“Has he a description of her attacker?” Both she and Francesca were talking in lowered voices to keep their conversation from Aletta’s ears.
“He rushed out into the street in time to see the villain running away and caught a glimpse of his face in the light from a window. He wants to speak to Papa about it.”
“Then ask him to find your father for himself. He drinks enough with Hendrick to know his possible whereabouts.” She shoved back the cape that Francesca held out to her. “No! That is to be burned. There’s more too.” She slipped back into the room, where everything Aletta had been wearing was tied into a bundle, including hose and shoes, and brought it to Francesca. “Give this to Griet and tell her to burn every item. I want no reminders left of this dreadful evening.”
When Aletta finally slept it was midnight. By her in the bed Anna lay awake, having finally been told of how the attack had come about. There had been more tears to dry, more comforting words to utter, and she hoped desperately that before long, with the resilience of the young, Aletta would be able to bury the experience in the depths of her mind. On the debit side was the reserve and modesty of the girl, which had been so flagrantly outraged, but on the credit side Anna knew there was in Aletta’s character much of her own determination never to crumble under adversity, which, combined with more than a dash of stubbornness inherited from Hendrick, should stand Aletta in good stead.
Tentatively Anna ran a hand over her painful side. Surprisingly, considering she feared she might have cracked a rib, there had been almost no bruising when she had looked in the mirror while undressing. The baby in her womb was still as active as before, almost as if he wanted to let her know she need not worry about him when she had so much else to concern her. From the start she had been sure she was to bear a son this time.
She woke from a doze in the early hours of the morning to hear a commotion downstairs. Hendrick was home! With difficulty she sat up and reached for a robe. She checked that Aletta was lying undisturbed and then went downstairs as quickly as she could, holding on to the handrail and keeping her hems high. She was not angry with him for having been so long away from home when she needed him. There was no changing the way he was. But now she wanted to be held in his loving arms and given some tender words in her turn after all the anguish and physical pain endured, which still weighed her down. Together they could talk a little of how they might bring their beloved child out of her nightmare.
As soon as she came in sight of him in the stair hall she saw it was not going to be like that. Hendrick, flushed from earlier drinking, but sobered by the news he had received, stood with a crazed look in his eyes, his contorted expression blended of rage and frustration.
“How is she?” he shouted, taking no heed of waking anyone.
She put a finger to her lips and took the last few treads. “Asleep. We must be thankful she was spared the actual act of rape.”
“The bastard laid hands on her! That’s enough to earn him a rope! Blankert and I and a band of others have been searching for him in the streets and alleyways! We enlisted the aid of the Night Watch and combed the docks.” His voice broke and he shook his head as if to clear it. “Dear God! I can’t endure the thought of what would have happened to her if Blankert had not shouted in time.” Then in remorse he drove a closed fist against his brow. “I should have been at home to meet her! That was the original arrangement, but I asked for it to be changed. There was to be a game of cards I didn’t want to miss!”
She went to him. His big arms wrapped her to his broad body, but his head drooped onto her shoulder. Again she was the comforter.
I
N THE MORNING
Aletta rose at six o’clock with the rest of the household. It had not occurred to her that because of what had happened she should seek any privileges, even though the black horror of what she had been through had leapt into her mind upon waking. Twice in the night she had awoken in screams, but her mother had been there and the terror had been subdued again. There was no evidence in the bedchamber of how she had cleansed herself, except a damp patch on the floorboards, from which she averted her eyes. She wanted to build up a wall of blankness in her mind that would shut out everything that had happened. It should be possible, for she could not remember coming home, there being nothing between the shout in the passageway and the rush of cold water over her head.
Whether she could have faced the day without a solution to her appearance she did not know, but her mother had brought her a head-hugging little cap to wear. Caps of every kind were worn by many women and young girls. It was an old custom that had never lost its grip, although the French fashion of drawing the hair smoothly into a coil at the back of the head, leaving the neck free with a few curls dangling over each ear, had banished cap wearing for all those with an eye for mode. Anna had always dressed her hair in a pretty style and had never seen the need for her daughters to wear caps.
The one she produced for Aletta had come from the chest of accessories in Hendrick’s storeroom where he kept a motley collection of robes, objects and artifacts for his paintings, much as strolling players had baskets of props. Aletta put the cap on. It was covered with bright beadwork, shaped to reveal a small semicircle of hair above the brow and then curving down over the ears to fit neatly at the back of the head. A damp comb had smoothed the little bit of her cropped hair that was to be seen and there was no longer anything unsightly about her appearance.
“There!” Anna exclaimed admiringly as Aletta stood regarding herself in the mirror. “It suits you well. Later today you may take any others you like from the chest. Several are in that style. Before long your hair will have grown again and in the meantime none will question your wearing a pretty cap.”
Going down to breakfast in her mother’s wake, Aletta thought that how long she had to wait for her hair to grow again was not important, for never more would she go with an uncovered head in public.
Sensibly everyone at the table, primed beforehand by Anna, made no comment, and before long the sight of Aletta always in a cap became natural to the household and to other people alike. For several nights Anna continued to sleep with her. Then one evening Aletta asked if Sybylla, who had shared her bed ever since growing out of the cot bed, could return to be with her. It was not that she did not prefer her mother’s reassuring company, but any deviation from normal routine was reminder of the cause of it in the first place. Anna understood.
“Yes, of course Sybylla can come back to your room.”
Sybylla was delighted. As the youngest she was the first to go to bed by half an hour. Since she never went to sleep early, she did not have so long to wait alone in the darkness for Aletta as she did for Francesca, whose bedtime was another hour after that. To add to Sybylla’s joy in being back in the shared four-poster Aletta took her hand and held it, something never done before.
“Aletta?” Sybylla whispered.
“Yes?” The reply was half muffled by the goose-feather quilt that was as thick and soft as the mattress beneath them.
“We are going to sleep hand in hand. It’s like skipping through a meadow or walking down a street or skating together.”
“I suppose it is. Now stop talking. I’m tired.” Aletta emphasized her desire for sleep by thumping her head on the pillow. She chose not to disclose that holding her sister’s hand was for her own benefit. She had been wrenched out of childhood through no wish of her own and she felt vulnerable and insecure in the adult world into which she had been thrown before her time. Sybylla’s fingers looped with hers made a link with her own innocence in the blissful days that would never come again.
A
NNA’S REALIZATION THAT
all was not well with her pregnancy came quite suddenly. She awoke earlier than the usual hour of rising to an unnatural stillness in her womb. It was still dark, but the curtains of the four-poster were apart and the embers in the fireplace gave some faint glow to the room. Hendrick was fast asleep, his arm around her. She lay for a while, trying not to be unduly alarmed and reminding herself that the baby was never constantly astir. Yet all her instincts told her that something untoward had happened. Her thought went against her will to the stumble she had had on the stairs. With concern for Aletta uppermost in her mind, had she reassured herself too quickly that no harm had been done? Was it possible that there had been deeper damage within that was now taking its toll? Merciful heaven! No!
Carefully she lifted Hendrick’s arm from her and he grunted, but did not wake. Then she spread her hands gently over her round belly, praying that she was mistaken and willing the baby to give her some sign that his little heart was still beating with hers. For minutes that seemed like hours nothing happened. She had begun to tremble with apprehension. Then she almost cried out with joy as she felt a faint stirring. Tears of relief started from her eyes and she smiled at her own foolishness in giving way to unnecessary imaginings. Nothing was wrong after all. Strangely, that moment of feeling him move again after nigh-panic fear for his well-being had released within her heart the fount of mother love that normally came with the first sighting of the infant. She felt as close to her son as if he were already in her arms. There was that sense of special togetherness that exists between a mother and her newborn child that is unique to the first hours and days.
Then pain pierced through her whole body like a sword. The force of her scream thrust her almost to a sitting position. Hendrick, waking with a great start, was in time to see her fall back again. She did not stop screaming and the whole house began to echo with banging doors and running feet. Ashen-faced, Francesca was first at the door as Hendrick flung it open. He had thrown on breeches and was thrusting his arms into a jacket.
“Stay with your mother! Don’t let the younger ones in. Maria will most surely be here with you at any minute. I’m going for the doctor!”
He ran from the house, stopping only to bang the knocker on a neighbor’s door. An upper window opened and a man’s face appeared. Hendrick shouted up to him.
“My Anna! Her time has come too early! Ask your wife to go in to her at once!” Then Hendrick’s running footsteps went echoing down the street.
For Anna there was only pain. Faces came and went at her bedside, accompanied by whispering and the crackle of starched aprons. For her previous confinements the midwife and helping neighbors had sufficed, for birthing was an entirely female affair, but this time the doctor was there as well. When he spoke to her his face seemed to hover in the most curious way and his cool hands on her arms made her realize how wildly she must be thrashing about. What he said to her she did not know, for she was incapable of listening or answering. Screams filled her head and her mouth as she and her son fought for their lives together.
When at last the pain eased she lapsed into a lulling quietude. There had been no newborn cry and she knew her adored infant had lost his battle. Yet the bond between them had not been broken.
“My beloved.” It was Hendrick’s voice, heavy with grief.
She opened her eyes. He was sitting at the bedside, holding her hand, and his poor, dear face was so doleful that she longed to take him into her arms, but she had no strength to raise them. There was no one else in the room and she was in a fresh nightshift and lying in crisp, clean linen. Her gaze moved across to the corner where the crib had stood in readiness. It had been removed.
“Anna—”
“I know,” she whispered. “Our son is waiting for me.”
He had to bend his head close to catch her words. “No!” he cried out desperately. “Don’t leave me, my darling. I can’t go on living without you!” He gazed in agony at her face, deathly white from the terrible hemorrhaging, and pressed her hand to his lips. The tears ran from his eyes, which were already red-rimmed.
It had become almost beyond her to whisper now. “I’ll never leave you in spirit, my love. Try to remember that.”
“You’ve always been everything to me. My love, my world, my soul!”
“I have loved you in the same way and will do so forever.” She did not want to go from him, but all her fighting for life had been done in the past hours and she was now possessed by the most wonderful sense of peace. She wished she could explain it to him, for it confirmed that death was only a door. Her lids closed again, but she could not go yet and they fluttered open again. “Are the girls here?”
“Yes. I’ll fetch them.” He left the chair to open the door and beckon to his daughters, who stood huddled together, Maria and Griet with them. Francesca put an arm around Aletta, weeping on one side of her, and Sybylla on the other.
“Now smile for our mama!” she insisted. “It’s what will please her most.”
Somehow they managed it as each kissed her in turn. Anna whispered lovingly, “My darlings.”
Maria and Griet came and stood at the end of the bed, able to see that the last moments were coming and there was no more time for personal farewells. The three girls together held Anna’s hand that was nearest them while Hendrick half sat on the bed and drew her from the pillows into his arms, her head coming to rest against his shoulder. She made two or three little sounds in her throat and then she went from them on a sigh.
F
RANCESCA’S LIFE TOOK
an abrupt turn at her mother’s death. She was just thirteen, newly come to womanhood, and her easygoing existence was no more. It was brought home to her the day after the funeral when she came down to breakfast, which was always eaten in the warm kitchen, to find there was no plate, knife, napkin or cup for her where she had always sat. Instead a place had been laid again at the end of the table at Anna’s chair. She looked uncertainly at Hendrick, whose haggard face and bloodshot eyes were evidence of the alcohol he was consuming nightly to dull his grief. Listlessly he raised his hand and indicated she should take her mother’s place.