Wings over Delft

by Aubrey Flegg

  Pieter broke out of his reverie. He clenched his fists. ‘He’s a bully… a bully!’ he said out loud, and a woman, presiding over a stall of spring onions, looked at him and shrieked:

  ‘Saying your prayers, Mr Kunst?’

  Then, laughing uproariously at her own joke, she turned to repeat it to the woman on the next stall. Pieter, who hadn’t even realised he had said anything, looked at her in astonishment, then he hurried off after the vanishing girl.

  Louise had felt the brush of Reynier’s attempted kiss as she turned from him in the Markt. If she had seen it coming she mightn’t have had the courage to fend him off, but now that she had, she felt a brief glow of satisfaction. She wove in and out of the market stalls, her long cloak and rustling silk incongruous on this sunny spring day. The heat and the constriction began to oppress her. She was thinking about Reynier. She hadn’t expected to see him. He had said a formal goodbye when he had told her of his intention to travel, ostensibly to help quench the rumours that had started about their engagement. If he wanted to quench rumours, kissing her in the Markt was not the way to do it. Ever since they were little, he’d been protective of her. He was two years older than she was, but he had always been prepared to play her games. When they were little, they had played at being married. Then, when she was old enough to feel uneasy, she’d got out of the game by making it a joke between them. There had been times when she had thought that she was in love with him, but it was a feeling that never lasted long; there were always more interesting things to do.

  She thought back to their last meeting, a week ago, when she first learned that there were rumours abroad. She had been at home. She heard a knock at the door but had ignored it. The C string on her lute had just snapped and was wrapped around her left wrist. It was her fault, she hadn’t played in a while and had tuned up too quickly. Voices came through from the hall as she was rummaging in her workbasket where she kept her spare strings. She found one, knotted the end, and levered out the tiny ivory peg that would hold it in the bar at the bottom of the lute. Next she turned her attention to unwinding the broken string from the tuning peg at the neck. She was totally absorbed in this endeavour when a man’s hand, encircled by a lace cuff, reached down and lifted the lute from her lap. It was Reynier.

  ‘Allow me,’ he said, with a smile. For a moment she was irritated; she liked to do things for herself. But Reynier had long claimed the right to rescue her whether she needed it or not.

  ‘I didn’t hear you come in,’ she said.

  ‘I was speaking to Annie in the hall, asking after your poor mother; I hear she has had a bit of a relapse.’ Louise was about to say something about her mother’s cough, but he swept on. ‘Annie is an ally of mine in the pursuit of Louise.’ This was the old game. Louise grimaced and watched as he made heavy work of unwinding the string. He soon got tired of it and put the lute down. ‘What’s this rumour I hear?’ he asked.

  ‘Rumour?’ Louise was indifferent to rumours; she wanted to get on with stringing her lute.

  ‘They are saying in town that Eeden’s and DeVries’s potteries may come together.’

  ‘Oh? I hadn’t heard. But then we are away from things here in the new house.’ Louise was surprised at the news. Her father had rather a poor opinion of the pots produced by DeVries, although she couldn’t very well say that. ‘It will just be a rumour,’ she said, indifferently, and reached out for her lute. But Reynier moved quickly and caught hold of her wrist.

  ‘Louise,’ he said reproachfully. ‘You are not thinking of your father.’ He loosened his grip and started caressing her hand.

  ‘Of course I think about Father.’ Louise’s face burned, what had she got wrong now? Reynier had a way of wrong-footing her. She wanted to withdraw her hand, but his grip, though loose, held her. What if she tried to pull back and he would not let go? It would precipitate something, she wasn’t sure what. He was speaking to her as if she were a child.

  ‘Just think, Louise, how it would be if the potteries joined. Your father is the finest painter of Chinaware in Delft. Humble old DeVries would continue to churn out tiles and cups and tableware, and he would be free to do the great vases and pieces of which he is the Master.’

  So that was what it was about. Eeden’s pots were indeed the most beautiful in Delft, but the money came from the humbler tableware. The more cups and tiles they made, the less time poor Father had to do the really delicate work for which he was justly famed. If the potteries joined, then DeVries’s could take over the routine work, and Father could concentrate on the decorative work he loved and which would bring honour and distinction to the venture. She was repentant now.

  ‘Do you think that it is possible? I … I just didn’t think …’ Reynier raised her hand to his lips and kissed it.

  ‘Of course you didn’t, why would you?’ he said, releasing her hand. Louise was so tired of being in the wrong; Reynier was really a better person than she.

  ‘Do you believe that they can come to some arrangement? Father hasn’t mentioned it.’ Rather than answering straight away, Reynier turned and walked over to the window. His hair was long and swept down over the broad linen collar that spread out on to his cloak. When he replied he seemed to be measuring his words.

  ‘Louise … there is another rumour going around.’ He paused. She had started to reach for her lute again but stopped, gazing at his back. ‘I deplore it,’ he continued, ‘but yet again I wish it were true.’

  A prickle of apprehension chased up the backs of Louise’s arms. Then Reynier turned and was striding towards her. He appeared to be about to kneel, but instead he clapped one fist into the palm of the other. ‘Louise,’ he said. ‘They are saying that … that this deal is contingent on our getting married.’ Louise looked up at him, thunderstruck. Her mouth opened in amazement. She wasn’t going to speak, but Reynier stopped her nonetheless. ‘No, no! Louise. You mustn’t say. I know your answer, and even if by some miracle you said yes, I could not accept it as your true inclination. I will go away, it is time that I travelled.’ He waved an arm vaguely … ‘England, France?’ he paused, ‘Italy perhaps. Father can spare me. That is why I have come here today: to say goodbye. We must let this blow over; then I may come to you truly on my knees. It will be six months before I see you again. Oh Louise, how I will miss you’. He took her hand and pressed it to his lips, while she, out of sheer bewilderment, failed to snatch it away. ‘Don’t forget your father, Louise …’ He hit his chest as if in determination. ‘But I stand back! I must leave now.’ Then, with a swirl of his cloak, he turned and strode to the door so quickly that Louise’s memory was, not of him, but of Annie in startled retreat, as he swept past her and out into the street.

  That had been a week ago. Louise had heard no more. She had presumed that he had left. It was then that she realised that the world was beginning to change about her. It started with Annie fussing over how Louise dressed, and scolding her for going out on her own. Then Father, all gruff and affectionate, came back from Amsterdam with the green silk for her dress. There were comments at home about the merging of the two potteries, but then the subject was dropped. Mother – pale and translucent in her illness – went about the house touching things, with a secret smile that Louise couldn’t fathom. The changes were subtle, more that unrelated things were beginning to orbit around her, instead of her orbiting around them. It was as if she had become a small sun, the centre of some invisible focus. Gradually it dawned on her that there really were rumours about Reynier and her. But how these had come about, and who had spread them, she had no idea. Annie?, she asked herself. No, Annie was just a willing conspirator. Reynier, then? But Reynier was doing the honourable thing and going away specifically to dispel these rumours. She kept thinking about Father, and what it would mean to him to be free to do the work he loved, his business responsibilities shared. She thought of all those childhood games with Reynier, so innocent. Then, more recently, of his ardent proposals and her ambiguous replies. For all that he
was gallant, she was sure Reynier did not love her; he could have the pick of the girls in town. Had she unintentionally woven a web, with her accessibility and – let’s face it – her fortune, and trapped the young man? The DeVries family were well off, but Reynier had always had an appetite for more.

  The Markt was hot and crowded. It was as if the sticky threads of the web were clutching at her, dragging at her heavy clothes. She wanted to scream. Her feet came up against something soft and yielding, and this time she did shriek. Feathery clusters of mute, wide-eyed chickens lay across her path, their legs tied together. She turned and gathered herself, walking faster and faster. She had to get out of the crowded Markt to where she could breathe fresh air and see sky. She skirted a loaded trestle piled with cabbages, only to come up against a flat handcart shouldering a pyramid of smooth waxed cheeses, round as cannon balls. She wanted to tip the table over and send the cheeses bowling through the market place. No one would want her then!

  Louise reached the deep shade along the side of the Nieuwe Kerk and stood there, panting. There were footsteps behind her. Why couldn’t she be left alone – surely it wasn’t Reynier following her? She swung around. It was Mr Kunst, the apprentice; she’d forgotten all about him. He had been told to escort her home. But she didn’t want to go home. She decided she’d walk on, perhaps he would turn back. They emerged at the back of the Nieuwe Kerk, Mr Kunst still following discreetly. They crossed a small arched bridge over one of the numerous canals that formed a grid of water throughout the town, and turned left. He would see that she was on her way home now – the Vrouwenregt led towards the Doelen where she lived. But the long, uneven strides continued behind her. When she turned right, away from the Doelen towards the town walls, the boy followed. She didn’t want him near her. She felt corrupted. Reynier’s attempt at that very public kiss still burned on the side of her face. She rubbed at it, then whipped around in anger. She watched as the boy stumbled awkwardly to a halt, his arms swinging loosely from his shoulders. The tart comment she had planned faded on her lips. What was there about that walk and the way his arms moved? It conjured up an image that she couldn’t quite identify. Reynier had said something to him, something about strings. Suddenly she understood: a puppet, of course. That’s what Reynier was alluding to. Righteous anger boiled inside her. How dare Reynier make fun of this boy.

  ‘Mr Kunst …’ she demanded, glaring at him. ‘May I call you Pieter?’ He seemed taken aback.

  ‘Of course, mistress …’

  ‘No!’ she corrected impatiently. ‘Louise, please … just Louise.’ Her anger was bursting out in all the wrong places. ‘And look …’ she indicated the distance between them. ‘We’re not strangers. Come, I need you.’ She turned and looked into the canal that ran down the middle of the road, a perfect mirror to the houses opposite. He arrived at her side. ‘Pieter,’ she said without looking up from the water. ‘That was my old nurse that I dodged when we left the Master’s house. I don’t want to deceive you, but she chatters, and I need time to think. Would you be kind enough to take me to the town walls? Your master will not object, will he?’

  ‘No,’ he said with a smile. ‘He will not miss me, and I promise not to chatter.’

  ‘May I take your arm?’ A bony elbow was held out to her and they walked on in silence. A few houses down, their path was blocked by a group of men preparing to haul a finely carved linen chest up to a top floor window. White-painted beams stuck out from the gable-ends of all the houses on the road, and they had attached a pulley to one of these. The chest would be swung through the big upstairs window, thus avoiding the steep and narrow stairs inside. As the chest was lifted up, Louise saw two sets of initials lovingly carved on the side of the box, just above this year’s date, 1654. Newly-marrieds just moving in, surely. She shivered slightly. They waited until the chest was safely inside the window before walking on.

  At the end of the street, the brick wall of the town defences rose in front of them. They found some steps that led to the ramparts above. The steps were steep, built for soldiers, and there was no balustrade, but Louise had a good head for heights, so she gathered her cloak and skirt in one hand, and climbed with the other touching the wall. Delicate tresses of what looked like ivy, but with pretty violet-shaped flowers, trailed from cracks in the wall. She picked a sprig and carried it with her.

  She arrived at the top, leaned against the parapet and drew in great gulps of air, cleaning her lungs of the stench of the town and the stagnant odours of the canals. When Pieter arrived she asked him to pin the little sprig of flowers to her cloak and was surprised at how delicately he used his fingers. Immediately below the wall flowed the Schiekanaal, a slow river that embraced the town protectively on three sides. Beyond it the lowlands stretched as far as the eye could see. Above them towered great masses of cloud: white and silver and grey against the unbelievable blue of the sky. The dotted farms, windmills and distant spires seemed to be sailing along like ships in a smooth green ocean as the drifting cloud shadows passed. She looked over at Pieter, wanting to share her feeling of freedom. He was leaning forward against the wall, looking at the scene through tightly narrowed eyes. She imitated him, her lids drawing closer and closer together until the view became fuzzy and indistinct, reduced to essentials.

  ‘It’s like an oil painting,’ she said, smiling at her discovery. ‘I’d have tried to paint every blade of grass, but you can’t, can you?’ She watched him while he opened his eyes and blinked.

  ‘No, but there are some that try.’

  ‘Wouldn’t you like to be out there?’

  ‘In the meadows,’ he paused and then smiled. ‘Chasing maidens?’

  ‘No!’ Louise protested, but she could feel a blush rising in her cheeks.

  ‘Don’t worry, that was his idea,’ he laughed.

  ‘He was just teasing you, wasn’t he?’ The boy smiled. She added wonderingly, ‘He was teasing me too.’

  A sailing barge, heading north for Leiden, passed by silently, its brown, tanned sail blocking out the view for a moment. The bargee’s wife was cooking on a small charcoal stove. A delicious smell of frying onions wafted up to them. The bargee saw Louise looking down at him and waved. When his wife said something sharp to him he looked away with a grin. ‘Is the Master always like that at the beginning of a picture?’ Louise asked.

  The Empty Glass

  Chapter 5

  Though Pieter had known the rich and famous from his work, he had never crossed the social divide that separated real wealth from humble employment. His father had been a valued painter in the DeVries Pottery, but there had been invisible barriers to his advancement on account of his religion. When it came to Pieter’s apprenticeship, his father had joked that he would not apprentice him to the potteries, as he would break more pots than he could paint, but the real reason was his own frustration. When Master Haitink agreed to take on the boy as an apprentice, Pieter’s father had urged him to strive towards becoming a member of the Guild of St Luke. ‘Catholics are accepted there, Pieter,’ he said. ‘There is no barrier if you have the skills to prove yourself.’

  But Pieter had no social ambitions. When his father died the following year, he willingly took on work in the Mistress’s bar to help support his widowed mother. Life and ambition had not prepared him for finding himself on the walls of Delft with the town’s richest heiress. He felt the presence of the girl beside him like a flame, as if she might burn, or blind, or – heaven forbid – blow out like a candle if he did the wrong thing. He found refuge in the view over the walls and squinted, watching the slow march of a cloud over the fields. The spring crops were above the ground now, oats, and wheat, and barley, each strip and chequer different. He watched the shade creeping forward, absorbing the delicate spring colours, creating a momentary gloom, and then releasing them in joy as it passed. Her voice broke his reverie.

  ‘Master Haitink was leading me on, about the planets and Aristotle, wasn’t he?’ She paused. Pieter didn’t know how
to reply. ‘But was it unseemly … my arguing with him … with your master? Father says that we must never undermine the beliefs of others, just say what we believe ourselves. But I ended up arguing with him.’ She appeared to think for a moment. ‘The trouble was, he was so like Annie, my old nurse, except that I whenever I try to discuss things with her she goes all prune with disapproval.’ Pieter watched her undo her head-cloth and shake her hair free. The string of pearls that the Master had loosened slipped from the coils and trickled down her back like water. He stooped and picked them up; she didn’t appear to notice. The tiny pearls slipped through his fingers while she gazed out over the meadows, lost in thought. Then, smiling to herself, she turned, eyes dancing.

  ‘But he did go for me, didn’t he?’

  ‘He didn’t stand a chance!’ Pieter laughed. He wanted to tell her that the Master owned a modest spyglass and was, he was sure, as avid a follower of Galileo as she was herself, but he was afraid that she might not understand. The Master’s deception had been in search of another truth, but how do you explain the work of angels? Now her face had clouded again, and he noticed how her eyes changed colour with her mood, blue-grey to green, like sunlight on a windy sea.

  ‘Is he always like that,’ she asked, ‘clowning and arguing? It was almost … I don’t know … as if he was frightened of me.’

  Pieter, who had been thinking of sunlit seas, laughed and said, without thinking: ‘Oh, he was, mistress, he was terrified.’

  She opened her eyes wide. ‘Me? How could he be terrified of me?’

  ‘Because he was afraid that he could not paint you.’

  ‘But that’s ridiculous! He … he’s the Master!’

  ‘No, it’s not ridiculous. People think that just because you’re a painter, you will always be able to capture what you see on paper or canvas, but it’s not like that at all. Often your eyes see things that don’t seem possible to put on paper. When you take up your charcoal, or your brush, there seems to be no connection between your eyes and your hands. It was like that with the painting of the Beggar at the Begijnhof gate that you liked. We had to smuggle the old man up the stairs in case Kathenka saw him. At first it just wasn’t working and the Master was like a bear. Then one day we got the beggar a little tipsy and he began to sing. Can you imagine that heap of rags pouring out love song after love song? He was like a canary in a cage. You wouldn’t know from the portrait that he was singing, but it could not have been painted otherwise.