The Golden Tulip (23 page)

When she saw
The Goddess of Spring
she thought it a beautiful painting and a splendid acquisition, and was not surprised when it replaced his favorite French painting in the banqueting hall. There was no doubt that Hendrick Visser was a painter of talent, but not even his Flora could supplant her particular fondness for a work by Pieter de Hooch, which hung in her dayroom exactly where she could gaze at it. It was a tranquil interior that reminded her so much of her childhood home that when Ludolf had brought it in she had asked for it to be hung in her apartment and he had agreed. The disadvantage was that he brought guests to see it, which meant she had to play the hostess, elaborately gowned and coiffured, either from her couch, if she was particularly weak that day, or from her chair, for the wasting illness afflicting her had drained away her energy, making it difficult for her to walk or stand for any length of time. She did fulfill her duties as hostess whenever possible; otherwise she remained in her apartment, which suited her and the husband who hated her.

He was coming! She knew his footsteps all too well. With an effort she raised herself and reached for the hand glass lying on the low table placed conveniently by her side. On it she had books, a decanter of fruit juice, an enameled casket that kept her bottles of physic out of sight and another, covered with embroidery, in which she kept her cosmetics. It was this casket that she would need.

Her hand glass showed her a face that had once been striking if not handsome, her brows thick and dark, as were her lashes, her eyes hazel with corn-colored lights and her chin prominent. Her illness had drawn purple shadows under her eyes and given a yellowish tinge to her skin, which had once been like alabaster, and drawn it tight over her facial bones until there was a skeletal look to her. Yet she must always be correctly painted and powdered for her own self-respect and not from any wish to please Ludolf. When she was too weak to apply her cosmetics, Neeltje, who was also her nurse, would apply them for her.

A touch of carmine on the lips! A dab of powder! Both were applied and the casket closed as he came into the room. He gave her his customary greeting. “How are you today, Amalia?”

“Much better, I think.” It was the lie he expected.

“Good.” He rubbed his big hands with the thick fingers in an exuberant manner, not because he was cheered by her answer, but through some happening that she knew he would soon disclose.

“Did you see anything you liked at the Visser studio?” She wished he would stop rubbing his hands. She always tried to avoid looking at them. They had done such dreadful, unspeakable things to her during the night hours when she had shared a marriage bed with him. If there could be any blessing in her illness it was that it had released her from Ludolf’s perpetual lust.

“I’ve bought four paintings. The artist is a most agreeable fellow. I’ve invited him to an evening of cards. One day soon my clerk shall send out invitations to a banquet. Visser, who is a widower, and his three daughters will be the guests of honor.”

She dreaded these banquets. However poorly she happened to feel, she had to attend, even for a little while, and to date she had always managed. What puzzled her was this sudden benevolence toward the artist. Ludolf never did anything unless it was for his own ends. “How many do you intend to invite?”

“Twenty-five to thirty. You may add whatever names you please to the list that my clerk will bring you.”

It was the usual procedure. Friendships made during her first marriage had fallen away and only a few faithful childhood friends still kept in close touch. Although they preferred to visit her on her own, they would come for her sake to the balls and banquets that he gave.

“You must have a new gown, Amalia.” He was striding about in his exhilarated mood, going to the window and back again. None could deny he had a good bearing.

“I have so many gowns.” She supposed some might argue that he was being generous, for he would be paying for it, and not many husbands were eager to subscribe to yet another expensive garment for a wife when her closet was already full of them. It was of no account that he had squandered her fortune on the house, his jewels and clothes, his carriages and sleighs and his stable of thoroughbred horses.

He dismissed her faint protest. “It doesn’t suit my rising position in society for you to be seen in the same gown twice over on a grand occasion. I’ll select the fabric to save you the exertion and the seamstress shall come tomorrow.”

She knew better than to argue further. “Whatever you say.” At least he had an eye for color and would choose a shade flattering to her present sallow complexion and graying hair. As for his social ambitions, she thought, as she had done often before, that he should have been born a Frenchman of quality, for Holland lacked those close-knit aristocratic circles that existed in France and he would have reveled in the pomp and ostentation that played no part in Dutch life. It made it all the stranger that he was now so secretive about any business that compelled him to travel to Paris. He never spoke of any invitations received there.

“When is your gaming session to be?”

“Next week. There’ll be only four of us playing. Visser and I played a few hands after supper last night. I could tell that he likes a serious game and I shall see that he gets it.”

That meant the stakes would be high. “Are you sure he can afford it? Artists are usually of moderate circumstances.”

“This fellow can. He has a well-built house and appears to keep a good table, although I suppose the best was put on for me, including the wine, which was excellent. Visser is also in a position to apprentice his eldest daughter to a Delft studio and the second is to follow shortly. What’s more, he has a hawk of an agent in de Hartog, who knows how to press up prices for his work.”

He was satisfied he had presented a convincing picture. Had he not known of Hendrick’s tendency to fall easily into debt, apparently controlled to a degree at the present time by Francesca and, according to his paid informant, frequently having to exist on a few wins at the tavern tables, he would have thought the Visser household to be on a solid financial foundation. It was his guess that Francesca had to look at every stiver and make it stretch far. All that would change for her in the future. She would want for nothing. At first the apprenticeship at Delft had seemed like a setback, but by the time she had finished his portrait even that obstacle to his pursuit of her should be eliminated.

Amalia’s mind had been put at rest by Ludolf’s assurance. It had been the mention of the artist’s daughters that had concerned her. Bankruptcy, with its attendant misery for the family, was all too often the fate of a painter and she did not want Hendrick Visser hastened toward it while under this roof.

As soon as Ludolf had left the apartment, Neeltje brought her tea on a tray, for she always needed something to revive her after being in her husband’s presence. Sometimes she wished she could find oblivion in alcohol, but she had never liked it in any form and when guests were present a juice resembling wine was always poured into her glass.

“How prompt you are, Neeltje,” Amalia said gratefully as the cup of fragrant China tea, sleved of its leaves, was handed to her.

“I try always to be prepared, ma’am.”

The exchange was a familiar little ritual that had evolved over the years.

Neeltje was in her forties, plain-featured with fading fair hair, always neat and spotless in her starched cap and apron, with large peasant hands that could be gentle when nursing and strong in supporting the frailness of an invalid when slow steps had to be taken from one room to another. She was a wonderful companion in every way and often Amalia would talk to her of days gone by and of her first husband, Stephanus, although Neeltje had never known him. Friends did occasionally mention him when on their own with her, but she had been widowed five years before marrying Ludolf and that had been over a decade ago.

It had been an arranged marriage with Stephanus, a widower and thrice her age, she only fifteen on her wedding day, but he had been good and kind. She had grown to love him, but it had not been love of the heady, romantic kind. That had passed her by entirely. Maybe that was why she had lost her head and allowed herself to be swept out of lonely widowhood by Ludolf, who had flattered her and wooed her and seduced her into marriage. Trusted friends had warned her, saying that nothing was known about this stranger who had been a sleeping partner in an admittedly reputable ship-brokering business and had only just made an appearance. She had replied that it was the death of his partner that had brought him home to Amsterdam from his travels securing business overseas. Why was it, then, they had countered, that nobody of their acquaintance in such circles knew of him? She had pointed out lightheartedly that the world was wide and Ludolf had confided to her that he made the best deals through quiet negotiations.

It had been a triumph for her when she met, and was able to present, two merchants who spoke highly of Ludolf, each of whom had met him in the New World. One had received vital supplies of gunpowder from him when none was available, and the other the replacement for a vessel wrecked beyond salvage. Later, when she was disillusioned and far wiser, she wondered if those two men had been bribed by Ludolf to make those statements, for neither of them had ever crossed her path again.

“There’s to be another banquet soon, Neeltje,” she said on a sigh.

“Then you must rest well beforehand, ma’am,” Neeltje replied solicitously.

Amalia smiled wryly to herself. She did little else to survive from day to day. The collapses she had endured had been frightening, but each time she had rallied, astounding her doctor. He explained it as her strength of will. What he did not suspect was that her elixir of life was a hatred of her husband that was equal to his own for her. Not even Neeltje guessed how it sustained her and was her strength. She knew she was living on extended time, but her vengeance would be if she could deny Ludolf the freedom from her that he wanted by outliving him!

T
HE NEXT DAY
in the parlor, Willem stared incredulously with a rise of anger at Hendrick. “You have done what?”

Hendrick was unperturbed. “Letting Francesca take the van Deventer commission was the only way I could get out of accepting it myself. I’m giving her the chance to earn some money for herself before she goes away, because I shall share with her whatever price you set on it. That’s generous of me, don’t you think?”

Furiously Willem shook the apprenticeship papers that he held. “These are signed and sealed stating she will start at Vermeer’s studio next month. She must be there!”

“Impossible,” Hendrick replied casually.

“Damnation to your folly. I gave up a lot of time to arrange all this! Do you imagine it was easy getting the Guild of St. Luke to grant Francesca three years to become a master instead of six? What’s more, the committee is prepared to consider only two if she should reach their expectations.”

“But you had that document of indenture.”

“That showed she had been trained in your studio from the age of twelve, but no work was displayed to the Guild of Amsterdam at what should have been the end of the apprenticeship span on her eighteenth birthday. The document was also queried because it was not written on parchment, but it was decided it would hold up legally, which is why the Committee eventually decided leniently in her favor. The strength of her sketches and the painting of her sisters did much to sway them in her favor.”

“What reason did you give for the switch of studios?”

“Circumstances!” Willem was glaring.

Hendrick did not probe. He suspected that neglect of tuition had tipped the scales. “That’s it, then.”

“What are you saying?” Willem looked as if he might explode. “I haven’t told you before, but Vermeer wasn’t enamored with the idea of having a pupil. I had to do a deal of talking about Francesca before he would consider taking her. Now that he has agreed, giving her a golden chance at moderate terms such as you’d never get anywhere else, you have to sabotage everything! Don’t you realize he could either sue you for her nonappearance or—worse still for her—take this opportunity, and be within his rights, to declare her indentures with him to be null and void! Where is she now?”

“Upstairs being fitted for new garments.”

“Send for her.”

Hendrick, as ever when knowing himself to be in the wrong, became belligerent. “I’m not having her upset by you in your present temper.”

“Then I’ll seek her out myself.”

Willem strode from the room and took the stairs two at a time. These upper regions were unknown to him, but he would shout for her. The landing branched curiously, as happened in so many Dutch houses, his own included, and another narrow staircase wound upward while a long corridor with closed doors lay to his right. Only the one at the end stood half open and from it came a buzz of female chatter.

“Francesca!”

There was a moment of surprised silence and then Francesca herself appeared in the doorway attired in a gown of tawny velvet that was partly held together by white tacking stitches. Astonishment and amusement blended in her face at the sight of him. “Have you lost your way,
mijnheer
?” she asked with laughter in her voice.

“I have to speak to you. It’s most important.”

Her smile fled at the sternness of his request. She spoke to the seamstress in the sewing room and then left to go to her own room. “We can talk in here.”

In her bedchamber, on the cushioned bench, he explained the situation. “I can’t say what action—if any—Vermeer might make. He is an amiable man and might be persuaded to overlook a delay, although that’s impossible to guarantee.”

She sat very straight, absently lifting her left sleeve occasionally, for it was slipping away from its tacking at the shoulder. “Whether he would or would not is beside the point. An agreement has been made in good faith on both sides and not to abide to it is breaking one’s word. Similarly a bond has been agreed in my accepting van Deventer’s commission.”