The Golden Tulip (79 page)

Francesca dodged, but two guards seized her. She kicked and struggled, calling again to the soldiers to make a stand against the French, but not one moved. Suddenly aware that she was in full view of the women gathered in the entrance, she screamed at them with all the force of her lungs as she was dragged away, the cords on her neck standing out.

“Pull up the drawbridge!”

She saw one woman spring into action immediately, but whether the others followed her example she did not know, for she was being taken swiftly away. In sickening realization she accepted that, however willing some of those women might have been, it would be beyond their physical strength to raise a heavy drawbridge. She saw that Vrouw Vreeburg was being hustled back by the third guard, who had gripped her by the arm, and her protests were fierce but in vain.

Francesca could hear the sergeant ordering his men to attention and there was a snap of heels and a clink of muskets. When she heard a single horse cantering forward from the approaching magisterial party, she closed her eyes briefly in despair, knowing whose voice she would hear.

“Release that young woman,” Ludolf ordered. “I’ll take charge of her.”

The soldiers let her go and stepped away as Ludolf dismounted. She turned to him, her expression stony, her eyes blazing.

“You traitor!” she hissed.

He had believed her to be still locked away in Delft, confident that she would still be there when he was ready to collect her, and although his brows drew together in a frown at her fierceness, nothing could dampen his pleasure at coming across her so unexpectedly. “Let’s have no harsh words. Come into the castle with me, my dearest, and tell me how it is that you are here.”

He reached for her, his intention plain enough that he would kiss her first, his lips parting and his expression elated. She raised both fists as if to hammer them against his chest and then spun about to run from him. One of the soldiers who had previously been holding her saw what was happening and gave her a thrust in the back as she passed him. She went crashing face downward, the breath knocked out of her, her arms outflung. Gasping, she would have raised herself up, but Ludolf’s booted foot slammed down onto the back of her wrist, crushing it on the cobbles.

“What is that?” he demanded wrathfully.

On her spread hand her gold wedding ring gleamed. She was ashen-faced with pain, fearing her wrist was broken, but she looked up over her shoulder at his brutal features with triumph.

“I’m Pieter van Doorne’s wife! We were married yesterday!”

His reaction was to grind her wrist still harder into the cobbles, his face turning an ugly color, distorted by jealousy. In the same instant there came a sudden uproar of shouts and a creaking and rattling. Automatically she switched her gaze, as he did, in that direction. The magisterial procession was in confusion. The cavalry officer at the head was trying to control his horse, which had taken fright when the drawbridge had suddenly begun to rise in front of it! Francesca let her cheek rest on the ground again with a sob of relief. The drawbridge was going up and there was nothing anyone this side of the moat could do to stop it!

“Halt that drawbridge!” Ludolf roared, leaping over her and running to where the magistrates, alarmed and disconcerted by this unexpected turn of events, were voicing their rage through the coach windows at those in the castle. In his inflamed mood Ludolf looked as if he would commit murder as soon as he came face to face with those responsible for the rebellious act and he let forth a torrent of abuse at the sergeant and the magistrates for allowing it to take place.

Francesca, nursing her wrist with no doubt now that it was badly broken and wincing at the excruciating pain, was thankful when one of the guard of honor, all of whom were in disarray, came to assist her to her feet.

“My felicitations,” he said with a confidential wink. “I can tell you now that as many men in the castle’s small garrison were against surrender as there were those for it, but any who spoke up were clapped into chains.”

“Do you think that some of your comrades in the castle helped the women to haul up the drawbridge?”

“You can be sure of that. How does it feel to have put a spark to tinder?”

“I’m glad of it!”

He was guiding her toward the coach, their steps slow, for every movement jarred her wrist. “That injury of yours needs a splint,” he said. “As soon as you’re seated I’ll find a suitable piece of wood.”

“You’re most kind.” She had to take a pause again, breathing deeply to fight the agony of her broken bones. As soon as she was ready to move on again there came a spatter of gunfire. She and the soldier looked back. All the military men had rushed for cover and the magistrates had crouched down in their coach while Ludolf had drawn his pistols and was shooting back at the castle’s apertures. The dismounted French troopers had begun firing their long-barreled matchlock rifles. The horses of the magisterial coach were frightened and restless, their reins held by their coachman, who had leapt down from his box to take shelter by a wheel. The sergeant had bawled an order to his men to fire, but it was noticeable that only about half obeyed him. A lull came, for there had been no return fire from the castle.

Ludolf shouted to those within. “Give up now! You haven’t a chance of holding this fortress! It will fall to the French army, never doubt it! Muiden will be put to the flames! Blood will run in rivers through the streets and the moat here will turn red!”

At one of the castle’s apertures, from which in centuries past arrows had been shot, a young military clerk looked down the barrel of his wheel-lock rifle and took the Dutch representative of Versailles into his sights. He had never aimed at a man before, and although his fellow countryman was a traitor of the worst kind, it was different from shooting game in the woodlands. His hand trembled as his finger tightened on the trigger. The deafening report of the fired bullet and the acrid smell of the gunpowder were not the cause of his sudden turning aside to vomit. He had not realized a man could look surprised at the moment of death.

Ludolf had fallen, but he was not dead. Two of the guards pulled him out of range and the sergeant knelt to examine the wound. The bullet had torn into the upper left arm. Ludolf’s own response to being shot was one of vengeance and frustration.

“The soldier who committed this misdeed must be executed! I’m here as the messenger of the King of France, not a militant.” He ignored the fact that he had fired both pistols.

The sergeant was binding up the wound with Ludolf’s own sash. “You must be taken to a doctor at once,
mijnheer.
The bullet appears to be lodged in a bone. Can you stand?”

“Yes, help me to my feet.”

The sergeant hauled him upright and supported him. The magistrates were eager to get away, and they reached out their hands from the coach to assist the sergeant in getting Ludolf up the steps to them. Yet Ludolf resisted, staring toward Francesca.

“I want that woman to come with me. Bring her here!”

Francesca stood appalled, knowing she would faint from the waves of pain sweeping over her if she tried to run away.

“Leave me,” she said to the soldier at her side. “This is something I must settle for myself.” Then, as the soldier moved, she took one agonizing step forward, cradling her wrist against her chest, and called to Ludolf across the distance between them. “This is as far as I can go unaided. You must either come for me yourself or go out of my life forever!”

Ludolf jerked himself free from the support of the sergeant, who protested at his foolhardiness. “
Mijnheer!
Don’t go! Get into the coach and I’ll fetch her. You’ll be within range of the castle’s fire again!”

“They’ll not dare shoot at me a second time,” Ludolf growled. With his good arm he thrust himself away from the side of the coach, but there was no time for more. A shout had gone up from the avenue as one of the sentries had come running to yell jubilantly through cupped hands. “Our army is here!”

Ludolf grabbed the sergeant by the sleeve. “Get me on my horse!”

The sergeant ran to fetch it. Ludolf was barely in the saddle when Dutch officers at the head of their running troops came bursting out of the avenue. Swinging his horse around, Ludolf galloped in the opposite direction. As he passed Francesca he shouted to her:

“Nothing is ended yet! Never doubt that I’ll deal with that so-called husband of yours!”

She watched him gallop on to disappear through the border of trees and plunge his horse down into the stretch of water beyond, making for the other shore.

Several hours later, weak from loss of blood, Ludolf lay at the edge of a cornfield. Some time ago he had fallen from his horse, which had galloped off on its own. He could see a farmhouse not far away, but he lacked the strength to crawl there. Yet sooner or later someone would come along and see him. His thirst was terrible, his parched throat making it impossible to shout. He drifted into blackness. When he opened his eyes again it was evening with the first early stars showing in the darkening sky, but he could see no lights at the farmhouse. There had been nobody about earlier, but he had thought the workers were all in the fields. Was the place deserted? It came to him in a few minutes of clarity that he had not heard a cow or the bleat of a sheep or the barking of a dog or any of the normal farmyard sounds. In fact, there had been a dearth of livestock for several miles before he had fallen at this spot, too dazed to consider the implication.

When he next emerged from the curious oblivion that kept sucking him down into its depths, the sun was up again and blazing down on him as it had done the day before. He was sweating with heat and fever. Somewhere in the distance was a curious roar and the ground on which he was lying appeared to be trembling. He seemed to see a sparkling in the sky above the corn. Then horrified realization dawned. It was spray from the sea. The sluices must have been opened at Muiden and the land was being flooded.

It was his last conscious thought before mercifully the moment of death came. He had no knowledge of being swept away by the thundering water like a piece of flotsam among fallen trees, broken buildings and pieces of thatch.

A
T
A
MSTERDAM
, Francesca had not been to the walls to watch the sea approach as hundreds of citizens had done. She was posing in the studio for Hendrick, seated on a chair with a shawl hiding the binding of her wrist, which was in a sling. It was giving her plenty of time to mull over the events of the previous few days.

Pieter had not been with the first Dutch troops that had arrived at Muiden, but he and his surviving men had reached the castle in time to help ward off and defeat a French attack that had followed soon afterward. The castle of Muiden had been left secure with a garrison of six hundred men when he had brought Francesca back to Amsterdam while there was still time to get through before the sluices took effect.

She had been exhausted by the speedy return journey, her wrist having been set by an army surgeon but still subject to severe pain. Despite her physical suffering, she knew intense relief when Pieter told her of the message he had received upon entering the city. They had hastened with the good news to Hendrick.

“Your troubles are at an end, Master Visser,” Pieter had said. “Ludolf van Deventer is dead, presumably drowned. His body, washed up against a bank, was seen by passing boatmen, who brought it to the city. As a proven traitor he would have been executed had he been caught. Now, by custom, his assets will be confiscated by the state while any debts owing to him will be declared null and void.”

“I can scarcely believe such news after all this time,” Hendrick had answered, almost dazed by this unexpected release from the nightmare that had been hanging over him for so long.

Francesca recalled the brief farewell in the reception hall that she and Pieter had shared. They had faced each other, their eyes full of love.

“Come back safely to me,” she had whispered passionately.

“One day there’ll never be another parting,” he had promised vehemently.

They had kissed, his arms wrapped around her. Then he had broken away and she had gone to the door to watch him mount his waiting horse and ride away. At the end of the street he had looked back and swept off his hat to wave it in farewell, the orange plume catching the sunlight. Then he was gone from her sight, riding to rejoin the Prince’s forces.

“You know, Father,” she said from the rostrum, “I think it’s time you gave me an interesting painting to look at on the wall whenever I pose for you.”

“What do you want?”

“Rembrandt’s portrait of Titus.”

“We’ll see,” he replied, intent on his work.

His reply showed he had no intention of moving the painting from where it had hung for so many years. She decided to solve the matter for herself, knowing that he would expect her to sit for him many times yet before this war was over. Common sense told her that people in Amsterdam would have no money to spare for luxuries such as paintings until peace was restored. Hendrick would not be able to afford professional models.

“I’ll paint my own picture to hang there as soon as my wrist is healed,” she announced. “I’ll paint Pieter, my tulip grower, on the morning when I saw him standing amid those acres of blooms. It’s all in my mind’s eye—the sunshine, the slight movement of the tulips in a gentle breeze, the workers bending as they collect the petaled cups into baskets, and then myself in the foreground.”

The only sound in the studio was the quiet slap of Hendrick’s brush against the canvas, a comfortable and familiar sound. Francesca forgot that the last time she had posed for him it had been for the painting of Flora, purchased calamitously by Ludolf. That was in the past. For Pieter’s sake her thoughts dwelt on the future in the hope that the picture she was planning would one day become a reality. Then once more would he come to her through an ocean of tulips.

Epilogue

F
RANCESCA WAS PAINTING IN HER STUDIO AT
H
AARLEM
H
UIS ON
the January day in 1689 when the Prince of Orange left Holland to become William III of England and reign jointly with his English wife, Mary. He was not leaving the rulership of his own country behind and Francesca was pleased that those ties would remain. He and his people had come through many trials and tribulations since that February day when he had taken command seventeen years before.

It had been a hard war for all, bringing starvation and tragedy and bankruptcy to many. She herself had known hunger and cold when Amsterdam was marooned by water. She had never forgotten what it was like and these days whoever came hungry to her door was given food and money. Amsterdam had been besieged for very nearly two years, but even then over three more terrible years of conflict passed before Louis XIV finally withdrew his armies with nothing gained, leaving Dutch freedom intact. Yet the prosperity of Holland and its states had been ruined, much of the land left unfit for agriculture from the flooding by the sea, and many bulb fields had been washed away. A great deal of overseas trade had been lost forever. Recovery had been slow and nothing would ever be the same again.

Francesca mixed yellow with lead white on her palette. Years ago, during the siege, she had painted
The Tulip Grower.
Now she was capturing a single tulip. Last summer, after years of hard work had been spent in restoring his soil, Pieter had finally achieved his aim to produce a new tulip. The petals rose creamy white from the calyx to shade through pale yellow to deepest gold, echoing the tulip she had long incorporated into her signature. She had made paint sketches at the time it was in bloom, unbeknown to Pieter, for there had been no chance at that busy time of year to settle to painting it as a surprise gift for him, but soon now it would be ready for his birthday. He supposed her to be working on a self-portrait she had begun before Christmas.

She was using more yellow on blue for the foliage than was usual for her and she hoped the resulting greens would hold. Recently one of Jan Vermeer’s paintings had been put up for auction in Haarlem. It was his
Little Street in Delft
and what had been green foliage had become decidedly blue in tint, although that in no way detracted from the unique beauty and tranquillity of the work. Pieter, knowing what it would mean to her to own it, had bid for it while she had sat beside him in the auction room, holding her breath in suspense. It had fetched very little. Nobody else had been interested, but she had been overjoyed when it became hers.

Pausing in her work, she looked at the Delft painting on her studio wall. Her foreboding that she would never see Jan again had proved right. His
Allegory of Faith
had been one of his last works. Not long after her departure he had caught a chill that had settled on his lungs. Three years later, when he had been made destitute by the lack of business owing to the war, he and his family had had to move into his mother-in-law’s house and there he had died at the age of forty-three. Catharina had been left in dire straits. Although housed with her children by her mother, she had had to sell all she possessed to meet colossal debts. Two of Jan’s paintings had gone to the master baker in lieu of payment for a single large bill. Most heartbreaking of all was that her most adored work by Jan,
An Artist in His Studio,
was taken from her by the law for her insolvency, even though she had done everything in her power to keep it.

Aletta had received part of her tuition from Jan until deterioration in his health had made it impossible for him to continue teaching, but he had transferred her apprenticeship to another Delft artist. She had gained her mastership, but an abundance of children, ten in all, had given her little time to paint. Her olive branch to Hendrick had been her first three children, one a babe in arms, whom she took to see him at the war’s end. The breach had been healed between father and daughter as soon as they sighted each other.

Aletta never sold her paintings, working now and again for her own pleasure. Horses had become a favorite subject, which was to be expected with Constantijn’s breeding of Thoroughbreds. All their children had been taught to ride as soon as they were old enough and, almost from the start, Constantijn had begun riding again, in a specially designed saddle, on horses he trained himself. He sold most of his fine animals to England, where there was always a demand, more than to his own countrymen, for even the richest, such as the van Jansz family, who had narrowly missed bankruptcy during the war, had never recovered their former great wealth in the hardships of the aftermath.

In Amsterdam, Hendrick still painted, although his hands were gnarled like the roots of a tree and it was excruciatingly painful for him to hold a brush. Strangely the influence of his old master had become more apparent than ever in these last works, and one of them was almost sold as a Frans Hals before the mistake was discovered in time. Although Hendrick scarcely ever found a buyer more than once or twice a year, he and his household lived in modest comfort on a stipend paid jointly by his two sons-in-law.

Maria had died, but not before seeing Sybylla again at the end of the war. Sadly, Sybylla had returned home a widow and her life was not easy, for Hendrick had grown still more cantankerous with the years. Sybylla never complained. Many times she could have married again, but her old flirtatious ways were quite gone and she would not consider it. Her loss of Hans, who had been killed during the defense of the town where they had lived after moving from Rotterdam, had changed her a great deal, for she had loved him with her whole heart, and since she could no longer have him she wanted no one else. Yet there was a widower of her own age whose companionship seemed to suit her well, and those who loved her hoped that with time they might find happiness together.

Her child, now sixteen and, for some reason known only to Sybylla, nicknamed Mouse since birth in spite of being christened Anna, was the apple of Hendrick’s eye. He had taught her to paint, showing a patience he had never been able to maintain with his own daughters. Her cousins called her Anna-Mouse, which was a pleasant combination, but although she produced quite adequate still lifes, she would never reach Guild level and neither did she wish to, for she was already in love and had marriage on her mind.

Francesca considered her own output of work. The days when Jan Vermeer had been able to sell her apprentice paintings easily from his gallery for a moderately good price were long gone, for sales for artists were few and far between these days. She did occasionally sell to art dealers and there was a collector of her work who came sometimes from Gouda, but she had become no richer through her work than any other artist she had ever known. Fortunately Pieter was a good provider for her and her sons. His investments made before the war in the colonies as well as in Holland had proved sound, not least in those three home commodities that would always be in demand by his fellow countrymen—beer, land and tulips.

As yet, circumstances had prevented Pieter from taking her on that long-promised visit to Italy, but before long the dream of her youth to see the Renaissance art of Florence, Venice and Rome was to come true. The youngest of their three sons, all of whom were born within eighteen months of each other, showed the true and unmistakable signs of becoming an artist, while the other two inclined to the land. Well named for a painter as Johannes, he was twelve years old and it had been arranged, to Francesca’s mixed feelings of pride, pleasure and the pain of parting, that as soon as he was fourteen she and Pieter would take him to Florence and apprentice him to an Italian artist of high repute. The pinnacle of Dutch art had been reached in the golden span that had seen Rembrandt, Hals, de Hooch and Vermeer. Now it was in a decline with all else that had once made Holland great. But that was not to mean that such genius would never flower again. Francesca was sure, as were many others, that it would show its bright flame one day in the future. Perhaps even in her own child?

Aunt Janetje was too frail in health now to be given the responsibility of Johannes during his Italian apprenticeship, but her eldest son and his wife, who had visited Holland only a few months earlier, had expressed their willingness to act as guardians to the boy, having children of their own.

“Mother!”

Francesca looked up as the door of the studio was flung wide and Johannes came rushing in. He had discarded his outdoor clothes, but the cheeks of his lively face were still red and shiny as apples from skating outside.

“What is it?” she asked with an amused lift of her brows. He had a boisterous personality and was only quiet when he was sleeping or painting.

“When are we going to Amsterdam again? I want Grandfather to see my new portrait of him.”

“I think your father hopes to take you with him when next he goes to the Exchange.”

“Shall you come with us?”

“Yes. I like to see your grandfather and Aunt Sybylla whenever I can.”

“Good.” He came to stand by her and tilted his head as he eyed her painting assessingly, he and his brothers sharing the secret of it being done for their father. “Do you think I’ll ever learn to paint with light as you do, Mother?”

“I’m sure you will.”

When he had gone from the room again, she thought to herself that the light in his work would not be of the crystal-clear quality that pervaded such works as Vermeer’s and her own, coming as it did from the sparkle of the canals and the soft, sun-shot mists of the Dutch countryside. The light he would learn to master would have the warmth and richness of the Florentine sun reflected back from rust-red roofs, ancient time-weathered stone and the sapphire glimmer of the Arno. A whole new palette was for him.

Brush in hand, Francesca was facing her studio door when it opened again. This time it was Pieter who stood there. “Am I interrupting the painting of a masterpiece?” he inquired with a broad smile, leaning a shoulder against the jamb.

“No!” she laughed. “Not today.”

“I came to see if you had time to go to the bulb shed with me. I’d like to show you the plans laid out there of the extension to be started in the spring.”

She put down her palette and brush and rose from her stool at once. Separation from him throughout the difficult years of war had taught her the true values of life. She never took for granted a single moment that she spent with the man she loved.