, though Judith could barely hear it. The servant raised her eyebrows in query, and Judith repeated Maria’s decision.
“All right.” The woman sounded doubtful, but she dipped her chin in acknowledgment and led them up the freshly polished stairs.
On the second floor, through an open door, Judith could see a small vase of fresh marigolds resting on a chest of drawers. Despite the thin rain clouds outside, the light from the window made the orange petals glow, and Judith wanted to enter and marvel at their beauty. It was rare to see cut flowers, especially at this time of year. But the servant moved briskly through the hallway, and Judith followed.
“Could he be dying?” Judith whispered to Maria as they stepped across the threshold of one room and the servant continued into another. The house was bigger than it looked from the outside.
Maria whispered something unintelligible, but from the pale cast of her face, Judith suspected he might be.
The servant knocked on a closed door and, without waiting, opened it. The young women approached the entrance. Inside the room, curtains were drawn back from a recessed bed compartment, and the small figure of a man reclined in the bed. The air was stale, and a timid peat fire burned in the fireplace. Curtains were drawn over the windows and two oil lamps were lit, an extravagant accommodation to the sick man, to keep out the damp air and any aggravating sunlight.
“He was up and speaking this morning,” the servant said, her voice hushed. “But just now, he seemed . . . look for yourself.”
Maria hesitated, so Judith approached first. Samuel was propped up against the pillows along the wall, but his head listed to the right, toward her. She had not seen him for some five years, though it seemed fifteen had passed for him. His cheeks were sunken into his face, and dark circles shadowed his eye sockets. He had been a handsome enough man, easy with a smile, yet now his beard seemed to pull his fragile skin downward like ballast.
His eyes were open, and he looked at Judith unseeingly. But when Maria neared, over Judith’s shoulder, his expression lit up, as if someone had opened all the curtains in the room.
He moved his lips, and a hoarse scratching came out. His hand, resting on the coverlet, twitched.
“I think he would like you to take his hand,” Judith said, though the words felt heavy in her mouth. She knew an embrace, even one as small as a handgrip, would make Maria uncomfortable.
Still, her friend stepped alongside the bed and laid her hand in the poet’s. The green-striped coverlet stippled as Maria added her hand’s weight to the bed, and Judith thought of the fields of hay bending in the wind that she had seen once while traveling to a countryside tavern. Someone had since harvested that hay, and what did the field look like now? Stubbled and sallow, most likely.
Samuel again tried to speak but was interrupted by a fit of coughing. Maria reflexively pulled away, then, blushing, stepped forward again to replace her hand in his. Samuel’s eyes softened in apology, and he squeezed her finger.
“Would you like something to drink?” Maria asked.
“We have a very good small ale,” the servant offered from the doorway. Judith had forgotten she still stood there.
Samuel shook his head slightly. “You came,” he said finally, his voice as rough as a house painter’s brush.
“Yes.” Maria glanced at Judith, and her eyes were wide with panic. Judith stepped closer and pressed her hand, for a moment, against Maria’s upper arm.
“I am gladdened,” he said. “To see . . .” The words faded as if the bellows of his lungs sagged. He tried again. “Your kind face.”
“We should speak more when you are well,” Maria said.
He closed his eyes. The room around them was silent, and all Judith could hear was the rough progress of his breath. Maria withdrew her hand.
Samuel opened his eyes again. “We will speak. To arrange things. Later, then.” It was more of a question than a statement.
“Yes, soon.” Maria stepped away from the bed. She opened her mouth to say something else but then closed it. Then, quickly, she reached for Samuel again, gave his fingers a swift caress, and left the room. Judith nodded at the man, but his eyes followed Maria, and she departed.
At the bottom of the stairs, they thanked the servant and stepped out into the gentle rain, which seemed about to shift back into mist.
“That was terrible,” Maria said and pressed her hands to her face. “I misled him. And yet what else could I say?”
Judith wrapped one arm around Maria’s shoulders and eased her into a walk. “You did what you could.”
They made their way home slowly and said nothing. Judith listened to the knocking of wagon wheels against the paving stones or the scolding of a mother, and she couldn’t help but look around each street corner for Abraham. Haarlem had never felt more vast. She looked at Maria, who let the rain accumulate on her cheeks like tears.
THE NEXT DAY, Judith went to her workshop. She checked on the drying layer of varnish over her portrait of Peecklhaering, or Gerard, and his drunken grin radiating upon the panel made her smile. She dabbed a fingertip at a corner of the panel, and it came away dry. That was a relief. At the grinding table she spooned cubes of Cologne earth into the mortar for grinding. The exertion in her shoulders transformed the world into a rhythmic noise, like beautiful pebbles underfoot.
The door opened, and Maria stood at the threshold. She had never visited Judith’s workshop, and Judith raised her eyebrows. The linen-seller must have admitted her downstairs, and it was strange that he didn’t tell Judith first.
“Come in, please,” she said.
Maria stepped inside but did not close the door behind her. The hallway at her back was dark, which had the effect of making her outline difficult to see clearly. Maria glanced around the room but made no reaction to the paintings or the light. Judith couldn’t help but feel a twinge of disappointment.
“He’s dead,” Maria said. “The over merchant’s housekeeper sent me a message today.”
“Oh, Maria.”
Judith rested her pestle against the mortar and moved to give her friend an embrace. But Maria stepped back.
“I should not have deceived him,” she said. “I feel wretched. And then I feel terrible for feeling terrible, all over a promise I shouldn’t have made.”
“You made no promise yesterday,” Judith said.
Maria shook her head. “It’s more complicated than that. I had prayed . . .” Her voice hitched, and she took a deep breath to control herself. “I had prayed for a resolution to my problem with him. I hadn’t meant his death, though. I hadn’t realized he was that ill.” She rested her face in her hands and then looked up. “I’m sorry. I’m making a mess of everything, as usual.” She turned and closed the door behind her.
Judith stood. She could follow Maria, and they could talk about her prayers and the poor dead poet. She exhaled and pressed her lips together. Her eyes wandered to a canvas stretched upon her new easel, with only a dead coloring sketch laid in upon it, and no buyer for it yet. There was too much work to do here in her workshop for Judith to worry about excavating every guilty crevice of Maria’s tortured conscience. That was Maria, always blaming herself for the slightest fault, imagined or otherwise. Judith shook her head. She would speak to her friend later. For now, she returned to the mortar.
Chapter 13
JUDITH CLUTCHED THE WRAPPED PANEL to her chest and pressed her back against the brick façade. A steady rain fell, and she hoped the sailcloth covering and the roof ’s overhang would protect her painting. Few pedestrians walked along Kleine Houtstraat that morning, and she strained her eyes for any glimpse of the Frenchman. He was late, and though she had expected he would be, she was still annoyed. He probably thought to pressure her to lower her fee by playing on her fears that he wouldn’t come at all. Judith narrowed her eyes and squeezed the painting closer. He would not find her so pliable.
The rain hammered on the roof tiles above, and Judith wiped the splatter from her face. Just then, she saw the Frenchman appear around a bend at the other end of the street. He saw her, waved, and ran to meet her.
“There you are,” he said.
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