John had not the slightest inclination to leave the poor little thing with her.
46
LOST
“Goed zo! Nog een hapje!”
Lucinda tasted something warm; something liquid dribbled onto her chin. She peeled one of her eyelids open, painfully. There was a spoon in front of her; grasping it, a gnarled red hand. Her trembling eyelid sank shut again. It felt much safer that way.
It was pitch black when she awoke a second time. She could hear herself breathing, and it occurred to her that she was alive. She would remain calm no matter what. There was a blanket covering her. She was lying on some sort of lumpy mattress, with her icy feet sticking out. She tried sitting up. There was a smell of stale cooked cabbage. She heard someone snoring not too far away. There was some grating horror, something abominable…Severely, she shut it out of her mind. Gravity pulled down her head and shoulders, and she succumbed again.
A stench of manure lay heavily on the air, and a discord of cackling and crowing told her that it was morning. She raised her head. An old face, crosshatched, smiled at her and addressed her in guttural gibberish. She shook her head, and tried to listen, to focus on the woman’s gestures to make some sense of the words.
Now an old man squeezed in through the narrow doorway. He was shaking his woolly head angrily, pointing at her. She sat up. He gestured at her to follow him. The old woman protested, and instead pulled her over to a table with a steaming bowl of porridge. The woman pushed her husband out of the way so that Lucinda could sit down, and she fell on the food hungrily, ignoring the quarrel behind her.
When she had finished, the old woman smiled at her again. “Lekker?” she was asking. “Very good,” said Lucinda, watching the old man climb shakily up on a stool. Muttering, he stretched his bent frame as far as it would go, reaching for something balanced across the rafters. It was an oar. He hauled it down, stepped off the stool, carried it, bowlegged, over to the door, leaned it against the lintel, adjusted it so that it would balance, watched it for a few seconds to make sure it would not fall, marched resolutely back to the stool, climbed up again and reached for its twin, almost lost his balance, growled some lengthy expletive, reached up again and captured the uncooperative implement, lowered it to the ground, leaned on it heavily to let himself down and, regaining his balance, looked around with an air of defiance, as if he challenged anyone to do it as well as he had.
The old woman was saying something to Lucinda, and touched her cheek. Sadly, she pointed to the door and waved her hand. Lucinda got up and followed the old man who, with the oars under his arms, was stumbling down to the canal where a little wooden boat was tied up to a pole. She turned. “Thank you!” she cried.
“Dank U!” the old woman said, nodding, to show that she had understood.
When she had climbed into the boat, the old man started pointing and gesturing, grunting and puffing. She looked around, confused. Impatiently, he grabbed her by the hair and yanked her head down so that she was forced to lie at his feet. “Ouch!” she complained, but she did not move. For with a rush of heart-stopping fear, she remembered what had happened the day before, and understood what he meant. She mustn’t show her face. It was dangerous. Humbly, she remained prostrate on the slimy bottom of the boat, and entrusted herself to him.
The peasant punted the length of the canal and then, where the canal turned into a river, rowed upstream along the bank for a couple of miles. Finally he pulled into a stand of rushes, and prodded her shoulder. She sat up. He pointed in the direction of the bank. She stepped out into the shallow water, her bare feet squelching in the mud.
“Dank U!” she cried, as she scrambled up the bank.
He shrugged, and backed out into the river.
“One more step. And another…”
She had begun talking to herself. Muttering under her breath like a madwoman was somehow helping her keep herself together. And at least talking to herself in her mother tongue afforded her a small measure of fluency in this country where she was otherwise a foreign object of scorn, tongue-tied, dumb, and rejected.
Even after days of this, begging had not lost its shame. Never, never would she get used to it. Each time she summoned the courage to ask, she steeled herself for rejection, or, worse, grudging generosity invariably delivered with a judgmental sneer. She couldn’t blame them: she too had always assumed that beggars were cheaters, liars and thieves. She used to think beggars capable of pretending misery—even capable of amputating a limb—just in order to make a very nice living preying on decent folk. That was before she had experienced the hunger pains that made a starving person desperate enough to brave any amount of contempt.
“Nou? Wat wil je?” asked a suspicious farmer’s wife, peering out of the top half of her door at Lucinda.
She held out her hands, cupped.
Now the woman became distracted, staring past Lucinda’s shoulder as if she didn’t exist. Turning her back, she busied herself in her kitchen, slinging pails around, yelling something at the children, shouting orders at a lazy boy sweeping the yard.
Lucinda did not budge. It took all the effort she possessed to keep herself erect, her head humbly bowed. Every so often the farmer’s wife would glance in her direction, only to see her still standing there. The woman made herself even busier, lifting a heavy sack of flour with a groan, retying her apron more securely, kicking a dog out of the way. Finally, as if it could wait no longer, she started breaking eggs into a bowl.
Lucinda let out a sigh.
“Hier!” Without warning, the woman threw an egg at Lucinda’s head. But the girl was alert as a dog. She caught it deftly in mid-air.
“Dank U,” she said, and shuffled off. She didn’t have enough self-control to wait until she was out of sight before cramming the egg into her mouth and sucking out the raw ooze to the last drop.
As Lucinda drew nearer to Amsterdam, the farms became more prosperous and the people even less compassionate. But she had heard that Amsterdam was a fine city, full of rich, generous merchants. If she could make it to Amsterdam, then perhaps the rasping hollow in her belly would be filled, the unaccustomed heaviness would go away, and the nightmare darkness would lift. It was a goal, and in the absence of any other possible purpose or hope of rescue, she plodded on.
PART THREE
47
A VIRGIN
If you think there is a chance you could lose your way in the dark and impenetrable forest, you must devise a way to leave a trail behind.
But bear in mind that the birds will eat your breadcrumbs, the wind will scatter your blazes, the rain will wash away the chalk marks, and time will erase most promises.
“Prynce! Dear fellow!”
John looked up from the Gazette he was reading and saw Samuel Wynde, a friend of his youth. He stood up, and inclined his head.
“Wynde,” he mumbled reluctantly. “Allow me to offer you a coffee.”
“Never touch the stuff, old boy! The humors, you know. One is too much afflicted with the choler as it is.”
Prynce smiled politely.
“Fellow! A bottle of claret over here!” bellowed Wynde. “More coffee for my friend!”
Prynce resumed his seat at the long coffee house table, and folded the paper.
“Well, man! Where have you been hiding? It has been years! I had heard—your cousin Rochester told me—you were with my Lord Monmouth at Maastricht in ‘73, when he had his Glorious Victory.”
“Ah yes, that glorious victory,” said John mildly.
“Did you go to the re-enactment of the siege at Windsor? Quite the spectacle!”
“No, I can’t say that I did,” said John.
“I must say the duke cut a dashing figure. So handsome, isn’t he! And His Majesty so very proud of him. He will very soon be declared the Heir, you know. I have it on the very best authority…”
“That will be very nice for him,” said John, taking a sip of his coffee.
“I am intimate with Sir Thomas Ar
mstrong and some of the others. They keep me informed. They’ll tell me anything I want to know.”
“Quite.”
“Dear old Prynce. But we never see you at court! Where the devil have you been hiding, old boy? Not still playing the quack, are you?”
“I’m afraid I am,” said John. “Actually, I have opened a lying-in hospital, in St. Giles, for poor women…”
“Fancy that,” exclaimed Wynde, biting back a yawn. He craned his head to look around the coffee-house. Suddenly he jumped out of his seat. “My lord!” he called out. “Excuse me, old boy, but I must pay my respects.”
“By all means,” said John, picking up his Gazette.
A short while later, a triumphantly sweating Samuel was at his elbow again. He was putting on his gloves.
“Lord Dunnover has done me the honor of inviting me to see the new pictures he acquired on his Grand Tour,” he said. “Will you come? I hear they are wonderful, quite lewd, especially the Italians.”
“Thank you, but I don’t think I—”said John.
Wynde pulled him to his reluctant feet. “Come! Let me introduce you to Lord Dunnover! You will be amused! You will be entertained! You will mingle with the better sort of people for once! It will do you good!”
“In truth,” John protested, “I truly…” But he allowed Wynde to drag him reluctantly out the door.
The better sort of people had never been very much to John Prynce’s liking. The better sort of people were epitomized, for him, by his kinsman John, Earl of Rochester, formerly darling of the court, who for some years had been wasting his considerable poetic talent on increasingly vituperative and pornographic doggerel, and whose alcoholic posturing and imbecilic escapades had finally earned him the distinction of being the only member of King Charles’ licentious court to be banished from it at least three times.
John had had to go to his cousin for permission to spend—”squander!” his lordship had guffawed—his personal inheritance on his pet project, the maternity hospital in St. Giles. Lord Rochester had been sober enough that morning to appreciate the idea of his dour relative playing quack to the masses.
“By all means!” he had roared. “And what do these worthy mothers come up with, in payment?” He winked at John with a leer. “That’s a nice little business, I warrant,” he slurped, “why seek out the bawds of Dog & Bitch Yard if you can get all you want for free, eh?”
It is difficult to be a man of principle in an age of meager morality. John did not consider himself a saint, nor was he a religious man; his actions were inspired simply by a very clear idea of what was right. It was his lot, however, to live in a world ruled by people who were more interested in appearances than in substance; a world in which worth was measured uniquely in wealth, and where talent, honesty, great deeds or worthy causes were generally regarded—if they were unprofitable—as just so much of a waste of time.
“Mother Marfidy!” he shouted when he arrived back at his lodgings that evening. He threw himself into a chair and tore off his boots.
“Sir? What is it?” The nurse came in, running. It wasn’t like Master to shout. Perhaps he was sick. His eyes looked unnaturally bright.
“Bring me Noé, Nurse,” he panted. “Bring me the boy.”
“At once, sir!” she said.
John started pacing up and down the room, a room suddenly too small to contain him. He stopped, stooped over the fire and stoked it with exaggerated gestures, as if to rid himself of excess energy.
“Here we are then. Here’s the little man.” The nurse came in again, carrying the little boy blinking his eyes at the light.
“Ah! There he is!” John held out his arms, and Noé let himself fall into them sideways.
“Noé,” John said excitedly. “We are going away. We are going on a journey…”
“A journey!” exclaimed Nurse Marfidy. “Really!”
He turned to her. “Please pack whatever you need for him. And for yourself as well. We leave for the Continent tomorrow. I wish to take the child.”
“Certainly, sir,” said the nurse. “But, sir! Have you—have you any…?”
She could not finish her question, because with his free hand he had grabbed her by the startled arm and started prancing around her solemnly, as if she were his partner in a minuet.
“Wool…? Yes, sir, yes, sir,” he hummed into the delighted boy’s ear. “Three bags full.”
He had lingered a few paces behind Samuel Wynde and the rest of Lord Dunnover’s entourage as they oohed and aahed over the new paintings—lavish jobs, brimming with allegory and heaving breasts. They were not to John’s taste, and he did not feel the need to chime in. He was wondering how soon he could make his escape when he spotted her.
Lucinda.
It was her face. Her eyes. Her clavicle. The angle of the jaw.
He gasped.
Lord Dunnover turned from the large canvas he had been showing Wynde.
“Ah. I see your friend prefers the Dutch. I am not so partial to them myself. Rather dull, aren’t they, compared to the Italians? One likes to see a little flesh.”
“I like this one,” John managed. “I like it very much indeed.”
“Madonna and Child, my lord?” It was Wynde who hazarded this guess. “Very nice.”
“It’s by one of those Hollanders—” Lord snapped his fingers. “Come, Pruett!”
“Arent Dirrekzoon Prul,” Pruett, an earnest little man in a black coat, supplied in a nasal voice.
“Prul,” his lordship informed his guests gravely. “He is the next Rubens, gentlemen. I have it on the highest authority.”
Lucinda was draped in greenish gauze and satin, gazing down in a resigned sort of way at the babe in her arms. She was sitting in a dark room; a window behind her let in a faint light, which left a glint on her cheek and the child’s forehead. The painting was a little flat, a little conventional, yet very tender.
Tears sprang to John’s eyes. It was Lucinda, it must be. Or else—or else it was her double, someone who looked devilishly like her. But…the likeness, now that he looked more closely, was not exactly…What was it that was different? The painter had failed to make her look desirable. Although she was certainly beautiful. But he had failed to capture Lucinda’s challenge, her coyness, the awkward, girlish determination to have an effect on you. This woman was oblivious of the observer. She was forcing you to look at the infant in her arms, as if that stiff little bundle (the artist was not very good at children: the head was too small, its proportions all wrong) were the only thing worth looking at in this whole world.
“I have an Announcement too,” bragged Lord Dunnover. “Found it in Rome. I’ll show it to you. It has a much better Virgin than this one.”
“I—I should like to buy it from you,” John blurted out. “I must have it. Whatever the cost.”
Lord Dunnover stared at him in amazement for a few moments, then examined his painting more closely, through his glass.
“Sir!” he said grandly at last, “My pictures are not for sale.” His eyes traced the cut of John’s coat, up and down. “Besides, I do not think that you, sir, could afford it.”
48
THE CUSTOMER
Arent Dirrekzoon Prul lived on Amsterdam’s Sint-Antoniebree Street, in a narrow townhouse with tall windows and vertiginous stairs. John was shown up these by a sturdy blonde maid with red cheeks and chafed elbows, who scaled the narrow treads as nimbly as a mountain goat.
On the landing she opened the door to a long, high-ceilinged room. There were two chairs pulled up to a table covered with a Turkey rug, and a curtained bed built into the wall. It was chilly in the room. The tiled stove was not lit.
Standing in the center of the room was a paunchy middle-aged man in a velvet dressing-gown. He wore a green velvet cap on his balding head. He spread out his arms in a sign of welcome.
“Ah! Goed zo, Dieneke! Een klant!”
“Pardon me, I…”
“An English customer! Good, so! Monse
igneur…?”
“Prynce, John Prynce,” he muttered.
The painter waved his stubby hand at the maid, who left and closed the door behind her. “Delighted! And you are making de whole tour, or just our liddle country?”
“Just Amsterdam,” John began.
“You haf come to de right place! You like Amsterdam? You like art? We haf fery good art here, whatefer you like…”
“I saw one of your pictures at Lord Dunnover’s, and I…”
“You heard off me! Dear sir! You like my paintings! Dear sir! Fine, so!”
Arent turned and opened a little door built into the woodwork surrounding the bed. He started pulling out rolled-up canvases by the handful.
“You like still-lifes? Sea scapes? An portrret?”
“Actually, Lord Dunnover had a Madonna, and I…”
“Rrrelidgious subdjects! Good so, sir!”
He started unrolling some of the canvases, shaking his head and tossing half a dozen into a corner. “Ha! Here, so!” he exclaimed at last. “King Dafid and Goliat!”
“Actually…” John began.
“Wait! You will like my Jezebel, vat de defil did I do wis her…”
“No, that’s not…”
“You don’t like de Old Testament? A Christus, den?”
“I was thinking more along the lines of—perhaps you have a picture similar to the one I saw, the Mother and Child…”
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