The Golden Tulip

by Rosalind Laker

  “I thank you, mejuffrouw, but no.” He unlocked the door of his room and went into it.

  Francesca and Clara drank two cups each of the tea. As always when Geetruyd was not present Clara chatted almost without drawing breath. She fired questions at Francesca about her time in Amsterdam and asked about the betrothal party. Francesca, who had expected this problem, immediately launched into a detailed description of Sybylla’s dress and style of hairdressing, by which time Clara’s interest had waned and she began recounting all the mundane little things that had happened during the period of Francesca’s absence. Her talk hopped from one subject to another and she returned again to Geetruyd’s attitude toward her when anything went wrong.

  “When the traveler who is staying here now arrived two days ago, Geetruyd became sharper than ever with me, because I can’t do anything to help at the present time. I don’t know why she bothers having any guests, except you, of course, Francesca, for it isn’t as if she needed the money. She has an income from some other source, but what it is I don’t know and wouldn’t dare ask.”

  “She certainly likes the best of everything,” Francesca said, thinking of the good wines, the food and the quality of Geetruyd’s clothes and footwear.

  Clara was enjoying herself. The opportunities for confidential chit-chat were normally denied her, as her benefactress’s long-held threat of sending her to an almshouse if she gossiped had always had the double effect of keeping her silent and making her fearful of having friends in case she made a slip of the tongue. The fact that Francesca lived under a similar shadow of possible incarceration for any indiscretion made Clara feel there was a bond between them and because of that she could speak freely.

  “I’m not stupid,” she stated rebelliously, “even if Geetruyd should think so. When I first came to live here she was filling the house with anybody who could afford to pay for a good bed and wholesome food, but it was still a struggle for her to make ends meet. We had to observe countless small economies. She even sold kitchen scraps to a pig breeder and woe betide me if I threw away as much as an apple pip. We didn’t live well in those days, but I made no complaint then and none now. She did what she could for me.” Clara lowered her voice conspiratorially, although there was nobody except Francesca to hear. “If Geetruyd only made a modest living with a house full of guests, how is she able to live well—even extravagantly—by letting a room occasionally?”

  “I think it proves your point that she has another income.”

  Clara looked triumphant. “Right! I believe Heer van Deventer made an investment for her when they met again after some years and now it’s paying off on a grand scale.”

  “Then why does she still have the inconvenience of lodgers in the house? Is it to maintain a front of genteel poverty?”

  “I suppose so, but there’s something else too. She likes to talk to them about their travels, however often they come. I think it’s because she’s never really been anywhere herself.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “She has told me. I once dared to say to her that it was indiscreet to stay talking to men on their own when she took in their meals. She pointed out that she always left the door slightly ajar and anyone could hear it was only an interesting and respectable interlude.”

  Francesca, remembering how Geetruyd had raised her voice on that one occasion, thought how at that hour Clara and Weintje were both in their beds and out of earshot. “Have you ever met any of those travelers?”

  “I’ve bidden them good day or good night, but nothing more.” Clara wanted to finish with that line of conversation, because she had a question pent up in her that she had long wanted to ask Francesca. She had never had a romance herself, although she had come near it once with a quiet-natured carpenter who had been repairing windows and replacing rotten shutters on the house. They used to talk, she indoors and he on his ladder outside. Then he made the mistake of bringing her a posy of flowers from his garden one day and asking her out. Geetruyd had dismissed him, saying his work was not good enough, and another carpenter had finished the tasks. As if that were not enough, Geetruyd had poured scorn on Clara that she, at the age of forty, should have behaved like a lovesick girl. The flowers had been tossed away by Geetruyd, who had failed to notice that one pansy had fallen to the floor. Clara had retrieved it and pressed it in her bible between two pieces of paper, where she had it still. The carpenter had died of lung trouble eighteen months later and it was her heartfelt regret that she had not been his wife to nurse him gently to the end. She felt that disappointment in love increased the bond between her and Francesca. “Were you very sad, Francesca, when you were banned from seeing Pieter van Doorne?”

  Francesca looked down, smiling inwardly. “That’s months ago now. So much has happened since.” There was only one way to stem any more such questions from Clara. She looked up again. “Has Geetruyd not told you what she must surely have heard from Ludolf van Deventer? It is that my father has promised me in marriage to him.”

  “That can’t be true!” Clara’s face had become a mask of almost panic-stricken dismay.

  “It is, and nobody wishes more than I that it was otherwise.”

  “But Geetruyd will go mad if she finds out! You must never let her know all the time you are staying here.” Clara was highly agitated. “She’s expecting to marry him herself!”

  Francesca stared at her incredulously, not through any question of why Geetruyd should wish to marry again, but because it was a revelation that the relationship between Ludolf and Geetruyd was close enough for the woman to have considered the possibility. “She is far more suited to him than I am, but how do you know her feelings?”

  “I know her so well that all the signs are clear. I remember her excitement when they met again after a number of years when he had been traveling abroad. After that it was never quite the same, maybe because he married someone else, but she loves money and he has plenty. It’s very important to her and recently, since he became a widower, she has let slip a word or two without realizing it that shows she doesn’t expect it to be long before she’s living away from here and in luxury.” All Clara’s agitation returned in full force. “So don’t, I beg you, tell of this marriage that has been arranged for you. She will make the rest of your time unbearable with every kind of pettiness. It is how she treats me whenever she is under strain or something has gone against her.”

  “What of you when I have left here?”

  Clara let her hands rise and fall meekly. “She needs me in the house, because she never likes to be wholly on her own.” She winced as she lowered her foot from the stool to the floor. “Would you help me to bed now, Francesca? I’m in such pain that it wearies me.”

  Francesca helped her hobble into a smaller and less used parlor where a temporary bed had been made up on a day couch to save her the extra stairs. They bade each other good night and Francesca went to her own room. It saddened her anew that Clara should lead such a bleak life. How often gentle people fell under the control of bullies, either in marriage or in business as well as in other spheres. In return they gave loyalty and sacrificed themselves.

  Before undressing, Francesca drew the face of the traveler, capturing his likeness in a minimum of lines before putting the drawing away with other work for the studio. She was in bed when she heard Weintje go up to her attic room. Not long after, Geetruyd came home. As Francesca had expected, she opened the door to look in on her and check that she had returned on the day arranged.

  “So you’re safely back from Amsterdam, Francesca. Did you bring me a letter from your father rescinding any of my rules of chaperonage?”

  “No.”

  “There! What did I tell you? He has your well-being totally at heart and knows, as I do, that a strict hand is all-important until a daughter is wed, whether or not there is a young man on the horizon. Now good night to you.”

  In the morning Weintje escorted Francesca to Mechelin Huis. The maidservant was very amiable and seeme
d to think she should reciprocate the good turn Francesca had done her by ignoring her dalliance the previous evening.

  “Now if there is any letter you want posted, or if there’s anyone you want to meet on your way to or from the studio, you can trust me not to say anything.”

  “That’s very obliging of you, Weintje, but—no.”

  “Well, remember what I’ve said. I’d have lost my free time indefinitely if you had told Vrouw Wolff about my beau.”

  “Are you going to marry him?”

  “He hasn’t asked me yet, but I’m hoping.”

  Jan and Catharina Vermeer welcomed Francesca back and the younger children were as excited to see her again as if she had been away for months. Jan looked through all her sketches with her and together they decided which she should extend into a painting. She returned to him the portrait of the unnamed model, and he took the “tronie” away to his gallery. Before restarting her own work she studied his painting of the local woman by the virginals and saw that during her absence he had completed only one small section of the heavy lace on the woman’s sleeve, but each precise stroke had been done meticulously to emphasize its silky texture. Then she cut a length from a roll of canvas for herself and began to thread it onto a wooden stretcher.

  With Clara still unable to walk, Weintje accompanied Francesca when she took her first opportunity to see Aletta a few days after her return to Delft. At the gates her sister turned a key in the lock to let her in, but shook her head at the maidservant.

  “I’m sorry, Weintje,” Aletta said, “but I have only gained permission to admit my sister and nobody else.”

  “That’s all right,” Weintje replied cheerfully. “I’ve friends at a farm only a quarter of a mile away. I’ll come back whenever Juffrouw Francesca wants me to be here.”

  It was agreed that she should return in three hours and she went off with an eager step. Francesca laced her arm in Aletta’s as they crossed the forecourt of the house together.

  “This is indeed a concession, Aletta. Is Constantijn being kinder toward you?”

  “He’s still extremely difficult,” Aletta admitted, “but he took notice when I said I would go into Delft for a whole day once a week to be with you if he didn’t permit me to offer you hospitality the next time you came. He can’t bear the thought of my being away from the house, because he is afraid that I won’t come back. He has also finally agreed to see his parents for the first time since he shut himself away here.”

  “I think you’re making progress.”

  “In some ways, although not in others. He still gets drunk as much to challenge me as to relieve boredom. I’ve looked everywhere in his apartment for his secret store of drink several times over, but always without success.”

  “Perhaps it’s in a neighboring room.”

  Aletta shook her head. “Nothing would make him go outside that sanctuary he has created for himself. Some of his friends—those with whom he used to hunt and race and sail—come regularly in twos and threes, hoping to see him. They climb onto the gates, enraging Josephus and the dogs, while they cup their hands around their mouths and shout to Constantijn to stop being a hermit and so forth. He doesn’t hear them, because his apartment is on the park side of the house, and it wouldn’t make any difference if he did. He gets irrational fears. One is that the most staunch and determined of his friends will one day get together and make a concentrated sortie on the house to get through to him.”

  “Is this likely?”

  “No. They would have done it already if that had been their motive. I think they come only to cheer him and to show that as far as they are concerned nothing has changed, hoping that eventually he will overcome his needless shame of his handicap.”

  “I like their attitude.”

  “So do I, although he is always ill at ease when he knows they’ve been at the gates. He sits with a spyglass to his eye like a seaman, scanning the park from the window. One night he roused the whole household with his shouting and ringing of his bell. When we arrived in his room he said his friends were coming with lanterns through the distant trees, but of course there was nothing to see. He’s done that twice since. Now I’ve told Sara to stay in her bed and only Josephus and I go to him.”

  “Is it when he has been drinking?”

  “It wasn’t the first time, but probably on the second and third occasions.”

  They had reached the kitchen. Sara had gone shopping in Delft and they could talk on their own. Aletta poured milk into two glasses and they ate a slice each of a newly baked open tart of dried apricots, raisins and apples with a topping of carameled almonds. Francesca handed over the gold bracelet from Aunt Janetje, and Aletta, delighted with it, tried it on at once.

  “It’s beautiful!” She held out her arm to admire it on her wrist. “Is yours the same?”

  “No.” Francesca displayed hers. “All three had different designs.”

  Aletta sighed with pleasure. “Aunt Janetje has always sent us lovely gifts.” Carefully she removed the bracelet from her wrist and put it away in its little casket. “I can’t wear it when I’m working.”

  “Is there ever a time in this house when you’re not working?”

  Aletta gave a little laugh. “Only when I’m sleeping. Now tell me all about home.”

  Francesca was uncertain whether or not to tell Aletta the whole wretched story when she had so many difficulties of her own to contend with, but her sister must know sooner or later and this was a time when they could be sure of being alone. She began with the good news that there was no deterioration in Hendrick’s hands and a description of Griet’s wedding, following with an account of the disastrous dinner party in Ludolf’s house, the revelation of the hold that evil man held over their father, the marriage contract Hendrick had been forced to sign and finally her reasons for not attending the betrothal party.

  Aletta’s shock and distress were severe. She exclaimed over such misfortune happening to both her father and her sister. “But—Pieter,” she said finally, “you—and—Pieter. Can’t he do something?”

  “I spent five wonderful days with him at Haarlem Huis,” Francesca told her, “and he has plans as to how this terrible situation can be averted.” She did not mention Italy. Aletta was so badly shaken it would have been cruel to add to her anxiety and grief by any suggestion they might be separated from each other for many years.

  When Constantijn’s bell rang, Aletta rose automatically from where she was sitting. “I’ll be back in a second,” she promised as she went from the kitchen.

  On her way to Constantijn’s room she could hear him playing the lute. Recently they had begun impromptu concerts together, she playing the clavichord in the anteroom and Constantijn the viol or the lute, both of which he played quite well. He also had a good singing voice, but so far he had only sung in her hearing when drunk.

  “Sit down and listen,” he said cheerfully as soon as she entered the room. “I’ve composed a new melody and I’ve jotted it down on paper. You can copy it out neatly later.”

  “My sister is here and I can’t leave her, but if I left both doors of the apartment open she could listen from the stairs while I am here.” She had said it all in one breath to stop any interruption.

  He frowned, not pleased. “How long is she staying?”

  “About another two hours.”

  There was a pause before he spoke again. “She must remain at the bottom of the flight.”

  “I’ll tell her.”

  In the reception hall Francesca stood by the newel post, hoping the music was proving a distraction to her sister, as the notes of the melody floated pleasingly down to her. When the last note was played she heard Aletta pick up the melody again on the clavichord and then the lute struck up once more in accompaniment through to the end.

  Upstairs Aletta rose from her seat at the clavichord and applauded Constantijn’s composition with enthusiasm. “Why not write some lyrics too?” she suggested eagerly. “The melody is ideal for
a love song.”

  “Is it?” he said bitterly. Before she could stop him he tore up the sheet of music he had written and crumpled the pieces into a ball, which he tossed fiercely out of the window.

  “I’m going downstairs to my sister,” she said quietly.

  Francesca saw at once by her face that something had happened. “Was I the cause?” she asked anxiously.

  Aletta shook her head. “No. There are a thousand ways to hurt him and I seem to blunder in on most of them. He threw his composition into the garden and I’m going outside to find it.”

  “I’ll come with you.”

  “No, wait here. I can judge whereabouts to look.”

  She found the pieces scattered in a rose bed and knelt on the earth until she had retrieved every one. She returned to the kitchen and talked quietly with Francesca until Weintje returned. Later, in her own room before going to bed, she put the scraps together painstakingly and copied out the music onto a fresh sheet of paper. When the ink was dry she put it away in a drawer with the bracelet from Aunt Janetje and a few other things she treasured.

  In spite of the shock and distress she had suffered so recently, sleep came soon, her last conscious thoughts being that Pieter van Doorne with his love and determination would surely save her sister from the life of misery with which she was threatened.

  Chapter 20

  WHEN THE DAY OF HEER AND VROUW DE VEERE’S VISIT ARRIVED, Constantijn insisted that Aletta stay in the room after admitting them. He had been morose ever since he had thrown his music out of the window, unpredictable in his whims and demands.

  “But they will want to talk to you privately,” she protested.

  “I want you to be present. Is that understood?”

  She had hoped to give his parents a little tactful advice when they arrived, but she had no chance. His mother rushed into the house and up to his apartment. There she promptly burst into tears at the sight of him, crying out that he was her poor helpless boy. As if that were not enough, her husband, obviously primed by her, tried to persuade him to come and live at their country house where he could receive the full care that he deserved.