Wings over Delft

by Aubrey Flegg

  ‘Pieter,’ she said, choosing her words very carefully. ‘If at any time I have shown you any marks of respect or affection, I want you to know that these have always been genuine and from my heart. I do not withdraw them now that I am free. I cannot withdraw them; they are yours forever, however you feel about me. If you want to walk away now, I won’t try to stop you, but my affection goes with you … always.’

  She faced him, trying to stop her lower lip from trembling. She had put everything on the line. Now it was up to him.

  Pieter took his time in answering her, and when he did it was with the same formality, preceded by a smile, a bow, and a gesture that reminded her of Father.

  ‘Miss Louise,’ he said. ‘I never have had any expectations. You must remember that I am just an apprentice without resources, while you are the heiress to a great fortune. Your friendship is all that I could ever look for, but that for me is a pearl of great price.’

  She looked at him and thought: yes, they are alike, Father and he, not in looks but in understanding. She held out her hand and he took it, and they walked on towards the walls, side by side, newly vulnerable after their formal declarations to each other.

  When they arrived at the now familiar steps, Louise knew better than to keep hold of Pieter’s hand, they would both be safer on their own. Once up, she waited anxiously for him to arrive, looking out over the wall. The weather was clearing now, the sun shouldering its way through ragged rifts in the cloud. So much had happened since she had stormed from her house that morning. She felt in her pocket and extricated the little flower she had tried to throw into the canal in an act of rejection; it had become mixed up in Mr Fabritius’s birdseed. This time however the canal accepted her offering and her thanks in a spatter of seed. When Pieter arrived they looked out together over the exhausted fields where the lapwings tossed as they searched for grubs among the stubble. The wind was still cold and Louise wanted to move close to Pieter for shelter, but she felt suddenly shy. All summer Reynier had stood as a barrier between them. Now that he was gone, she felt suddenly exposed. Pieter seemed no better. Sentences came, and died stillborn; they found themselves mimicking each other’s small but helpless gestures. The barrier between them had been replaced with a void. Pieter seemed to be even more tongue-tied than she, so it was up to her to break the silence. She remembered searching for a tune on her lute, absently running her fingers over the strings until some chance chord would spark the tune in her mind.

  ‘Pieter?’ she said over the fragile space that separated them. ‘This morning while I sat in the back of your beautiful little church, I had a strange experience.’

  ‘I hope it had nothing to do with Little Frans? I should have warned you.’ She smiled.

  ‘Oh no, Frans and I got on well. This was something different.’ She looked out over the still landscape. No one worked in the fields on a Sunday: no horses, no carts, only the sails of the unattended water-pumps flickered as they lifted water from the fields, ultimately to pump it back into the sea whence it came. Pieter had his eyes half-closed and she guessed that he was preserving all this in his mind. It was a good sign. She would try another chord. ‘Do you remember your empty glass?’ she asked.

  ‘How could I forget it?’

  ‘While I sat in your church this morning, I had a vision.’ Pieter’s eyebrows shot up. ‘No, don’t look alarmed,’ she smiled. ‘I’m afraid it had nothing to do with saints, not even with Little Frans. But while I sat there at the back, I began to see the church, the building, the people, even the priest in his robes, as if it was all a painting. The colours were like the fragments of light on your empty glass – remember?’ He was watching her closely now.

  She hurried on. ‘But I had a role because it was in my eyes that this picture was forming. Remember what the Master said, about how a picture is never finished, how it has to be recreated in the mind of the viewer?’ Captivated by her new idea, she didn’t notice the amusement in his smile. ‘Religions are masterpieces, Pieter: stories, paintings, music, architecture – sacred all –’ at last she faltered, because something strange seemed to be happening to the space between them. However he had done it, Pieter had crossed the divide. She heard her voice, far off, repeating, ‘sacred all…’ but it didn’t seem to matter now. That was just the original chord. What mattered now was the new tune that seemed to be welling up inside them, and around them, over them. She could see her reflection in Pieter’s eyes and wondered what he was seeing. But in her heart she knew; he was seeing everything that was Louise, from her wind-blown hair, to her heart’s core, the good the bad, and … but the new tune was filling her head and there was no time for thought. She could feel his arm in the small of her back, and her face tipped up towards him.

  The last thing she saw before she closed her eyes was a flight of geese, flying high, in a perfect ‘V’ against the cold blue sky.

  Their kiss lasted no longer than a long breath. Louise stepped back, startled. In a town where any public expression of affection was frowned upon, this was not the place to be; it was too public. She wanted to be alone with Pieter, but there was nowhere that they could go. She had to do something, so gathering her skirts about her, she set off down the steps. When she got to the bottom she turned to watch Pieter safely down. He was two or three steps from the bottom when he suddenly pointed to something over her shoulder.

  ‘Look,’ he said. ‘Surely that’s Mr Fabritius’s little bird!’

  ‘Mr Midas!’ Louise exclaimed. She had forgotten all about him. She turned to look; it was a moment or two before she spotted him, sitting on a fence post. In turning, she missed the moment when Pieter walked off into space from three steps up. She got him to his feet, dusted him down, and they set off after the now startled Mr Midas like two schoolchildren.

  They followed the little bird from house to house down the Oosterplantsden, the long straight road that bounds the town to the east. The high wall blocked off all view of the Schiekanaal and the country beyond. Streets opened at intervals on the right but the goldfinch ignored these, fluttering along the base of the wall, as if he sensed the freedom that lay beyond it. At the end the road swung to the right. A windmill stood on the wall here but its sails were idle, feathered for the day of rest. Just around the corner was the Oosterport, the east gate of the town. There was a water gate here where barges could turn off the Schiekanaal, and passing under an arch, enter into the town’s system of canals. Road traffic had to cross a bridge and then pass through the arch of the Oosterport. If Mr Midas wanted to escape, this was the place he would do it, where he could see the fields of freedom beyond the arch. Just for the moment, however, he had developed an interest in his pursuers. Long years of captivity had made him a domestic little bird.

  ‘Don’t move,’ Louise whispered, holding Pieter back. ‘If he crosses the Schiekanaal we’ll never see him again.’ They assessed the situation. Ahead of them and to their left was the water gate where Mr Midas was sitting on the gutter watching them and waiting to see what they would do next. Beyond him was the Oosterport. Two black slated towers rose on each side; the pale brick of the arch was glowing in the late afternoon sunlight, which reflected off the windows of the rooms above the arch.

  ‘I’ll try to get past him and out onto the bridge beyond,’ Louise said. ‘Then if he sees me I may be able to turn him back. Perhaps he’ll come down for you here. He seems to prefer men.’ She sniffed, and gave Pieter some of Mr Fabritius’s seed from her pocket. With one eye on Mr Midas she walked past the water gate, under the arch, and out on to the bridge. Relaxed conversation emerged from the guards in the guardroom as she passed. She turned; she could see the little bird now, a dot on the ground in front of Pieter. I knew he’d be good at this, she thought proudly. At that moment, the guardroom door flew open with a crash and, in a gale of laughter, two very tipsy members of the gate-watch reeled out into the road.

  ‘Arrest that man!’ one of them roared and then bellowed with laughter. Louise had to jump
up to see over them. Pieter was pointing up towards the towers. She ran back onto the bridge and was just in time to see the little bird shoot over the high roof above the archway. Perhaps he was daunted by the unfamiliar sight of empty fields beyond the town, but he turned, fluttered back, and perched on the head of the statue that occupied the niche above the archway. Louise dared not move. She studied the statue: a watchman, complete with spear, lantern, horn, and dog. A tiny trickle of birdlime ran down his stone helmet. Mr Midas tried one more brief foray in her direction, then looped back and disappeared up into one of the sloping portals designed to take chains for a now defunct drawbridge. Louise tiptoed back to consult with Pieter.

  ‘If we could get in there,’ she urged, ‘perhaps we could catch him inside.’ The guardroom door had been left open by the departing revellers. They crept forward and listened. Resonant snores came from the room to the right of the door where the duty watchman was sleeping off his Sunday roast and a bellyful of ale. Carrying their Sunday shoes, they slipped in. Ahead of them rose a flight of stone stairs. They mounted, looking for a door that might open into the room above the archway. When they found it, it didn’t look much used, but when Louise raised the latch and pushed, it opened easily enough. Light from a high dusty window filtered down on to them. There was no sign of Mr Midas but Louise thought she heard a tiny movement behind the crude shutters that had been propped up to block the portals, presumably to prevent jackdaws coming in to nest. She put down her shoes, crossed the room, and eased back the shutter. There below her was Mr Midas, head cocked, looking up at her with a single bright eye. Hardly daring to move, she trickled some seed down the slope, and then retreated, leaving, grain by grain, a trail of seed leading into the room. She beckoned Pieter in, signalling that he should close the door so that Mr Midas would not escape. There was nothing to do now but wait.

  Henk Blut, gatekeeper at the Oosterport, woke with a start to the sound of bird-song. At first he thought that the sound was inside his head, a notion that was painfully dispelled when he shook it. Pain stabbed upwards from his neck and spread into his forehead. The song, however, persisted. Avoiding any further violent movement, he took up his musket and went to the door under the arch and peered up and down the road. No bird, and no song. When he turned back into the gatehouse, he distinctly heard the singing again. It appeared to be coming from upstairs. Still in his stockinged feet, he climbed the stone steps. That was strange, the singing seemed to come from the room over the archway. He raised the latch slowly and inched the door open. A nearly horizontal beam of sunlight shone in from the west, projecting a golden square onto the stone wall. There, perched on a rusty spike, was a goldfinch, head back, singing its heart out. A short length of chain hung from its leg. Henk, a keen sportsman, raised his musket. Then the thought of an explosion in that enclosed space made him wince, and he lowered the weapon. The chain intrigued him; perhaps the bird was worth money. He was broke, as usual. He peered into the dim room, looking for an owner. It was at that moment that he saw the young couple, locked in embrace, totally oblivious of him and of everything else in the world. He struggled valiantly with a weak sense of civic duty and with an even weaker puritanical heart. Another half-hour of sleep would see him right, he thought. He backed out of the room and pulled the door after him, sighing for his lost youth. Perhaps they, and the bird, would be gone when he woke up.

  They walked home together in the darkening streets with Mr Midas perched contentedly on Pieter’s finger. They said good night to Willy Claes outside the powder store. Louise remembered the time that she and Pieter had walked back past the powder store after their first visit to the town walls. Everything was all right now, even his illicit smoking seemed a harmless occupation.

  As they approached Mr Fabritius’s house Louise was having second thoughts about Mr Midas. It seemed a shame to return him to captivity. Also, for reasons she didn’t want to have to explain to Pieter, she did not really want to knock on the Fabritius door. They decided to set him free where he could fly home if he wished. Pieter undid the chain in case it caught on something, and Mr Midas disappeared up into one of the great trees near the house.

  The Lapis Arrives

  Chapter 17

  The lapis, that Pieter had eventually ordered, had arrived. He weighed the packet in his hand. It felt light; it had better be good quality, otherwise there would not be enough, and the Master would have yet another excuse for delay. Only a single panel of Louise’s dress remained to be painted. The Master had already been growling, at once hating to finish it and yet wanting it to be done. Pieter cut the stitching on the cloth-bound packet and eased the inner wrappings apart. He sucked his breath through his teeth in appreciation. Surely this was gem quality material. He eased out a particularly beautiful flake and turned it in the light. He smiled in recollection; he had been grinding lapis that day when Louise had walked into their lives. What was it the Master had said all that time ago? One day, Pieter, someone will walk into my studio who is without conceit. He hadn’t been defeated though; this was his finest work ever.

  Pieter had visited Louise’s house twice in the week following the riot, both times at Mr Eeden’s invitation. The first time had been to report on the progress of Louise’s portrait. He had started to apologise about the awaited lapis but Mr Eeden had just laughed and had begun questioning him about how they compounded their colours. Soon Pieter’s stutter had vanished, and his hands did what they were told; he forgot that he was speaking to a Master of the Guild, and didn’t notice Louise quietly smiling to herself.

  At Pieter’s suggestion, the congregation at the hidden church made no formal complaint about the riot or the damage that had been done to the church. An anonymous donation, however, more than compensated for the damage done. News soon reached the town that young Reynier DeVries was extending his studies abroad for an indefinite period; clearly the rumours about Miss Eeden’s betrothal had been unfounded. If it caused mild surprise that the merger of the two potteries appeared to be going ahead without Miss Eeden’s betrothal, the fact that the merger made business sense on its own was an adequate explanation.

  Pieter turned the lapis in his hand and shook his head. He was reluctant to stop daydreaming. The stone was perfect, no crust of limestone to be laboriously chipped and scraped away. All he had to do was to drop it onto his grindstone and begin reducing it – carefully this time – to the precise grain size. As he began the laborious process he thought about a suggestion that Mr Eeden had made on his last visit. He had been invited to see the moons on Jupiter. It was long after curfew when he got ready to leave, so the only thing to do was to wait so that he could walk home with the watch. They were standing in the starlit doorway when Mr Eeden put his hand on Pieter’s sleeve. Pieter remembered how he had so nearly drawn it away, embarrassed at how coarse the cheap cloth must feel to the gentleman.

  ‘You know, Pieter. When the time comes, your subscription to the Guild of St Luke need not be a problem. A patron can help a young lad along, it is quite in order.’ Before Pieter could mumble out his thanks he found that he was being pushed down the steps. ‘Look, here’s the watch. Off with you now. Goodnight.’ It was typical. Mr Eeden had timed his offer for the arrival of the watch. All Pieter could do was mouth his thanks to the closing door.

  Pieter looked up and blinked. The light in the studio had changed suddenly. The change had come and gone faster than any lightning flash. He looked at the window, and what he saw there was unbelievable. The leaded panes were curved into the room, as if a gigantic wind was blowing in on them from outside. Each square was haloed by a fine spray of coloured glass, where the panes were crackling along their edges. At the moment when it seemed that the windows must inevitably burst inwards, they were instantly sucked out and were gone. All this happened in perfect silence. Then, as the ceiling lifted above him, a roar, as of some demented animal, rose through the floor and slammed into him from every side. The clamour went on and on, and Pieter, who had instinctively thrown
himself over his precious grinding, found that he was yelling at the top of his voice at the sheer outrage of it all.

  When the din stopped, he gazed dumbly out through the eyeless windows. Debris of every kind was plummeting out of the sky, screened by a curtain of falling tiles that slipped from the roof above. He looked about the studio foolishly; surely there was something he should be doing. Louise’s portrait had been knocked skew-wise on its easel. He crossed the studio to right her and gazed in disbelief at the sprinkle of fine glass on the canvas. He began to blow it off.

  Suddenly a dreadful constriction gripped his throat. The phenomenon, whatever it was, had happened so quickly, and so violently that he had no time to rationalise it. It had seemed meaningless. Now, as reason returned, it took on a meaning that was too dreadful even to contemplate. Pieter’s body reacted instinctively, without any conscious instruction from his brain.

  He half ran, half fell, down the stairs and rushed through the bar, where stunned customers still clutched their beer jugs. Outside he dodged the rain of debris by the Nieuwe Kerk, where the black slates skimmed like scimitars from the roof. He turned towards the Doelen, towards where Louise Eeden’s house stood, and entered a nightmare out of hell. He was seeing light where no light should be. There was a rampart of debris ahead; he climbed it without realising what he was doing. He stood on its crest, trying to comprehend where he was. The town walls had been toppled. His eyes tracked down, drawn as if to the vanishing point of a picture. At the point of focus, in place of the powder house, a vast cavity reeked. It was fully fifteen feet deep.