by Wilbur Smith
At that moment a larger wave lifted the ship’s hull and she rolled sharply. Taken off balance Louisa was thrown against him. He put an arm round her shoulders. “I am so sorry, Mijnheer.” Her voice was husky. “I slipped.” She tried to draw back, but his arm held her firmly. She was confused, unsure what she should do next. She dared not pull away again. He made no move to release her, and then—she could hardly credit her senses—she felt his other hand close on her right breast. She gasped and shivered as she felt him roll her tender swollen nipple between his fingers. He was gentle, unlike his daughter had been. He did not hurt her at all. With a terrible burning shame she realized she was enjoying his touch. “I am cold,” she whispered.
“Yes,” he said. “You must go below before you catch a chill.” He released her and turned back to lean on the rail. Sparks streamed from the tip of his cheroot, and blew away on the wind.
When they returned to Huis Brabant, she did not see him again for several weeks. She heard Stals telling Elise that Mijnheer had gone to Paris on business. However, the brief incident on shipboard was never far from her mind. Sometimes she woke in the night and lay awake, burning with shame and remorse as she relived it. She felt that what had happened was her fault. A great man like Mijnheer van Ritters surely could not be to blame. When she thought about it her nipples burned and itched strangely. She felt a great evil in her, and climbed out of her bed to kneel and pray, shivering on the bare wooden floor. Gertruda called out in the dark, “Louisa, I need the chamber-pot.”
With a sense of relief Louisa went to her before she could wet the bed. Over the following weeks the guilt faded, but never quite left her.
Then, one afternoon, Stals came to find her in the nursery. “Mijnheer van Ritters wants to see you. You must go at once. I hope you have not done anything wrong, girl?” As Louisa brushed her hair hurriedly she told Gertruda where she was going.
“Can I come with you?”
“You must finish painting the picture of the boat for me. Try to stay inside the lines, my schat. I will be back soon.”
She knocked on the door of the library, her heart racing wildly. She knew he was going to punish her for what had happened on the ship. He might have her beaten by the grooms, like they had done to the drunken nursemaid. Worse still, he might dismiss her, have her thrown out into the street.
“Come in!” His voice was stern.
She curtsied in the doorway. “You sent for me, Mijnheer.”
“Yes, come in, Louisa.” She stopped in front of his desk, but he gestured for her to come round and stand beside him. “I want to talk to you about my daughter.”
Instead of his usual black coat and lace collar he wore a dressing-robe of heavy Chinese silk that buttoned up the front. From this informal attire and his calm, friendly expression she realized he was not angry with her. She felt a rush of relief. He was not going to punish her. His next words confirmed this. “I was thinking that it might be time for Gertruda to begin riding lessons. You are a good horsewoman. I have seen you helping the grooms to exercise the horses. I want to hear your opinion.”
“Oh, yes, Mijnheer. I am sure Gertie would love it. Old Bumble is a gentle gelding…” Happily she started to help him develop the plan. She was standing close to his shoulder. A thick book with a green leather cover was lying on the desk in front of him. Casually he opened it. She could not avoid seeing the exposed page and her voice trailed away. She lifted both hands to her mouth as she looked at the illustration that filled the whole of one folio-sized page. It was obviously the work of a skilled artist. The man in the painting was young and handsome, he lolled back in a leather armchair. A pretty young girl stood in front of him, laughing, and Louisa saw that she might have been her own twin. The girl’s large wide-set eyes were cerulean blue, and she was holding her skirts up to her waist so that the man could see the golden nest between her thighs. The artist had emphasized the pair of swollen lips that pouted at him through the curls.
That was enough to stop her breath, but there was worse—far worse. The front flap of the man’s breeches was undone, and through the opening thrust a pale shaft with a pink head. The man was holding it lightly between his fingers and seemed to be aiming it at the girl’s rosy opening.
Louisa had never seen a man naked. Even though she had listened to the other girls in the servants’ quarters discussing it with gusto, she had not expected anything remotely like this. She stared at it in dreadful fascination, unable to tear her eyes away. She felt hot waves of blood rising up her throat and flooding her cheeks. She was consumed with shame and horror.
“I thought the girl looked like you, although not as pretty,” said van Ritters quietly. “Don’t you agree, my dear?”
“I—I don’t know,” she whispered. Her legs almost folded under her as she felt Mijnheer van Ritters’ hand settle lightly on her bottom. The touch seemed to burn her flesh through the petticoats. He cupped her small round buttock, and she knew she should ask him to stop, or run from the room. But she could not. Stals and Elise had warned her repeatedly that she must obey Mijnheer always. She stood paralysed. She belonged to him, like any of his horses or dogs. She was one of his chattels. She must submit to him without protest, even though she was not sure what he was doing, what he wanted from her.
“Of course, Rembrandt has taken some artistic licence when it comes to dimensions.” She could not believe that the artist who had painted the figure of God had also painted this picture, yet it was possible: even a famous artist must do what the great man required of him.
“Forgive me, Gentle Jesus,” she prayed and shut her eyes tightly so that she did not have to look at that wicked picture. She heard the rustle of stiff silk brocade, and he said, “There, Louisa, this is what it really looks like.”
Her eyelids were clenched tightly, and he ran his hand over her buttock, gently but insistently. “You are a big girl now, Louisa. It is time you knew these things. Open your eyes, my dear.”
Obediently she opened them a crack. She saw that he had undone the front of his robe, and that he wore nothing under it. She stared at the thing that stood proud through the folds of silk. The painting was a bland and romanticized representation of it. It rose massively from a nest of coarse dark hair, and seemed as thick as her wrist. The head was not an insipid pink as in the painting, but the colour of a ripe plum. The slit in the end of it glared at her like a cyclopean eye. She shut her eyes again tightly.
“Gertruda!” she whispered. “I promised to take her for a walk.”
“You are very good to her, Louisa.” His voice had a strange husky edge to it that she had never heard before. “But now you must be good to me also.” He reached down and under her skirts, then ran his fingers up her naked legs. He lingered at the soft dimples at the back of her knees, and she trembled more violently. His touch was caressing, and strangely reassuring, but she knew it was wrong. She was confused by these contrary emotions, and she felt as though she were suffocating. His fingers left the soft back of her knees and moved up her thigh. The touch was neither furtive nor hesitant, but authoritative, not something she could deny or oppose.
“You must be good to me,” he had said, and she knew that he had every right to ask that of her. She owed him everything. If this was being good to him, then she had no choice, yet she knew it was wicked and that Jesus would punish her. Perhaps He would cease to love her for what they were doing. She heard the rustle of the page as he turned it with his free hand, and then he said, “Look!” She tried to resist him in this at least, and shut her eyes again. His touch became more demanding and his hand moved up to the crease where her buttock joined the back of her thigh.
She opened her eyes, just a fraction, and looked through her lashes at the fresh page of the book. Then her eyes flew wide open. The girl who looked so like her was kneeling in front of her swain. Her skirts had hiked up behind her, and her exposed bottom was round and buttery. Both she and the boy were gazing down into his lap. The girl’s expression w
as fond, as though she were looking down at a beloved pet, a kitten perhaps. She held it clasped in both her small hands, but her dainty fingers were not able to encompass its girth.
“Is it not a beautiful picture?” he asked, and despite the wickedness of the subject, she felt a strange empathy towards the young couple. They were smiling, and it seemed as though they loved each other and were enjoying what they were doing. She forgot to close her eyes again.
“You see, Louisa, that God has made men and women differently. On their own they are incomplete, but together they make a whole.” She was not sure exactly what he meant, but sometimes she had not understood what her father had told her, or the sermon preached by the dominie. “That is why the couple in the painting are so happy and why you can see that they feel full of love for each other.”
With gentle authority his fingers moved between her legs, right up to the juncture of her thighs. Then he did something else to her there. She was not sure what it was, but she moved her feet apart so he could do it more easily. The sensation that overtook her was beyond anything she had experienced before. She could feel the happiness and love he had spoken about spreading out and suffusing her entire body. She stared down again into the opening of his robe, and her feelings of shock and fear faded. She saw that, like the picture in the book, it was really quite pleasing. No wonder the other girl looked at it like that.
He moved her gently, and she was pliant and unresisting. Still sitting in the chair, he turned towards her, and at the same time, drew her closer and placed one hand on her shoulder. She understood instinctively that he wanted her to do what the girl in the picture was doing. Under the pressure of the hand on her shoulder she sank down to her knees and that strangely ugly, beautiful thing was only inches from her face. Like the other girl she reached out and took it in her hands. He made a small grunting sound and she felt how hot and hard it was. It fascinated her. She squeezed gently, and felt a leap of life as though this thing had a separate existence. It belonged to her, and she felt a strange sense of power, as though she held the core of his being in her hands.
He reached down and placed his own hands over hers. He began to move them back and forth. At first she was not sure what he was doing, then understood that he was showing her what he wanted. She felt a strong desire to please him, and she learned quickly. While she moved her fingers as rapidly as a weaver working at the loom he lay back in the chair and groaned. She thought she had hurt him and she tried to stand up, but he stopped her with the hand on her shoulder again and, a desperate tone in his voice, said, “No, Louisa, just like that. Don’t stop what you’re doing. You’re such a good, clever girl.”
Suddenly he let out a deep, shuddering sigh and whipped a scarlet silk kerchief out of the pocket of his robe, covering his lap and both her hands with it. She did not want to let go of him, even when she felt a hot, viscous fluid pouring over her hands and soaking the silk cloth. When she tried to keep on with what she was doing, he grasped her wrists and held her hands still. “That’s enough, my dear. You have made me very happy.”
After a long time he roused himself. He took her little hands one at a time and wiped them clean with the silk cloth. She felt no sense of revulsion. He was smiling at her kindly, and he told her, “I am very pleased with you, but you must not tell anyone what we did today. Do you understand, Louisa?” She nodded vehemently. The guilt had evaporated, and she felt instead gratitude and reverence.
“Now you can go back to Gertruda. We will begin her riding lessons tomorrow. Of course, you will take her to the academy.”
Over the next few weeks Louisa saw him only once and at a distance. She was half-way up the staircase, on her way to Gertruda’s room, when a footman opened the doors to the banquet room, and Mijnheer van Ritters led out a procession of his guests. They were all beautifully dressed, prosperous-looking ladies and gentlemen. Louisa knew at least four of the men were members of Het Zeventien, the directors of the VOC. They had obviously dined well and were jovial and noisy. She hid behind the curtains as they passed below her, but she watched Mijnheer van Ritters with a strange feeling of longing. He was wearing a long, curled wig, and the sash and the star of the Order of the Golden Fleece. He was magnificent. Louisa felt a rare flash of hatred for the smiling, elegant woman on his arm. After they had passed her hiding-place she ran to the room she shared with Gertruda, threw herself on the bed and wept.
“Why does he not want to see me again? Did I displease him?”
She thought about the incident in the library every day, especially after the lantern was out and she was in her bed across the room from Gertruda.
Then one day Mijnheer van Ritters arrived unexpectedly at the riding academy. Louisa had taught Gertruda how to curtsy. She was awkward and clumsy and Louisa had to help her back on to her feet when she lost her balance, but van Ritters smiled a little at this accomplishment, and returned the courtesy with a playful bow. “Your devoted servant,” he said, and Gertruda giggled. He did not speak directly to Louisa, and she knew better than to address him uninvited. He watched Gertruda make a circuit of the ring, on the lead rein. Louisa had to walk beside the pony, and Gertruda’s pudding face was screwed up with terror. Then van Ritters left as abruptly as he had appeared.
Another week passed and Louisa was torn with opposing emotions. At times the magnitude of her sin returned to plague her. She had allowed him to touch and play with her, and she had taken pleasure in handling that monstrous thing of his. She had even begun to have the most vivid dreams about it, and she woke in confusion, her newly fledged breasts and her private parts burning and itching. As though in punishment for her sins her breasts had swelled until they strained the buttons of her blouse. She tried to hide them, keeping her arms crossed over her chest, but she had seen the stable boys and the footmen looking at them.
She wanted to talk to Elise about what had happened to her and ask her advice, but Mijnheer van Ritters had warned her against this. So she kept silent.
Then, unexpectedly, Stals told her, “You are to move to your own room. It is the Mijnheer’s order.”
Louisa stared at him in astonishment. “But what about Gertruda? She can’t sleep alone.”
“The master thinks it is time she learned to do so. She, too, will have a new room and you will have the one beside her. She will have a bell to call you if she needs you in the night.”
The girls’ new apartments were on the floor below the library and Mijnheer’s bedroom suite. Louisa made a game of the move, and stilled Gertruda’s misgivings. They took all her dolls up and held a party for them to introduce them to their new quarters. Louisa had learned to speak in a different voice for each toy, a trick that never failed to reduce Gertruda to shrieks of laughter. When each of her dolls in turn had told Gertruda how happy they were with their new home, she was convinced.
Louisa’s own room was light and spacious. The furnishings were quite splendid, with velvet curtains and gilt chairs and bedstead. There was a feather mattress on the bed, and thick blankets. There was even a fireplace with a marble surround, although Stals cautioned her that she would be rationed to a single bucket of coal a week. But, wonder of wonders, there was a tiny cubicle that contained a commode with a lid that lifted to reveal a carved seat and the porcelain chamber-pot under it. Louisa was in a haze of delight as she crept into bed that first night. It seemed that she had never been warm in her life until this evening.
She came out of a deep, dreamless sleep and lay awake trying to place what had woken her. It must have been well past midnight for it was dark and the house was silent. Then the sound came again, and her heart raced. It was footsteps, but they came from the panelled wall at the far side of the room. She was gripped by superstitious dread, and could neither move nor scream. Then she heard the creak of a door opening, and a ghostly light glowed out of nowhere. Slowly a panel in the far wall swung wide open and a spectral figure stepped into the room. It was a tall, bearded man dressed in breeches and a white shirt with
leg-o’-mutton sleeves and a high stock.
“Louisa!” His voice was hollow and echoed strangely. It was just the voice that she would have expected from a ghost. She pulled the covers over her head and lay without breathing. She heard footsteps crossing to her bedside, and she could see the wavering light through a slit in the bed-clothes. The footsteps stopped beside her and suddenly her coverings were flung back. This time she screamed, but she knew it was futile: next door Gertruda would be sleeping in a mindless stupor from which nothing short of an earthquake could waken her, and there were only the two of them on this floor of Huis Brabant. She stared at the face above her, so far gone in terror that she did not recognize him even in the lantern-light.
“Don’t be afraid, child. I will not hurt you.”
“Oh, Mijnheer!” She flung herself against his chest and clung to him with all the strength of her relief. “I thought you were a ghost.”
“There, child.” He stroked her hair. “It’s all over. There is nothing to be afraid of.” It took her a long time to become calm again. Then he said, “I won’t leave you here alone. Come with me.”
He took her hand, and she followed him trustingly in her cotton nightdress on bare feet. He led her through the door in the panel. A spiral staircase was concealed behind it. They went up it, then through another secret doorway. Suddenly they were in a magnificent chamber, so spacious that even with fifty candles burning in their chandeliers the far reaches of the room and the ceilings were in shadow. He led her to the fireplace in which tall yellow flames leaped and twisted.
He embraced her and stroked her hair. “Did you think I had forgotten you?”
She nodded. “I thought I had made you angry, and that you did not like me any more.”
He chuckled and lifted her face to the light. “What a beautiful little thing you are. This is how angry I am and how much I dislike you.” He kissed her mouth and she tasted the cheroot on his lips, a strong aromatic flavour that made her feel safe and secure. At last he broke the embrace and seated her on the sofa in front of the fire. He went to a table on which stood crystal glasses and a decanter of ruby red liquor. He poured a glass and brought it to her. “Drink this. It will chase away the bad thoughts.”