Wings over Delft

by Aubrey Flegg

  A tinge of gold appeared in the trees overhanging the canals and the treetops danced as the first of the autumn gales swept in across the Low Countries. Kathenka took Louise’s cloak from her and closed the door against the blast. There was a smell of burning when Louise entered the studio, but her attention was drawn to her portrait. It was nearly finished now. The startling blue of the lapis underlay on her dress was turning to a brilliant, translucent green. The Master had at last begun to apply his secret yellow. She watched for a while as he delicately laid it on, layer by layer. She regretted the loss of the pure jewelled blue, but as she watched him work, she could see all the dimpled subtleties of the green Chinese silk emerging.

  ‘I can almost feel it,’ she whispered as she stood beside him. ‘I have never felt with my eyes before!’ He looked up at her, his own eyes red from the taxing work. Then he took her hand and kissed the back of it.

  ‘One day, three hundred years from now, more perhaps, people will see this canvas, and you and I, Louise, we will live again in the minds of others. And if, by some mischance, the painting is lost and we are both forgotten, what matter! We live now, and you and I have done something great together.’ He straightened his back with difficulty. ‘The light is poor today and I feel winter in my bones; a hot toddy calls me from Kathenka’s kitchen. But before I go, just look at this.’ He drew Louise down by the hand so that she was kneeling beside him. ‘Look at the painting of that carpet. That is Pieter’s work, you know. Beautiful…beautiful, painterly work. One day I’ll have to tell him how good he is, but not now. I have to keep him on his toes. He wants the secret of my yellow,’ he chuckled. Louise kissed the old painter on his cheek, before helping him to his feet. He winked at her. Then he put his head back and yelled:

  ‘I don’t know what you are doing, Pieter. You have forgotten to order the lapis we need to finish Louise’s dress; you haven’t milked the white cow in weeks, and all your saints in heaven will not make cinnabar red for you without you doing some work.’

  ‘There,’ he said, ‘that’ll keep him sharp.’ Louise helped him off with his gown. Pieter’s answer came to them from the far end of the studio.

  ‘I am ready for the cinnabar now, if Miss Louise wants to watch.’

  She made her way down the studio, past the dejected knight, to the area behind the junk where the furnace was set up. Here, everything was spotless and ordered. There was a stone-topped table and swept flagstones on the floor. Pieter had his back to her and was tending a charcoal brazier on the stone bench. She could feel a warm glow from it. He heard her arrive, and said over his shoulder.

  ‘I’m going to fire the cinnabar. Do you want to watch?’

  ‘I wondered what was on fire when I came in,’ Louise said, and Pieter shuddered.

  ‘Don’t even think about something going on fire. That’s why I’m down here, well away from our paints. Just about everything in paint is flammable.’ He blew a little of the ash from the surface of the charcoal in the brazier and revealed the glowing coals beneath. She moved up behind him, thinking of Father’s descriptions of the alchemist’s laboratories he had seen.

  Pieter explained what he was doing. ‘Fabritius told me to melt the sulphur and quicksilver together and then crush the cake. I’ve done that. Now we have to fire them together; it’s really too hot for the glass, but I have to stir it.’

  ‘If we were alchemists,’ Louise suggested helpfully, ‘we would add base-lead to the mixture and it would turn into gold. An incantation if you please, Mr Kunst.’ Pieter smiled but he was preoccupied.

  ‘I haven’t done this before, and it’s quite poisonous enough without your adding lead to it.’ He put a lid on the beaker. ‘You must stand back now because of the fumes.’ She watched as he waved the glass beaker back and forth over the bed of charcoal so that the shock of sudden heat would not shatter the glass. She crept forward. As the beaker heated, steam and smoke began to swirl inside it. A wisp of red appeared.

  ‘Look!’ she whispered.

  ‘Now, I must stir.’ Pieter gently lowered the beaker on the coals. The wisps of red were combining and precipitating through the swirling vapour. He inserted a glass rod through a hole in the lid and began to stir.

  ‘It is like the fires of hell,’ Louise said.

  ‘Don’t tempt fortune, Miss Louise.’ Pieter breathed. Perhaps he lost concentration, but at that moment there was a sharp snap, the beaker broke and a wedge of glass fell from its side. A cloud of red vapour, heavy with mercury, poured towards them. Louise stared at it, unable to move. Then she felt herself being lifted up and carried away out of danger. The viscous vapour cascaded over the edge of the bench and on to the flagstones, where it spread, lost momentum, and sank, settling as a red carpet on the floor. Pieter’s arms were tight around her, crushing her. But she didn’t mind.

  ‘Did you breathe any of it, are you all right?’ he asked anxiously.

  ‘No, I’m fine. If I did, you have squeezed it all out of me,’ she laughed. He let go of her hurriedly then, and lifted the beaker off the heat. ‘Can we save it?’ she asked as he shook his head over the broken beaker. She bent down and poked the flagstones. ‘Look, it’s a powder,’ she said. ‘Come on, we can gather it up.’

  Using old paintbrushes, they swept the powder into a pile and then onto pieces of parchment, finally funnelling it into a small jar. With what was left in the beaker, the jar was nearly full. Enough for twenty carpets, she was assured.

  They walked back down the studio and found it empty.

  ‘Where’s the Master?’ Pieter asked.

  ‘He said the light was too bad.’

  ‘The rogue. Look, the sun’s out. I can’t take my eyes off him for a moment. Now what should I do?’

  ‘Milk the white cow,’ she reminded him. ’Poor beast, not milked in weeks.’ Louise was pleasantly aware of the pain in her ribs where Pieter had crushed her after the beaker had burst.

  ‘Good idea.’ Pieter agreed. ‘Mistress Kathenka,’ he called as they passed through the bar, ‘Miss Louise and I are going to milk the white cow.’

  ‘You can’t take her there, it’s a dung heap!’

  ‘She says she wants to come. And it’s near her home.’

  ‘Take some more vinegar,’ the Master’s voice interjected from the kitchen, ‘it’s under the counter.’ There was much clinking, and then Pieter found the flask. Louise took the flat flan dish he had been carrying and they walked out into the Markt Square.

  ‘Where are we going?’ she asked. ‘Where do you graze this unfortunate cow of yours, and why the vinegar?’

  ‘It’s in the allotments, beyond your place. If you don’t want to come, I can leave you at your door. The vinegar reacts with the lead.’ The wind had dropped and the late sun glowed amber on the red bricks of the new houses.

  ‘It’s a lovely evening now,’ Louise said, ‘and if making white lead is as exciting as making cinnabar I wouldn’t miss it for anything!’

  It was a quiet time, early evening, with not many people about. They walked past Louise’s house towards the allotments. At one stage Louise had a feeling of being watched, but when she looked back there was only one person in sight – a youth who seemed more interested in the clouds than in her. A grassy path led down beside a narrow irrigation canal.

  ‘Have we time to sit for a moment?’ Louise asked. They left the flask and dish in the long grass and walked to the water to where a single board-bridge crossed the ditch. There was a seat there and a rotten trellis held up by a mass of honeysuckle. In summertime the scent of the honeysuckle would have been overpowering. Now it was as thin and sweet as the slender song of the resident robin that had decided they needed entertainment. Autumn was breathing over them, a gentle reminder of the passage of time.

  ‘So it’s nearly finished?’ she said sadly, almost to herself.

  ‘The portrait?’ Pieter asked.

  So much more than the portrait, Louise thought, but she nodded.

  ‘Do you like it?’
she asked him. Pieter smiled, but he did not reply. Louise thought about all that had happened during this summer. ‘I’ve loved watching you both painting, the whole science of the art, seeing how you work together; the preparation, and all the work. I had no idea how much work, but …’ the word hung between them. ‘But soon it will be over, won’t it? The picture will be finished. Louise Eeden will become a moment in time then, captured and preserved like something in a bottle. I will be The Girl in the Green Dress, who seems to be about to say something, but never speaks, who seems to be about to get up, but never rises. Pieter, I’m no good at just being; I want to do things too. In the studio just now the Master said that in hundreds of years from now, we would live again through the portrait. You too; he thinks your work is wonderful, by the way. People will see your brushstrokes, but what about me?’ She watched a small shoal of fish that hung and darted in the shallow water of the canal. She was sorry she had started on this; Pieter could never understand. Her impulse was to put her hand on his, but she kept it to herself and examined him instead. At first she thought he had forgotten all about her, but then she noticed that his eyes were half closed, and she remembered that first time on the walls, when he told her how he had drawn an empty glass. She smiled when he absently applied a stroke or two of paint to the air in front of him. ‘Thinking?’ she asked. He grinned, clasped a knee and turned to her.

  ‘You’ve seen the Master when he’s behaving like a bear, stamping and raging. Not many clients have seen that. Sometimes he bangs his head against the wall; sometimes he just sulks, but the worst time of all is when he has just finished a painting, particularly a good one. We’re not at that stage yet, but it will come.’ Pieter paused to think. ‘It’s as if there are two bears inside him: one bear knows it is time to stop, the other bear wants to add just that final brushstroke that the first bear knows will ruin the whole canvas. My job is to stop bear number two from spoiling everything. You remember the beggar?’

  ‘Of course! I remember the beggar, and his picture, too.’

  ‘I was inexperienced in those days. The picture was as you see it now, but the Master kept wanting to add things and change things. I realised that I had to stop him but I didn’t know how. I was more frightened of him then than I am now. In the end I just said: “so the beggar is finished at last.” Oh Miss Louise, it was as though I had got between his two fighting bears. He’s shorter than I am but he grabbed me by the shoulders.

  ‘“Fool! Pieter Kunst, have I taught you nothing? You numbskull, you thick-headed bundle of skin and bone. Nothing!” He was shaking me as you would shake a sieve. “No masterpiece –and this is a masterpiece – is ever finished.” He turned to the picture; I could see that he had spotted something that he wanted to change.

  ‘“Master, please,” I urged. “What do you mean by never finished, I don’t understand?” That did the trick. He backed away from the painting, growling. Then he melted; you know the way he does. When he talked next it was as if he was talking to the picture.

  ‘“Look you … you beggar. What are you, eh? Canvas, size, paint? You may be the work of the finest painter in Delft,” he bowed towards the painting. “But, turn you to the wall and you will be nothing. Do you hear me, Pieter? It is not you, or me, or Mr bloody Rembrandt – as he likes to call himself these days – that makes a work of art. No, it is the person who looks at it, the ignorant buyer, the wretched hoi polloi. It is the people who look on my canvas that make it a work of art.” Now he was shouting again; “That’s what galls me, Pieter. Don’t you see? I’ve lost control; every damned person who looks at the old beggar will see him differently. It is they who will finish my picture – not you, not me, not the beggar; we will be dead and buried. That’s why I hate to give him up, why I hate to see the old bastard go.”

  ‘We both stood there looking at the portrait. Then the Master began to scratch. “Which reminds me, Pieter, we must burn sulphur, to get rid of his fleas.” Then he put his arm around my shoulder and said, “But there will be those, far down the river of time, perhaps, who will bring the old boy back to life for us. Who knows but that someone may even hear him sing.”’

  Louise wanted to put her arms around Pieter. She felt jealous of the Master, who was able to do what she couldn’t. They were both so vulnerable, master and apprentice, giving so much and having to trust other people to finish their work. At that moment a sharp whistle rang out over the allotments. Pieter looked up, puzzled, and Louise noticed that the sun had dipped behind the houses to the west.

  ‘We’d better be getting along,’ Pieter said. ‘I need light to milk the cow.’

  The lush fertility of Heer Boerhaeve’s allotment could be traced to an impressive pile of manure beside his tool shed. A texture like rich fruitcake was revealed where the gardener had cut into it. A wisp of vapour rose from the exposed face, a reminder to Louise that the evenings were getting cooler; time was running out. She shivered. A second whistle shrilled somewhere not far away. Pieter seemed nervous and kept glancing about him.

  ‘I’ll go and get it,’ he said, climbing on to the pile, holding an old wooden spade that seemed to be reserved for manuring. He came back carrying a deep jar. ‘This is our cow,’ he said as he lifted the lid. Louise leant forward to see, and wrinkled her nose. Above the deep smell of dung wafted the astringent smell of vinegar.

  ‘Why keep it in a dung heap?’ she asked, as Pieter reached into the jar and drew out a coiled sheet of lead. A thin paste of pure white pigment was creeping from it. Louise hastily slipped the flan dish underneath to catch it.

  ‘Mistress Kathenka can’t stand the smell of vinegar, and the manure keeps it warm, winter or summer,’ Pieter explained as he carefully scraped the coating of white lead from the surface of the sheet into the dish. ‘That’s it,’ he said as he finished, ‘the cow’s milked.’ As he straightened himself up, another whistle echoed through the allotments. A frown crossed Pieter’s face. Quickly he thrust the coil of lead back into the jar and splashed some more vinegar on it. ‘Let’s get you home,’ he said, as much to himself as to her.

  They closed the gate and set off for the Doelen. Pieter took Louise by the arm and hurried her along, occasionally glancing over his shoulder. His anxiety was infectious; when a fourth whistle rang out Louise found herself copying him, but it was too dark to see clearly now. When they reached her door, she said, ‘Safe home.’

  ‘Close the door,’ he said shortly, and hurried off into the failing light.

  These were old terrors for Pieter. It was a relief to have Louise safe and out of the way. He remembered only too clearly from school how the older boys would pick on an unpopular child and harass him by whistling. The game was that the boy should never see or identify the whistler. Occasionally it ended in an attack. ‘Pieter the puppet’ had often been the target. He wasn’t brave, and they knew it, so he had had his share of misery and bruises from this cruel sport. He walked rapidly; the canals and alleyways were black cracks in the night, full of menace. He should have brought a cover for the dish of white paint that seemed to glow like a full moon in his hands.

  The first missile hit him between the shoulder blades with a soft thud. To his relief it wasn’t a stone; dung perhaps. The whistles were closer now, shorter and sharper, aggressive little darts of sound. Another object hit him, on the shoulder this time. He hunched over the precious paint. There were whistles ahead of him, and a clot of something soft and wet struck him on the forehead and fell into the paint. He had no time to fish for it; he hid the dish in a doorway and started to run. The whistles were on all sides now, mocking, imitating the huntsman’s call, ‘away, away’. The next missile hit Pieter on the forehead and it was not soft; blood trickled down his face. Then they were all around him and jabs of pain burst out of the dark. He was a small boy again. He pitched forward onto his knees and wrapped his arms around his head, defending himself as best he could. Nothing was said – the blows did the talking. He could smell their sweat. They weren’t tanners, or br
ewers either; both had their distinctive smells. Feet shuffled, there was the occasional grunt as the blows fell. Then came a low whistle from nearby. Immediately the beating stopped, and soft shod feet ran off into the distance. Slowly, cautiously, like a hedgehog unwinding from its ball, Pieter straightened up and parted his hands. He must retrieve the paint and get home. But he wasn’t alone. His stomach tightened. Although there was no movement, he knew there was someone there; a mere thickening of the darkness above him. His scalp crawled. A draft of air that had found its way into the town via the Oosterport and up the canal wafted past the looming figure above him and blew gently across Pieter’s face. He breathed in and sniffed. Was that scent? It was the merest whiff. He tried to place it. What did it remind him of? Where had he smelled it before? Then he remembered. Of course – The Hague – young bloods, disembarking from foreign parts, seeking to impress their sweethearts. Older men impressing their wives with the scent of travel. It was the smell of musk, and Pieter knew, as much by intuition as anything else, who was standing above him – Reynier DeVries. The fury of the bullied child boiled inside Pieter, and so he did just what his opponent expected him to do; he began to rise. All he wanted to do was to get his hands on his tormentor’s neck and wring …

  ‘Oooof!’ The kick went straight to Pieter’s stomach; it had been aimed lower. The wind left his lungs and he rolled over, retching and gasping. The cobbles tilted and his hands tried to find a drunkard’s grip on the world. Then he was sick.

  When he came to, the stars winked clear in the sky, the menace was gone; so also was the scent of musk.

  In the studio the following day Louise noticed Peter’s bruises. At first, she accepted his explanation: he had cut his forehead and bruised his face when he had blundered into a tree the night before. But when he turned his back and she saw the round marks on his jerkin, she became suspicious.