“That’s perfect. Thank you. I’ll be back soon.”
That afternoon, following the midday meal, Judith walked over to the De Grebber house. The city’s streets were damp and slick from intermittent rain, and a few buds were beginning to swell on the tree branches. She saw a new apothecary had opened, as indicated by the addition of a stuffed green crocodile to one row of shop fronts and signs. She would have to stop in and see how the proprietor had priced his linseed oil. Typically she bought the oil from a man by the lake who sold to all the city’s artists, but with his prices skipping upwards, she wanted to inquire elsewhere. The stuffed crocodile, a twisted creature, swung in the breeze on new chains that did not yet creak.
As she waited for someone to answer her knock at the De Grebber house, she hoped, against her instincts, that Maria had returned. Judith needed to tell someone about the new apprentice, and she needed Maria’s advice. But only Frans and his boys were home. His skin looked pale and fragile.
“I’m not worried about Maria,” he said as they stood in the entry hall. The familiar smells of baking bread and acrid paint tinted the air. “She’s surely on her way with the priest to his home to collect the relic, and letter delivery isn’t reliable in those parts.” He paused, and Judith nodded as if she shared his judgment. “My daughter is very dutiful. She’ll feel obliged to see her task through to completion.”
Judith nodded again. There was no point in belaboring their fears. “And no word from Abraham, I assume.”
“No. You’ll hear immediately if anything arrives. I know what it means to you.”
Judith already knew as much, and she grasped his hand in brief gratitude. She had already known Frans would share any message, but she still needed to ask. Without a spoken farewell, she left.
She missed both of them. Now, when she noticed how the light fell on a spring leaf, or that the timbre of a young man’s voice was deeper than his smooth face would suggest, she had no one to confide in but her art. She walked home through the damp streets, her boots quiet upon the paving stones, and she wondered how it was she had become the one left behind.
WILLEM MOVED IN with his single pine trunk that evening, and in the morning, he was waiting at the breakfast table before the rest of the household arrived. Hendrik rubbed his eyes, making his pimple-afflicted skin even redder, and Davit coughed, trying to disguise his newly changing voice. Judith noticed mold on the cheese Carolein had placed on the table, and she grabbed the plate so she could slice off the green smudge. She hoped Willem had not seen.
After the meal, she led the three apprentices to her workshop. She stood at the threshold watching the morning’s haze illuminate her tools, like a curtain had lifted. The easels, gray grinding stone, brushes, and props were so beautiful in repose. She ought to paint a workshop scene, she thought. She would love to capture the tender detail hidden in her well-loved tools. But no, those scenes weren’t what sold. Not for her, at least.
“Let’s get started.”
She let Willem spend the day refreshing his sketching; tomorrow she would task him with working through the copybook of essential body parts. She suspected his focus on naturalist work with Jacob de Gheyn had been at the expense of human anatomy. She would fix that. In the meantime, she needed to focus on getting a few of her own paintings ready for sale, and maybe she would paint one more revelry piece. She should find Gerard Snellings, now that Shrovetide was past. He might have more time to sit with her. She had enjoyed painting him, enjoyed replicating the spirit in his eyes and the lines alongside his mouth, his combination of joy and wear. Every time she painted, she fell a little in love with her subject, snared by the crevices and shadows and twitches that made the person. Painting meant focusing on the details, much like love. So each of her paintings became, in a way, an act of adoration. She would send Hendrik out later to find Gerard.
TWO DAYS LATER, Judith stepped out of the doorway to her bedchamber and collided with Willem. She stumbled back and brushed at her skirts. Crimson paint had spattered right next to her hip; she placed her hand over it. He hardly noticed he had run into her.
“Gerard Snellings is dead,” he said. He looked stricken, his eyes grown larger with the news. His expression alarmed Judith even more than the message.
“What do you mean?”
“Hendrik couldn’t find him yesterday, so I did some looking. I knew the man, a little. He used to come by my father’s banquets. I found his old neighbor, who told me Gerard died two weeks ago. No, not died. Was killed.”
Judith took a step back and leaned against the wall. The cold plaster chilled her shoulders, even through her layers. She had painted his portrait only two months earlier.
“How was he killed?” Her voice was so quiet that she was not sure Willem could hear her.
He took a step closer. “A man beat him. Until he died.” He shook his head.
Judith cradled her face in her hands. She thought of her deal with Lachine, and her stomach twisted. He had never explained why he was so set on a likeness of Gerard.
“I can’t believe it,” she said. She looked up at Willem, whose face was pale. “I painted him.”
“I knew him, a little,” Willem said again.
“He was kind. Don’t you think?”
“It’s awful,” Willem said, his voice trembling. Then he leaned into her, his arms wrapped around himself but pressing against her breasts and shoulders. “What an awful way to die.”
Her heart pounded. Her face was pressed into Willem’s shoulder, and she could smell the sweet, earthy smell of him. Some of the threads in his white shirt still had a flaxen tint.
He pulled back.
“I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking.” His cheeks flushed pink.
“It’s fine,” she said quickly. But it was not fine, she should not ever touch an apprentice. She had heard of such things between other masters and their boys, but not her, not in her workshop. She could not afford it.
But he reached out and grasped her hand, for a moment. Then he pulled away, whispered another apology, and hurried upstairs. Judith closed her eyes and pressed her knuckles against her eyes. She returned to her room and shut the door.
Chapter 21
SHE DECIDED TO PRETEND THE encounter had never happened. When she saw Willem in the workshop an hour later, he smiled neutrally and went back to helping Hendrik pull a canvas over a large stretcher. The younger boy’s face was pink with effort as his thin arms strained at the ropes woven into the prepared linen.
“Mistress, we’re out of oil,” Davit said. He sat at a chair by the window, and the sunlight behind him gave his fine brown hair the radiance of a minor halo. He seemed so much more innocent than twelve years would suggest, and she wanted to kiss his forehead.
“Out already?” She exhaled and tried to focus her thoughts on the oil, away from the boys. She smoothed her countenance. The apprentices could not learn how tight her finances were. She knew how young painters could gossip between workshops.
“That’s fine. I have a few errands to run anyway. I’ll buy some more from the supply merchant.” Without making eye contact with Willem, she turned and left.
But before buying the oil, she had a more important errand. Judith walked down her street away from the bustling Grote Markt square and the din of vendors moving their crates and wives talking to one another as they compared purchases of dusty turnips or onions. She nodded at a neighbor, who gave a hesitant smile, and she walked toward the canal. Away from the painting supply merchant. Below her, the murky water looked almost solid, and she kept her eyes on it as she followed the walkway toward the bridge. A gull with a black face like a masked bandit dove toward the water to snatch up something, and another one arrived to tussle with the first.
Bakenesserkerk, Haarlem’s smaller church, was only a short walk past the canal. After a brief conversation with the prelate, she found Gerard Snelling’s grave, or so he assured her. The rectangular paving stone along the wall had
been replaced, and no one had paid for an inscription. The roof must have had a leak, for a puddle of water collected in the adjacent stone. Judith wished she had made another painting of the dead man, one for herself—an image that would allow him to endure. Her portrait of him existed somewhere else, and at least his face still grinned and radiated life wherever that painting hung. She remembered the pleasure she had taken in rendering the lines around his eyes and that distinctive mole. Now he was dead, and the portrait represented a dead man, and she wondered if she could still consider the painting as holding a scrap of Gerard, the man, the way it had reflected him when he lived. She shook her head. Surely that was a blasphemous thought. His soul was gone, and any image was illusion. But still, the details that had been him would persist in her painting, while below her was soil and bone. She exhaled deeply and murmured a farewell to the lost man. His soul’s fate was set, and she could only hope for the best. Faced with the proof of Willem’s story, there was nothing else for her to see. As she walked back through the heart of the city, she noticed the water from the leak had dampened her boots, and her toes grew cold.
The apothecary shop did sell linseed oil, but in bottles too small for her purposes, and the collective price of a sufficient quantity would have been five times what she ordinarily paid. There was no walnut oil available at all. She asked the shopkeeper if he had noticed an increase in the price of linseed oil, but he blew a puff of air into his orange mustache and said nothing. She glanced at the cherry and apple tarts lining the counter, standard fare for an apothecary, and left without buying anything. Outside the shop, the stuffed crocodile swung in the air above her head.
Judith pressed her hand to her hair to straighten it, and she turned to walk across town to the painting supply store. She walked through Grote Markt, where some peasants were already packing their wagons to return to their homes outside the city. She cut through the cavernous Grote Kerk, and while she walked down an alley she had to threaten a kick to ward off a begging dog.
The supply store was close to the docks and stocked prepared wood panels, long stretches of sailcloth usable as canvas, ropes for tying the canvases to the stretchers, and some whole pigments: lead white stored in water, ochre, malachite in little pots. Judith asked the young boy standing at the back of the cluttered room about linseed oil, and he pointed her to an adjacent, open door leading deeper into the house. She rested a hand on the doorframe, craned her neck inside, and called into the dark.
A scowling old man trudged into the light and waved a hand to silence her.
“Linseed oil? We have it. Though why a lady like yourself needs it is beyond me. Shouldn’t the apothecary have enough for your poultices?”
She gritted her teeth. Judith had shopped at this store half a dozen times in the past year, and most of those times, she’d turned her money over to the same man. Generally she ignored his insults, but today she had no patience.
“As you know, sir, I am a painter. Maybe you are aware painters use linseed oil to bind their paints? Though maybe you’re not. I would not want to tax you with such calculation.” He was wearing a puce-colored dressing gown, as if he were not expecting to deal with customers today.
“Dabbling, are you?” He said it loudly, as if to suggest he had not heard what she had said. “A lady of your means deserves only the best. We do have some jugs of the oil, though not many.”
“Don’t play games with me. I’ve bought here before and know what you sell. Tell me what’s on hand. If you please.”
He raised a lip to show startlingly bright teeth, and he named his price. Judith gasped. One jug was nearly the cost of two of her completed paintings—the price had doubled since she last purchased oil.
“That’s absurd. You’re trying to take advantage of me.” She hoped she was right.
He shrugged and turned away. “I don’t have to sell it to you. We have three jugs left, and someone else will buy them within a day or two, I’m certain. Did I mention there’s no more coming in? If you don’t need the stuff, that’s your business.”
Judith tried to quell the sick feeling that surged inside her stomach. The price would account for almost all her guilders. Though there would be the fee Willem promised. The thought of his name made her blush, and she looked down to reach into the purse tied to her waist and extract a handful of lustrous guilders.
“That’ll do,” she said. It was only a little less than he had asked for, and when he counted the coins in his palm, he scowled again.
“Fine. But let no one accuse me of lacking generosity.” He called out to the boy in the store and ordered him to deliver one of the jugs to the mistress’s home.
“Or is your ‘workshop’ in another location?”
“I’ll make sure your boy finds us,” she said, turning away and leaving the man to his dark room.
Judith spent the afternoon sitting in her bedchamber going over her accounting books. She needed to find a way to cut costs or to sell more paintings. She had recently made a few sales, but she knew she was nothing close to the city’s favorite artist. Little could unseat the vivacious Frans Hals from that position. It wouldn’t even do her any good if he tumbled down a few notches, as far toward the bottom as she was. But her paintings were worthy, she knew. They had passion and heart. And she had been the first person in the city, as far as she knew, to paint a visible light source into nighttime scenes. Not that any of the other Guild members would ever credit her for it when they copied her and painted glowing candles and golden oil lamp flames onto their tables, but she knew she had been the first to try it. She ran the numbers again and dropped her head to the table. She skipped supper that night, and when Carolein came to ask after her, she assured the young woman she simply had an upset stomach. It was true enough.
When she extinguished her candle and climbed into her bed compartment, the room felt unseasonably cold. She shivered under the quilts and tried to will the oblivion of sleep to sweep over her.
The door clicked open, and her body snapped rigid.
“Who’s there?” she whispered, though she already knew.
“Judith, oh Judith, I’m sorry.” Willem threw himself to his knees beside the bed. “Please don’t hide from me.”
She sat up and swung her bare legs over the bed. Her nightdress hitched up, and she squirmed to pull it over her calves.
“Willem, don’t be dramatic. It wasn’t that. I’m not hiding from you.”
He grasped her hands, and she cringed in embarrassment. Her hands were dry and chapped from all the washing she did to scrub the paint from her skin, and she hadn’t applied any salve recently.
“I’m sorry to trouble you; I was sick with worry. You won’t be afraid of me?” He stood, still holding her hands, and now he looked down at her, his face invisible in the room lit only by the embers of the hearth.
“I’m not afraid of you, Willem,” she said. It wasn’t a lie, though her words felt false. She didn’t fear him, but she feared the seams of heat he created in her veins, more intense than anything she had felt before, even around Jan Miense Molenaer. Worse, this man was her student.
He exhaled and gripped her hands even more tightly. She felt him bending down toward her, drawing her hand closer to his chest, and she pulled away.
“Willem. Go back upstairs. Go to bed.”
He paused, took a step back, and then left without saying a word. She sat frozen, listening to the settling sounds of the house and his quiet footsteps creaking up the stairs. It must have been hours before she fell asleep.
And then she overslept. The window glowed brightly behind the latched shutters when Carolein banged on her door.
“Mistress Judith, are you alright?” she called in her rough voice. Carolein could be mistaken for a man when she spoke, if no one saw her small figure.
“Yes, all’s well. Please come in.” Judith climbed down from her bed and, once the door was closed again, began dressing herself.
“Judith
, didn’t you hear it?” Carolein said. “Willem’s father was here.”
“What?” She paused, leaving her unbuttoned skirt loose at her waist.
“He said he would never concede to his son working for a woman. And some other unpleasant things. About Willem being untrustworthy, and . . . and some women taking advantage of that.” Carolein turned away to poke at the cold ashes in the fireplace. “He dragged Willem out from here, and his man brought Willem’s trunk away with him. The boy looked, well, shocked.”
Judith forced her fingers to continue their work on the buttons.
“They’re gone now?”
“Yes.”
“And the other boys?”
“In the workshop. Confused.”
She had to make sure she did not lose the other apprentices as well. Without them, her workshop was a farce. A room with some paintings and a woman who fancied herself an artist. She could do no business without having workers. Her throat tightened, but she fought it off.
“I’ll manage this. We’ll have to respond quickly.”
“He’s not coming back. I can tell you that.”
There was an edge to her voice that made Judith look up. But Carolein’s pale blue eyes were blank.
“That’s fine. I don’t need him, not him specifically. But I can’t let them treat me like this. We had an agreement.” And as she spoke, a plan began to form in her mind. Yes, she would protect herself. As any man would.
Chapter 22
JUNE
MARIA AWOKE, BUT AFTER BLINKING her dry eyes at the light tinting the sky above, she squeezed them shut again and gathered the blankets around her. She shifted, and the wagon creaked, but Sara slept on next to her. Maria buried her face into the warm wool and tried to recapture the sweet feeling of the dream she’d had. The details were lost, but she remembered Judith’s face. And the comforting touch of her hands. Maria squeezed, pulled every muscle in her body tight toward her middle, as if she could keep the sensation deep inside.
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