She must have drifted back to sleep because when she opened her eyes again, Sara was sitting at the edge of the wagon brushing her long white hair. With a deft twist, she wrapped it up and tucked the coil under her cap. She cleared her throat.
“It’s an important day for us,” Sara said without turning around. “Are you ready?”
Maria pulled herself into a seated position and stretched her arms toward the sky.
“Yes. I want to help.” She did. Now, it was all she wanted. More than nourishment, more than comfort.
“Good. We have to be careful. Especially you.” Sara turned around and reached out to brush the back of her thumb against Maria’s knee. “A city like that begs to consume you.” She waved her hand toward the city on the horizon, with its stone wall and the tufts of its early green trees.
“Then why are we going?”
Sara leaned forward. “Because it’s there that they need us the most.”
When Sara climbed down, Maria hurried to pull her clothes on before anyone from the surrounding wagons started walking around. Then she and Sara ate a quick meal before stepping back up into the wagon. The kermis—the festival— started in Den Haag at half an hour past midday today. And they had to get there quickly to secure a spot for Sara’s small stand. But before spurring the mule into motion, both women prayed a single decade of the rosary with their lips moving silently in the hazy light and the beads clicking through their fingers. Sara was Catholic too, or at least that was how she labeled herself. They had only attended one Mass in the weeks since Maria left Leiden with her. Maria hoped to find a Mass and confession in Den Haag, but she suspected that, for Sara, such ceremony was missing the point.
When she first joined Sara, she had hopes of finding Father Cloribus and the artifact. Sara knew the hidden eddies of Catholicism in Holland, she had told Maria as they pulled away from Leiden. And they had searched for a week. But each village turned up nothing more than its own concealed priest or crumbling monastery, and Maria told Sara not to trouble herself. She would find the relic in God’s time. That night, Maria cast into the campfire a letter she had written to her father to explain her prolonged absence. There was nothing, now, to say. With Sara, she had found the sacrifice God had been asking of her.
They finished their prayers and snapped the mule into motion, joining the stream of wagons and people on foot, mostly peasants from nearby villages entering the royal city of Den Haag for the week’s festivities. Maria wondered if any of the nobility from the court would wander through the kermis. She and Sara had attended another, surely much smaller, kermis the week prior, and it was so raucous and chaotic that she had a difficult time imagining someone of noble blood deigning to participate. But Sara had assured her when the kermis arrived, no one was immune to the celebration’s siren song.
“I’d like to attend Mass while we’re here,” Maria said with a quick glance at her companion, who was sitting next to her on the high bench. “It’s been so long.”
“Has it?” Sara’s voice was distant as if she weren’t paying attention. The cart hit a bump, and they jostled into one another. Sara glanced back at the wagon’s contents. Maria turned around too and saw the tawny kitten still tucked neatly into the nest of blankets Sara had made for him. The mule twisted her head as she worked against the bit in her mouth, and Sara tugged the reins.
“Yes. Too long.”
“This matters to you?” Now Sara was certainly paying attention, and her sharp gaze made Maria wrap her arms around herself as if that were an explanation.
“It does matter. It’s what we do, right? We need to go to Mass to stay in the Lord’s good graces. Or to show we are good.”
“That seems weak proof of goodness to me. But if it’s important to you, I’ll help you find one. Unless attending the Reformed service is good enough?”
Maria furrowed her brow and looked at Sara, who kept her eyes on the mule. She wondered if Sara was posing some sort of test to her.
“We are Catholic. That service is a parody.” She tried not to sound petulant.
Sara’s full lips curved in a soft smile. “If you say so. I wonder why the name of a thing is so important.”
“It’s not simply a name.” Maria strained to keep her tone even. “It’s who we are.”
“And without these names and traditions, we wouldn’t know how to be?”
“Probably.” Maria clenched her jaw in frustration. She had not expected her request to prompt so much conversation, and she felt unable to explain herself. The Church’s traditions were braided into her being, deep inside her chest, and she needed to honor those traditions to be herself. But she could not find the words. “I need to go to Mass. That’s all there is to it.”
“Yes, yes.” Sara patted Maria’s hand with her long, soft fingers. The gesture reminded Maria of her dream, and she wrapped her arms more tightly around herself and turned to watch the crowd as it accumulated along the road. She searched for any ragged children bearing the tell-tale signs of leprosy. Lepers were the only children Maria had ever seen Sara offer her services to for free, though the woman had certainly dropped a coin or two in a shivering hand. Maria was not sure if she wanted to see any of the bandaged children, but there were none along the crowded road. The royal town authorities would have rounded up any strays before the kermis. Presumably, people could not enjoy themselves when faced with the disease.
Sara found a space for their stand along one of the roads leading away from Den Haag’s central square and its small, still lake. Pond, really. Nothing like the wind-stirred sea at Haarlem’s shores, certainly only a fraction of the size. Den Haag in general was more composed than any city she had been to, few that they were, and the buildings around Sara’s wooden stall were freshly painted and ornamented with green plants cascading from their window planters. The canals she saw had little odor, though Sara assured her the kermis would soon change that.
While Sara began arranging her bottles, small pots, and other wares, Maria sat back and tried to clear her thoughts. She needed confession. She felt the weight of her sins like a grime crusting her chest, but Sara had insisted it would have to wait. Until after the kermis was over. For now, she would have to do the purification herself. It was necessary, Sara had emphasized from the outset, that Maria be as pure as possible for their work together. For her part, Maria could be confident only of her virginity. No other cleanliness was certain to her, but she would not admit that to Sara. She had wanted so badly to leave her shameful failure in Leiden, and she wanted even more to be the pure soul Sara took her for. So she tried.
She closed her eyes and listened to the clink of the glass bottles as Sara arrayed them in a row at the top of her shelf, and the gentle shivering sound of glass against glass when the woman removed a stopper to sniff the contents. Only once did Sara snort and splash the remedy out upon the ground. Maria opened her eyes and wanted to ask what had soured, but the forbidding expression on Sara’s face as she hurried to pour new tinctures into the empty bottle silenced her. Sara moved too quickly for Maria to learn the recipes, except for one Sara had made a point to teach her, but she knew a few of the common ingredients: oil of olives, white lead, aniseed water, rainwater collected in a hollow stone, and others. And of course she knew a few of the more precious ingredients as well.
The bells tolled half an hour past midday, and the streets came to life, filling with animated revelers. Sara did brisk business selling her mixtures and charms, like a hollow walnut shell holding the head of a spider, intended to be worn close to the chest, or the small bones of a stranded whale tied together with a ribbon and infused in cinnamon water. People in fine clothes and those in tattered, dusty skirts came to whisper their ills in Sara’s ear. She would nod, think, and point them to the solution. Some customers she obviously recognized from previous visits, and they greeted her warmly. A few glanced Maria’s way and, when they did, she lowered her gaze to her hands.
The day wound on, and
the sounds of the kermis wafted through the streets. In the distance, one man was touting the ferocity of his caged wolf, and another was advertising for a group of glassblowers who traveled all the way from Bohemia. The men and women jostling by were cheerful and jubilant in the early stages of their drink. Someone closer to the center square was whistling a lively tune on a wooden flute, and a stringed hurdy-gurdy soon added its energetic accompaniment.
A woman with fine, spotless lace ornamenting her green silk sleeves approached the stand. She had a thin face, and Maria could see the azure veins running under the skin at the bridge of her nose, although she could not have been more than thirty. She laid a trembling hand upon Sara’s wrist and whispered into her ear. Sara nodded, whispered back, and nodded again. Then she looked at Maria.
Maria didn’t know what ailment her special customers might have, but she knew what was needed to cure them. Sara and the frail woman whispered for another moment, and then they took a step back, as if offering Maria her stage. She stepped to the center of the stall. In a box on one of the side tables was a small glass bowl and a plain dagger. Its blade reflected the filtered light in the stall, covered by Sara’s crimson linen tent. Sara had insisted Maria wipe the blade with a wet cloth until it gave the light back to her.
Maria rolled up her sleeve to expose her forearm. Three scabbed and puffy lines marked her right arm, below the valley at the bend in her elbow. There were four, still covered, on her left arm.
Her hand trembled as she drew the blade across her flesh, but she managed the cut. It was smoother than the second time she had offered herself; then, she had known how it hurt but was not yet accustomed to the pain. Now, the little line of agony in her arm drew in the turmoil of the world around her, like a river’s wild waters finding boundary and calm in the carved earth of a canal. She sighed, and her breath came out softly scalloped along the edges. Blood rushed up and dripped down into the bowl. The cut was not deep, of course, and Sara only needed a small amount of virgin’s blood. Maria held her arm out and waited.
A small crowd had gathered to watch the spectacle, and when Maria eased the edge of the bowl along her skin to collect the last bit before bandaging herself, she looked out at them. She scanned their faces in a daze, only half wondering if her demonstration had moved anyone. Perhaps someone out there knew what it was to need to sacrifice, or someone else might recognize the deep sincerity of her penance.
There, among the curious heads bobbing about and trying to get a better look, was a young man with a full, oval face and curly dark blond hair. The bowl nearly dropped from her fingers. She set it on the table and stepped back to wrap up her arm and wipe the blade down. As she did, she snuck another glance. The man still stood there, a half smile below his elegant mustache, and Maria knew she was right in thinking she recognized him. It was Jan Miense Molenaer, a member of the Haarlem Guild. Maria had seen him at the workshop a few times when he had come to visit either her father or Judith. She hoped he had not recognized her—they had never exchanged a word. Surely he would not expect to find her here. But she could feel the pressure of his gaze.
The crowd dissipated, though one or two bought a few of the cheaper, bottled remedies, and Jan stayed. He smiled at Sara, who gave him a wary look, and he approached Maria.
“This is quite the surprise, Maria de Grebber.”
She gingerly pulled her blouse sleeve down over her arm.
“For both of us. Have you moved to Den Haag? Trying to be a court painter?” Maria had no idea if the stadtholder, Prince of Orange, was interested in court painters, but she had heard her father refer to such men elsewhere. She wanted this conversation to be about Jan.
He straightened his collar, buttoned at his throat, and gave another half smile.
“You’re flattering me. No, nothing so lofty. Don’t tell, but I’m hoping a dealer here will sell a few of my paintings during the kermis. And I wanted to see what there was to see. More than I had reckoned for, as it turns out.” He nodded his head toward her.
“Selling a painting here, and with a dealer no less, that’s asking to get caught. I know enough about Guild rules to know that.”
“And you know enough about your father’s notorious habit of scoffing those rules to know I’m not worried.” He shrugged. “We’re all trying to get by.”
Maria nodded, and they fell silent. She took a step back and thought he would leave. Instead, he suggested they visit the dances later.
“When you’re done, I mean.”
She blushed and looked over at Sara, who was staring vacantly out into the crowd but certainly listening.
“I can’t. Dances, that sort of merriment . . . It’s not appropriate. For this, I mean.” She blushed and wished she had not said anything.
“I didn’t mean anything by it. Nothing inappropriate. Don’t you want to see the sights?”
She did want to, but she shook her head.
“Very well. I’ll give your best to Judith.”
“No! I mean, I do wish her the best. But please, don’t mention to anyone that you’ve seen me. I—how do I put this—I want to be alone for a while.”
He brushed his sleeves down as if tidying himself for presentation. “This is a strange way of going about it. But that’s not my business. I’ll see you around, I suppose. Goodbye.” He gave her a farewell kiss on the cheek and disappeared back into the crowd flowing past.
No one else needed or met the threshold for Maria’s salve that day, so she sat quietly at the back of the stall and watched the kermis. A group of four girls, all likely on the cusp of courtship and marriage, walked from stall to stall. Two of them were engaged in animated, intense conversation, and the other two walked behind, keeping close with eager smiles on their faces, attentive to their ebullient friends. Maria watched the two following girls closely. She knew about that, smiling and waiting hopefully for the world to notice. That had been her life in her father’s house, she thought now. She looked at Sara, who had her eyes closed and her face upturned toward the tent ceiling. On their journey to Den Haag, she and Sara had passed a dog lying injured in the road. The creature could not get up, not even to get out of the way of the wagon, but still it wagged its tail hopefully, waiting for a rescue. Sara steered the mule around the dog without stopping. Neither of them said anything, but the dog’s pain pressed down upon them both.
The girls meandered into the distance, and Maria watched Sara sell her wares. She said little as she worked, merely listening to her customers, laying the occasional sympathetic hand on their wrists and forearms, and offering the necessary remedy. She must have had a reputation, for some customers sought out the stall, and their faces brightened with relief when they saw the white-haired Sara. Maria’s arm throbbed a little with warm pain.
That night they slept in the wagon alongside Sara’s most precious bottles and wares, which she had packaged up to protect from any revelers who would try to violate the curfew, which was in effect regardless of the kermis. Maria slept fitfully in the tepid air, her sleep punctuated by the voices of roving drunkards or the admonishments of the town guards. When dawn came, her head felt dipped in wax, heavy and obscured.
After the midday meal, which was a briny pickled herring purchased from another vendor, an old man with a slight stoop whispered to Sara, who soon nodded toward Maria. Her right arm was still tender, so she performed the ritual on her left. The man watched in grateful awe, and Maria smiled at him when she handed Sara the bowl.
Maria saw nothing of the kermis beyond the vicinity of Sara’s stall over the next two days. On the dawn of her fourth day there, her right arm woke her with a throbbing pain. Her forearm was suffused with warmth, and her sleeves felt shrunken and tight. She drank her small beer and ate her cheese, and she wondered if she should tell Sara. The heat grew, spreading from her arm over the rest of her body like dye running up fresh cloth. She stood up from her seat at the back of the stand and wobbled as the world filtered slowly by.
/> “You’re not well,” Sara said. She pressed her soft hand to Maria’s forehead. “An excess of heat.”
“I’m fine. It’s the weather.”
Sara clucked her tongue and pulled up Maria’s sleeves to examine her forearm. Small red lines shot away from the scarlet wound, like spider’s legs. Maria wondered if a spider salve would counteract the manifestation. Or perhaps something that would be the opposite of a spider. A fly or something else, like a gust of wind. No. Her head swam.
Sara led her back behind the stall to the cart.
“Rest here for a bit. I’ll get you something.”
“No. I can’t. They need me.” Maria tried to keep her voice from cracking. Sara patted her hand and walked away.
Maria laid back in the cart. Her arm was tender and taut, and she tried not to let anything touch it. Her vision throbbed in pace with her heart.
Somehow, this sacrifice was being rejected too. She opened her eyes and tried to make sense of the veil of white clouds above, and then she closed her eyes to hear the wash of the kermis crowds. She was doing something wrong. A deep sense of defect, like two pigments refusing to blend into one color in a paint, suffused her. Wrong. She had done something wrong.
Someone laughed in the distance, or perhaps very close, and Maria was conscious of her solitude. She felt caught behind a pane of glass alone to watch the kermis crowds delight in one another. She closed her eyes.
She must have slept, for when she opened her eyes again the sky had the savory hue of late afternoon. A poultice was wrapped to her arm and moving was agony. Every bit of her body ached. Slowly, she rolled over onto her side and pushed herself up. She could feel the blemish in her soul, the dark guilt that sucked in the light. Deeper than any black background she had painted and without the relief of an illuminated figure inside. She slid down from the wagon and winced when her feet hit the ground. She needed to find a priest. To beg God to forgive her for leaving her family and failing to find the relic, and to cleanse her soul of the grasping hands of that man in the Haarlem alley. And to forgive her for missing her friend so deeply when she knew her friend didn’t miss her. She needed the understanding granted by a solemn nodding head. God’s messenger.
Light of Her Own Page 15
