The Golden Tulip

by Rosalind Laker

  Carefully Francesca removed the remaining piece of tile, which dislodged another that was loose. She took that for good measure, not wanting it to fall by its own accord and draw attention to the gap that was presently out of sight from anywhere except the unlikely place where she was standing. Weintje would wash the whole of the fireplace once a week, as she did others in the house, whether the room was occupied or not, but Francesca had seen she only stretched her arm inside the various canopies and never looked closely at the tiles themselves. Some brick dust had fallen to the hearth. Francesca wiped it up carefully with her handkerchief, into which she also concealed the tiling. It made a bulky little package, but she went back upstairs and reached her own bedchamber safely. There she removed the paint rags from the aperture in her fireplace and deposited the tiles within, where they would never be seen again unless the canopy and the chimney breast were ever demolished. After shaking the brick dust in her handkerchief out the window, she knew she had removed all evidence of what she had done.

  Chapter 21

  WHEN PIETER LEFT DELFT AFTER SPENDING TWO WEEKS there, he felt he had laid good groundwork and also secured a small office in Kerkstraat where he could work on local projects while giving him a solid foothold in the town. As yet he had gleaned nothing of value to his assignment, but that would have been highly unlikely so early in his quest. During his stay he had spent every evening in the taproom of the Mechelin and had had no difficulty in getting himself known as a Haarlem man making ready to open up a new branch of his business locally. He had called on Vrouw Thin since she moved in wealthy circles and could establish him in another sphere of society. Unexpectedly, on her recommendation, he had gained two commissions for newly designed layouts of sizeable gardens. Both clients were wealthy men, but as yet he did not know where their political sympathies lay. All he could hope for was that sooner or later he would uncover something, however slight, that would set him on a trail.

  He went back to Amsterdam, intent on speaking to Neeltje again. Previously she had concentrated on anything that might help him protect Francesca, but in the light of the strange little incident Francesca had reported to him, he felt anything Geetruyd Wolff had written to Ludolf might be of some interest. It was a long shot, but worth trying, because Ludolf was an unprincipled, self-made man with much to lose if war should come. One thing to be guarded against was too hasty a step in any direction that might lead to the capture of one man and the escape of many more, all equally dangerous to the freedom of Holland.

  Disappointingly, he learned from his housekeeper that Neeltje had been given notice from the van Deventer house and was presently employed as companion to an old woman. Having acquired the address, he called on Neeltje, who was content to be looking after a kindly person again, but she could think of nothing in the letters that would be of any help to him.

  “It always seemed to me that Vrouw Wolff wrote of business matters and nothing else,” Neeltje said, puzzled by this new line of questioning, for which he had given no reason. “Sometimes she actually referred to investments at the Exchange.”

  Although she promised to search her memory, Pieter was not optimistic that she would remember anything useful to him. He thanked her for all she had done and agreed to convey her good wishes to Francesca and her sisters.

  When Pieter arrived at the Visser house, Griet showed him through to the studio, as Hendrick was working without a model that day. Hendrick proved to be in good spirits. There were days when his fingers still made it painful to hold a brush, but then he would take one of his breaks from work and enjoy the convivial company in the taverns with a game or two of cards with modest stakes. He had learned a lesson and never forgot the outcome was still in the balance, even though it was weighed heavily in his favor with Sybylla’s marriage to a wealthy bridegroom only a few weeks away.

  “Is the Civil Guard painting finished?” Pieter asked him after giving him news of Francesca.

  Hendrick frowned irritably. “No, it’s not. I can’t work only on that piece. I’ve been busy with other work. I hope you haven’t come here to bring more complaints. Your fellow officers don’t understand how difficult it is for me to remember appointments for sittings or, if I do remember, I may not feel like painting a face not of my choosing on that particular day.”

  Pieter had received reports that all was not going as well as had been expected. There was growing impatience for the painting to be ready. “When I leave here I’ll take a look at it in the church. Is Sybylla home?”

  “Yes, she is, and she’ll go with you. I’ve never known her to take such an interest in a work of art before. Not only does she view it at least once a week, but she is nagging me constantly to get it done before her marriage.”

  “I hope you will.” Pieter spoke firmly.

  “All right!” Hendrick waved an impatient hand. “I’ll do my best. I expect you’ll find Sybylla is still upstairs with the seamstress. Come and dine with me at a tavern this evening. I need some sensible conversation. There’s no talk in this house that centers on anything other than the wedding.”

  They arranged to meet at a certain tavern. The seamstress was just leaving the house as Pieter went into the reception hall and Sybylla was delighted to see him, greeting him with a full kiss on the lips.

  “How are Francesca and Aletta? Have you seen them? Say you have!” she exclaimed.

  He suggested they talk on the way to the church and she rushed to get a cloak. Then she tucked her arm into his and set a swift pace as he told her all he could about her sisters. She also had something to tell him that linked indirectly to Francesca.

  “Griet’s husband, who is a seaman, as you know, told her something before he went to sea. She passed it on in confidence to me as a warning for Francesca, but since you are so close to her I want you to know too. Ludolf called at the house two or three times while Sijmon was here and that’s how all this came to light. Sijmon recognized him as a privateer he had served under for a short while during his cabin-boy days, one voyage being enough under Ludolf’s command, although van Deventer was not the surname he used then.”

  “Was Sijmon certain he had made no mistake?”

  “He admitted he wasn’t sure at first. The modulated voice, the curled periwig, the clean-shaven face and grand clothes, combined with the lapse of seventeen years, would have fooled him if it hadn’t been for Ludolf’s gait. I’m sure you’ve noticed how he throws himself into a certain swagger when he walks. It was that walk, which Sijmon had seen many times on the ship’s deck, that convinced him as to Ludolf’s identity.”

  “So now we know how Ludolf made his original fortune.” Pieter was wondering if Geetruyd’s friendship with the man went back to those days.

  “I’d be frantic about Francesca having to marry him if I didn’t know that Adriaen is prepared to pay Father’s debts and set her free.”

  “Is that settled?”

  “Not yet, but it will be. Adriaen has said over and over again that he wants me to be happy in every way.” Flirtatiously she snuggled up against him. “Oh, Pieter, you should see how generous he is to me. My betrothal gift was a glorious diamond necklace and eardrops. I have only to glance in a shop window at something and it is mine. Aunt Janetje sent me a Florentine silver brocade for my wedding gown, but Adriaen has allowed me to choose dozens of lovely fabrics for the many garments I’ll need and his mother’s seamstress and an army of assistants are making them up for me. Rich women don’t go to shops to choose what they want, you know. Tradesmen will bring everything to the house.”

  “So you are happy, Sybylla?”

  “Happier than I’ve ever been in my life!” she declared, her eyes challenging him to suppose otherwise. They had reached the church and she darted in ahead of him. Following her, he heard her disappointed exclamation and saw her expression droop. “Hans is not here!”

  “Is he still coming to paint every day?”

  “Just for a little while each morning. He has a room somewhere that i
s his home and his studio, and he does his own work there. Father’s tardiness over painting the remaining sitters makes it impossible for him to finish this group painting as yet.”

  Her pace was slow as she led the way to the great canvas, her eagerness to get to it having evaporated completely. When Pieter viewed the painting he saw a vividly dramatic group, the sitters not just staring out of the canvas, but in animated discussion of how they would defend Amsterdam in an emergency, a map of the city spread out on the table around which they sat or stood. Five faces had still to be done, although collars and clothes and hair had all been completed. The hands of those men had also been left blank, for to an artist hands were as individual as faces. Pieter noticed that Sybylla was peering frowningly at a corner of the painting.

  “Are you looking for the mouse?”

  Her smile returned with dancing eyes. “You could only have heard about it from Francesca, because nobody else knows. You won’t tell, will you?”

  “You have my word on it.”

  “I don’t think the mouse is in the painting yet, although I keep looking. I believe Hans is waiting until Father finishes those faces before he adds it with the last strokes of his brush.”

  “It’s a very fine painting, so any mouse should be proud to be in it.”

  She trilled merrily. “What fun you are, Pieter! Hans is like you in that respect, although he can make me very cross at times. He has promised to point the mouse out to me on my wedding eve if I haven’t discovered it before.”

  “Why then?”

  “Because once I’m Vrouw van Jansz I can’t spend time here anymore. My social engagements will keep me busy from morning to night.”

  When Pieter left she stayed on, certain that Hans would come. Not once had he touched her or been in the least amorous toward her, but she was drawn to him by some magnetic quality that she could neither understand nor analyze. Whenever she saw him after an interim she felt suffused with joy. He would talk, rarely greeting her, conversing as if there had been no time between their being with each other and he was just carrying on with whatever they had been discussing previously. Her disappointment at not seeing him today was acute. How dare he not be there! Her temper began to mount as the minutes passed toward the hour of noon, when she would have to leave if she was to be ready in good time for a social outing with Adriaen’s mother and sister that afternoon. Vrouw van Jansz was not a woman to be kept waiting and had a cutting edge to her tongue when displeased.

  Sybylla’s expression would have been a match for Hendrick’s in a rage when finally she sprang up from the stool where she had been sitting, too angry to contain her temper any longer. She gathered up her skirts to rush out of the church and indulge her fury. Then she burst into tears and withdrew to a sheltered place by a tree so as not to be observed, although at the present time nobody was going past. Why didn’t anything go exactly as she wanted? She had thought she would never have another care in the world when she was safely betrothed to Adriaen, but nothing was perfect. His mother was hateful and in her own mind she was having dreadful doubts about whether Adriaen would pay her father’s debts, because he always changed the subject when she brought it up. Not that it mattered, because she was to have a large allowance and she could pay off Ludolf on a regular basis. She was realistic enough to know she would begrudge paying out of her own purse, but she loved Francesca too much to let her become wife to that detestable man. Why was life so contrary? And where was Hans? How dare he not be at work in the church.

  “Do you think, Sybylla,” Hans said, breathing heavily as if he had run a long distance, and coming to a halt only a yard away from her, “that I could persuade Master Visser to let me complete the painting of the remaining sitters?”

  She looked up quickly through a sparkle of tears. “I had something in my eye,” she explained defiantly, wiping both eyes with a handkerchief.

  “Shall I look?”

  “It’s gone now. You weren’t painting this morning.” Her quivering lower lip was accusing.

  “I was kept waiting longer than expected when I went to see about a commission.”

  “Did you get it?”

  “Yes. That’s why I want to finish what has to be done on the group.”

  “Come home with me now and you can ask Father.”

  They walked together to her home and found Hendrick in his studio, where Hans posed the question to him. Hendrick made a great show of indecision, but inwardly he was thankful enough to relinquish the tedious chore. After all, Frans Hals had left half of such a group painting to another artist to finish, and what was good enough for such a master was all right for him too.

  That afternoon Sybylla decided she loathed Adriaen’s sister as much as she detested his mother. Both women walked past a most pitiable beggar without putting a coin in his cup as she did. One surprising fact she was discovering was that the rich could be horribly tightfisted when it suited them. Where was the pleasure in having money if one did not spend freely? She would show them how it should be done as soon as she was Adriaen’s wife! Behind their backs she gave a little skip of anticipation. In the meantime Hans would be busy painting for longer hours again in the church, which would enable her to call in some time during each day to see how he was progressing. It was, she told herself, only to watch out for the mouse. For some reason everything seemed to stand or fall on her sighting it for herself without his having to tell her. Pieter met Gerard at regular intervals, although so far each had little to report. A man had been watched on suspicion of spying in Gerard’s area, but it proved a false trail. They sat in the parlor of Haarlem Huis.

  “Have you seen this fellow anywhere?” Pieter asked, showing him the sketch of the traveler that Francesca had given him. Gerard shook his head, but he was keenly interested to know that Pieter was concentrating his attention on the Wolff house and those who came and went there. During the kermis, when every tavern and available room in the town had been full, many visitors even sleeping in stable lofts, Pieter had learned that the landlord of the Mechelin was under the impression that every room in the Wolff house had been taken, although Francesca had said nobody had been staying there. “Is Vrouw Wolff housing now only those engaged in undercover work and eliminating risk by confining the accommodation to them?” Pieter suggested.

  “That seems a likely supposition,” Gerard agreed. “It’s fortunate we have Francesca under that roof. How often are you going to Delft now?”

  “Once a week. Design orders that I never expected have given me a legitimate reason for being there so often at this time of year, and I’m now on conversational terms with a remarkable number of people in the town, and others living in fine country houses.”

  “When is your next visit?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  The first snowflakes of winter were falling, only to disappear as soon as they touched the ground, when Pieter entered his Delft office. His clerk was an older man, not yet ready to retire, who had answered Pieter’s advertisement for someone to do a few hours’ office work on six mornings a week, this being sufficient at the present time. Pieter greeted him.

  “Good day to you too, mijnheer,” the clerk replied. “Have you just arrived?”

  “No, I spent last night at the Mechelin. What is there for my attention today?”

  Pieter sat down at his own desk while the clerk came from his to lay letters and various papers in front of him. He had dealt with everything when the door from the street opened and Aletta came in with a laden basket on her arm, snowflakes melting into sequins on her cap and cloak.

  “I hoped you’d be here,” she said smilingly after Pieter had kissed her cheek and drawn her to the fireside. She looked around as she pulled off her gloves. “What a neat office! I’ve had no chance to come in before. I like those etchings of tulips and that painting of aquilegia on the wall. Most appropriate.”

  “You’re not often in town, are you?”

  “No, but I wanted to buy gifts for the Feast of St. Nicho
laes. Constantijn still doesn’t like me to be absent from the house for long, so I keep short my time away.” They were able to converse without being overheard, for the clerk was partially deaf.

  “How is de Veere? Has he received those wooden legs yet that Francesca told me about—such a good idea of yours.”

  “No, not yet, although he is well enough. You see, at first I had only thought of getting him into the right frame of mind to use them, but then I realized that was not enough. He needed physical strength too. He is strong in the arms and shoulders through hoisting himself about, but his thigh and pelvic muscles had to be strengthened again or else he would never manage those heavy legs. Josephus agreed with me and I left it to him to urge Constantijn into a routine of regular exercise. Now Josephus is in his element, seeing himself as a coach again, although he is training Constantijn for a different purpose than before.”

  “It’s a sensible decision. Only good can come of it.”

  “I hope so.”

  “Have you seen Francesca this morning?”

  “No, I don’t call in during her working hours. Fortunately she can come quite often to see me at the de Veere house. I hear that the two of you are not meeting until Christmas.”

  “That’s right. I only catch glimpses of her going in and out of the Vermeers’ home, usually in the company of Weintje. Yet we keep in touch.” It was easy enough with the Vermeer children or a tavern potboy as go-betweens. As yet Francesca had nothing to report. Two travelers had stayed overnight, but not in the room with the funnel, and she had had no chance to catch sight of either.

  Aletta glanced at the clock. “I must go. Josephus will be waiting for me by the Town Hall and I don’t want him to catch a chill in the cold wind that is blowing today.”