Light of Her Own

by Callaghan, Carrie

  Maria skirted the edge of the stall, walking in the constricted space between their wooden shelves and the next vendor. Sara was talking with a young, blond man, her head leaned in close to his. Maria moved her aching body with deliberation, careful not to jostle any of the racks of bottles or tables of herbs. Her breath was shallow; the air skimmed across her mouth. She maneuvered past the tables and plunged into the crowd. Four days of kermis had littered the ground with an ankle-deep sludge of refuse, mud, vomit, and loss. She labored to trudge through it, and around her the drunk, merry voices bubbled. A hand clutched at her skirt and then her breast, but she pushed the man away. She walked toward the square. A priest. She needed to find a priest.

  Chapter 23

  JUDITH WALKED THROUGH THE CENTRAL square with her tafelet in one arm. She tried to move with confidence and hold her head high, but the muscles between her shoulders quaked with tension. She wondered, for a moment, how she might depict this sensation, this mask of self-possession. She thought of the painting now resting on her easel. The young woman at the panel’s center stared, fixed in concentration, at the needlework in her hands while over her shoulder a man bid for her attention. In one of his hands, a pile of coins. His other hand pulled at her arm. Pay attention to me, give up your work and your honor for me, he said. Or so Judith hoped. The oil lamp on the table illuminated both their faces as well as the white of the woman’s shawl. Stay fixed on your purpose, Judith told the young woman. But she wondered, as she walked, if she could show the tremors of fear beneath the woman’s concentration. Showing what lay beneath the surface was always hardest.

  Today was her hearing. Judith approached Jan Bouchorst’s house, lined with black trim and shutters, the same place she had entered to bid for Guild membership. Now she would defend her rights.

  The house was quiet when the servant let her in, though she heard the muffled murmur of conversation coming from elsewhere in the building. The black and white floor tiles gleamed from a wash. They ascended to the second floor, where a window in the passageway offered an unusually ample panorama of the city, looking out over a neighboring yard and the slate roof tiles of the nearby streets. In the distance, the inland Haarlem sea languished like an empty pewter plate.

  The small room held only a few spectators, hardly any she recognized. They must have been associates of Willem’s father, also named Willem, or maybe they were non-painter members of the Guild. She thought again of that painting in her workshop. These men and their families were the proper, comfortable customers she was selling her paintings to. Would they buy anything like her proposition painting? Or would they consider it subversive or, worse, unrealistic? The woman, after all, ignores the man’s attempts.

  The voices around Judith receded and then swelled once everyone had registered her entrance. She held her head high and walked to a long, empty table facing another table populated by Guild leaders. She assumed those were the judges, and she did not want to have to ask. The more it looked like she knew what she was doing, the better. She imagined she had a sort of invisible callous, a protective layer all around her body that divided her outer appearance from her inner and walled her off from any sally these men might make. She took a deep breath but exhaled quietly.

  No one objected when she took her seat, and she busied herself flipping through the heavy pages of her tafelet. It usually held her drawings, sketches of paintings used to help her determine how to structure a scene. But for the purposes of the hearing, she had wiped a few pages clean and filled them with her notes. Observations of fees paid to other masters (hers were modest in comparison), quotes from the recently rewritten Guild bylaws, a few formulated sentences for her to fall back upon if she got nervous, and a breakdown of her stretched budget. The last she had no intention of sharing, for to do so would be embarrassing. But it was there to steady her resolve. She had to retain part of Willem’s fees. She had made purchases—primarily the jug of linseed oil, exorbitantly priced—based on the assumption of that income. Without the fees, she, Carolein, and the other two boys would have even less firewood when winter came and very little food. Certainly no more fine pigments.

  A matronly woman with smooth skin entered the room and stopped at the threshold. She looked around, her eyes open in question, and Judith wondered which of the men here she had come to fetch. She made eye contact with one of the seated men, smiled, and then walked to the head table. After a few whispers with Hendrik Pot, the woman nodded and took her seat beside Judith. She glanced at Judith and then scooted her chair a little farther away. Judith cringed at the noise.

  “With the arrival of Freija Woutersooz, we can begin,” said Pieter Molijn, recently elected dean, in his voice still resonant with the native English of his childhood. Other than him, most of the officers were the same group of men who had judged her master piece, except for the missing Jan Bouchorst, who was ill and said to be on his deathbed. In this very house. Pieter, she did not know well. He dabbled in a few different styles, but he was mostly a landscape painter. He had a square face with a prim mouth and storm-cloud eyes. Not yet forty, he was reputed to be stern but fair. She hoped so.

  Judith looked over at Freija Woutersooz. She wore dove-gray sleeves and rested her forearms on the oak table. She introduced herself to the group. As she spoke, her mouth was tremendously expressive, twitching and curling, but the rest of her expression was calm. There was something about the dichotomy that made Judith shiver. She had no idea how she would paint that woman.

  Judith introduced her case and explained her demands. Willem had paid nothing up front; he owed her a quarter of his yearly dues. She had made arrangements for him and needed compensation. He was welcome to go to Frans Hals’s workshop if he wanted, but she still had her right to proper compensation. She used a few of the prepared sentences from her tafelet.

  The room was dark, though it was a bright day, and she imagined she was illuminated by a single flame, with the rest of the murmuring faces cast in shadows or darkness. Much like one of her paintings. Salomon de Bray leaned forward and placed one elbow onto the table; beneath it, she could see a leg extended out straight, the other bent under him. The classic pose of Gluttony. The allegory anchored her, and she took a deep breath.

  “You are claiming one quarter of the thirty-two guilders? A quarter of the annual rate, for a handful of days?” Hendrik Pot’s tone lacked its usual warmth. For the first time, Judith could see why the soft-faced man enjoyed painting militias and guardrooms.

  “Yes. We had a contract, an oral one, and—”

  “In which I had no part.” Freija Woutersooz knitted her hands together above her belly.

  “But you and your husband—you’re the ones who broke the agreement. How can I keep students if I can’t rely upon them?”

  “Judith, how can you keep students if you don’t register them with the Guild?” Salomon de Bray shook his head in disappointment, though certainly he knew less than half of the Guild’s artists paid to register their pupils. The boys were invisible labor, usually, and registering them only invited scrutiny and more fees. As it was, almost every workshop had more than the supposed limit of two students.

  “I’ll be glad to register my students. I’ll do so upon the completion of this meeting. But that’s not the issue at hand.” She drew her lips together. Repeating her arguments would only make her sound plaintive.

  “The inspectors will consult,” Pieter Molijn said.

  The three men at the head table leaned toward one another and whispered. Salomon rapped a finger against the taupe cloth that ran the length of the table. Judith glanced over at Freija Woutersooz. That expressive mouth, now still, had some of the full ripeness of her son’s lips. Judith looked away.

  Some men outside in the hallway raised their voices, seemingly in anger. She closed her eyes and tried to listen. How much better to be concerned with whatever they were discussing than to be here, facing this shame. If she lost, she might never be able to sign another stud
ent again. What family would want to be with a master whose own Guild had sanctioned her? Judith pinched her eyes even tighter. Outside, one of the men cursed.

  “Judith Leyster.” Hendrik Pot tapped his fingernail on the table. “We have come to a decision. We agree with Freija Woutersooz. Eight guilders is excessive.”

  Judith opened her mouth to object, but Salomon de Bray silenced her with a raised hand.

  “He’s not done.”

  Hendrik cleared his throat and glanced uncertainly at his colleague before continuing.

  “But we agree you are owed something. Four guilders should be sufficient. And fair. But. We assess you a fine of twelve stuivers for not registering the boy in the first place.”

  “I won’t pay this woman anything,” said Freija Woutersooz, her smooth cheeks tinged pink.

  “Oh, you will,” said Pieter Molijn, and his fine lips lifted into a genteel smirk. “If you want your son to have any role in the art market here, you will pay.”

  She huffed. Then she dug into her hanging pocket, slapped two silver rijksdaaler on the table and stood up. She nearly knocked her carved chair over in her haste to leave.

  Judith dropped the coins into her brown embroidered pocket and pulled out two small schellings. The United Provinces coat of arms glittered, and she walked over to place them in Pieter Molijn’s hand.

  “Is there a registry for me to fill out?”

  “Of course. Let me go get it, after I finish these notes. You wait here,” Hendrik said. The warmth had returned to his voice.

  Salomon de Bray and Pieter nodded at her and left without another word. The few men sitting and watching followed him, except Hendrik, who sat writing something. In the quiet of the room, Judith could hear them all greet the men waiting outside. Maybe the men watching her had not been present for her hearing, but for whatever was coming next. The voices outside were hushed and urgent. Hendrik Pots finished making his notes in his ledger then stepped outside to get the registry. Judith sat alone in the room and noticed her bodice was damp with sweat. She closed her eyes and leaned her head back.

  “Here you go. Put the boys’ names here. Now you realize the Guild limit is two students, yes?” Hendrik looked down at her, and she could see a few strands of gray in the pointed beard at his chin.

  “Yes, I know.” She wanted to object that no workshop producing enough art to make money could get by with only two pupils. But she took the quill pen and filled in the two names alongside her own.

  When she left the room, the men were still gathered with Salomon de Bray and Pieter Molijn, apparently arguing about something. Salomon shot her a narrow look as she passed, but otherwise they paid her no attention. One man said something about the damned warehouse, or so she thought, but her interest would have been obvious if she had stopped to listen.

  Outside, sunshine glittered between the puffs of cloud, and Judith straightened her starched collar. The lace was becoming more and more difficult to maintain stiff and radiating from her neck. She ought to buy a new one—it was important to look prosperous—but she could not afford it. Not yet. She hurried back to the workshop. She needed to paint.

  Chapter 24

  THAT NIGHT, SHE DREAMT OF Gerard Snellings. He wept from bloodshot eyes, and he held an outstretched palm toward her. Judith awoke nearly in tears herself. If Maria had been there, Judith might have been able to ask what the dream meant. Though the answer was probably simple enough. She tried to go back to sleep, but instead her mind retraced her conversations with Lachine and Gerard himself. Over and over, like paint layered upon the initial dead coloring sketch of a scene, her thoughts took shape. When dawn broke, her head swam with fatigue and misgiving, but she pulled herself from bed to dress and set the boys to work. They needed to know that nothing in her small workshop had changed since Willem’s departure.

  After breakfast, where Carolein was unusually quiet and preoccupied, Judith led Davit and Hendrik to the workshop and gave them their tasks—beginning a copy of her successful “Merry Company” for Hendrik, who still struggled with fine details but could manage the dead coloring and under painting first stages, and brush cleaning for Davit. Hendrik kept his eyes to the floor and said nothing. When Judith told Davit his task, he exhaled.

  “I don’t want to do that.”

  “You what?” She turned to face him and propped her hands on her hips.

  “Cleaning brushes. It’s not important.” His voice was soft and quiet, but he held her gaze. “If we’re going to have to find new workshops, I want to be able to show I can do things. Draw, paint. Not just clean brushes.”

  “What are you talking about?” Her heart pounded, and she struggled to keep her face composed. “You aren’t going anywhere. And brushes are the painter’s tool. We’re nowhere without clean ones.”

  “But people are talking now, after Willem,” began Hendrik.

  “No. Nothing has changed. You hear me? You both have a lot to do. Get to work.”

  She turned her easel, where she was adding texture and shine to the body of a fiddle held by a jovial young man. Her hand trembled, and she tried to focus on the instrument’s wood grain, but she could only envision the merry eyes she had painted for Gerard. She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and opened them to look again at the fiddle, now resting on a table in front of her. Its body bore the wear of many hands and songs. She swept her brush along the curve of her painted fiddle, but the effect was too bright. Too slick. She tried again, more gently this time, dabbing the brush against the painted image of wood. Tiny brushstrokes that would, at the right distance, coalesce and resolve into an image. An illusion. Maybe that was how God made sense of this world that so baffled her. From a distance, patterns emerge. But He must know the details first. She put the brush down, untied the smock from behind her neck, and hung it on a hook. Without saying a word, she walked out of the workshop, though she felt the boys’ gaze on her back as she did. She hoped they had not noticed the unsteadiness in her hand. Her brush hand.

  Judith went to her room, where she pulled her second-best lace collar from her bedroom cupboard. She buttoned it around her neck but then, while running her fingers along the outstretched lace, reconsidered. More humble would be better. She had one other, more worn, and she put that collar on instead.

  She did not like leaving the house when the boys were in a sullen mood or maybe even thinking of moving to better pastures, but she needed answers. The sooner she could rid herself of her guilt, the sooner she could ensure her focus was where it needed to be. Gerard Snellings’s disappearance was her doing, and she would do what she could to learn how he died. As if the details might lay her guilt to rest. Gerard had been a regular with the rhetoricians. She could start there.

  She crossed over Haarlem’s smaller, tree-lined canal and then turned east, toward the branch of the Sparen River coursing alongside the streets. She walked along the path that had been host to her childhood games, as her father’s failed brewery was along the river. The side of that brick building came into view as she rounded the river’s bend, and she turned away from the brewery to cross the bridge into the newer part of town.

  The rhetoricians of De Pellicaen met in the broad house of Hans van den Velde, a successful art dealer who had died over a decade earlier, and whose son, in addition to dabbling in etching and draughting, made a good parcel of money by renting the ample lower floor as a club. Judith had never been inside; women were not allowed. Except, she imagined, as entertainment.

  An elegantly painted pelican adorned the small sign nailed to the right of the door, which was set up a few steps from the ground. Judith hiked up her skirts to climb the stairs. It was late morning, an unlikely hour for any convivial meetings, but she hoped someone would be around. She knocked on the door.

  A rheumy-eyed old man cracked open the door and squinted as he regarded her. He gave no greeting, and Judith swallowed nervously.

  “I’m sorry to bother you.” She paused, and st
ill he said nothing. “I’m a painter, looking for a model who worked for me once. To hire him again. He works here, I think. Gerard Snellings. Do you know him?” She had to make an effort to speak in the present tense.

  The man’s wrinkled features collapsed.

  “Gerard. The best Peecklhaering we ever saw. Oh yes, I knew him. Come on in, you’ll need to sit down.”

  He ushered her through a dark entryway abundantly lined with paintings. A quick glance identified a few of the artworks: loose radiant portraits in the signature style of Frans Hals, the dark shadows of Hendrik Goltzius’s prints, a small guardroom painting by Hendrik Pots. She looked away, ashamed to be faced with evidence of the men who were ostensibly her peers and, yet, were not. Her paintings would never hang on that wall.

  The old man walked her up a step into a sparkling kitchen and then continued out the back door, down a few steps into a small walled garden. He indicated a chair on the patio and took the one next to her. Nearby, the splashing of laundry being washed in someone else’s walled yard sounded, and birds flitted from branch to branch in the poplar tree that rose in the corner.

  “Gerard. He was a fine fellow. Was, you see? Because he’s dead now.”

  The old man paused, and Judith realized he waited for her reaction.

  “Oh!”

  “Yes, that’s right. What a waste. Dead from a knock on the head.”

  Judith sat up straight. “He was murdered, then?”

  “No, no. Not like a real murder, like you mean. Killed in a brawl. Of course, he gave almost as good as he got. It started with a dispute over a who—I mean, a woman. Or so I heard.”