The Golden Tulip

by Rosalind Laker

  It was a gloriously warm and sunny afternoon. The iris-blue sky seemed to sparkle about the variegated gabled rooftops as if it had garnered the iridescence of the city’s waterways. Linden trees, bright with vigorous green foliage, gave pleasing shade. With a tax imposed on width frontage, all the houses were tall and narrow, rising up through four, five and sometimes six floors to an attic, but each ran back a considerable length to a walled courtyard and occasionally a garden. A flagged passageway, incorporated into the side of many houses, gave access to these rear regions. Built usually of redbrick that was soon mellowed by time and with sandstone ornamentation, each house had above its top window a hoist jutting out like a claw, for with awkward corners and narrow staircases within there was no other means of getting furniture to the upper floors except by rope.

  A large cupboard was being hoisted to a fourth floor at one house as Hendrick and Francesca crossed a bridge. She paused briefly to watch it swinging suspended in the air before she darted forward to catch up with her father again. As she had expected, their progress was erratic. He could not pass any acquaintance without some conversation. If those persons were on the other side of the canal he would thunder his greetings across to them, making other people turn their heads to stare.

  Before long they came to a street corner where an old seaman with a crutch and a peg leg stood propped against a wall as he played a flute. His cap was on the ground and Hendrick threw a stiver into it.

  “Play us your merriest tune!”

  As the seaman obliged, Hendrick turned to Francesca and took her by the hand to lead her into a lively jig to the music of the flute, she followed the quite intricate steps he had taught her himself last St. Nicholaes’s Eve. Round and round on the cobbles they danced. A small crowd gathered. A few other people joined in and the seaman’s cap became agleam with coins. There was applause as Hendrick led Francesca away. She smiled at him joyously. Nobody else had a father who could turn the most ordinary outing into an occasion of drama and entertainment.

  They crossed a bridge over another canal and came into Breed-straat. Rembrandt’s home was an imposing residence topped by a steep gable, the double windows of the attic having once given light to the pupils’ studio, his being on the floor below. Hendrick, hammering on the door, supposed that this visit would be the last to this particular house, for Rembrandt was shortly to leave it, forced to by unhappy circumstances. Four years earlier, in desperate financial straits, Rembrandt had made an appeal for the liquidation of his property, thus saving himself in the nick of time from being declared a bankrupt. Legal procedures had enabled him to continue living in the house even after it was sold with all its contents by auction, but now time had run out and he was shortly to remove to a small and humbler dwelling.

  Hendrick knew it must be admitted that much of Rembrandt’s ill luck, apart from deep personal tragedies, was due to his extravagance and his failure to keep abreast with popular taste in painting. Hendrick was aware of being guilty himself on both counts, but a man could not change his nature. Although there was a warning in what had happened to a fellow artist, Hendrick was not unduly worried by it. He trusted to the generosity of Fate, which all through his life had rallied to him whenever a financial situation was particularly bleak. The natural optimism with which he was born had never yet deserted him.

  The door had opened, but Francesca, who had paused on the lowest step of the entrance flight, had her gaze riveted at the Veldhuis family home farther down the street, where both her mother and her aunt were born. They could remember Rembrandt’s late wife, Saskia, their ages twelve and ten respectively at the time of her death. But that thought was not in Francesca’s mind now. She had seen, although her father had failed to notice, that Aunt Janetje and the Florentine gentleman had just alighted from a coach and were entering the house together.

  “Who is this daydreaming on the steps?”

  With a start Francesca looked up at the door, where Juffrouw Stoffels, who kept house for Rembrandt and lived with him as his wife, was smiling at her in welcome, capable peasant hands clasped together.

  “It’s only me,” Francesca answered self-consciously. At any other time she would have responded more quickly to the little joke, but she had seen her aunt’s romance set still further on the course of marriage. Janetje would never have asked any ordinary stranger into her home for tea and those delicious little cakes that she made.

  “Come in, dear child. Why are you still standing out there when your papa is already indoors?” Round-faced with handsome dark eyes, warm-spirited, loving and maternal, Hendrickje Stoffels flung out her arms to the child. Francesca sprang up the steps into her embrace.

  “How are you today, ma’am?” Francesca inquired, remembering her manners as the door was shut after her. Her mother had explained that Rembrandt and Hendrickje would have married long ago if it had not meant that by some condition in Saskia’s will he would have forfeited a small allowance that at times had provided food for their table when otherwise there would have been none.

  “I’m very well, Francesca, even though moving from here means that there’s a lot to do.”

  Francesca had seen at once that the house was even more empty than the last time she had been here. The reception hall was completely bare, although the black and white marble tiles were as spotless as ever. She could see through the open door of the drawing room that everything was gone from there as well and she supposed it to be the same in the rest of the house. Yet she had been told that in his heyday Rembrandt had had over a hundred paintings on his walls, half of them by himself and many by his now well-known pupils.

  Rembrandt’s voice and her father’s echoed hollowly from the studio upstairs, magnified as sounds always are when a house ceases to be a home. Hendrickje, taking Francesca by the hand, led her up there.

  “Look who’s come to see you, Rembrandt.”

  In the studio, devoid of everything now except a large easel and a table with the usual conglomeration of artists’ materials, Rembrandt turned where he stood with her father. Clad in an old blue painting smock, a length of cloth wound into a flat turban about his head, his white hair as curly in his fifties as it had been in his youth, he smiled at the piquant beauty of the child holding out a book to him.

  “I thank you, Francesca,” he said, taking it from her.

  She in her turn thought that, in spite of the parting of his lips that lifted upward the ends of his narrow mustache, his whole life-ridden face was full of sadness. Perhaps he was remembering all the happy times he had had in this house that would never come again.

  “You may keep the book as long as you wish,” she said swiftly, wanting to cheer him. “Papa won’t mind.”

  “That’s most generous,” he replied appreciatively in his deep voice. “I may have to take my time over it, as I’m about to embark on a commissioned work.”

  “Shall you paint it here?”

  “No.” He cleared a space on the table and put the book down. “It’s far too large for me to paint in this studio or at my new abode. I’ve always been permitted to set up my large canvases in the Zuider Church and I shall paint there once again.”

  Hendrickje put a hand on Francesca’s shoulder. “Come down to the kitchen with me now and let the menfolk continue their talk.”

  Francesca accompanied her. “Is Cornelia here?” she asked hopefully. Hendrickje and Rembrandt’s daughter was only a year younger than she and they always enjoyed meeting.

  “No, she’s gone with Titus to the other house in Rozengracht, where we’re going to live. He’s putting up some shelves and getting a few things ready. He and I are business partners now, you know.”

  Titus, who was now nineteen, was the fourth and only surviving son of Rembrandt’s late wife, another boy and two girls not having lived more than a few weeks after their birth. Francesca liked him and thought of him almost as a brother, because one of his father’s portraits of him as a boy hung in the parlor of her home and she saw it every
day.

  “Are you going to have a shop there?” she questioned with interest.

  Hendrickje laughed. “Oh no! But together we are employing Rembrandt and paying him a wage. By that means he does not have to surrender his paintings to the Court of Insolvency. Now you shall try some of the pancakes I’ve been making and I’m sure your father would like a glass of my apple wine.”

  Francesca was reminded of two other people taking refreshment together. On the way home again she saw the coach was still waiting outside the Veldhuis house.

  FOR TEN DAYS nothing more was seen of Janetje. Then Francesca and Aletta arrived home from school in Maria’s care at the usual hour of noon to discover an air of excitement prevailing in the house. Anna, full of smiles, met them with the news.

  “Giovanni de Leone was here! As your father is Janetje’s most senior male relative, albeit by marriage, the Florentine asked him formally for her hand. The wedding is already arranged for next week.” She read the question in her eldest daughter’s deep green eyes. “I know it has all happened very quickly, but he is due to return home in a matter of days.”

  Aletta spoke up. “Where is Aunt Janetje now?”

  “Upstairs in the sewing room with a seamstress. Her betrothed has given her some beautiful Lyonese silk that he bought in Paris, not knowing then it would be for his bride’s wedding raiment.” Anna became aware that Francesca had neither moved nor spoken. She cupped her hand against the child’s pale face. “I believe you knew of this match before any of us. Papa told me you spoke of it on the very day they met. It won’t be any easier for Janetje to leave us than it will be for us to see her go. We must smooth the way for her.”

  Neither of them noticed that Maria, thinking that Anna and Francesca should be on their own together at this moment, had shepherded Aletta away with her. Francesca swallowed hard.

  “Will she be happy forever and ever with Signor de Leone?”

  Anna drew her daughter to a cushioned bench by the wall. “Love isn’t just being happy, Francesca. It’s more than that. It is the willing commitment of one’s whole heart to one person. That brings joy and ecstasy beyond measure and far ahead of your present understanding, but it can also bring pain and sorrow and the agony of being torn apart, not only by outside events but through the actions of the very two who care most for each other. Janetje will have special problems to face in going to a new country where another language is spoken, amid strangers and far from home.” Fondly she smoothed back an unruly curl from her daughter’s brow. “But true love can maintain its strength no matter what is hurled against it. I believe Janetje and Giovanni have found that kind of love for each other or else I would do everything in my power to prevent the marriage.”

  Francesca sensed, almost without being aware of it, that a great deal of what had been said had referred to her own parents’ relationship as much as to what lay in store for Janetje. “May I go up and see her?”

  Anna nodded. “She asked that you should go to her as soon as you came home.”

  As Francesca darted away upstairs, Anna went through the archway that led from the stair hall. When she entered the studio she was met by a strong odor of resin and animal glue with which, combined with ochre, Hendrick was preparing a canvas. He was whistling in high spirits, for after he had given his permission for Janetje to marry the Florentine a most generous offer had been forthcoming.

  “My future wife’s only reservation about leaving her homeland,” Giovanni had said in his limited Dutch, “is her concern for her sister and nieces through your present financial straits. I want her to be happy and for her sake I am willing to give you a fresh start and settle all your debts from whatever source if you care to present me with the figures.”

  “I’m overwhelmed!” Hendrick had exclaimed.

  “Do not thank me. I am doing it solely for Janetje’s peace of mind and on the condition that you will never approach either her or myself for any financial help in the future.”

  “You have my word!” Hendrick had declared.

  Anna, crossing the studio toward him, was grateful for Giovanni’s generosity, but she had no hope of Hendrick being able to keep out of debt for long, even though he was to be given a clean slate. She linked her arms around his neck and rested her head on his shoulder. With the jar of gluey mixture and the brush still in his hands, he folded his arms about her, knowing that the forthcoming break with her sister was already causing her enormous anguish.

  “I love you,” he said softly, putting his lips to her temple.

  She nodded. Had she not known that to be the truth she could never have borne the trials and tribulations that marriage to him had brought her. Slowly she turned her face up to his and immediately his hot, passionate mouth met its response in hers.

  Chapter 2

  ANNA SAVED EVERY ONE OF JANETJE’S LETTERS AND WROTE twice a year herself. With various wars raging around Holland’s peaceful borders the passage of mail was precarious and it was best to entrust it to a merchant or traveler known to be going to Florence. Heer Korver had contacts there and he always sent word to Anna when he knew of someone prepared to collect and deliver a letter. The marriage between her sister and Giovanni was proving to be a good one. Janetje, although assailed at times by homesickness, was content in her new life, much absorbed by her sons, one having arrived nine months after the wedding and the second a year later.

  Anna always had plenty of news to tell her sister, mostly domestic but including snippets about friends and neighbors that she knew would be of interest. Inevitably there were times when there were sad tidings to impart, and she shed tears that blotted the ink on the paper when she wrote that once again tragedy had struck Rembrandt in the death of Hendrickje Stoffels. He had aged noticeably afterward, but work still flowed from him and recently he had been commissioned to paint the likenesses of a mutual acquaintance and his betrothed after their marriage. It was not to be a pair of bridal portraits, which was usual and had been expected. Instead he intended to paint them side by side. When Anna called on him one day, bringing him one of her cakes and a basket of plums from the tree in the courtyard, he explained his reason when answering her inquiry as to whether he would be attending the wedding.

  “No, I’ll not be there,” he replied, biting into one of the juicy plums. “I don’t go anywhere socially these days. Work is my heartbeat. It’s my eating and my sleeping, my going out and my coming in. I’m an old man now, you know.”

  She was facing him on the bench by the open parlor window, where they sat in the sun, and she exclaimed in protest, for to her he seemed ageless. “No, Rembrandt, no! Nobody would ever think of you as an old man!”

  He smiled wryly. “That’s kind of you, but nowadays I often feel at least a hundred years old!”

  “You could come to the wedding with us. We’ll all be going.”

  “No, Anna. It’s thoughtful of you, just as it was to bring me cake and fruit today. But I don’t want to see the bridal couple on the wedding day. They’ll both be nervous and under strain. I want to create my first impression of them in their happiness when they have tasted the tender joys and sweet passion of love.” He looked toward the door with his eyes narrowed as if visualizing their entrance into his house. “Why should they be separated on individual canvases when their lives together are in first bloom. There are too many partings of lovers in this life. I’ll take no hand in that, even in paint.”

  She knew that Saskia and Hendrickje were in his thoughts. Two women quite different in character and from opposite backgrounds, but each had loved him and been loved, Saskia dying at thirty and Hendrickje only eight years older. She shivered as if a shadow had fallen across her path. He had noticed.

  “Is there a draft? Are you cold?” He would have closed the window, but she stayed him.

  “No! Please leave it. Somebody must have stepped on my grave.” Then she regretted her use of the old saying in a house that death had visited again only a while ago. He saw her dismay and leaned fo
rward to put his hand over hers and give it a friendly reassuring shake.

  “Whoever it was will have to wait a long time for that chance!” His tone was deliberately cheerful, gaining a little smile from her, even if her eyes did not quite echo it. He tried a change of subject. “How are your daughters progressing with their art? Is their father pleased with them?”

  Before replying she glanced out of the window to where Aletta and Sybylla were playing with Cornelia. Francesca was not with them, for she had left school on her twelfth birthday in January, the age when girls were expected to receive increased instruction at home in the field of domestic arts in preparation for marriage. Today Francesca was being entrusted with the planning and cooking of the noonday meal for the family and the dinner in the evening, something she had done with success a good number of times before. Anna returned her gaze to Rembrandt, unable to keep a note of maternal pride from her voice.

  “Hendrick continues to be astounded by Francesca’s artistic ability at her age. Aletta is also far better than average.” She gave a wry half smile as she took a different tone. “As for Sybylla, she likes to play at being a painter sometimes, but that’s the end of it, I fear. Unfortunately Hendrick doesn’t like to be beaten at anything he undertakes and continues to teach her with the two older girls, hoping to coax some minor gift for art out of her. It would be far better if he didn’t.” She was thinking of the tempestuous scenes that resulted. Normally she could take such uproars in her stride, but since she had become pregnant again her nerves were constantly on edge. Maybe when her violent attacks of morning sickness passed she would regain the strength that was now drained from her at the start of every day.