The Golden Tulip (57 page)

As he left his wife to go to his own bedchamber, he reflected that in all honesty Sybylla was not the wife he would have chosen for his son, but the old adage of any port in a storm held in this case. What was most important in his eyes was not the happiness of the young couple, but that the dreadful disgrace of Adriaen’s blatant affair would be buried at last. At least Sybylla could be counted on to ensure that scandal would never arise again about the esteemed name of van Jansz. To the father, if not to the son, she had all unwittingly revealed herself to be too shallow and greedy ever to allow anything that was rightfully hers to go to anyone else, whether it was Adriaen himself or the riches and luxuries that made her beautiful eyes glint like a cat sighting cream.

Chapter 18

W
HEN
G
RIET LEFT THE
V
ISSER HOUSE IN THE MORNING TO GO
home she had several wedding gifts from the family in her basket as well as from Maria and neighbors who knew her well. She also had a verbal message to deliver at the van Deventer house, which Hendrick had given her at the last minute. She was too excited to wonder anything about it and delivered it cheerfully to the manservant who opened the door to her.

“Please tell your master that Juffrouw Visser is at home.”

Her duty done, she skipped back down the flight of steps and continued lightheartedly on her way.

In his studio Hendrick was nodding firm approval of Francesca’s painting. It was small, less than a foot square, and was what was known as a “tronie,” being a painting of a face executed as an exercise or for the artist’s own whim, the identity of the sitter unimportant. In the case of Francesca’s picture, it would be sold under the title
Head of a Girl in a Pearl Necklace.

“It’s quite good.” Inwardly Hendrick was astounded by the immense quality of the painting, but although he was extravagant in all ways, including praise for his own work, he did not believe in turning any young artist’s head with lavish phrases. Not that Francesca had ever been inclined to conceit, but that was beside the point. Although he had had to let Ludolf know she was at home, he was more at ease with her than he would have been if he had not had a rich son-in-law in the offing. The certainty had grown every day that his troubles would be over once the van Jansz wedding band was on Sybylla’s finger. He would be able to snap his fingers at Ludolf and give his blessing to Pieter and Francesca. Luck had always rallied to him.

“The eldest Vermeer daughter posed for me,” Francesca told him.

He had been leaning forward to study the precise brushwork and now he stepped back again to view the painting from a little distance. His daughter’s work showed no trace of his bold technique with its echoes of Frans Hals’s tutorship, but had evolved into an almost ethereal style as delicately as music from an Aeolian harp and yet with an underlying strength that compelled the eye. The sitter was looking over her left shoulder with light playing on the creamy skin of her face and neck, her dark eyes glowing as luminously as her pearls, embodying the power of life and beauty. All was held within a single second as if the whole painting had been begun and finished in that time, for in the next the eyelids would blink, a breath would be drawn and the moment lost forever.

“Your master has taught you well,” he admitted, knowing that he could never have brought out her talent as Vermeer had done.

“I’ll always be thankful for my apprenticeship with him,” she said, unaware that she had touched a raw nerve in her father’s conscience.

“Well, yes, it was all for the best. Weren’t you going over to the Zuider Church this morning?”

“Yes, I’ll be off now. I’ve asked Sybylla to come with me. She has told me that she was out both times that your assistant, Hans Roemer, was here and she hasn’t seen your work there yet.”

“She’s had no time during weekdays and on Sunday she worships now with the van Jansz family at the Westerkerk.”

“Has she ever said once to you that she is in love with Adriaen?”

“No, but that doesn’t mean she’s not.” Then, seeing the questioning look on Francesca’s face, he made a placating gesture with his hand. “All right. You and I know that she is dazzled by everything he represents, but she is fond of him too. I can tell. For mercy’s sake, don’t start casting doubts in her mind! The sooner she’s married, the better. I’ve had no end of unsuitable suitors after her since you went away.”

“In what way unsuitable? Do you mean they weren’t rich enough to please her?”

“That was the main factor, but any bachelor or widower she smiled at seemed to think he had a chance with her. When they came calling to present themselves to me, interrupting my work, I soon gave them short shift.”

Her eyes danced. “I’m sure you did.”

He grinned at her, sharing her amusement. “It’s good to have you home again, Francesca.”

“It’s good to be here. Now I’ll leave you with your landscape. I like those trees.”

“The tallest is growing here in Amsterdam and I took the other two from a sketch I made some years ago in Haarlem.”

All the way to the Zuider Church, Sybylla talked about the gown she would wear for her betrothal party and of the silver brocade that was on its way from Florence for her wedding gown. “Aunt Janetje wrote that it has a design of Florentine lilies. Can you imagine anything lovelier?”

“Knowing her wonderful taste, I’m sure it will be a marvelous fabric. Do you think she’ll come home for your marriage?”

“No. Her husband has been given some high civic appointment and for months ahead she will have to be at his side for great social functions and all the entertaining he will have to do.”

They had reached the Zuider Church and they entered quietly. It was Basilican in design, lofty with pure clear windows. Together they made their way to a side aisle where Hendrick had told them Hans Roemer would be found at work.

The back of the massive easel holding the huge canvas in extended clamps was toward them as they approached. It stood on a large square of coarse linen spread over the flagstones to save blobs of paint staining them. There was no sign of the artist, although his discarded work smock, his palette and brushes with all the rest of his materials were on a table. The sisters went to the front of the canvas. The Civil Guard group was almost life-size, the men sitting at, or standing around, a table. As yet the painting was little more than the customary oil sketch such as an artist submitted on a much smaller scale for his client’s approval before beginning commissioned work. Hendrick had completed three of the faces, including that of the standard-bearer, whose almost completed gilt-fringed cream silk garments and yellow-plumed gray hat shone out from the dull ochre ground on which the paint was being built up.

“I wonder where the artist is,” Sybylla queried.

A reply came from behind the railings of a side chapel. “I’m here.”

A wall hid the speaker. Followed by Francesca, she went to investigate. She looked through the railings at a wild-haired, narrow-faced young man with reckless black eyes and a long humorous mouth that looked well used to laughter. He was seated on a praying stool, his back against the wall and his long legs stretched out in front of him as he tucked into a piece of bread and a hunk of cheese. The rest of the loaf lay on a spread-out paint rag. By it was a beaker of water. On his other side lay his hat like a tattered black saucer with a bright plume dyed to multicolors. He was plainly clad in clothes that had seen better days and wore a pair of wooden clogs.

“Don’t make crumbs in there,” Sybylla said automatically.

He made a comical play of looking around anxiously from where he sat and then giving her a bold grin. “I can’t see any. Have you brought your broom to sweep up?”

“No, I haven’t!” she retorted haughtily.

“That’s as well, because there’s a little mouse for whom I always leave a titbit. He comes out when I’m painting on my own and nobody else is about. I wouldn’t want him to be disappointed. I’ve already promised him that he shall be in the painting.”

“You can’t do that!” Sybylla was outraged. “A mouse! In a serious militia group!”

“Oh, he won’t be sitting at the table, leaning an arm on a piece of Gouda cheese. He’ll be hard to find, but he’ll be there.”

Francesca was laughing. He was poking good-natured fun at the pompous poses many sitters adopted for such paintings. “Has this friend of yours a name?”

“I call him Rembrandt, after the great master, who once painted on this very spot.”

Sybylla looked down her nose. “I don’t think that’s respectful.”

Francesca disagreed with her smilingly. “My childhood memories of Rembrandt are of his being a very serious man, but I’ve always heard that when Saskia was alive they led a merry life and none enjoyed a joke more than he.”

The young man had risen to his feet, energetic in all his movements, and he came to the open gate in the railings. “I was certain he would have approved. I’m Hans Roemer, painting for Master Visser.”

“We know,” Francesca replied. “We’re his daughters. This is my sister Sybylla and I’m Francesca.”

“My compliments! Your father told me he had two daughters.”

Francesca and Sybylla exchanged a glance. So Aletta was no longer thought of by Hendrick as a member of his family. “We are three,” Francesca corrected, determined to set the record straight. “My other sister, Aletta, is living in Delft now. I’m home from there for a few days.”

“So you’re the one serving the apprenticeship and this sister is about to be betrothed. What is Vermeer’s work like? I’ve never seen anything by him.”

Sybylla became bored as they conversed. It never suited her not to be the center of attention when a man was present. Admittedly this one was nothing to look at with his peasant garb and leonine mop of hair, but irritatingly there was something magnetic about him. But he was paying no attention to her, completely taken up with what her sister was saying and full of questions about Vermeer, whom nobody had heard of. She had felt quite shamed when she had had to admit to Adriaen’s parents that her sister was training with an unknown artist.

“We should be going,” she said imperiously. Yet she did not want to go. She wanted to go on standing there and to absorb the sight of this lithe young man, who probably hadn’t a stiver in his purse. He and Francesca were getting on remarkably well together. Then, as they laughed over something humorous about painting, excluding her, she felt an upsurge of savage jealousy. “Didn’t you hear me, Francesca? With my betrothal only two days away I have no more time to waste here if you want me to go with you to the de Hartog house!”

They both looked at her then, Francesca with surprise at her acid tone and he with mirth still twinkling in his eyes. Sybylla was aware that her face was deeply flushed and knew she never looked her best when riled.

“Since when,” he inquired impudently, “has anyone needed to rush about so busily before a betrothal that there is no time for a little leisurely talk? Perhaps you’re having to exercise your finger to strengthen it for the weight of the van Jansz ring?”

She became like a spitting cat. “Such impertinence to your master’s daughter!”

He was quite unperturbed. “Permit me to correct you. In this case your father is my employer and not my master.”

“All the more reason why you should be working and not idling these minutes away!”

“True,” he agreed amiably. “That was why I was here at first light and did not stop work for my breakfast until now. Perhaps tomorrow you would like me to save the one meal of my day until an hour when you could conveniently share it with me, humble fare though it is?”

“Stop making fun of me!” She did not know why she did not turn on her heel and stalk away.

Francesca stepped in, disturbed by Sybylla’s tantrum. “I think we should go now.” She looked back over her shoulder at Hans. “I’ll call in to see if you have finished the standard-bearer before I go back to Delft.”

“I look forward to seeing you, Juffrouw Visser. Good day to you both.”

Outside again, Francesca looked curiously at Sybylla as they fell into step along the street. “Whyever did you become so aggressive toward that young man? There was no malice in him.”

Sybylla tossed her head wilfully. “That’s your opinion. I can say what I like and, as he certainly took no notice of what I said, don’t you start telling me to go back and apologize as if I were five years old.”

“I admit he spoke somewhat out of turn about the ring, but you must agree you did shout out rudely. It was quite unnecessary, because we had settled beforehand that we shouldn’t stay long.”

Sybylla gave a snort. “You appeared to be so lost in him that I thought you’d never be able to tear yourself away.”

“Don’t be childish. You should have learned by now that you can’t always be the center of attention.”

It was the last straw for Sybylla. She came to a standstill and blazed at her sister. “I knew when you came home you would start ordering me and everybody else about! We’ve managed perfectly well without you. I’ll soon be a married woman living in the finest house in all Amsterdam away from the moans of Maria and the moods of Father and—best of all—you can come home as often as you like and I’ll be far out of your reach!”

Such blustering reminded Francesca of their father when he was unsure of himself and anxious to cover up something. “Indeed you will. So calm down and let’s enjoy our walk to Willem’s house. Remember, it’s quite a while since I was here and I’ll not be back again until your wedding, whenever that should be.”

Sybylla bit her lip as they continued on their way. She wished she had not said what she had to Francesca, because she had not meant any of it. It was comforting to have her at home again. “I don’t know what’s the matter with me. I’m so on edge.”

“Prebetrothal nerves. It’s not unusual.”