Maria snorted derisively and clattered plates. Never had she seen the likeness in character between Hendrick and his youngest daughter stronger than at this moment. With that same buoyant optimism, which took no account of possible disappointments, they already had a marriage band on Sybylla’s finger.
“There’s many a slip betwixt the cup and the lip,” she warned them ferociously.
To her intense annoyance they both laughed.
A
T THE VAN
Deventer house Pieter was checking the laying of the flagstones. He had a good foreman and there was no need for him to be there personally, but he wanted to see Neeltje. He had received a full account from Francesca of Ludolf’s visit and the attempt to disrupt her apprenticeship. Now that she knew Ludolf and Geetruyd were well acquainted she was convinced that the last-minute switch of her accommodation had been due to his conniving and her father had simply fallen in with his patron’s wishes.
Pieter, knowing much more about the whole situation, had not the least doubt that it was as she believed, for he was certain that Ludolf was using Hendrick’s gambling debts to virtually blackmail the artist into doing his will with regard to Francesca.
Ludolf was wandering about the garden, watching the work in progress, which meant that Neeltje would not appear. Pieter was impatient for the man to be gone, but he did not seem to have any other commitments that morning. Pieter did not dare send a note to Neeltje, fearing that Ludolf inspected all correspondence that came to the house before it was passed on.
Pieter glanced upward at the house several times, but there was no sign of the woman. For all he knew she might have been dismissed already. Disappointed, he left his foreman to complete the work and went from the house. At the first corner of the street he found Neeltje waiting for him.
“I’ve been hoping to see you!” he exclaimed.
“That’s what I thought. I saw you look up at the house several times.”
“Can you tell me anything about your master’s relationship with a woman in Delft named Geetruyd Wolff?”
“Only that she writes to him on business matters occasionally. She has mentioned Juffrouw Francesca only twice—once when she first went to Delft and secondly when Juffrouw Aletta went there too.” Neeltje saw Pieter’s gaze sharpen and realized she had given herself away. She jerked her shoulders back defiantly. “Yes, I read his correspondence. I have my reasons.”
“Maybe if you confided those reasons to me we might work together on them.”
She regarded him steadily for a few moments as she considered what he had said. Then she spoke abruptly. “Shall I come to your house this evening?”
“I’ll be there,” he said, and gave her directions.
She hurried back along the street to the house without saying farewell. There was no point in wasting time when she would be seeing him later. For the first time since Ludolf had cast a shadow across her life she felt a glimmer of hope. If all went well this evening she would have a strong ally in Pieter van Doorne.
She arrived at his house after dark. His housekeeper served them tea and cakes by the fireside and then withdrew. Neeltje was grateful for Pieter’s relaxed attitude and easy manner. No pressure was being put on her to confide anything if she should have second thoughts. It helped her tremendously and she supposed he knew that. She drained the last drop of her tea from the little bowl of Chinese porcelain before returning it to its saucer and putting it to one side.
“I was still a child in those mad years of the tulipomania,” she began.
He listened quietly and attentively as she recounted the horrific experience of the destruction of the black tulip bulb and her father’s brutal murder. It astounded him to learn whom she believed the murderer to be. She gazed into the fire all the time she was talking. Although she did not weep he saw the firelight reflected like tiny sparks in the tears that gathered in her eyes, but which she blinked back. He was full of compassion for her and when at last she fell silent he shook his head sympathetically.
“I’ve never heard a worse story of treachery and foul murder,” he said. “You say you remember Ludolf as being the younger of the two men when you saw him again. Are you absolutely sure that it was he?”
She turned her head slowly and looked directly at him. “I’m absolutely certain. As I said, when I saw him in my home his face was already familiar and this caused me to study his features. That’s why, ever since I entered my late mistress’s employ, I began to check on him, hoping to find something incriminating against him. I’ve been shameless in reading his correspondence from the time I first managed to get a duplicate key made to his study, the first of several I collected through patient waiting and watching until I could gain access to all his private letters and papers wherever they were kept. It’s my belief that what he was paid as an accessory in the destruction of the black tulip enabled him to buy a half-share in a ship. Eventually he must have done well enough to own his own vessel before becoming a ship broker. At the time when inquiries were made it was believed he had gone straight to sea. Never did I suppose that the day would come when I would be wanting to make him atone for a second murder as well.”
“A second?” Pieter queried alertly.
She folded her hands in her lap. “If this were to be my dying breath I would swear that Ludolf van Deventer caused the death of his wife. He smothered her with a cushion! He had to be rid of her in order to marry Juffrouw Francesca!”
“What are you saying?” he demanded.
She told him everything. He was convinced that the truth was in all she said, and he questioned her closely about the correspondence she had followed through the years.
“What sort of business is it that causes Geetruyd Wolff to keep in touch with him?”
“I don’t know. She used not to write at all, except for one letter that came from Delft some years ago and which he burnt immediately. I found the ashes of it in the fireplace and kept a tiny scrap of paper that had escaped the flames. I matched it up with other writing, but never found its like until she began writing these business letters three or four years ago. It was undoubtedly her handwriting and I believe it was a love letter that he had put to the flames. He must have told her that he thought it was too risky to write in such a manner again.”
“That is only supposition,” he pointed out practically.
“It’s what I believe. But to get back to what she writes now. It’s sometimes about a delivery of which she’s had a good report that it will please him to hear about and so forth. She only refers to people by their initials.”
“Perhaps he has a half-share in her house, just as he may once have had in a ship, and she is referring to the number of guests she takes in. When I tried for accommodation the last time I was in Delft, the wife of the tavernkeeper asked her husband if Vrouw Wolff had any vacant rooms.”
“Maybe that’s it,” she agreed. “I thought the occasional references to a ship might mean that he handles investments for her.”
Mentally he stored away all that she had told him. They talked for a little while longer before he saw her home. She told him not to go farther than the corner of the street nearest the van Deventer house, but he watched until her lantern, bobbing along at the side of the canal, disappeared down into the servants’ entrance under the double flight of steps to the main door. Satisfied that she was safely indoors, he returned to his own home.
S
OME DUTIES IN
the reserve militia kept Pieter in Amsterdam for another week. The present standard-bearer was getting married, which meant that a replacement would soon be needed and Pieter heard that his name had been put forward. It was an honor given only to a bachelor, for the standard-bearer was expected to wear the richest clothes and finest sashes with gold or silver fringes, all of which mounted up to a considerable financial outlay, and it had been agreed long since that a married man with other responsibilities should not be expected to take on this expense. In conversation during one of the meals Pieter had enjoyed in the Visser house, before being barred from there, Hendrick had talked of Frans Hals’s only time in Amsterdam when he had been commissioned to paint the officers and subalterns of the Civil Guard.
“Hals was so homesick being away from Haarlem,” Hendrick had said, “and he disliked Amsterdam so much that he only painted the left half of the painting and then went home again, leaving somebody else to finish it off. But you can be sure that the standard-bearer with his lace and silver, his white boots and golden spurs and his orange sash with enough fabric in it to make a woman’s skirt was in Hals’s completed section. The standard-bearer always draws the eye and Hals wouldn’t have wanted his replacement to belittle that splendor.”
Pieter, after being officially approached, agreed he should give his reply to the whole corps and he chose a moment about an hour after the start of a three-day banquet that had begun that evening. At these gatherings, restricted solely to officers and subalterns, music and singing provided breaks in the eating and drinking, the speeches and the toasts.
“You do me much honor, gentlemen,” Pieter said, standing at his place and looking up and down the table at the seated company, “but I have to decline the esteemed appointment as standard-bearer that has been offered me.”
“Are you taking a bride too?” someone shouted out jovially.
Smiling, Pieter shook his head. “Not yet. My reason is that I shall be in Amsterdam less and less during the months ahead and I wouldn’t wish to be absent on any important occasion when a standard-bearer should be present.”
There was a rumble of disappointment, but his reason was accepted. Pieter sat down again to enjoy two or three hours of good talk and feasting before he made his departure. When he did leave he had reached the hall when one of his fellow officers who had seen him go from the table came after him.
“Van Doorne! Wait a minute. Are you going already?”
“I’m returning to Haarlem tomorrow. I need to get some sleep.”
“I won’t delay you long, but you know the artist Hendrick Visser, I believe.”
Pieter compressed his lips slightly. “I have an acquaintanceship of sorts with him.”
“Good. A vote was taken at the last meeting, which you were unable to attend, that it was high time another group painting was commissioned. It’s several years since the last one and there are many new faces among us now, including that of the captain. It was suggested that you should see the artist and talk terms and so forth.”
Pieter nodded, welcoming a legitimate reason to break the ban of calling at the Visser house that had been placed on him. “I’ll be pleased to do so. Out of interest, why was Master Visser selected?”
“One or two people had seen his work in the van Deventer house and also elsewhere.”
“I’ll call on him before I leave Amsterdam tomorrow and send you a written report from Haarlem afterward.”
Next morning at the Visser house Griet expressed her pleasure at seeing Pieter again. “It’s been such a long time,
mijnheer
! Come in.”
“How are you, Griet?” he inquired.
“Very happy indeed. My sweetheart is home from the sea and we’ve become betrothed.” She was so full of excitement that he guessed the betrothal was very recent.
“That’s excellent news. My felicitations!”
“But I’ll not be leaving here, because after we’re wed he will be returning to sea before very long.”
He regarded her with understanding. “It will not be easy for the two of you to part again, but I’m sure this household is very glad not to be losing you.”
“I don’t know how they would ever manage without me.” Then she clapped a hand over her mouth. Heady with joy over this new turn of events in her life, she was not her usual discreet self that morning. “Take no notice of me,
mijnheer.
I’m forgetting myself. I’ll tell the master you’re here.”
“You’d better state my business too.” Pieter was not at all sure that Hendrick would see him otherwise. “Tell him I’m here to commission a group portrait on behalf of the Civil Guard.”
It was not long before Pieter was shown into the studio. Hendrick was alone but at work. On his canvas people were at table and a richly robed man had risen to his feet with an expression of such fear and alarm on his face that Pieter guessed the subject to be Belshazzar’s Feast. The paint had been built up thickly on the jeweled brocade cloak and Hendrick was carving it away with a knife to promote the rich texture.
“What’s all this about a group painting?” Hendrick questioned gruffly without greeting, his eyes on his work. When what was needed had been explained to him he gave a snort. “I don’t paint portraits on demand. I choose faces to my own liking.”
“I remember Francesca telling me that.” Pieter paused deliberately. “Before a ban was placed on our meeting.”
“Why did you come here, then?” Hendrick shot at him with a scowl.
“I came with regard to the commission. I thought it might suit you to paint the individuals in your own time and when the mood took you. I would arrange that you had a generous time limit.”
Hendrick pondered, recalling that Rembrandt had taken four years to paint that militia company preparing for the Night Watch, for although he had let his pupils do much of the groundwork and the garments, he had taken other commissions in between painting the faces and the important details.
“The officers would come when it suited me?” Hendrick checked.
“I would make that stipulation on your behalf.”
“Hmm.” Hendrick thought the matter over. The canvas would be too large to set up in his studio, but he was not far from the Zuider Church, where Rembrandt had been allowed to paint, and since he and his family worshipped there, he was almost sure the same privilege would be extended to him. This meant that he could hire an artist to do everything except the faces and anything else he particularly wanted to do himself. The fellow would not be under his feet, something he had never been able to abide in his own studio.
It was still not a commission that appealed to him, but he was wearied of painting solely for Ludolf, who took unerringly whatever he produced. The history painting he was finishing now had been commissioned originally by somebody else, but Ludolf had taken a fancy to it. It had meant making an excuse for a delay while another was painted for the merchant, who had wanted that particular subject, and Hendrick was not surprised when the commission had been taken from him and given to somebody else. If Ludolf had paid as he did originally it would have sweetened the pill a little, but he had revealed a tightfisted streak that had not been apparent before. A group painting of the Civil Guard would be the last thing Ludolf would want on his wall.