I Am Rembrandt's Daughter (3 page)

“What a storm!” Titus wipes his face with his arm
.

I see the tracks his wet stockings have left on the wood floor. Moeder won’t like that
.

“Titus,” Vader says, “come here and put your hand in front of this lamp.”

Titus raises his brows at me, shrugs, then squats next to me. He holds his hand before the light. “What is wrong?” he whispers to me
.

Vader goes back to his desk. “Titus, move your hand to the left.”

Titus does what Vader says. He makes a face only I can see as Vader sketches over finished parts of his drawing, his sleeve flapping, flapping
.

Vader stops drawing, runs to Titus, and grabs his face. “You!” he says, kissing him on both cheeks. “You gave me the heart of the picture! The light of God shining unto Peter. It shines through the maid, making her hand transparent! Brilliant! Brilliant! Son, what would I do without you?”

Titus laughs
.

I crawl back to the corner, forgotten. Better that, than to be shouted at
.

Later, when the painting is finished, Moeder tells me it is a picture of St. Peter, at the moment he said he did not know Jesus for the third time. But my care is for the maid in the picture, holding the lamp up to Peter. You can see into her hand, like I had seen into my own. You can see the bones of the secret stranger hiding inside. Why doesn’t it bother people that their insides don’t match their outsides? It bothers me. I don’t sleep that night, afraid that my insides will come crawling out
.

Chapter
3

Almost three months have passed since the terrible announcement of Titus’s engagement, and now, on this, the most doleful of occasions, Titus’s wedding, my own feet betray me. The rotten traitors wish to skip under my good dress. It is the happy call of viol and lute, the whinny of the bagpipe—my stupid feet can hardly resist it. Even as the damp late-February wind nips at my hands and face, my feet want to behave like idiots as we march in the torchlight from the church to the bride’s house. No one else dances. All around me I hear the muted patter of soft leather against cobblestone and the somber jingle of gold chains and jeweled belts—the sounds of rich people walking. When the people from our neighborhood march to a wedding feast, they clatter merrily along in their wooden
clompen
and cough.

I look over my shoulder to make sure Vader is not dancing like a peasant. Miraculously, he is not, though he is grinning like a simpleton. Of course, he’s grinning. He has married his son well and now he thinks Titus will help him with expenses. Who gave Titus life? he’ll argue. From whom did Titus inherit his irresistible coppery curls? His charming smile? He will not mention Titus’s slightly bulbous nose, a neater version of his own spongy affair. At least I did not inherit that.

I squint ahead, seeking out the bride and groom. Magdalena is easy to find—the diamonds in her white-blond hair wink in the bobbing torchlight; the gold cloth collar and cuffs of her garnet robe shine. But it is not this finery that holds my gaze. What does are Titus’s long fingers, wrapped around her delicate hand.

My face burns from the cold by the time we reach the Apple Market. On the other side of the market, across the Singel, which reeks of fish, Magdalena’s house, called the House of the Gilded Scales, seems to blaze before us, its fire made double by the reflection of the windows on the black water of the canal. They must be burning a fortune in candles in there.

Vader nods at someone as we march over the wooden drawbridge to the house. I look through the crowd and see a wispy young man in a large hat, Gerrit van Uylenburgh, nodding back. I have seen Gerrit van Uylenburgh before, when I have been out with Titus. He is a well-known art dealer in Amsterdam. He is also a cousin to Titus, through Titus’s mother, and Titus’s pretty new wife is Gerrit van Uylenburgh’s cousin, too. All so cozy, so very
gezellig
. The old tie to the van Uylenburghs that had been cut when Vader couldn’t keep his hands off his maid—my mother—has been knotted again.

I follow Vader into Magdalena’s house, ducking under the golden fish-shaped sign that swings above the door. Everyone blinks as we tumble from the dark into the great hall. Mirrors cover every wall, making the light from the bristling chandeliers painful to the eyes. Like everyone else, I clap blindly as Titus and Magdalena take their places on their wedding thrones canopied with a thick red-and-gold Turkey carpet. When I can see, I study Magdalena’s pale hazel cat’s eyes, her silky silver-blond hair, those high, wide cheekbones, that pointed little chin. I will never be that beautiful.

I hate her.

The viol and pipes quicken their tune. The jingle of gold deafens as the guests begin to clap. Though Vader has no gold chains to rattle, his grin grows wild. He puts his arm around the waist of the young woman next to him and leans to whisper in her ear. Oh, no, there he goes—fires burn in old houses. Please let him not embarrass Titus and me, not here, not now.

Since Magdalena’s vader is dead, her cousin Gerrit comes forth with the double wedding goblet. The music builds to a screeching frenzy as bride and groom lean forward in their thrones to drink wine from great twin cups that swivel up from a connecting joint of silver. Titus gulps while Magdalena sips slowly, under protest, though both must drink every drop if they are to have good luck in their life together.

I feel someone watching me in the crowd of perfumed well-wishers. Someone must have figured out I am Titus’s ill-starred half sister. Cringing, I look toward the source and find a boy just older than I, watching me with his mouth slightly open. He looks away fast, not wanting to make a connection with the likes of me, so I stare back, daring him to look me in the eye. But as I study him in cold defiance, I notice his clear blue eyes. They are the very color of the irises that grow at the river’s edge. And his spun-gold hair—see how sweetly the curls catch on the linen of his collar. His light brown lashes are as long as a girl’s, though he is most definitely not a girl, not with those shoulders, not with those hands, and his upper lip is slightly fuller than the lower—

What am I doing, staring down such a boy like this? But before I can look away, he returns my gaze.

He smiles.

Heat comes so fast to my cheeks that I nearly drop from light-headedness, though I have the quickness of mind to pretend that I am merely looking at someone behind him—an old woman, it just so happens, whose chins are laid like a pale pudding upon the platter of her wagon-wheel ruff. Still smiling, he raises a brow then turns to follow my intent gaze. The old woman glares at him with an intensity that would singe the feathers off a goose. He frowns at the floor.

I am grinning when my sights catch on something on the wall behind Titus and Magdalena, still tipping back their wine cups: life-size portraits of the newlyweds. I didn’t know Titus had asked Vader to paint their picture.

Then I see how smoothly the couple is painted, how there are no visible brushstrokes. Someone else has painted the wedding portrait of the great Rembrandt’s son.

I move to grab Vader before he sees.

Too late.

“Van der Helst!” Vader’s throaty voice cuts a swath through the squeal of the pipes as he elbows his way past gentlemen in their best black cassocks and ladies in their glossiest silks. His own dull doublet, layered over even older doublets for warmth, is stretched so tightly across his rounded shoulders that the seams pull. Why had I not thought to inspect his dress before we came? “Old Bartol van der Helst!” he exclaims. “His name is writ all over them!”

Magdalena pulls away sharply from her cup. The last of her wine spills out—three bloodred drops—and soaks into Titus’s white collar. She presses her fingers on the spots as if to make them disappear, then bursts into tears. Magdalena’s mother rushes to Magdalena; the bride throws herself into her mother’s arms. The bagpipe wheezes to a stop.

Oblivious to it all, Vader arrives at the painting, folds his arms over his barrel chest, and cranes forward to better judge the portrait of Titus. There are yellow paint spots on the back of his doublet. “A fair likeness,” he growls to himself. “A good one, most would think.”

Five ladies in black gowns glossy as a rook’s wing gather around Magdalena and her mother, patting the injured parties’ backs. Guests lean together and whisper as Titus pulls on his collar to see what damage has been done. I slip a sickened glance at the handsome blond boy. He is staring at Vader with the rest of them.

Gerrit van Uylenburgh, more hat than man, steps in front of Vader. “Now look here, Rembrandt, the girl wanted their portraits done, and she wanted the most modern painter, that’s all. Must you spoil her happiness on her wedding day?”

Golden chains clank as people shift uncomfortably; someone clears his throat. A sharp note rips from the viol as the fiddler drops his bow. Now Vader sees Magdalena clutching Titus’s hand. He notes the glares shooting from the other guests. The crease that separates his brows deepens.

“I am sorry. I did not realize.”

He snatches off his cap and bows, first kissing Magdalena’s hand, then Titus’s, then kisses them both on the cheeks, Magdalena as stiff in his hands as an ivory doll. “Best wishes to you, my children. May your marriage be a long and happy one. Good night.”

“Don’t go, Papa,” says Titus.

Vader looks at Magdalena, and then at the angry relatives surrounding her. “Goodnight, my son.” He starts toward the door, his bandy legs carrying his stocky body in an old man’s shuffle. The guests shrink away from his path as if he has the tokens of the plague upon him.

The viol player taps out three beats and the pipes begin to wheeze.

“Papa!” Titus calls, then wildly scans the crowd. When he finds me, the desperation in his face makes me want to cry.
Help
, he mouths.

Vader opens the door. A wind rushes inside, lifting heavy skirts and capes and rattling the mirrors on the wall. I’ll not stop him.

Vader turns. When he meets Titus’s gaze, Titus gives him such a raw look of love that it splits my heart.

“Goodnight, Vader.”

One side of Vader’s mouth crooks into a pained curve. “Goodnight, son.”

He plunges into the night.

Magdalena’s mother smoothes her daughter’s hair. From under his large hat, Gerrit van Uylenburgh pours wine for two men wearing thick chains, while a man in a fur robe steps up and shakes Titus’s hand. Titus tears his gaze from the door.

The old woman with the pudding chins and ruff turns and narrows her watery eyes at me. A young man catches her staring, sees me, then slaps the buck next to him with the red gloves he’s holding. They smirk together. The handsome boy with the yellow curls takes it all in, frowning at me like he’s trying to figure something out. I don’t wait for him or anyone else to mock me. I slip through the crowd, my head pounding with shame.

Outside, the cold, fishy air bites my hot skin as I run down the brick sidewalk after Vader. I want to sink the boats rocking smugly on the Singel. Kick the rats scurrying in front of me. One night! Just one night! Why cannot Vader behave like everyone else just one night?

We tramp on through the dark streets, my anger not abating as we cross bridges and empty market squares, take turns down unfamiliar shadowy passages. I must keep Vader in view or lose my way, though the sight of his rounded back only fans my righteous fire. Narrower and narrower the streets become, until at last I recognize the neighborhood. A baby cries behind shuttered windows as we pass. Dogs bark. A woman shrieks from inside a dimly lit corner tavern. When the clouds scud from the moon to reveal triangular gabled rooftops crowded together like the broken teeth of a comb, I know we are almost home.

Inside the house, Vader lights a candle. He should not waste it. We can find our beds without it, enough milky moonlight is filtering through the windows.

Vader starts upstairs, though his bed is in the back room. Go to sleep, old candle waster. I head toward the kitchen, then remember with a jolt that I can now have Titus’s bed—no longer do I have to sleep on my pallet by the fire. I am not cheered by this as much as I thought I would be.

In the front room, I take off my good skirt and bodice, push back the curtain, and slide in my shift under the featherbags on the four-poster bed. They smell like Titus—salty and sweetly musty, with a touch of spicy smoke. His joshing laugh comes to my ears. I see his angel face.

I turn over, unable to get comfortable. Who is going to watch over me now that Titus is gone? Who is going to care two figs whether I come or whether I go?

The face of the handsome boy at the wedding floats into my mind. I sigh with happiness as I recall his smile when he saw me pretending to gaze at the old lady. He smiled at me,
me
, Cornelia, as if we had our own joke. I touch my face, with its cheekbones so like Moeder’s, its silly little nose. Could he actually think me pretty?

And then I see him watching Vader, after Vader acted like a fool and made Magdalena spill her wine.

Overhead, the floorboards creak. The old man is still wasting candles. Someone should make good use of the light, and since I cannot sleep, I can do some mending. I haven’t got a pair of stockings through which my big toe does not poke, and Vader is hardly going to pick up needle and thread.

Upstairs, a filmy shawl of moonlight rests on Vader’s bent back, illuminating the yellow paint spots on his doublet as he stands before the painting of the van Roops, a candle flickering near the canvas. Tijger squats at his feet. Vader makes no sign that he sees me before he steps to the painting with his tiniest brush, the one made of ten sable hairs—the likes of which I would sneak from his palette when I was little, to rub across my cheek.

“Lord, grant me peace!” Vader growls, ordering his dear friend God Almighty as if He were a sulky servant. “Grant me peace!”

In spite of my anger, the movement of Vader’s brush puts me in a spell. I don’t know how much time passes as Vader dots pinpoints of white around the baby’s eyes, softening them, softening them. At last, in the guttering light of the candle, something is happening. My mending slips from my hand as I lean forward, holding my breath. I can see it—the love flowing from the baby’s eyes. It is so calm, so pure, it fills me with rest.