The boy narrowed his eyes as he looked at her, but he took the letter and scampered off. Judith walked around the corner of a nearby alley, where she watched.
The boy knocked, and when a woman with a white cap and brown skirts opened the door, he handed over the note and ran. Judith bit her lip as the woman considered the folded paper, then shrugged and closed the door.
Fingers grazed the back of her arm, and she jumped.
“It’s only me,” said the boy. “You should have told me where you were hiding. I had to run around the block.” He held out his palm. Judith dropped two coins into it, and he ran off.
She walked to the canal, which was lined by houses with tiered brick frontages. She kicked a stone into the water, where the brown ripples flickered with white light. The air was dense with the smell of stagnant water, and she tapped another pebble over the quay, just to watch the reflection again. Her pulse fluttered with nervous energy while she waited.
After a quarter of an hour, footsteps ran up behind her.
“I got away as quickly as I could,” Willem said.
She turned to face him and, after a quick breath, pressed her lips closed.
“Thank you. I know this is strange, but I didn’t know who else to ask.”
“I’m always glad to help you. Always.” He took a step closer.
Short blond stubble grew in faint patches across his chin and cheeks. To her surprise, her breathing grew easy. He was so young.
“It’s awkward between me and your master, as you can imagine,” she said. “But I need to drop something off for him. Without him knowing. Is there any day soon when he’d be away from the workshop for a few hours?”
“Couldn’t I just give it to him for you?”
“This is between me and Frans. I won’t get you involved.”
Willem’s shoulders sagged, and then his eyes brightened. “He doesn’t usually leave, there’s so much painting to do. But tomorrow, he’s taking his sister and her children for a boat ride on the sea. In the afternoon.”
“You’re sure?”
“Absolutely. He’s already told Harmen, his oldest, to oversee the workshop. You should have seen Harmen preening.”
“Thank you, Willem.” Judith reached out to clasp his hand. Willem took her fingers between his palms and then pulled her into an embrace. He rested his lips upon her cheek, where they left a shiver of saliva. Judith frowned and stepped away.
“That’s enough,” she said. But as she did, over his shoulder, she saw Jan Miense Molenaer approaching. He was frowning.
Willem brushed his fingers against her arm, but she stepped back.
“Have I interrupted anything?” Jan said.
“Not at all. Willem forgot a few things in his mother’s haste to move him out.”
Jan made a show of looking around. In his hands was an earthenware jug with a pewter top, and he waved it toward the younger man. “It must have been small, whatever he forgot.”
Judith shook her head. “I didn’t bring the trunk. He’ll have to come get it. And you’ve brought your drinking vessel out this early in the morning?”
“It’s Frans’s, the prop I mentioned. Mine broke in the middle of a sitting, and I knew he had a similar one.”
“Well, send him my regards,” Judith said. “Willem, tomorrow it is then, in the afternoon?” The deceit felt like ash on her tongue, but she couldn’t let Jan find out.
Willem gave a proprietary smile. “That’s right, Judith. I’ll see you then. Jan, shall I walk you to the workshop?”
“If that’s where you’re going,” Jan said.
Judith waved a weak farewell and left the men to their silence. Lachine would be looking for her soon, and she needed to be easy to find. She turned toward home.
Even before she reached her workshop, he fell in step with her.
“What’s it to be?” He lifted his chin as if to stretch his neck.
“Tomorrow. After the midday meal.” Judith kept her eyes on the paving stones. A dusting of brown dirt turned the gray stone almost iridescent. Without another word, he walked away. Judith unlocked her door, stepped inside, and locked it behind her. She leaned against the bare plaster wall and closed her eyes. The sound of her blood pounded in her ear. When it faded, she went to the kitchen to get some bone broth for Maria.
Judith spent the rest of the morning trying to feed Maria, who let the amber liquid dribble from her slack lips. Spoonful by spoonful, she tried to ladle the broth into her friend’s mouth, but most of it glazed her cheek. Judith pressed her palms against her eyes.
That afternoon, she left the boys practicing sketching the shine of a pewter pitcher, and walked to the shadowed cobbled street with the verdant window boxes. She knocked on Paulus van Beresteyn’s door.
The same middle-aged servant whom she had seen when she spied on the door with Lachine answered.
“I’m here to see the magistrate,” Judith said. Her mind rattled with the sentences she had memorized, but she pressed her lips closed. Not yet.
“And you are?”
“He won’t know my name. But tell him it’s about Lachine.”
The servant nodded then invited her into the entry hall. He shut the door behind her and walked into an adjacent room. Judith pressed at the skin around her thumbnail. The walls here were naked, except for a single shelf which held two books. The Familiar Epistles of Bishop Anthony of Guevara read the spine of one, and the other had only an embellished design.
“It’s an impressive family, isn’t it?”
She turned around to see the magistrate standing in the doorway. “What?”
Paulus shook his head and approached. He was only a little taller than she was. “My grandfather wrote the translation. A true scholar.”
“That’s admirable,” Judith said.
“But not what you’re here for.”
She waited for him to invite her further into the house, but he simply stood with a polite smile on his face.
“I’m the artist who painted your portrait of Gerard Snellings,” she said.
His eyebrows jumped up, and his mouth opened before he composed himself quickly.
“I see.”
“I wanted to tell you that I knew nothing of the business between the three of you. Lachine commissioned the painting from me. I needed the work.”
“And the money.”
“Of course.” Below her dusty boots, the floor was tiled in black and white, alternating on a diagonal.
“Why are you telling me this?”
“So we understand one another. Gerard Snellings was a good man, and I’m saddened by his death. Tomorrow afternoon, Lachine plans to break into Frans Hals’s house. Frans won’t be home, and Lachine is trying to get money so he can flee you.” She paused and held his gaze. “I’m telling this for your own purposes, not for Frans’s sake. I’m not particularly interested in his well-being. You can’t say anything to him, though. I wasn’t allowed to sell that painting of Gerard. But I thought if you caught Lachine, you might be glad of it.”
“I should believe you?”
“I painted that portrait. I can describe every detail of it if you like, from the white highlighting along the carmine-colored feather to the black shadows under the scalloped trim of his coat. And why should I expose my secret, unless it was to some gain?”
“You want to see Lachine caught?”
Her stomach tightened. “Not really. But he threatened to expose me.”
Paulus laughed. “And somehow you think I will not?”
“You′ll have to explain why Lachine gave you such a gift. If you reveal that I painted the portrait in your possession.”
Paulus crossed his arms. “I’m fed up with painters and their games. But Lachine is dangerous. You’re right, he should be punished.”
Judith took a step closer to the shelf and examined the fine leather spines. She wanted to touch them, but didn’t have the courage. And she
wanted to throw the books to the floor and curse simply for the pleasure of not maintaining appearances, but she couldn’t do that either.
“You’ve done the right thing,” Paulus said. “Gerard would be grateful.”
Judith nodded. She took one last look at the magistrate, whose face was as blank as a river stone, and she let herself out the front door. When she shut the door behind her, the wooden poor box rattled on its hook, and she thought she heard the echo of a coin inside.
Chapter 28
WHEN SHE RETURNED HOME, JUDITH went upstairs, where she sat by her friend’s new straw-stuffed mattress.
Carolein had spent the morning sewing the rough cloth together, and the fresh smell of hay filled the attic. Maria regularly murmured words Judith couldn’t hear, and every so often she would open her eyes and seem to plead with Judith. Or someone just over Judith’s shoulder. Judith stood. She was doing little good here.
“You’re going to get better,” she told Maria in a soft voice. And when she did, she would need to eat. Judith might ask Maria’s father for help, but anytime she mentioned Frans de Grebber, Maria groaned and tried to swat her hands, as if pushing someone away. No, she would need to care for Maria herself, at least for a time. Which meant she needed to paint.
“I’m sorry to leave you,” Judith whispered, and it was true. But it had been too long since she held a brush, and her emotions twitched like the lid of a simmering pot. She needed to release them into paint and color.
Over the next two days, Judith painted. She tried not to imagine the scenes at Frans Hals’s workshop and in her own, where Maria lingered at the edge of death. Judith wished she could find Jan and explain to him what she had seen. But she didn’t know how she could explain her connection with the Frenchman without losing Jan’s esteem. She alternated her time between daubing Maria’s forehead with a damp cloth and coercing the boys to sit still so she could use them as models. The experience would be good for their timing, she told them. They’d need to learn how to capture a model before fatigue consumed him.
On the third day, Maria finally drank a little more watered ale, and Judith was desperate for the feeling of the sunlight on her cheek. She offered to buy the day’s beans and cabbages, and Carolein readily agreed. With the shopping bucket slung over her arm, Judith stepped outside, where she breathed in the heavy summer air and the mixed aroma of the horses, baked bread, and light sea breeze. In the market, a table laden with purple plums made her mouth water, but she knew she didn’t have enough coins for the fruit. She hadn’t had time to find that tailor who wanted a painting, and she had sold nothing since before leaving for Den Haag. Instead, she went to the few sellers she knew would offer her credit. She could pay them back soon. And what coins she had went to buying juice of ivy and a draught of cinnamon water from the apothecary, at Carolein’s instruction, to help Maria’s fever.
Just as she was walking back toward the square, a boy’s voice called her name. Judith looked up to see a thin boy in rags.
“Mistress Judith,” he said, wiping an arm across his nose. “I’m here from the prison. They sent me to find you, right? I asked for you at the house, and your girl said you were at market.”
He gestured for her to follow, then he led her around the corner to the area in front of the municipal building. A curious crowd of market-goers gathered around the scaffold that stood near the adjacent prison. A crier continued calling for attention, and Judith tried to elbow her way through the crowd. The crier yelled, “Abraham Leyster.”
She pushed her way toward the front, leaving the protests of the boy behind. The executioner, the same skinny, balding man with gaping teeth and ice for eyes Judith had seen so many times before, stood in his usual place beside a stained chopping block. The scaffold loomed behind him. She saw no prisoners, and she was about to ask the grinning gray-haired man next to her if she had heard correctly, when the prison guard led out two men. One was young, nearly a boy. The other was Abraham.
He was thin, and the shackles on his wrists seemed absurdly large. He blinked and bent his head away from the sunlight. Judith gasped and nearly ran to embrace him, but she stopped herself. Such unrestrained behavior would horrify the onlookers and might worsen Abraham’s punishment. She held out a hand, low, but he didn’t seem to see her.
The crier explained that the younger boy, whose name Judith missed, had sold dog meat and passed it off as lamb. The guard unlocked his shackles and marched him to the executioner. The executioner, wearing a long black robe, pushed the boy to his knees, pulled his arm over the chopping block, and, before the boy could move, swung down an axe. The hand fell twitching to the ground and, when the boy howled and grabbed at his maimed arm, blood sprayed across the paving stones. The crowd tittered and shifted.
“Heaven’s mercy.” The words escaped Judith before she could think. “For selling dog meat?”
The gray-haired man next to her hissed for her to be quiet.
The crier repeated Abraham’s name. “For the crime of burglary and theft of very valuable investment items from the household of citizen Arnold Luik.”
The guard unlocked him and yanked him toward the executioner. The thin man lifted one lip to expose a few snaggled teeth and then slammed Abraham’s right hand to the block. Judith covered her eyes. But instead of the slam of the axe, she heard a singe. She opened her eyes and saw Abraham clutching his hand to his chest. His eyes were wide with pain and confusion as he stood cringing before the executioner. The crowd moaned in disappointment, though a few started chanting, “D for dief!” Thief.
The executioner hauled him to his feet and then said something to Abraham, who nodded. Using his uninjured left hand, he fumbled with the hem of his shirt, presumably trying to lift it over his head. Finally, the executioner sighed and pushed Abraham back on his knees. His face was away from the crowd, and Judith hugged her arms tightly over her chest. The bucket pinched the sinews of her wrist.
The executioner sliced his whip through the air. After half a dozen lash strokes, Judith lost track. Blood spattered out from the wounds on Abraham’s back, and its crimson brilliance was horrifying.
Finally, the executioner stepped back, panting. The guard pulled Abraham to his feet and gave him a nudge.
“Go on, thief,” the guard said.
Clutching his right hand against his chest, Abraham stumbled toward the edge of the crowd. Judith pushed her way past a few townspeople and ran toward him. He needed to get home before anyone might try to shove him around or throw refuse at him.
She pressed both palms against his cheeks.
“Abraham, come with me, quickly.”
“Judith?” he asked, his voice confused. But when she took his left arm in her hand, he followed. They skirted the front of the crowd until she found a place where it had thinned and she pulled him through. Her cheeks burned with embarrassment. So many people had seen her.
They had woven their way out of the densest part of the crowd, and the crier announced another name.
“Pierre Keroy,” the crier said. “Known as Lachine.”
Judith spun around. She could see little over the heads of the onlookers except the scaffold beckoning above them.
“For the crime of murder,” the crier added, at which the crowd bubbled over with murmurs and exclamation. No one was paying attention to Abraham now. Judith squeezed his arm tightly.
The crier waited until the noise died down before continuing.
“He is convicted of the murder of our beloved townsman Gerard Snellings,” he continued with a flourish.
The guard led Lachine up the scaffold steps. The French-man’s face was crusted with grime, but he had the same haughty lift to his chin. His hands were tied in front of him. He looked over the crowd, then raised his bound hands into the air.
“I’m innocent!” he yelled. “It was no murder!”
The executioner slapped Lachine on the side of his head. In a quick series of deft movements, he slipp
ed the noose over the Frenchman’s head, pushed him over the trapdoor, and stepped back to release the lever.
Judith turned away.
“We shouldn’t see this.” Her head swam as if she had been the one to receive the slap, and she struggled to find her breath. Beside her, Abraham was crying softly at her side and oblivious to the final proceedings. He wiped his eyes and looked at her.
“Judith.”
“Let’s go,” she said. Behind her she could almost hear Lachine’s legs kicking at the air. This wasn’t what she had intended. “We have to go.”
“Wait.” He groped with his left hand at the pocket sewn to the front of his shirt. The angle gave him some difficulty, but after a moment he pulled a small chain and orb from the pocket. “I won’t have this on me another minute.” He handed the pomander to her. “I wouldn’t sell it. Even when I had nothing, Judith. I’m so sorry I took it.”
She wrapped her fingers around the jewelry and then brushed his chin with her knuckles. “Thank you,” she said, and tears welled up in her eyes. Behind them, the crowd cheered at something. “It’s time to go.”
She took his arm again, and they wove through the crowd until they reached the edge, where the bystanders were fewer. A few roedes away, Paulus van Beresteyn was leaning against a stone wall and watching the execution. His lips were pressed together in grim determination, and his small eyes glittered with what might have been tears. He watched without breaking his gaze. Judith lowered her head and guided Abraham past. But then she left Abraham at the corner and walked back toward the crowd.
“You did this?”
Paulus turned his head toward her and frowned. “Did what?”
“You had him executed?”
“I submitted him to the town’s justice. Isn’t that what you wanted?”
She shook her head, but she couldn’t bring herself to find the words. She hadn’t wanted him dead. Or so she hoped. Her stomach shuddered.
Light of Her Own Page 19