Light of Her Own

by Callaghan, Carrie

  Maria blinked and tried to follow the argument, while a wave of fatigue pushed at her senses. She stifled a yawn.

  “All the way from Haarlem today,” Hendrikje said in a low voice as the men continued talking. “You must be exhausted.”

  “It wasn’t that long of a journey. Not too bad.”

  Hendrikje clicked her tongue. “You’ll never get an answer out of them, now that they’re off.” She waved her hand toward the men. “You’d better spend the night here. Unless you had other arrangements? I didn’t think so. We’ve got an extra room with a small sleeping space upstairs. It’s where Cloribus was staying, but I’ll put him in with Réne. We’ll get Anneke to change the linens for you.”

  “Is it always this crowded?”

  Hendrikje smiled. “Often. Jacob complains, of course, that he can’t get his scholarship done with all these visitors tramping through, but look at him. He adores the interaction. So yes, we’re used to guests. Don’t worry.”

  She left the room and, a few minutes later, reappeared in the doorway, where she waved at Maria to come over. Maria picked up her bag, nodded a silent farewell to the arguing men, and left. In the entry hall, Hendrikje picked up a candle.

  “I’m going to bed now, so I want to show you to your room. Don’t worry, I’ll break the news to Cloribus. He won’t be barging in on you. Do you want to sleep now? Or maybe you want to compose a letter for your family? Tell them that you arrived.”

  “Please. I hadn’t thought of that. I was so tired all I could think of was sleep.”

  “Let me show you up and get you settled in. I know Jacob has some paper he can give you.”

  Maria followed her hostess up the narrow, winding staircase. The upper level was completely dark, illuminated only by the flickering candle in Hendrikje’s small hand. When they reached the tiny room where Maria would be staying, Hendrikje lit an oil lamp and placed it on a small table in the room. She left Maria in the room while she went to get writing supplies, which she returned with some minutes later.

  “We can give it to the man who runs the regular Haarlem route in the morning. That line is typically reliable. Will you be going back downstairs tonight?”

  Maria regretted missing the men’s conversation, but she was too tired and, she suspected, not welcome among them now that Hendrikje was going to bed.

  “No, that’s all right. I’ll see you in the morning. Thank you for letting me stay.”

  Hendrikje patted her shoulder. “Our pleasure.”

  That night, Maria dreamt of colorful scarves, and when she woke, she had forgotten where she was. She had never woken in a bed that was not her own, and it had been years since she had spent a night without hearing Judith’s noisy breathing a few arm’s lengths away, even if they spent the day without seeing one another.

  The room was only a shade brighter than utter darkness, and outside her window, the sky was a felted gray. She regarded the view and tried to let the location settle in her mind. She could hear the rumble of voices below as the house roused itself for breakfast, so she pulled on her skirts, two shifts, and a quilted bodice for warmth. She hurried downstairs to join them, for she was famished.

  The Frenchman, Hendrikje, Jacob, and Anneke all sat around a table crowded with bread, cheese, small beer, and butter. Maria slid into an empty seat and tore off a chunk of the crumbly black bread. Jacob regarded her with a wry smile, but everyone focused on their meal and kept silent.

  When Anneke began to clear the serving dishes and leftovers from the heavy table, Jacob leaned back in his chair. He flicked a tongue over his teeth, and Hendrikje shook her head.

  “Your friend has flown the coop, so to speak,” he said. “Our good companion left this morning before sunrise, and without saying farewell. You must have scared him, Maria. We should have invited you sooner.”

  “He’s gone?” She glanced at the letter she had written, which now lay in her lap. She had said that the priest had the relic and would return it. She had not mentioned his misgivings; she had assumed he would find a way to return everything. “Do you know where he went?”

  Jacob shook his head. “No. Maybe he went home. Maybe not. He tends to wander. Are you thinking of pursuing him?”

  Hendrikje sighed loudly and stood to help Anneke with the dishes.

  “I don’t know. Should I?” Maria glanced back and forth between the men. Réne gave her a weak smile and shrugged; Jacob looked up at the plastered ceiling.

  “That’s for you to decide. I guess it depends on how important this relic is. A bit of bone? Doesn’t seem like much to me. But who am I to say? Cloribus might even be on his way to retrieve the thing and bring it back to you.”

  “Do you think? Did he leave a note?”

  “No, no note.” He pressed his shapely lips together. “Probably not. You’re right, he would have left a note. But listen.” His face grew serious. “The priest is a good man. I’ve known him since our travels in the Levant. I’m sure he’ll be in touch.”

  Hendrikje poked her head in from the scullery. “You’re welcome to stay here, if you want to wait. Or while you figure out what to do.”

  Réne extracted a small sheath of papers from his doublet pocket, flipped through them, and returned them to the pocket.

  “I’ll be here through tomorrow,” he said. “I return to Deventer then, but I could show you around here if you like. I spent some months here last year and know a few places. Including a house for Mass, if you’re interested.”

  Maria blinked in surprise to hear the forbidden Mass mentioned so openly. But then, the Frenchman had mentioned his rosary.

  “That would be nice. A look around, I mean.”

  “And Réne, help her deliver a letter please. To Arend Wichart, at the Hound’s Tavern,” Hendrikje called from around the corner. “Assuming you wrote one, Maria?”

  The courage to ask for yet another set of expensive writing supplies withered in her throat.

  “Yes, I guess I should send it. Thank you.”

  After waiting for Réne an hour while he did some writing in his room, Maria joined him for a walk in the gray, but almost warm, April morning. He took her past the imposing brick buildings of Leiden University, where knots of men in black robes bustled past them. They walked along one of the city’s large canals, and Réne pointed the other way, away from the city center. In the distance, the canal gave way to a quiet river.

  “You said you’re from a family of painters, yes? It’s too bad your timing is off. You’ve missed the miller’s son, a painter whom I’ve heard is quite good. Rembrandt van Rijn, his family name is for the river here, of course. He was here last year when I was, but now he’s off to Amsterdam. That’s where the future is for men of talent. Not this old dusty place.” He kicked a stone into the canal.

  “But I thought you were in Deventer now, not Amsterdam. Was I wrong?” Maria had no idea where Deventer was, but she wanted him to know she had been paying attention. It was the best she could do to solidify her presence. If Judith had been in her place, she would have reminded the scholar that she herself was a painter, not just from a family of painters.

  A man poled a punt up the canal, and Réne ignored her question.

  “Look,” he said, “the fortress. That hill, obviously, is man-made. No such rises around here, in this flat place. Is Haarlem so flat?”

  “Yes, I suppose so.” She wondered what land could look like if not flat, without the horizon stretching from fingertip to fingertip. They fell quiet as they walked, and she took a deep breath.

  “You didn’t hear Father Cloribus as he left this morning? Since he was in your room, I mean.”

  Réne gave her a crosswise look with his sharp, brown eyes, but the face under his wide hat remained impassive.

  “Certainly, I heard him moving around, if that’s what you mean. But I didn’t know he was leaving.”

  “Of course.” She caught her reflection in the mullioned windows as she passed
, and she was surprised by how fatigued she looked. Or perhaps that was her imagination working on her image as it flickered by.

  “I would have said something.” Réne lifted his nose and did not look at her.

  When they arrived at Hooglandse Kerk, a large cathedral with a pair of narrow turrets rising up beside the glass windows, presumably once ornate and glowing with colors but now clear in the old gothic frames. Maria asked if they could step inside. She knew the building was no longer consecrated, not in any way that was meaningful to her, and it would have little holy feeling to it. The Reformed Church had done away with the comforts of a sanctified interior, as her mother used to put it. But she still enjoyed the sense of entering a space separate from the busy world. A house built to honor God.

  “They dedicated this one to St. Pancras,” Réne said when they were inside the cavernous, white space. His voice bounced from the bare floors to the ribbed ceiling, even though he spoke in a low tone. She wondered what the cathedral would have looked like with carved benches and rich tapestries. A painted altarpiece at the front.

  “Pancras, the child martyr,” she said.

  “That’s right. Maria, would you wish such a thing for your son, once you become a mother?”

  The question startled her, and she looked over at him, but he must have meant it to be rhetorical, for he had stepped away.

  “Réne,” she called quietly. “I think I’ll stay here for a while. I can find my way back to the house.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.”

  He nodded, as if he understood the need for contemplation. “I can post your letter, if you like.”

  “Yes, please. I had forgotten.” She inwardly grimaced at the lie; she had still been debating whether or not to revise the missive. But she wasn’t sure what else she would say. She handed him the letter.

  When he left, she sought out one of the chairs lined up along the side. The side chapels were empty, but the light filtering through the leaded windows gave the space a soft, quiet glow like the brush of feathers against her cheek. She sat and considered her hand, turning it one way and then the other as she imagined painting it in this gentle light.

  “You are looking for something, aren’t you?” asked a woman standing next to her. She had silver hair, which was wrapped in a long coil under her cambric cap, and a smooth, broad-cheeked face.

  Maria placed her hand in her lap. “No, just looking.”

  “That’s not what I meant.” The woman closed her eyes briefly. “I mean inside. Inside you, you are searching for something.” She paused and looked at Maria. Her eyes were clear and, Maria thought, kind. “You have a purity, yes, but also a darkness. A question. I’m right, aren’t I?”

  Maria frowned and said nothing.

  “I’m in the business of helping people find what they want,” the woman said. She stepped back to look up at the window. “To find God’s wishes. I protect purity.”

  “What do you mean?” She stepped closer again and picked up Maria’s hand to cradle it between her own. “I think you know, my dear. Let’s talk. But not here. Think about what you want, Maria. And meet me tomorrow morning by the Groenmarkt. Canal side. Don’t worry, it’s safe, there are people about. And we can talk. You’ll see.” She smiled, a soft, knowing smile that made Maria’s chest constrict. “My name’s Sara,” she said before walking away. Maria stood and wanted to call out after her, to ask how Sara knew her name, but she didn’t. She didn’t dare make such a loud noise in the merciless space. She sat back down and watched the sunlight flash over the woman as she walked between the bright pools cast by the clear windows and then out the church’s large door.

  Chapter 18

  MARIA APPROACHED THE MORNING MARKET at the convergence of Leiden’s river and canals, and she didn’t slow her pace. She walked past the peasant women crouching on the ground next to baskets of onions or leeks, and she wove her way through the knot of children laughing at a farmer doing an impromptu puppet show with his cabbages. A goat stood tethered to a small wagon, and a little boy fed the animal carrot tops. The market took up the open space along the quayside patio, but it wasn’t as large as Haarlem’s open central square. Maria knew it was folly to agree to meet the silver-haired woman, and she hadn’t said a word about the meeting to her hosts. She was returning to Haarlem, she’d told them, and that was probably what she would do. But she had to walk through the market once, to satisfy her curiosity.

  At the far end of the market, the Rijn River swept toward her and under a bridge to run through town, to her left. A five-story white building stood looming over the riverside, and a couple stood laughing in front of it. Maria was about to turn to the left, toward town and the gate where she would meet the carriage, when she noticed a white-haired woman lying on her stomach at the quay’s edge. Her arms reached down into the river. With a snap of her wrists, the woman snatched up a basket that had been bobbing in the water. She placed the small basket up by her hips and slowly pulled herself up to sit.

  Maria approached. Sara partially eased off the top of the basket, which was the width of a dinner plate. She glanced cautiously at Maria before craning her neck to look inside. Then Sara smiled and lifted away the top. She pulled out a tiny, sopping wet kitten.

  Maria kneeled down beside Sara and raised a finger to touch the kitten’s light brown fur. The creature gave a tiny mew and blinked its terrified eyes at her, but it held still in Sara’s palms.

  “What children will do for amusement,” Sara said. She held the kitten to her breast and used the square of white apron cloth on her skirt to towel the animal dry. “I’m sorry I wasn’t on the canal side, as I’d promised. But I saw the boy drop the basket in, and I had to catch it.”

  “What will you do with him?” The kitten seemed too small to survive in the streets.

  Sara furrowed her eyebrows and regarded Maria with blue eyes the color of tile paintings. “He’s coming with us.” She stood. With one hand she held the kitten, now purring, close to her breast, and with the other, she took Maria’s elbow and led her away from the market.

  “I’ll answer your questions,” she said as they walked down a street lined with brick buildings. “First, I knew your name from the other man. I have a sense for people, and you have a glow to your expression that is rare. But I won’t claim any witchery for knowing thoughts or the like. Second, you should come with me because there is nothing better you can do. I don’t mean that you have nothing to do, I wouldn’t presume to know that. But rather that I know that my work, our healing work, will bring you its own healing. Only giving of yourself can heal a wound. You have wounds—don’t worry, I won’t ask. I don’t need to. Everyone does. But God has suggested to you a way to heal yours. Despite these wounds, you have a certain purity.”

  They crossed a cobblestone lane and passed under a brick archway. Around them, men in long black robes argued or rushed from building to building.

  “The university?” Maria asked.

  “Yes,” Sara said. “I thought you should see this. What men’s learning brings them to. And how it differs from our learning.”

  Maria raised an eyebrow but said nothing. Still, Sara must have noticed, for she stopped walking and held out the kitten.

  “What is this?” Sara raised both eyebrows.

  “A cat.” Maria ran her finger down the kitten’s nose and over the dome of his head. He closed his eyes in pleasure.

  Sara shook her head. “That’s what these men would say.” Two young men with red pimples around their nascent beards walked past, and they laughed nervously at the women. “Try again.”

  “A baby cat? An animal?” Maria wanted to guess Sara’s meaning, but she felt like she did when her father would call her to an easel to critique an apprentice’s painting. She would look at the bend of an elbow or the shadow under an eye, and she’d know he sought a particular response, but her mind flailed in dark confusion. What seemed a flaw to her might be a strength
to him, and she didn’t want to disappoint.

  “No. A life. A spark of life. Though these fools might argue that the kitten is an animated machine, and I’ve heard their natural philosophers say as much, you know better. Look at him.” Sara held the pink nose and wide, golden eyes close to Maria’s face. “This kitten is feeling something.” She wrapped the animal back into the fold of her apron, against her chest. She resumed walking deeper into the university. From behind, the silver of her hair and the white of her cap seemed to melt into a single luminous halo.

  Maria hurried after her.

  “Is it animals you heal then? People?”

  “I do what I can, where I am needed.”

  To be needed. The words settled into an opening in Maria’s chest, and her shoulders melted down, away from her neck. Farther down the pathway, a woman in a simple brown dress stepped out of a building with a basket of laundry balanced at her hip. There were very few women around, Maria realized. She crossed her arms over her chest.

  “How do you know where to go?” Maria asked.

  Sara glanced at her as they walked. “I don’t, my dear. We have to find where people are hurting. But in truth, it’s usually not hard.”

  They walked in silence for a few minutes. They passed an open window, where a man’s voice rolled through the round sounds of Latin while he lectured to the students seated around him.

  “I wish I could attend classes here,” Maria said. “They have a world to take apart, piece by piece, and see how it works.”

  Sara said nothing but nuzzled the kitten against her chin. The apron bib fell back down against her skirt.

  “I’m leaving this afternoon before the town gates close. I would love to have you join me, Maria. But I recognize that I know nothing of what I’d be asking you to leave. Do you have a family here? You have a gift to share—you might not believe me, but I can see it. Still I don’t want to ask you to sacrifice your care of your children.”