He tilted it toward himself and popped the lid open, all while grinning jovially. It wasn’t hard to imagine he would be a congenial drinking companion. His warm eyes crinkled at the corner and his brown custard lips had something of a woman’s delicacy, curved as though he were about to laugh at someone else’s joke.
“Yes, that’s the pose. Let me frame out the general shape, and then we’ll focus on your face. At that point you can rest your arm. No, not yet, wait until I’ve finished this first sketch. I’ll get someone else to sit for the rest of the painting.” She had no idea how she would find the time and money for another model, but she would have to.
She painted quietly for some half an hour in the gray scrim of light from the rain-damp window. This was the dead coloring phase, where she roughed in the oval shape of his head, the broad but soft shoulders, and the growing paunch, all on top of the oil-bound, umber-tinted grounding she had prepared earlier. She glanced back and forth between his jovial face and the simple lines taking shape on her panel. As she mirrored the rightward tilt of his head into a leftward pose on her painting support and channeled the warmth from his smile into a charming grin, the familiar intimacy and protectiveness began to grow inside her. By seeing this man in a way that few others had, she was creating him again. A soft smile wafted across her lips as she painted.
“Go ahead and take a break,” she said.
Gerard stood and shook out his arms.
“That pipe of yours,” she said. “I think we should add it to the painting. Yes, that’s good, put it on the table there.” She stood, and picked up a floppy cap adorned with a long feather from the table. She held it out. “Do you mind? The curve of this feather will frame your face.”
“That’s fine,” he said, and replaced his worn black hat with her prop. He took a deep breath and looked at her. “I was only wondering. No, it’s foolish. But . . .this man you’re working for, he didn’t have a French accent, did he? Hideous nose?”
Judith sat down and finished swabbing at a line along the figure’s back before answering. The angle of his head was sharp, but otherwise she had a good outline. She wished she could talk about the beautiful painting she was going to make, not Lachine.
“He did. Do you know him?”
He froze. The color drained from his face, though his nose stayed a wan shade of red.
“I don’t think I can do this. I’m sorry, little lady.”
He stumbled over the stool he had been sitting on and moved toward the door. Judith shot up from her stool.
“Wait! Gerard, wait.” She touched a hand to his wrist. “Don’t rush out. Please, talk to me for a minute. I’ll stop the painting. But talk to me.”
He hesitated at the door, and his eyes flicked between the handle and her face.
“You have some drink?”
Judith nodded. She had taken a cask, half full, from the De Grebber kitchen. She knew they wouldn’t miss it, and she had suspected the drink would prove useful. She would pay Frans de Grebber back, someday, for all the kindnesses he had done to her, even those he didn’t know about. She poured the crimson liquid into Gerard’s tankard and held it near the stool he had sat on. He regarded her warily, then walked back to sit down again.
Gerard shook his head. “You don’t understand.”
“No, I don’t.” She sat on her stool, though she pulled it away from the panel so nothing stood in between them but the table. “What’s the harm in giving him your portrait?”
“You don’t understand,” he repeated. “That man, Lachine, you call him. He wants me killed.” His eyes widened in emphasis.
Judith blinked in surprise. “Killed?”
Gerard took a long sip. “It’s ugly business, I shouldn’t get into it with you. Though it’s been so long since anyone . . .”
“You can tell me,” she said softly.
Gerard puffed out his cheeks as he exhaled. “May as well, I guess. We work for the same man now. Maybe you know him, Paulus van Beresteyn? He’s a magistrate. I didn’t know Lachine worked for him when I signed on, and I wouldn’t have agreed to the work if I had, but then I didn’t want to do the work anyway. Paulus pressured me, you see. He knew things, er, about me, and I didn’t have a choice. You know?”
Judith didn’t see why a magistrate would stoop to blackmailing a drunkard, but she nodded in agreement anyway. She didn’t want to hurt his feelings, and it would be better for him to keep talking.
“So now me and Lachine are competing, you see, only I never meant to be in that spot. So now he wants to kill me.”
“Gerard, I can’t imagine anyone wanting to kill you.” Particularly not over some nonsense about working for the same prominent Haarlem gentleman.
He pressed his lips together and tapped his fingers on the tabletop. “I’m sure that’s what he wants. It’s the only thing that makes sense.”
“Did anyone tell you this?”
He took another sip. “Well, no.”
“Maybe he sees it differently than you do. And in any case, I don’t understand how a portrait would help him kill you.” She glanced at her own nascent portrait. It was going to be beautiful.
“Isn’t it obvious? So he can show the killers what I look like.”
“But you’re famous. Everyone knows what you look like. I hadn’t met you before last week, but I knew what you looked like. Or close enough. I don’t even make it to many of the Shrovetide celebrations. And obviously I can’t go into the rhetoricians’ club.”
She reached a hand toward him to close the distance between them. “I need this portrait. Please. It’s my chance at getting into the Guild. No one else would pay me nearly enough.”
He waved her plea away with a snap of the wrist, but he stayed seated. Outside, the rain pattered against the window.
“Gerard. It’s a portrait. A good one too. I promise. I can see that you’re a gentle man, and I’ll show that. Lachine will see it too.” She didn’t know what tension might run between the men, but surely that would dissipate when mediated by art.
He rubbed his chin with his hand, already spotted with age. “Hmm.”
“You’ve already been painted. So what’s one more? And then, there’s the fee . . .” A feeling that might have been guilt crept up from her gut and into her throat and fingertips. She wasn’t lying, but she was trying to convince him to stay. He would be glad to have the money, she told herself.
“Well, that’s true. Even the great Frans Hals painted me once. When I was younger.”
He rested his tankard on the pine table. “The Frenchman’s a demon, I tell you. But I won’t be the one to walk away from a lady in need.”
Judith exhaled and closed her eyes a moment. “Thank you, Gerard.” She smiled. “Let’s make the most of our time. No need to hold the tankard. Tilt your head as you did before. A little that way. Yes. And could you smile, as if you’re enjoying your wine?”
“I’d find that easier if you had some more wine to enjoy.” He gave the innocent smile of a wicked child.
Judith laughed. “You drank that quickly. But yes, of course.”
She poured him another cupful and set to painting rapidly, trying to catch the worn skin and lilting smile of her subject before the day faded. As her brush flew across the wood panel, her thoughts were consumed by color, shadow, and lines. She examined the arch of his eyebrows, like a bridge sweeping over a canal. But occasionally, when she paused, she wondered what Gerard had meant, and why Lachine would want to kill him. It could only be the fantasy of a drinker. Still, she wondered.
The light was dim when she stood back and regarded the completed first stage of the painting. On the panel, Gerard— no, Peeklhaering—cocked his head and grinned warmly at the viewer, his eyes crinkled in delight. He held a tankard, its lid flipped open to suggest he had taken a long pull, or was maybe contemplating its empty bottom. The setup was common enough, the merry drinker, but Judith was pleased with her execution, even in this earl
y stage. Enough delight in his expression to suggest the joy of drink, enough wear in his face to remind one of the perils of overindulgence. The lightness of the feather in his hat contrasted with the weight of the metal tankard. It was all a pleasant balance. She would still need someone to sit and let her finish the body, but she could find someone. Lachine should have no difficulty selling the painting.
After Gerard left, Judith closed the door behind him and then leaned against the workshop’s cool wall. The plaster seemed to infuse her thoughts with its blank white, and she exhaled. It was too late now to look for Abraham. Perhaps tomorrow. Though now, with the empty workshop surrounding her and begging to be filled with portraits and merrymaking scenes, she wasn’t sure his theft mattered. Or was it her brother she was willing to give up on? No, that wasn’t right. Everything mattered, she just needed the time for it all. She was tired, and she pushed herself away from the wall. Paint still clung to her brushes’ bristles, and she needed to scrape the palate clean. All that before returning to her room in the De Grebber house before dark. She had better hurry.
Chapter 11
AS SOON AS THE CHILLED dawn broke on Shrove Tuesday, the chorus of merry crowds bubbled and swelled until, by midday, the drinking, music, and laughter seemed to paint every surface of the De Grebber workshop. Maria stayed inside. She had no interest in those carnal pre-Lenten revelries, and would not expose herself to the drunken men roving the streets. Every time she walked outside now, she found herself nervously scrutinizing the crowds in search of the rough hands she remembered in her nightmares. Though she had not seen him yet, she was certain each time she left the house that she would. Today would be the worst day to be reminded of her defilement. Today she had to prepare her sacrifice.
The household had already burned through much of their supply of wood for the season, and Maria did not want to ask the servants to buy more. The request would get back to her father. Instead, she resolved to make do with peat fire and the scraps she could scavenge unnoticed from the diminished woodpile.
After the midday meal, her father and the apprentices went out to have a drink at the Illumination, a high-end tavern favored by many of the St. Luke’s Guild elite, in addition to a smattering of burgomeisters and wealthy merchants. Naturally, neither she nor Judith were invited. Judith had scurried off to her workshop. Maria had suggested they share some wine, but Judith said she was busy. Maria nodded and bit her lip. She would instead, in her friend’s absence, make the most of the quiet house.
Outside, drunken men hollered off-key songs and children tittered at the antics of a rommelpot player, whose hideous instrument shrieked and groaned as he pulled the stick through the pig-bladder drum. Maria closed the shutters over the window of the front room, which served as her father’s primary display space. The rain from the night before had now eased into an unseasonably clear day, and she was reluctant to shut out the precious sunlight. But she needed solitude in this room with the large fireplace.
She leaned her painting, with the cover still over it, against the wall, and then scattered a few sticks around the stack of peat disks glowing softly in the hearth. Even with the small peat fire, her breath fogged in the cold room. Maria paused, swallowed, and considered her next steps. She reached into the fireplace and tinkered with the position of a stick, moving it closer to the peat flame. She sat back on her heels, with her wool skirts pulled back from the hearth. After a minute, she got up to find more kindling.
When her nest of wood finally sparked into flame, Maria exhaled. This gift to God would be that much more meaningful for the effort entailed. She slid the cloth off her painting and held her work at arm’s length. A feeling of pride surged inside her. Instead of quelling it, like she might ordinarily, she reveled in her accomplishment. The woman’s nose still wasn’t quite right, but her eyes glowed with real warmth, and they were fixed upon the candle in her hand. Maria imagined she could feel that little flame’s burn, and she gave a strained smile.
The fireplace crackled and hissed, and Maria extended her painting into the flames. At first the flames seemed to hesitate, but after a moment they licked the corner of her wooden panel. The paint bubbled and smoked. An exploratory flame took root in the wood and flared with warmth. The impending destruction was agony. As if the flames were reaching into her chest to rip her pride from her heart and roast it alive. But she pushed her painting closer to the fire. More of it caught, and soon the entire upper edge of the panel hosted small, dancing lights. She released her hold.
Her heart contracted as she watched the consumption approach the woman’s crown of brown hair. She wished she had shown the painting to her father. He would never believe she was capable of such work. But no, she had to keep this painting private. Anything else would have been succumbing to temptation.
As the fire lapped at her paint and crept across the panel, Maria stood. She wrung her hands and paced in the large room. She couldn’t watch. A sharp scent, more pointed than the loamy smell of burning peat, filled the room. Maria tried to breathe through her mouth and looked around for distraction. A wooden chest holding dozens of her mother’s napkins and tablecloths hulked under the front window. Otherwise the plank floor was bare, save for the dusting of sand meant to keep it clean. Maria had been urging her father to update to a more fashionable surface, marble or even ceramic, especially for this, his display room, but he always cited the expense and brushed the suggestion away. At that moment, ten paintings of various sizes filled the room’s walls. She forgot herself and inhaled through the nose, and the painful smell of her disappearing art filled her nostrils. She lifted her hand to her nose and stared at one of her father’s paintings, a variation of Daniel with the lions. Lacking lions to model from, her father had relied on a set of etchings, so the resulting beasts looked stylized. But Maria liked it even more for the acknowledgment of artificiality. The grace in Daniel’s eyes and the confidence in his hands were palpable. Her brother Pieter, now in his thirties and running his own workshop, had served as a model for this one, and there was a freshness to his image that tugged at Maria’s heart. Or perhaps it was her father’s evident affection for the son he considered his artistic heir.
The fire popped behind her, but she forced herself to turn to the next piece, a commissioned portrait of a burgomeister that was already sold, obviously, but on display for a short time for advertising purposes. Her father had executed that piece quickly, for his subject had little time to sit for the portrait, but she thought it had come out well all the same. The lace around his neck glittered in an intricate pattern, and she could almost touch it.
A chill swirled around her ankles, and she shivered. She checked to ensure the window was tightly closed and turned to the fireplace. But the fire was extinguished. Using a stick, she poked at the embers, hoping to urge them back to life, but they glowed and then dulled to gray. Her painting was partially consumed, with only the crown of the woman’s head lost to the fire.
Her fingers shook, and her head swam as she stood up and began searching the room for a way to relight the fireplace. She was about to go find a lamp from which to borrow a flame when a certainty settled upon her. Her sacrifice had been rejected. There was no reason for the fire to have gone out: no draft, no damp wind. She wrapped her arms around her waist in a protective self-embrace. No, it had been God’s work. The fire’s stillness was a message, an indication that her sacrifice was insufficient. Or tainted, perhaps. Vanity and pride infused her effort too deeply for it to be meaningful.
Maria snatched the painted panel from the hearth, shook it clean, kicked the remaining charred sticks to the back of the fireplace, and ran upstairs to her loft bedroom. She stowed the painting in the small space under her clothes chest and sat on the chest’s polished top. Through the window she could see the striking celestial sky of the afternoon and hear the raucous celebrations below. Her throat tightened with shame and embarrassment, but she did not allow herself to cry. Instead, she bit her lip until it bled.<
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Later that afternoon, while the streets bubbled with the sound of good cheer, someone knocked at the door. Most of the house was empty, and Maria sat reciting her memorized prayers in her room. She would pray until the ache in her chest eased, however long that took, and she was willing to wear her fingertips bloody from the nubs on her rosary beads. The knock sounded again, so she closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and went to the door.
“Master De Grebber home?” asked the narrow-faced man. Maria recognized him as a messenger often used by Salomon de Bray, a painter and an officer in the St. Luke’s Guild. It was an unusual day for Guild business, and Maria fumbled for the right words.
“I’m back here,” her father called.
She escorted the man through the entry hall and up two steps into the room that served as her father’s sleeping quarters and sitting room. Carved doors concealed his large sleeping cabinet, and a small peat fire burned in the fireplace. Frans sat in a straight-backed chair with his stockinged feet propped on a foot warmer, a small wooden box containing a clay bowl and hot embers. He had picked up the habit of relying upon foot warmers from his wife. Maria did not know of any other man who indulged himself with what was considered a woman’s comfort, but her father was either oblivious or indifferent. He preferred being comfortable to correct, and sometimes she envied him.
“I’m sorry to interrupt, but Master Salomon de Bray wanted you to see the letter tonight. I understand you’ve already discussed it? He’d like your signature as soon as you can.”
Intrigued, Maria lingered in the doorway, her hand on the cool wall. Her father usually had little use for the Guild and was often at odds with them for their efforts to restrict his painting sales to approved channels. He scoffed at their rules and sold his work as he pleased, for the prices he pleased. But now he sat reading with his fingers pinching the bridge of his nose in concentration. The room was silent as they waited, and Maria could once again hear the muffled noise of laughter from the streets.
Light of Her Own Page 6
