Outside, church bells tolled three o’clock and then the funeral tones. The pastor put away his verses and indicated for the pallbearers to screw the coffin lid tight. The young men had been easier to find than Judith had expected. After she sent the death announcement to those names that she knew, these men came to her door, one by one, to offer their help. She assumed they had been friends with Abraham, though she didn’t ask. It didn’t matter now.
The six pallbearers lifted the coffin onto the hand bier and laid the black shroud over it. Judith stepped forward to lay a bunch of lilies upon the coffin, and other mourners added the white roses and other flowers Carolein had bought. The men then hefted up the laden bier and carried it out. Judith fell in line first, followed by Frans Hals, the most prominent citizen in the room. Everyone else took their place, though she didn’t turn around to watch. Against her will, her eyes flooded as she watched them carry the coffin out of the house. His final departure from her home. They bore him feet first, as if to suggest he might walk to Heaven on his own. That was a relief. She had said nothing to the pastor about this part of the procession. Only criminals were carried out head first, and she was glad the pastor had decided Abraham was not one. She wiped the tears from her cheeks and choked back the urge to sob. It was unseemly to grieve noisily.
The procession inside the Groke Kerk and the following brief service went quietly. The summer heat still weighed upon the city, and Judith was sweating beneath her black dress, even in the cool shade of the church. The sensation of moisture on her skin was a welcome distraction. She didn’t want to think about the moment when she would have to turn from the grave and leave Abraham behind. At the front of the Grote Kerk, the pastor’s voice boomed, but she hardly listened.
After the service, the pallbearers moved the coffin to the side of the church, where the heavy paving stone had been slid to the side earlier. Judith narrowed her eyes, trying to shrink the range of her sight to avoid seeing what lay in that dark hole under the church floor. The pastor led the pallbearers and a few other observers in the customary circular passage around the grave site before lowering the coffin all the way to the bottom. Abraham’s head pointed east. Judith leaned over to bid him farewell, and a few silent tears fell onto his coffin. His body was already too distant. She watched as the rest of the group gave their prayers. Then, she handed a coin to each of the pallbearers, mumbled her thanks, and turned toward the house. She tried not to think, but still a part of her screamed that with each step she was again abandoning her brother and leaving him behind. She squeezed her hands into fists and focused on the feeling of her nails against her palms. Her feet felt rubbed raw with each step.
Carolein had stayed back at the house, and when the group returned, the house was filled with benches and chairs. She had pulled the kitchen table into the large space of the entry hall, and it was laden with peaches, breads, and cheese. Four barrels of beer lined one wall, and the mourners set to filling their cups. Carolein guided Judith to a chair against the wall and handed her a mug heavy with beer. Judith took a sip and puckered her lips. This was, to her surprise, potent double beer. She thought they had agreed to serve the standard simple beer, to avoid trouble as the evening wore on. She watched as a middle-aged man she didn’t recognize opened the tap on the barrel to her left and poured the beer into his tankard. The liquid was golden, not bread-brown like hers. Carolein must have set aside something for her. Judith took another sip and relished the quicksilver feeling it sent to her head. This was better than the black wound in her chest. She drank again.
Across the room, Frans Hals stood nodding in conversation with Outgert van Akersloot and Frans de Grebber. Maria sat behind them, obscured by the crowd. Judith could barely see her, for which she was glad. Frans Hals seemed to be saying something flattering about Judith’s paintings, for he lifted the traditional black cloth covering the wall hangings and indicated some detail beneath to Frans de Grebber, who nodded. Ordinarily, Judith would have flushed with pride, but now she watched them. Pieter Molijn hadn’t come, but as she watched Haarlem’s leading artists lean their heads toward one another and chuckle, she imagined he would have stood there with these men. Sharing the same secrets. They were hoarding linseed oil, and even Frans de Grebber knew at least some part of the story.
Beneath the heavy layer of her grief, a radiant anger stirred as she watched the older men. They wanted to pretend to include her, yet they tried to force her out. She didn’t know how they had set up the scheme, but she might find out. Paulus van Beresteyn had obviously played a role, and who else? She closed her eyes for a moment. None of that mattered. She opened her eyes and looked at the artists again. Frans Hals was laughing at something Outgert had said, and Dirck threw an arm around his brother’s shoulders. They would never embrace her like that. She wanted to paint, but she didn’t want to paint alone. And yet everything she had done seemed to make her only more alone. Her workshop would only last a few more weeks if she couldn’t find more oil or money. She looked away.
Judith drank a few more sips then rested her mug beneath her chair. The beer’s warm hum was pleasant, but she didn’t want anything pleasant right now. She watched her guests eat, drink, and speak more and more loudly. She nodded when people came to express their regrets or say some kind words about Abraham. The house grew stifling, and Carolein opened all the windows. The front door hung open to the street, and a ray of sunshine slashed through the doorway to fall upon the one bare spot of wooden floor. No one wanted to invite the extra warmth by standing in the sun.
Staring at the sunlight, Judith remembered a time when Abraham had visited her at the De Grebber house. She was young, thirteen or so, and had only been there less than a year. Abraham was ten. That day, like today, was filled with glittering sun, and they had spent the afternoon sitting in her loft bedroom and making shadows against the circle of sunlight on the floor. Maria sat with them, smiling as the younger children played and chattered. Judith loved her for not mocking their game; a game that Judith already realized she herself was too old for. But it was the best way she and Abraham had found to talk to one another. The three of them had been so happy that day.
Judith stood. She felt sober and empty. She wove her way through the crowd, past a long bench, and over to the other side of the room. There was an empty stool next to Maria—Judith’s painting stool, she realized before she sat on it.
As if exhausted, she took a few breaths and listened to the conversation swirling around them. Maria kept her eyes fixed on a spot across the room, or perhaps on her father, who was refilling his tankard. She took a small sip from her own cup.
“How’s your father?”
“He’s well.”
Judith pursed her lips and tried to think of something else to say. “Are you planning to leave Haarlem? I had heard from Abraham that you were interested in Amsterdam.”
Maria glanced at her and narrowed her eyes for a moment.
“No, I’m not, not yet.” She paused, then looked at her father, who was laughing alongside Dirck Hals. “Once you realize how much someone loves you, you find you have a lot of power over them. I can’t, I wouldn’t, do anything now that might hurt him.”
Maria took another sip, and Judith stared at her hands crossed in her lap.
“Every day I think about how I should have kept my word to you,” Judith said. “I’m sorry.”
Maria nodded. She swirled the beer in her cup.
“You’re angry,” Judith said. It was obvious, but she didn’t know what else to say. Silence was worse.
Maria exhaled. “Mostly at myself. For expecting anything different.”
“What does that mean, Maria?” A part of her relished the opportunity to defend herself, and Judith sat up straight upon her stool.
Maria turned to face her, and she had tears glistening on her red cheeks.
“Do you want to know? I shouldn’t say this, Judith, not today.”
“You’ve gotten this far.”
“Judith, you think only of yourself. All you wanted was to have your workshop, and no one else mattered. What does your success mean, really, if you’re alone?”
It was as if Abraham had spoken too. Judith’s anger flared then collapsed like a bit of kindling quickly consumed. She nodded. Maria looked at her as if expecting a fight, but Judith had nothing to say. She slumped against the wall. Around them, the men and women in black drank and told stories and laughed.
She took a deep breath, and let herself release the dike she had built inside her chest. The wooden slats behind her breastbone that held back the sorrow, anger, and fear gave way. She let herself cry. When the tears turned into sobs, and people began to glance at her, she didn’t try to control herself. She didn’t care. Maria was right in a way. Judith had thought of her workshop, though not only of that. She had missed her friend and her brother, and she had forgotten how to tell them. If she had been able to paint Abraham, to show him how well she saw him, how she noticed the pinch in his cheek when he smiled, or swirl of black hair over his ears, or even the way the D on his hand bent over his veins, he might have understood. And she had thought Maria understood that, too, but Judith had never asked.
“I’m sorry,” she said through her tears.
Chapter 40
CAROLEIN APPEARED THROUGH THE CROWD and bent down to whisper in Judith’s ear.
“You need a break,” she said. “It’s understandable. Come with me.” She reached under Judith’s arm and pressed her up. Carolein’s cornflower blue eyes were rimmed red, as if she had been crying, but her cheeks were dry.
Judith complied, and as she stood, she glanced back at Maria. The other woman’s face was a mask, but her eyes followed Judith.
Carolein parted the crowd, many of whom regarded Judith with pity tinged by condescension. Grief was one thing, weeping was another. Frans and Dirck Hals seemed to shake their heads as if her misbehavior only confirmed some judgment. None of them understood. Carolein held her hand and guided her up the stairs. Judith felt no shame for showing her emotions. It was not doing so that injured more.
They entered the workshop, and when Carolein shut the door, the noise from the funeral gathering below dulled. “You need a moment,” Carolein said.
“Thank you,” Judith said. She hiccupped through a sob and wiped some tears away.
“It’s nothing.” Carolein turned to leave.
“Wait. Carolein, tell me. Who have you lost?”
Carolein faced her. She lifted her dry, chapped fingers to Judith’s jaw. “Too many. And it never gets easier.”
She closed the door again before Judith could say anything.
In the softening late afternoon light, the white plaster walls lost their ridges and pockmarks. The uniform white space seemed to wrap its arms around Judith, and after a few minutes, her crying slowed. She breathed in the comforting smell of crushed ochre, Cologne earth, bone black, and the rest: the blended perfume of all her pigments. The wooden boards creaked as she walked through the room. There was her easel, untouched since the day Abraham died. There was Davit’s panel, where he was working on a study of the violin. And there was the mortar and pestle Hendrik had been using to grind charcoal into pigment fine enough for a gentle gray paint. She ran her fingers over each brush, bowl, and table she passed. She picked up the shard of crockery Lachine had given her when they made their deal. Over the months her thumb had worn the sharp edge down, a little. She placed it back on the table.
By the window hung the painting of a man offering a woman some coins. She loved that painting, and when the dealer at the auction house expressed his concerns, she decided to keep it for herself. The woman in the dark scene fixed her eyes on her needlework while the man in the fur cap bent over her shoulder, trying to distract her. A flame illuminated them both. Judith loved the focus she had captured on the woman’s smooth cheeks and downturned eyes. Yet the painting would not be complete without both figures. The brown in the man’s fur hat echoed the brown in her hair. The gold of the coins in his palm contrasted with the sky blue of her skirt. While preparing the scene, Judith had scratched perspective lines into the white grounding, outlining how she would guide the eye from the woman’s knee to hand and setting the woman’s chair just that much farther in the illusory distance. But instead of boasting of her skill with perspective, instead of painting tile grids to show the viewer what she had done, she painted over the lines. It was the woman and the man who mattered. This painting had achieved the elusive balance of positioning and light that she strove for. Had she focused too much on the woman or too much on her technique, she would have thrown the painting askew.
She looked around the workshop. Under the grinding table sat the jug of linseed oil she had purchased from Frans de Grebber. It was more than two-thirds gone, and she didn’t know where she would find more. Perhaps she would go knocking on Pieter Molijn’s door, she thought bitterly. And how to explain that?
She shook her head. Maria was right. It was her brother’s funeral, and still she was thinking of the cursed oil. None of her labor mattered if she didn’t have a life worth living. She picked up the jug, then she grabbed the rommelpot from the prop table with her free hand. Carefully, she opened the workshop door and walked out to the landing. Below her, the mourners ate, drank, and raised their voices to be heard over the din. Paulus van Beresteyn stood arguing with Frans Hals and Outgert van Akersloot. His stiff lace ruff radiated from his collar, and his deep black tunic drank in the light. He did not wear the mourning gowns of the others, and yet somehow he didn’t look out of place in his finery. Paulus van Beresteyn. She would have to thank him for Abraham’s wages, if she could think of the appropriately graceful words.
“I’m owed something,” he said, his voice sharp.
“It’s not our fault you can’t protect your investment,” Outgert replied. Judith listened and pressed her lips together.
A man with curly golden hair under his broad hat rushed in the open door, and Judith froze. Jan Miense Molenaer. He looked up at her with eyes wide in sympathy, and she wanted to run down and greet him. But if she did, she’d never get this courage again.
Judith placed the jug of oil on the floor. Then she pulled the rommelpot’s stick slowly through the pig bladder stretched over its opening. A loud groaning sound echoed across the room. She repeated the motion a few times until everyone in the room was looking up at her with startled faces.
“Neighbors and friends, thank you for coming today. I know it’s unusual that I would address you at a time like this, but I hope you’ll have patience with me.” A murmur of voices rippled across the crowd and then faded. Judith watched their upturned faces, and a cold panic gripped her throat. She had walked out without thinking, really, and now a black fear washed away whatever words she had held ready. She stood in silence. At the back of the room, Carolein held a hand over her mouth. Maria sat where Judith had left her, her arms wrapped around herself as if she were shivering.
“Thank you for coming,” Judith said again. “Abraham . . . he would have been grateful. Surprised too, probably.” Her voice caught, but she pressed forward. “I’m a little surprised. But I forgot to see the people around me. Awful, isn’t it, for a painter not to be looking? Not to see the hidden details? And for that, I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Maria.” Judith put the rommelpot down and picked up the jug. “I learned, recently, that some other master painters don’t want the rest of us around. I understand why. It’s hard to make a living. They’re hoarding this stuff,” she held up the oil, “to squeeze the rest of us out.” Below, there was a sharp intake of breath and a few low murmurs. Judith didn’t look to see who was speaking. Her stomach was twisted in an anxious knot, but she kept talking. “Maybe there’s some sense to it. Still, I’m finished worrying about it.”
She unstoppered the earthenware jug. Carefully, she lifted the jug over the balustrade. She tipped it and poured a thin stream of heavy oil down onto the floor below. It splatte
red onto Dirck Hals’s black leather boots, and she smiled. A few people exclaimed and whispered, but mostly the crowd stood in shocked silence. She wondered, for an instant, if anyone would ever buy her paintings after this display of madness. But she had had enough of fretting over what Haarlem thought about her.
She stopped her pouring and held up the brown jug.
“There’s enough left here for one painting. I’m going to use it to paint my friend Maria, if she’ll let me. It’s something I should have done for Abraham too.” She blinked back a tear. “And then, if there’s not enough linseed oil for me to buy, I’m going to talk to the younger masters in town. We’ll find our own. And we’ll talk to the Vroedschap.” She knew the painters in the room would understand the threat. If the St. Luke’s Guild wouldn’t represent the interests of all of its members, the men of the city’s governing Vroedschap might be less willing to recognize the guild at all.
Her hands trembled when she finished speaking. She tucked them, one hand still holding the container, under her crossed arms. She had no idea if she could follow through, but judging by the panicked glances exchanged by the Guild leaders standing below her, she had hit upon something.
She put the jug down. When she straightened, she saw Maria climbing the stairs toward her. Her blue eyes glistened with tears, and her brown hair had come undone under her cap. She reached the landing and held out a hand.
“I’m sorry, Judith,” she said, her voice so soft it was almost impossible to hear. “That was cruel of me to say. That you only thought of yourself.” “But true,” Judith said, her two hands holding Maria’s one. “Not entirely,” Maria said. “Yes.” Judith sighed and stepped away. She smiled as she wiped away a tear. “Not entirely.”
Light of Her Own Page 25