Girl With a Pearl Earring

by Tracy Chevalier

  “Once you are used to it, it will not take as long as today.”

  I hated to question or disobey him—he was my master. But I feared the anger of the women downstairs. “I’m meant to go to the butcher’s now, and to do the ironing, sir. For the mistress.” My words sounded petty.

  He did not move. “To the butcher’s?” He was frowning.

  “Yes, sir. The mistress will want to know why I cannot do my other work. She will want to know that I am helping you, up here. It’s not easy for me to come up for no reason.”

  There was a long silence. The bell in the New Church tower struck seven times.

  “I see,” he murmured when it had stopped. “Let me consider this.” He removed some of the ivory, putting it back in a drawer. “Do this bit now.” He gestured at what was left. “It shouldn’t take long. I must go out. Leave it here when you are done.”

  He would have to speak to Catharina and tell her about my work. Then it would be easier for me to do things for him.

  I waited, but he said nothing to Catharina.

  The solution to the problem of the colors came unexpectedly from Tanneke. Since Franciscus’ birth the nurse had been sleeping in the Crucifixion room with Tanneke. From there she could get easily to the great hall to feed the baby when he woke. Although Catharina was not feeding him herself, she insisted that Franciscus sleep in a cradle next to her. I thought this a strange arrangement, but when I came to know Catharina better I understood that she wanted to hold on to the appearance of motherhood, if not the tasks themselves.

  Tanneke was not happy sharing her room with the nurse, complaining that the nurse got up too often to tend to the baby, and when she did remain in bed she snored. Tanneke spoke of it to everyone, whether they listened or not. She began to slacken her work, and blamed it on not getting enough sleep. Maria Thins told her there was nothing they could do, but Tanneke continued to grumble. She often threw black looks at me—before I came to live in the house Tanneke had slept where I did in the cellar whenever a nurse was needed. It was almost as if she blamed me for the nurse’s snores.

  One evening she even appealed to Catharina. Catharina was preparing herself for an evening at the van Ruijvens’, despite the cold. She was in a good mood—wearing her pearls and yellow mantle always made her happy. Over her mantle she had tied a wide linen collar that covered her shoulders and protected the cloth from the powder she was dusting on her face. As Tanneke listed her woes, Catharina continued to powder herself, holding up a mirror to inspect the results. Her hair had been dressed in braids and ribbons, and as long as she kept her happy expression she was very beautiful, the combination of her blond hair and light brown eyes making her look exotic.

  At last she waved the powder-brush at Tanneke. “Stop!” she cried with a laugh. “We need the nurse and she must sleep near me. There’s no space in the girls’ room, but there is in yours, so she is there. There’s nothing to be done. Why do you bother me about it?”

  “Perhaps there is one thing that may be done,” he said. I glanced up from the cupboard where I was searching for an apron for Lisbeth. He was standing in the doorway. Catharina gazed up at her husband in surprise. He rarely showed interest in domestic affairs. “Put a bed up in the attic and let someone sleep there. Griet, perhaps.”

  “Griet in the attic? Why?” Catharina cried.

  “Then Tanneke may sleep in the cellar, as she prefers,” he explained mildly.

  “But—” Catharina stopped, confused. She seemed to disapprove of the idea but could not say why.

  “Oh yes, madam,” Tanneke broke in eagerly. “That would certainly help.” She glanced at me.

  I busied myself refolding the children’s clothes, though they were already tidy.

  “What about the key to the studio?” Catharina finally found an argument. There was only one entrance to the attic, by the ladder in the studio’s storeroom. To get to my bed I would have to pass through the studio, which was kept locked at night. “We can’t give a maid the key.”

  “She won’t need a key,” he countered. “You may lock the studio door once she has gone to bed. Then in the morning she may clean the studio before you come and unlock the door.”

  I paused with my folding. I did not like the idea of being locked into my room at night.

  Unfortunately this notion seemed to please Catharina. Perhaps she thought locking me away would keep me both safely in one place and out of her sight. “All right, then,” she decided. She made most decisions quickly. She turned to Tanneke and me. “Tomorrow you two move a bed to the attic. This is only temporary,” she added, “until the nurse is no longer needed.”

  Temporary as my trips to the butcher and fishmonger were meant to be temporary, I thought.

  “Come with me to the studio for a moment,” he said. He was looking at her in a way I had begun to recognize—a painter’s way.

  “Me?” Catharina smiled at her husband. Invitations to his studio were rare. She set down her powder-brush with a flourish and began to remove the wide collar, now covered with dust.

  He reached out and grasped her hand. “Leave that.”

  This was almost as surprising as his suggestion to move me to the attic. As he led Catharina upstairs, Tanneke and I exchanged looks.

  The next day the baker’s daughter began to wear the wide white collar while modelling for the painting.

  Maria Thins was not so easily fooled. When she heard from a gleeful Tanneke about her move to the cellar and mine to the attic she puffed on her pipe and frowned. “You two could just switch”—she pointed at us with the pipe—”so that Griet sleeps with the nurse and you go in the cellar. Then there is no need for anyone to move to the attic.”

  Tanneke was not listening—she was too full of her victory to notice the logic in her mistress’s words.

  “Mistress has agreed to it,” I said simply.

  Maria Thins gave me a long sideways look.

  Sleeping in the attic made it easier for me to work there, but I still had little time to do so. I could get up earlier and go to bed later, but sometimes he gave me so much work that I had to find a way to go up in the afternoons, when I normally sat by the fire and sewed. I began to complain of not being able to see my stitching in the dim kitchen, and needing the light of my bright attic room. Or I said my stomach hurt and I wanted to lie down. Maria Thins gave me that same sideways look each time I made an excuse, but did not comment.

  I began to get used to lying.

  Once he had suggested that I sleep in the attic he left it to me to arrange my duties so that I could work for him. He never helped by lying for me, or asking me if I had time to spare for him. He gave me instructions in the morning and expected them to be done by the next day.

  The colors themselves made up for the troubles I had hiding what I was doing. I came to love grinding the things he brought from the apothecary—bones, white lead, madder, massicot—to see how bright and pure I could get the colors. I learned that the finer the materials were ground, the deeper the color. From rough, dull grains madder became a fine bright red powder and, mixed with linseed oil, a sparkling paint. Making it and the other colors was magical.

  From him I learned too how to wash substances to rid them of impurities and bring out the true colors. I used a series of shells as shallow bowls, and rinsed and rerinsed colors, sometimes thirty times, to get out the chalk or sand or gravel. It was long and tedious work, but very satisfying to see the color grow cleaner with each wash, and closer to what was needed.

  The only color he did not allow me to handle was ultramarine. Lapis lazuli was so expensive, and the process of extracting a pure blue from the stone so difficult, that he worked with it himself.

  I grew used to being around him. Sometimes we stood side by side in the small room, me grinding white lead, him washing lapis or burning ochers in the fire. He said little to me. He was a quiet man. I did not speak either. It was peaceful then, with the light coming in through the window. When we were done we
poured water from a pitcher over each other’s hands and scrubbed ourselves clean.

  It was very cold in the attic—although there was the little fire he used for heating linseed oil or burning colors, I did not dare light it unless he wanted me to. Otherwise I would have to explain to Catharina and Maria Thins why peat and wood were disappearing so fast.

  I did not mind the cold so much when he was there. When he stood close to me I could feel the warmth of his body.

  I was washing a bit of massicot I had just ground one afternoon when I heard Maria Thins’ voice in the studio below. He was working on the painting, the baker’s daughter sighing occasionally as she stood.

  “Are you cold, girl?” Maria Thins asked.

  “A little,” came the faint reply.

  “Why doesn’t she have a footwarmer?”

  His voice was so low that I didn’t hear his answer.

  “It won’t show in the painting, not by her feet. We don’t want her getting sick again.”

  Again I could not hear what he said.

  “Griet can get one for her,” Maria Thins suggested. “She should be in the attic, for she’s meant to have a stomachache. I’ll just find her.”

  She was quicker than I had thought an old woman could be. By the time I put my foot on the top rung she was halfway up the ladder. I stepped back into the attic. I could not escape her, and there was no time to hide anything.

  When Maria Thins climbed into the room, she quickly took in the shells laid in rows on the table, the jug of water, the apron I wore speckled with yellow from the massicot.

  “So this is what you’ve been up to, eh, girl? I thought as much.”

  I lowered my eyes. I did not know what to say.

  “Stomachache, sore eyes. We are not all idiots around here, you know.”

  Ask him, I longed to tell her. He is my master. This is his doing.

  But she did not call to him. Nor did he appear at the bottom of the ladder to explain.

  There was a long silence. Then Maria Thins said, “How long have you been assisting him, girl?”

  “A few weeks, madam.”

  “He’s been painting faster these last weeks, I’ve noticed.”

  I raised my eyes. Her face was calculating.

  “You help him to paint faster, girl,” she said in a low voice, “and you’ll keep your place here. Not a word to my daughter or Tanneke, now.”

  “Yes, madam.”

  She chuckled. “I might have known, clever one that you are. You almost fooled even me. Now, get that poor girl down there a footwarmer.”

  I liked sleeping in the attic. There was no Crucifixion scene hanging at the foot of the bed to trouble me. There were no paintings at all, but the clean scent of linseed oil and the musk of the earth pigments. I liked my view of the New Church, and the quiet. No one came up except him. The girls did not visit me as they sometimes had in the cellar, or secretly search through my things. I felt alone there, perched high above the noisy household, able to see it from a distance.

  Rather like him.

  The best part, however, was that I could spend more time in the studio. Sometimes I wrapped myself in a blanket and crept down late at night when the house was still. I looked at the painting he was working on by candlelight, or opened a shutter a little to let in moonlight. Sometimes I sat in the dark in one of the lion-head chairs pulled up to the table and rested my elbow on the blue and red table rug that covered it. I imagined wearing the yellow and black bodice and pearls, holding a glass of wine, sitting across the table from him.

  There was one thing I did not like about the attic, however. I did not like being locked in at night.

  Catharina had got the studio key back from Maria Thins and began to lock and unlock the door. She must have felt it gave her some control over me. She was not happy about my being in the attic—it meant I was closer to him, to the place she was not allowed in but where I could wander freely.

  It must have been hard for a wife to accept such an arrangement.

  It worked for a time, however. For a time I was able to slip away in the afternoons and wash and grind colors for him. Catharina often slept then—Franciscus had not settled, and woke her most nights so that she needed sleep during the day. Tanneke usually fell asleep by the fire as well, and I could leave the kitchen without always having to make up an excuse. The girls were busy with Johannes, teaching him to walk and talk, and rarely noticed my absence. If they did Maria Thins said I was running an errand for her, fetching things from her rooms, or sewing something for her that needed bright attic light to work by. They were children, after all, absorbed in their own world, indifferent to the adult lives around them except when it directly affected them.

  Or so I thought.

  One afternoon I was washing white lead when Cornelia called my name from downstairs. I quickly wiped my hands, removed the apron I wore for attic work and changed into my daily apron before climbing down the ladder to her. She stood on the threshold of the studio, looking as if she were standing at the edge of a puddle and tempted to step in it.

  “What is it?” I spoke rather sharply.

  “Tanneke wants you.” Cornelia turned and led the way to the stairs. She hesitated at the top. “Will you help me, Griet?” she asked plaintively. “Go first so that if I fall you will catch me. The stairs are so steep.”

  It was unlike her to be scared, even on stairs she did not use much. I was touched, or perhaps I was simply feeling guilty for being sharp with her. I descended the stairs, then turned and held out my arms. “Now you.”

  Cornelia was standing at the top, hands in her pockets. She started down the stairs, one hand on the banister, the other balled into a tight fist. When she was most of the way down she let go and jumped so that she fell against me, sliding down my front, pressing painfully into my stomach. Once she regained her feet she began to laugh, head thrown up, brown eyes narrowed to slits.

  “Naughty girl,” I muttered, regretting my softness.

  I found Tanneke in the cooking kitchen, Johannes in her lap.

  “Cornelia said you wanted me.”

  “Yes, she’s torn one of her collars and wants you to mend it. Wouldn’t let me touch it—I don’t know why, she knows I mend collars best.” As Tanneke handed it to me her eyes strayed to my apron. “What’s that there? Are you bleeding?”

  I looked down. A slash of red dust crossed my stomach like a streak on a window pane. For a moment I thought of the aprons of Pieter the father and son.

  Tanneke leaned closer. “That’s not blood. It looks like powder. How did that get there?”

  I gazed at the streak. Madder, I thought. I ground this a few weeks ago.

  Only I heard the stifled giggle from the hallway.

  Cornelia had been waiting some time for this mischief. She had even managed somehow to get up to the attic to steal the powder.

  I did not make up an answer fast enough. As I hesitated, Tanneke’s suspicion grew. “Have you been in the master’s things?” she said in an accusing tone. She had, after all, modelled for him and knew what he kept in the studio.

  “No, it was—” I stopped. If I tattled on Cornelia I would sound petty and it would probably not stop Tanneke from discovering what I did in the attic.

  “I think young mistress had better see this,” she decided.

  “No,” I said quickly.

  Tanneke drew herself up as much as she could with a sleeping child in her lap. “Take off your apron,” she commanded, “so I can show it to the young mistress.”

  “Tanneke,” I said, gazing levelly at her, “if you know what’s best for you, you’ll not disturb Catharina, you’ll speak to Maria Thins. Alone, not in front of the girls.”

  It was those words, with their bullying tone, that caused the most damage between Tanneke and me. I did not think to sound like that—I was simply desperate to stop her from telling Catharina any way I could. But she would never forgive me for treating her as if she were below me.

  M
y words at least had their effect. Tanneke gave me a hard, angry look, but behind it was uncertainty, and the desire indeed to tell her own beloved mistress. She hung between that desire and the wish to punish my impudence by disobeying me.

  “Speak to your mistress,” I said softly. “But speak to her alone.”

  Though my back was to the door, I sensed Cornelia slipping away from it.

  Tanneke’s own instincts won. With a stony face she handed Johannes to me and went to find Maria Thins. Before I settled him on my lap I carefully wiped away the red pigment with a rag, then threw it in the fire. It still left a stain. I sat with my arms around the little boy and waited for my fate to be decided.

  I never found out what Maria Thins said to Tanneke, what threats or promises she made to keep her quiet. But it worked—Tanneke said nothing about my attic work to Catharina or the girls, or to me. She became much harder with me, though—deliberately difficult rather than unthinkingly so. She sent me back to the fish stalls with the cod I knew she had asked for, swearing she had told me to buy flounder. When she cooked she became sloppier, spilling as much grease as she could on her apron so that I would have to soak the cloth longer and scrub harder to get the grease out. She left buckets for me to empty, and stopped bringing water to fill the kitchen cistern or mopping the floors. She sat and watched me balefully, refusing to move her feet so that I had to mop around them, to find afterwards that one foot had covered a sticky puddle of grease.

  She did not talk kindly to me any longer. She made me feel alone in a house full of people.

  So I did not dare to take nice things from her kitchen to cheer my father with. And I did not tell my parents how hard things were for me at the Oude Langendijck, how careful I had to be to keep my place. Nor could I tell them about the few good things—the colors I made, the nights when I sat alone in the studio, the moments when he and I worked side by side and I was warmed by his presence.

  All I could tell them about were his paintings.