Wings over Delft

by Aubrey Flegg

  On one of their walks, they found themselves near the Begijnhof gate. Here they found the old beggar; he still remembered Pieter – and Kathenka’s special brew – and greeted them like a king and queen. The streets were deserted as they made their way home. Louise slowed to let Pieter catch up. Then they both looked up at the leaning tower of the Oude Kerk. Puffy white clouds scudded across the sky and Louise gazed until it seemed that the clouds stood still, and the spire appeared to be tipping over on top of them. She fell back against Pieter, laughing, and let him hold her lightly while she blinked the illusion away. She glanced up at him and noticed that his eyes were far away, perhaps capturing the scene for some future occasion.

  Thinking of the little boats jostling in the rain barrel, she asked, ‘Pieter, do you like me?’ It seemed such a simple question; she just wanted to know – part of her research into small boats. She was dismayed when a stab of pain crossed Pieter’s face. The arm that was holding her stiffened until it felt like a piece of wood, and he politely returned her to her feet. When he spoke, his voice had a harshness and a tightness that she could not understand.

  ‘Yes, Miss Louise. I like you very much, but you forget your situation; it is time that you were home.’

  That night, Louise went over the incident again in her mind. What was it about her question that had affected Pieter so deeply, and what had he meant by ‘her situation’? Could he mean Reynier? She fell asleep while pondering the answer.

  Annie brought the letter in to her, and hovered while Louise opened it. ‘It’s from Master Reynier,’ she said approvingly.

  The letter ran to several pages.

  My dear Louise, it began. It grieves me most terribly that I was such a boor as to expect a kiss from you when we met in the Markt on the day I left. It was shameful of me to have presumed on our friendship like that in public, and in front of Pieter Kunst – a simple soul, I think you’ll agree – but not really one of us. Forgive me please, I’m sure you understand.

  Louise felt her anger rising.

  I felt I had been pressing you too hard, and then, from God knows where, came these uncalled-for rumours about our engagement. Whatever my desires, I have my duty. These rumours have put you in an intolerable position. I cannot return to Delft without declaring my passion, therefore I must absent myself completely. I was lucky enough to pick up a ship that was sailing for Italy, although I didn’t really care where it was going. We arrived in Le Havre today, which is in France. In this way I take myself away from you and from temptation. Perhaps I will find distraction in the mighty Parthenon in Rome …

  Louise blinked. This was a new height of eloquence for Reynier, but she had to smile. When, she wondered, would Reynier discover that the Parthenon was in Athens, and not in Rome? She was still smiling at the thought, when she looked up and caught the very satisfied expression on Annie’s face. She sighed and finished the letter; it had taken some weeks to find its way from France. So, Reynier really wouldn’t be returning until the autumn. She sat back with her eyes closed for a moment, a sensation of reprieve flowing through her. Italy seemed wonderfully far away. She could feel herself relaxing; a wicked little thought crossed her mind. She looked up at Annie, who was watching her complacently, hands clasped in front of her. Louise tucked the letter into her bodice.

  ‘Annie,’ she said, innocently. ‘Reynier is off to the Mediterranean. It’s stiff with pirates, you know. Can you imagine Reynier as a galley slave?’

  ‘Oh! Mistress Louise!’ The little nurse’s face trembled. ‘We must trust in God for his safe return. At least he’ll be among Christians in Italy, even if they are Catholics.’ Louise felt no remorse at teasing Annie; she had no right to stay watching her while she read Reynier’s letter.

  Since their altercation in the hall, they had reached a state of armed neutrality. Annie approved of the studio and the Master: ‘such a courteous gentleman’. Pieter was conveniently dismissed as a mere servant, and Louise did her chores and divided her time between her mother’s bedside and the studio. It was time for her to go there now. She bent to put her sewing things into her basket and then paused halfway as a thought struck her. How had Annie known that Reynier was going to Italy? She had mentioned the Mediterranean, but not Italy. Louise looked across at Annie, busily hemming a linen skirt, and wondered.

  There was no answer to her knock. Louise eased the studio door open quietly and tiptoed in. They were both there, crouched in silent concentration over the canvas. It had been taken down from the easel and was propped on a sloping stand set on a bench where it got good light from the north windows. Louise could feel their intensity. She stepped across silently, and stood, enthralled, watching the Master at work. Now everything he did seemed controlled and compact. She thought back to the sometimes hectic sketching that he had done on her first day. In his left hand he held, not just his palette, but a long polished stick with a pad on the end. Pieter had called it a maulstick, but she hadn’t understood how it was used. Now she saw it as part of the slow rhythm of his work. First came the careful charging of the brush, hardly more than a whisker on a slender handle. Then, in a single, slow, precise movement, the Master would lean forward, and the padded stick would come to rest on the edge of the canvas. Using the stick to support his wrist, he would carefully feather in a tiny dab of paint and then rock back. She watched this metronome movement without stirring, until eventually the Master straightened himself.

  ‘Ja! Pieter,’ he announced triumphantly, ‘we have the colour right this time. If Miss Louise were here would she not kiss the old man on the cheek in appreciation?’ He cocked his head to one side expectantly. Louise didn’t accept his invitation but clapped lightly. The Master sighed, ‘Too old, too old. You try, Pieter.’

  The work went on. Neither of them paid her the slightest attention after that. Only the occasional low-voiced consultation broke the silence; the quiet activity closed around her like a cocoon. She began to think of all her privileges: her new house, her wealth, the green silk dress that she had hardly worn, and she asked herself what she was doing to deserve all this? She thought with irony of her demand to be painted like the beggar at the Begijnhof gate when a tenth of what she would inherit could house and feed all the beggars of Delft for life. And also there was Father, who could be free to do his own fine work, like these two craftsmen, if the potteries merged. So that too was in her gift. She remembered also – a little guiltily – how Reynier was sailing on dangerous seas just to give her a chance to make up her mind about marriage to him. How could she atone for all this? If only she were Annie … Annie always knew what was right and what was wrong; God told her. The words of a recent sermon came to mind, ‘Brethren, there comes a time when we all must make that leap of faith. Leap brothers, leap sisters, leap into the arms of God!’ She would marry Reynier when he came back in the autumn. The time was shrinking, but autumn was still a long way away.

  Day by day, Louise watched her face emerge from the canvas. It was as if she were inside the canvas, wiping an ever-widening spy hole in a frosted window and peeping out. She wanted to wink at herself. Her right eye appeared first, bright and curious. Gradually the spy hole in the frosted glass widened; another eye appeared, then an eyebrow. Things went well for a while. The Master would hum while he worked, and Pieter would be in attendance. If she wasn’t sitting for him, the Master was happy to let her watch. But gradually the summer heat became oppressive. It bore down on them, and the atmosphere in the studio became uncertain. The Master would get her to sit long hours for him, but she noticed that even though he changed position, picking up brushes and putting them down, he often did nothing. Then, in a flurry of determination, he would charge his brush, lean forward, the brush would hover above the canvas, then his hand would fall to his side and he would sit back with a groan. The portrait was not going well. Her whole face had emerged now. There was no question about a likeness; it was the face that looked out at her each day from Mother’s mirror in the hall. But it was lifeless; e
ven she could see that – so like – but so lifeless.

  The atmosphere in the studio was sometimes actually hostile. Her tap at the door would be met by a growl; Pieter was keeping his distance from them both. Louise too walked as if on eggs. What was wrong? When she glanced through the open sketchbook that lay beside the canvas, the crowded sketches tumbled over each other like sparkling wavelets rushing to the shore, but the face that stared from the canvas was as lifeless as a leaden sea. She wanted to ask Pieter, but he was aloof these days and tended to disappear into the far reaches of the studio, where she could hear him breaking things.

  One hot, sultry morning, the storm broke.

  ‘You’re late!’ Louise was taken aback. The Master had not asked her to be there at any particular time. In fact she’d been late on purpose; she was getting tired of both of these men and their moods. The canvas was on the easel today and the Master was pacing, doing about-turns that set his painter’s smock swinging. He waved her towards her chair. ‘Sit, sit!’ he said as if talking to a dog. Louise was cautious. He wasn’t clowning; this mood was dangerous. There were livid spots on his cheeks that reminded her of her mother, but his colour was from suppressed fury. ‘Pieter …’ he yelled, ‘maulstick!’ Pieter had it ready, but the Master still snatched it from his hand. Louise edged around them. Pieter looked pale and tight-lipped.

  ‘Do you know what that imbecile apprentice says?’ snapped the Master, doing a cruel imitation of Pieter’s flapping hands. ‘He says that you are dead. Do you look dead?’ He waved towards the canvas. ‘Pah! I am finished with him. Today I will tear up his indentures.’ He turned on the boy, ‘I can do it, you know. But,’ he went on sarcastically, ‘seeing as you know better than your betters, I want your opinion. Now, Pieter Kunst, perhaps you will gratify your master by telling him what colour he should use for the shadows that you claim will bring Miss Eeden back to life.’ He hissed like a snake, and Louise backed towards her chair, looking nervously at Pieter. What was going on?

  ‘There are some that would use brown, Master.’ Pieter’s face was white but he was staring the Master down. Louise wondered what would she do if the old man went for him – she remembered that he had attacked Pieter once before, over the painting of the wine glass.

  ‘Brown!’ the Master’s scorn was palpable. ‘And who said I would do as other people?’

  ‘I did not, Master, but I am not going to tell you what I think you should do, because then you will refuse to do it out of sheer obstinacy.’ Pieter’s mouth was set like a razor; she realised that this fight had been going on for some time.

  ‘Listen to him!’ the Master was shouting, turning to her for support.

  But Louise was not going to take sides. You don’t walk between fighting dogs. She abandoned them to their argument. She only had one role in all this, and only one weapon. She thought back to her first day in the studio when this same little man had been provoking her, goading her with his astronomical nonsense. She remembered taunting him, and her moment of triumph. She leaned forward, and smiled at the memory. At that second she felt the remembered pose click into place. She had found the password – if only they would notice. She could hear Pieter arguing and the Master’s sarcastic whine. At last Pieter’s voice sliced across that of the Master.

  ‘Look!’ he said, ‘look at Louise.’ The effect on the studio was instant. Silence descended, sudden, but charged. She could hear the froo froo of ‘our friend’ on the windowsill. She heard the Master’s sharp intake of breath. Their eyes seemed to be burning her face. She tried to think of Pieter – she was doing this for him – but she dared not look. It was now or never. There was a spot of red paint on the back of the easel; she stared at that. Pieter and the Master were mere hazy images floating around the edges of her vision. She sensed, rather than saw, when the Master took his palette from Pieter’s hands. All their movements were slowed for her by the sheer energy that she was pushing out through her.

  She heard the Master whisper: ‘Blue, Pieter, go … go get blue. You’ll have to make it up out of the lapis you ruined the day she came.’ When she heard Pieter respond: ‘It’s here Master, it’s made up already,’ she wanted to laugh, or perhaps cry.

  ‘The way to build her shadows is to use her natural skin tints and then to darken them slightly with blue. Did you know, Pieter, that the blue of the sky can filter into shadows? Now, where are those damned paints?’

  ‘Here, ready.’ The children had stopped fighting, and Louise could feel her energy flowing out and into them, feeding their needs.

  The Master’s quiet voice called for oil. Now the pace was changing.

  ‘Not that brush, Pieter … no no, wider Pieter, wider. Look, now I am the Master again. Remember how it was when the Begijnhof beggar began to sing his song. In a hundred years from now he and this girl will live … Dear God, I need more time, just a little more time.’ He was bent to the canvas, and Louise could almost feel his brush-strokes on her face. Then, at last he dropped his head and whispered, ‘Look, Pieter, she lives. Pieter, she lives!’

  Pieter, watching over his shoulder, looked, and heard a fanfare of angels. But somewhere inside him there was also a tremor of dread.

  Louise stood up, still stiff from her pose, and then looked at the canvas. She didn’t like what she saw. She knew she wasn’t pretty, but she hadn’t expected to find her own face disturbing. There were unexpected echoes of her mother – not Mother as she was now – but the mother that Louise remembered challenging the wind when she was little. And did she really come across as so argumentative? You are a demanding child, her mother would complain. She smiled. The Master, sitting in an exhausted heap, patted her hand.

  ‘At least she makes you smile.’ For the first time Louise saw the picture, not as herself, but as an outsider would, and was a little shocked.

  The following day, Louise tapped on the door of the studio, to find that they had moved an ancient suit of mediaeval armour into the centre of the room. Pieter was busy polishing it. She was a little jealous. It hadn’t occurred to her that, now that the Master was happy about her portrait, he could be starting on another one. She looked around and asked where the Master was. Suddenly the armour broke loose and started clanking towards her while a sepulchral voice boomed out from inside.

  ‘Squire, my horse! For we must

  Pluck this damsel from the clay;

  And let fair Hesperus,

  Define her course.’

  Louise had no time to untangle his riddle. All she could do was swoon into his arms, thinking that it was more like a collapse into a pile of saucepans than an armorial embrace.

  It took Pieter and her a considerable time, and quite a lot of laughter, to extricate the Master, pink and triumphant, from his armour. It was a long time before she had reason to remember his courtly words.

  Fabritius

  Chapter 11

  Work on the painting was almost continuous now. When the Master was not engaged on Louise’s dress, Pieter was labouring on the tiles and on the background of the picture. To begin with, Louise sat for long hours, her hair carefully arranged by Kathenka, her dress billowing about her. After working on the silk for a while, the Master began to complain that the folds changed too much between sittings. After some serious rummaging at the back of the studio, he returned, doing a gavotte with a wickerwork manikin. With Kathenka’s help, they successfully dressed this in the green silk and persuaded it to adopt a proper pose. Now Louise had to live with herself as a headless effigy while the Master laboriously built up the blue foundation, layer by layer, for the later yellow.

  ‘Look at it, Miss Louise;’ he would beckon her over, and make her bend to his view. ‘See how it lies, a thousand dimples curving into every fold. It must seem to move to the eye, a living emerald, the most precious of all the stones.’

  Louise made herself busy; an apprentice’s apprentice, she called herself. She ground and mixed and cleaned brushes and palettes. Kathenka would come up with a tray and they would
picnic together in the studio. Kathenka made cordials out of elderflowers and fruits as they came into season. It was a change from the small-ale they drank in winter. There was always a bowl of fruit and a basin of water to wash their hands, as many of the paints and powders seemed to contain deadly poisons: lead, arsenic, and mercury. After lunch, the Master would retire for a snooze, but Pieter would work on, and Louise would watch. If she became bored she would explore the far end of the studio. It was like an Aladdin’s cave, stacked high with the curios that Jacob Haitink had collected over the years. There were elephant tusks, and huge shells from tropical seas. There were piles of books and open portfolios of prints and etchings; strange creatures floated limply in bottles. There were swords hanging on nails, and the suit of medieval armour, now empty, hung its head despondently.

  ‘Where does he get all these things, and what does he want with them?’ she asked Pieter.

  ‘I don’t really know,’ he replied. ‘He says that they are useful as props in his paintings, like the globe that we dug out for you, but it’s actually that he can’t resist anything new and curious. Half the time when he should be painting, he’s poking about down here.’

  One day when she came up to the studio, carrying the tray for Kathenka, she noticed that Pieter was grinning to himself. She waited till the Master and Kathenka had retired before she questioned him.