eleven years old. After a moment I realized he must be Franciscus, though I did not see much of the baby in him that I had known. But then, I had not thought much of babies when I was young. The others I did not recognize, except for seeing them occasionally in town with the older girls. They all stared at me.
I addressed myself to Franciscus. “Please tell your grandmother that Griet is here to see her.”
Franciscus turned to the older of the two girls. “Beatrix, go and find Maria Thins.”
The girl jumped up obediently and went inside. I thought of Maertge and Cornelia’s scramble to announce me so long ago and smiled to myself.
The children continued to stare at me. “I know who you are,” Franciscus declared.
“I doubt you can remember me, Franciscus. You were but a baby when I knew you.”
He ignored my remark—he was following his own thought. “You’re the lady in the painting.”
I started, and Franciscus smiled in triumph. “Yes, you are, though in the painting you’re not wearing a cap, but a fancy blue and yellow headcloth.”
“Where is this painting?”
He seemed surprised that I should ask. “With van Ruijven’s daughter, of course. He died last year, you know.”
I had heard this news at the Meat Hall with secret relief. Van Ruijven had never sought me out once I’d left, but I had always feared that he would appear again one day with his oily smile and groping hands.
“How did you see the painting if it is at van Ruijven’s?”
“Papa asked to have the painting on a short loan,” Franciscus explained. “The day after Papa died Mama sent it back to van Ruijven’s daughter.”
I rearranged my mantle with shaking hands. “He wanted to see the painting again?” I managed to say in a small voice.
“Yes, girl.” Maria Thins had come to stand in the doorway. “It didn’t help matters here, I can tell you. But by that time he was in such a state that we didn’t dare say no, not even Catharina.” She looked exactly the same— she would never age. One day she would simply go to sleep and not wake up.
I nodded to her. “I’m sorry for your loss and your troubles, madam.”
“Yes, well, life is a folly. If you live long enough, nothing is surprising.”
I did not know how to respond to such words, so I simply said what I knew to be true. “You wanted to see me, madam.”
“No, it’s Catharina who is to see you.”
“Catharina?” I could not keep the surprise from my voice.
Maria Thins smiled sourly. “You never did learn to keep your thoughts to yourself, did you, girl? Never mind, I expect you get by well enough with your butcher, if he doesn’t ask too much of you.”
I opened my mouth to speak, then shut it.
“That’s right. You’re learning. Now, Catharina and van Leeuwenhoek are in the great hall. He is the executor of the will, you see.”
I did not see. I wanted to ask her what she meant, and why van Leeuwenhoek was there, but I did not dare. “Yes, madam,” I said simply.
Maria Thins chuckled briefly. “The most trouble we’ve ever had with a maid,” she muttered, shaking her head before disappearing inside.
I stepped into the front hallway. There were still paintings hanging everywhere on the walls, some I recognized, others I did not. I half expected to see myself among the still lifes and seascapes, but of course I was not there.
I glanced at the stairs leading up to his studio and stopped, my chest tightening. To stand in the house again, his room above me, was more than I thought I could bear, even though I knew he was not there. For so many years I had not let myself think of the hours I spent grinding colors at his side, sitting in the light of the windows, watching him look at me. For the first time in two months I became fully aware that he was dead. He was dead and he would paint no more paintings. There were so few—I had heard that he never did paint faster, as Maria Thins and Catharina had wanted him to.
It was only when a girl poked her head out from the Crucifixion room that I forced myself to take a deep breath and walk down the hallway towards her. Cornelia was now about the age I had been when I first became a maid. Her red hair had darkened over the ten years and was simply dressed, without ribbons or braids. She had grown less menacing to me over time. In fact I almost pitied her—her face was twisted by a cunning that gave a girl her age an ugly look.
I wondered what would happen to her, what would happen to them all. Despite Tanneke’s confidence in her mistress’s ability to arrange things, it was a big family, with a big debt. I had heard in the market that they had not paid their bill to the baker in three years, and after my master’s death the baker had taken pity on Catharina and accepted a painting to settle the debt. For a brief moment I wondered if Catharina was going to give me a painting too, to settle her debt with Pieter.
Cornelia pulled her head back into the room and I stepped into the great hall. It had not changed much since I had worked there. The bed still had its green silk curtains, now faded. The ivory-inlaid cupboard was there, and the table and Spanish leather chairs, and the paintings of his family and hers. Everything appeared older, dustier, more battered. The red and brown floor tiles were cracked or missing in places.
Van Leeuwenhoek was standing with his back to the door, his hands clasped behind him, studying a painting of soldiers drinking in a tavern. He turned around and bowed to me, still the kind gentleman.
Catharina was seated at the table. She was not wearing black as I had expected. I did not know if she meant to taunt me, but she wore the yellow mantle trimmed with ermine. It too had a faded look about it, as if it had been worn too many times. There were badly repaired rents in the sleeves, and the fur had been eaten away in places by moths. Nonetheless, she was playing her part as the elegant lady of the house. She had dressed her hair carefully and was wearing powder and her pearl necklace.
She was not wearing the earrings.
Her face did not match her elegance. No amount of powder could mask her rigid anger, her reluctance, her fear. She did not want to meet with me, but she had to.
“Madam, you wished to see me.” I thought it best to address myself to her, though I looked at van Leeuwenhoek as I spoke.
“Yes.” Catharina did not gesture to a chair, as she would have to another lady. She let me stand.
There was an awkward silence as she sat and I stood, waiting for her to begin. She was clearly struggling to speak. Van Leeuwenhoek shifted from one foot to the other.
I did not try to help her. There seemed to be no way that I could. I watched her hands shuffle some papers on the table, run along the edges of the jewelry box at her elbow, pick up the powder-brush and set it down again. She wiped her hands on a white cloth.
“You know that my husband died two months ago?” she began at last.
“I had heard, madam, yes. I was very sorry to hear of it. May God keep him.”
Catharina did not seem to take in my feeble words. Her mind was elsewhere. She picked up the brush again and ran her fingers through its bristles.
“It was the war with France, you see, that brought us to this state. Not even van Ruijven wanted to buy paintings then. And my mother had problems collecting her rents. And he had to take over the mortgage on his mother’s inn. So it is no wonder things grew so difficult.”
The last thing I had expected from Catharina was an explanation of why they ran into debt. Fifteen guilders after all this time is not so very much, I wanted to say. Pieter has let it go. Think no more of it. But I dared not interrupt her.
“And then there were the children. Do you know how much bread eleven children eat?” She looked up at me briefly, then back down at the powder-brush.
One painting’s worth over three years, I answered silently. One very fine painting, to a sympathetic baker.
I heard the click of a tile in the hallway, and the rustle of a dress being stilled by a hand. Cornelia, I thought, still spying. She too is taking her place in the drama.
I waited, holding back the questions I wanted to ask.
Van Leeuwenhoek finally spoke. “Griet, when a will has been drawn up,” he began in his deep voice, “an
