Wings over Delft (5 page)

The Markt was hot and crowded. It was as if the sticky threads of the web were clutching at her, dragging at her heavy clothes. She wanted to scream. Her feet came up against something soft and yielding, and this time she did shriek. Feathery clusters of mute, wide-eyed chickens lay across her path, their legs tied together. She turned and gathered herself, walking faster and faster. She had to get out of the crowded Markt to where she could breathe fresh air and see sky. She skirted a loaded trestle piled with
cabbages
, only to come up against a flat handcart shouldering a pyramid of smooth waxed cheeses, round as cannon balls. She wanted to tip the table over and send the cheeses
bowling
through the market place. No one would want her then!

Louise reached the deep shade along the side of the Nieuwe Kerk and stood there, panting. There were footsteps behind her. Why couldn’t she be left alone – surely it wasn’t Reynier following her? She swung around. It was Mr Kunst, the apprentice; she’d forgotten all about him. He had been told to escort her home. But she didn’t want to go home. She decided she’d walk on, perhaps he would turn back. They emerged at the back of the Nieuwe Kerk, Mr Kunst still following discreetly. They crossed a small arched bridge over one of the numerous canals that formed a grid of water throughout the town, and turned left. He would see that she was on her way home now – the Vrouwenregt led towards the Doelen where she lived. But the long, uneven strides continued behind her. When she turned right, away from the Doelen towards the town walls, the boy followed. She didn’t want him near her. She felt corrupted. Reynier’s attempt at that very public kiss still burned on the side of her face. She rubbed at it, then whipped around in anger. She watched as the boy stumbled awkwardly to a halt, his arms swinging loosely from his shoulders. The tart comment she had planned faded on her lips. What was there about that walk and the way his arms moved? It conjured up an image that she couldn’t quite identify. Reynier had said something to him, something about strings. Suddenly she understood: a puppet, of course. That’s what Reynier was alluding to. Righteous anger boiled inside her. How dare Reynier make fun of this boy.

‘Mr Kunst …’ she demanded, glaring at him. ‘May I call you Pieter?’ He seemed taken aback.

‘Of course, mistress …’

‘No!’ she corrected impatiently. ‘Louise, please … just Louise.’ Her anger was bursting out in all the wrong places. ‘And look …’ she indicated the distance between them. ‘We’re not strangers. Come, I need you.’ She turned and looked into the canal that ran down the middle of the road, a perfect mirror to the houses opposite. He arrived at her side. ‘Pieter,’ she said without looking up from the water. ‘That was my old nurse that I dodged when we left the Master’s house. I don’t want to deceive you, but she
chatters
, and I need time to think. Would you be kind enough to take me to the town walls? Your master will not object, will he?’

‘No,’ he said with a smile. ‘He will not miss me, and I promise not to chatter.’

‘May I take your arm?’ A bony elbow was held out to her and they walked on in silence. A few houses down, their path was blocked by a group of men preparing to haul a finely carved linen chest up to a top floor window.
White-painted
beams stuck out from the gable-ends of all the houses on the road, and they had attached a pulley to one of these. The chest would be swung through the big
upstairs
window, thus avoiding the steep and narrow stairs
inside
. As the chest was lifted up, Louise saw two sets of initials lovingly carved on the side of the box, just above this year’s date, 1654. Newly-marrieds just moving in, surely. She shivered slightly. They waited until the chest
was safely inside the window before walking on.

At the end of the street, the brick wall of the town
defences
rose in front of them. They found some steps that led to the ramparts above. The steps were steep, built for soldiers, and there was no balustrade, but Louise had a good head for heights, so she gathered her cloak and skirt in one hand, and climbed with the other touching the wall. Delicate tresses of what looked like ivy, but with pretty violet-shaped flowers, trailed from cracks in the wall. She picked a sprig and carried it with her.

She arrived at the top, leaned against the parapet and drew in great gulps of air, cleaning her lungs of the stench of the town and the stagnant odours of the canals. When Pieter arrived she asked him to pin the little sprig of flowers to her cloak and was surprised at how delicately he used his fingers. Immediately below the wall flowed the
Schiekanaal
, a slow river that embraced the town protectively on three sides. Beyond it the lowlands stretched as far as the eye could see. Above them towered great masses of cloud: white and silver and grey against the unbelievable blue of the sky. The dotted farms, windmills and distant spires seemed to be sailing along like ships in a smooth green ocean as the drifting cloud shadows passed. She looked over at Pieter, wanting to share her feeling of freedom. He was leaning forward against the wall, looking at the scene through tightly narrowed eyes. She imitated him, her lids drawing closer and closer together until the view became fuzzy and indistinct, reduced to essentials.

‘It’s like an oil painting,’ she said, smiling at her
discovery. ‘I’d have tried to paint every blade of grass, but you can’t, can you?’ She watched him while he opened his eyes and blinked.

‘No, but there are some that try.’

‘Wouldn’t you like to be out there?’

‘In the meadows,’ he paused and then smiled. ‘Chasing maidens?’

‘No!’ Louise protested, but she could feel a blush rising in her cheeks.

‘Don’t worry, that was his idea,’ he laughed.

‘He was just teasing you, wasn’t he?’ The boy smiled. She added wonderingly, ‘He was teasing me too.’

A sailing barge, heading north for Leiden, passed by
silently
, its brown, tanned sail blocking out the view for a moment. The bargee’s wife was cooking on a small
charcoal
stove. A delicious smell of frying onions wafted up to them. The bargee saw Louise looking down at him and waved. When his wife said something sharp to him he looked away with a grin. ‘Is the Master always like that at the beginning of a picture?’ Louise asked.

Though Pieter had known the rich and famous from his work, he had never crossed the social divide that separated real wealth from humble employment. His father had been a valued painter in the DeVries Pottery, but there had been invisible barriers to his advancement on account of his religion. When it came to Pieter’s apprenticeship, his father had joked that he would not apprentice him to the potteries, as he would break more pots than he could paint, but the real reason was his own frustration. When Master Haitink agreed to take on the boy as an apprentice, Pieter’s father had urged him to strive towards becoming a member of the Guild of St Luke. ‘Catholics are accepted there, Pieter,’ he said. ‘There is no barrier if you have the skills to prove yourself.’

But Pieter had no social ambitions. When his father died the following year, he willingly took on work in the
Mistress’s
bar to help support his widowed mother. Life and ambition had not prepared him for finding himself on the walls of Delft with the town’s richest heiress. He felt the presence of the girl beside him like a flame, as if she might burn, or blind, or – heaven forbid – blow out like a candle if
he did the wrong thing. He found refuge in the view over the walls and squinted, watching the slow march of a cloud over the fields. The spring crops were above the ground now, oats, and wheat, and barley, each strip and chequer different. He watched the shade creeping forward,
absorbing
the delicate spring colours, creating a momentary gloom, and then releasing them in joy as it passed. Her voice broke his reverie.

‘Master Haitink was leading me on, about the planets and Aristotle, wasn’t he?’ She paused. Pieter didn’t know how to reply. ‘But was it unseemly … my arguing with him … with your master? Father says that we must never undermine the beliefs of others, just say what we believe ourselves. But I ended up arguing with him.’ She appeared to think for a moment. ‘The trouble was, he was so like Annie, my old nurse, except that I whenever I try to discuss things with her she goes all prune with disapproval.’ Pieter watched her undo her head-cloth and shake her hair free. The string of pearls that the Master had loosened slipped from the coils and trickled down her back like water. He stooped and picked them up; she didn’t appear to notice. The tiny pearls slipped through his fingers while she gazed out over the meadows, lost in thought. Then, smiling to herself, she turned, eyes dancing.

‘But he did go for me, didn’t he?’

‘He didn’t stand a chance!’ Pieter laughed. He wanted to tell her that the Master owned a modest spyglass and was, he was sure, as avid a follower of Galileo as she was herself, but he was afraid that she might not understand. The Master’s
deception had been in search of another truth, but how do you explain the work of angels? Now her face had clouded again, and he noticed how her eyes changed colour with her mood, blue-grey to green, like sunlight on a windy sea.

‘Is he always like that,’ she asked, ‘clowning and arguing? It was almost … I don’t know … as if he was frightened of me.’

Pieter, who had been thinking of sunlit seas, laughed and said, without thinking: ‘Oh, he was, mistress, he was terrified.’

She opened her eyes wide. ‘Me? How could he be
terrified
of me?’

‘Because he was afraid that he could not paint you.’

‘But that’s ridiculous! He … he’s
the Master
!’

‘No, it’s not ridiculous. People think that just because you’re a painter, you will always be able to capture what you see on paper or canvas, but it’s not like that at all. Often your eyes see things that don’t seem possible to put on
paper
. When you take up your charcoal, or your brush, there seems to be no connection between your eyes and your hands. It was like that with the painting of the Beggar at the Begijnhof gate that you liked. We had to smuggle the old man up the stairs in case Kathenka saw him. At first it just wasn’t working and the Master was like a bear. Then one day we got the beggar a little tipsy and he began to sing. Can you imagine that heap of rags pouring out love song
after
love song? He was like a canary in a cage. You wouldn’t know from the portrait that he was singing, but it could not have been painted otherwise.

‘But I didn’t sing, all I did was argue,’ Louise pointed out. She thought for a moment. ‘Does this ever happen to you? That you can see but not get it down? I can’t imagine you as a bear.’

‘Yes …’ he said, surprising himself.

‘Oh, do tell me.’

‘But it’s a silly example.’

‘Go on, please,’ she asked eagerly. Pieter paused to gather his thoughts.

‘It was the first time that the Master had let me work on a live canvas. It was a routine portrait of a town councillor, and the Master had got bored with both the man and the painting. “I need some colour here, Pieter. Run down to Kathenka and get me a glass of red wine.” I started down the stairs. “In one of the plain Venetian glasses,” he called after me. I returned, carrying the wine carefully up the stairs. He placed it in the composition. “On second thoughts, Pieter,” he said, “you will paint it.” Now this was a real honour for me. He showed me where to place the glass in the canvas. “There, we will paint it just beyond the old scoundrel’s reach.” Then he chuckled and shuffled off, for the taproom, I suspect.’

‘How did you get on?’ Louise asked.

‘Oh it was good! The glass appeared flat on the table, which is always a good start, but it was the wine that pleased me most. I had built it up in layers and had
remembered
from the beginning to leave one point uncovered so that when it took a final coat there was just a small ruby of red light glowing in its heart. When the Master came back I
couldn’t restrain myself. “Look, Master. Have you ever seen a finer glass? No need for you to go to the taproom; you could just reach out –” Thump!’ Pieter laughed ruefully at the recollection. ‘And I was lying on the floor looking up. It was the jibe about the taproom that did it. He is strong. He put a foot on my chest to keep me there. He took up the glass of wine, which had been my model, and drank it down in three gulps. Then he stood, polishing that glass with his cravat – his foot still on my chest – till the glass shone. When it was polished to his satisfaction he put it down on the table, tucked in his cravat, took his foot off my chest, and said, “Draw that!”’

‘Were you hurt?’ she asked.

‘Mistress, I was not hurt, but I was hopping mad. Ten minutes before, you see, I had thought that I was a rival to the great Rubens himself, now I was being buffeted around like a first-year apprentice, and being asked to draw an empty glass … of all things! Well, I drew in the outline of the glass, checked that it was true – I didn’t want another buffet – and called out, “Master, it’s done.” He waddled over. You should have heard what he said.’ Pieter shook his head. ‘Dear God, how I came to hate that glass, Louise. How he harassed me! I tried it again and again.

‘“It’s not one of your damned saints, you nincompoop!” he said at last. “Look … look … look … what’s that?” He was jabbing at my page. “It looks like a bloody halo?”

‘But master, that’s the
rim
!’ I said it through clenched teeth. ‘See – it’s there!

‘“No, it is not there!’ This time his thump set my ears
ringing. “Look with your eyes. How do you really see that rim?” I blinked and squinted because my eyes were
watering
from the blow; I was near to tears. And you know, Louise, at that instant I saw what he meant! The glass, the rim, it wasn’t bound by lines at all, but by tiny unattached fragments and facets of light. The imagined glass that my mind had been trying to force on to the page had dissolved. Now I was seeing the glass with an artist’s eye, albeit a
watering
one.’ Pieter paused. He had been getting carried away, his hands, obeying him for once, were drawing the glass for her in the air between them. She urged him, with a gesture, to go on.

‘It was as if I had made this great discovery all on my own. I said, “I see it, Master! Look, no rim … just two
slender
moons of light where the rim should be. You are right!”

‘“Well, draw them!” he growled.

‘For another hour I drew, while he lumbered up and down the studio like a bear shaking its chain. My
sketchbook
filled with these tiny meaningless fragments and shards of light. They floated over the page like forgotten dreams. Then, just as the light was going, the glass appeared. Oh, Louise, joy!

‘“Master!” I shouted, and I looked down at my book in case it had flown away. But it was still there, a floating, translucent glass, captured on the page. I couldn’t believe it! I sat back with a groan of sheer exhaustion. He stood over me, growling. I wanted to hug him then, but all he did was grunt: “Kathenka has opened a new cask, it has been
calling
to me this last hour. Come on, let’s celebrate.”’

Pieter stopped, dazed by his own eloquence. He was staring at the girl, seeing her with a painter’s eye, much as he had looked at that glass. Not binding her with lines, but catching her essence as tiny unattached fragments and
facets
of colour and texture and light. He shrugged, and his hands flapped loosely.

Louise turned for a last look over the town walls. She must go home now. The rebelliousness that had brought her up here was being overtaken by a feeling of regret, she wasn’t sure for what. She felt Pieter’s eyes on her, but they weren’t intrusive, they were soothing, like when the Master had patted and straightened her clothes ready for her sitting. The boy was an artist, and she was learning that artists looked at things differently to other people. She had watched him, seeing how he changed when he talked about his art, how his hands suddenly found co-ordination and became storytellers. For some reason she found his vision both disturbing and exciting; it was like being offered a forbidden fruit. Up till now she had believed passionately in science. Father described science as being like a new sun, burning away the mists of superstition and folly. Newer and more wonderful things were being discovered daily, not by mystics with woolly visions, but by mathematicians, and astronomers, and alchemists. If something could be measured, it could be believed. Now Pieter was offering her something different; it was new, and it was a little exciting, and a little shocking, but she wasn’t sure what it was.

She was looking forward to Father coming back from Amsterdam tomorrow. Since she had been little, whenever Father returned from one of his trips – Amsterdam, The Hague, even abroad – he would come up to her room when she went to bed in the evening, and tell her of all the wonderful people he had met and the things he had seen. ‘One day,’ he would say, ‘you will come with me.’ Then they would plan exotic trips in which they met
philosophers
in gowns, and alchemists in pointed hats bent over bubbling retorts in search of gold and the philosopher’s stone. She’d stay awake for hours after these sessions, her mind and pulse racing.

Then there was their telescope; the barrel was ready, beautifully crafted by the cooper from the pottery. All it needed were the lenses that Father had ordered from a lens grinder in Amsterdam. Then they would be able to see the moons on Jupiter … and perhaps even see the arms on Saturn. She wondered if Pieter would be excited by things like this. At one time she had thought that Reynier would be interested. He was, and she was
delighted
, but in the end she realised it was just so that he could create a new illusion:
Reynier, the man of science
.

And now there was this boy who spoke to her about art in a language she could understand, of ‘fragments and facets of light’. Wouldn’t it be nice if they could be friends? But she closed her mind; she was learning to shut some thoughts out. It looked as if her mind had been made up for her by society, and that she had somehow walked herself into her own destiny. She watched a heron flap heavily up the canal
below them, its snake neck tucked tight between its
shoulders
. She watched its neck uncoil and its legs reach out, clawing at the water as it landed in the shallows. It was time to go. She turned to Pieter with a smile and held out her hand.

‘Pieter, you have been very patient, but I would like a hand down the steps, I am trussed like one of those poor chickens in the Markt.’

He took her right hand in his and descended backwards, enabling her to hold up her cloak and skirt in the other. For someone so naturally awkward he managed well; she only had to stop him falling once. They paused to laugh.
Suddenly
the thought that had been teasing her swept through her mind like the flight of a swallow.

‘Pieter,’ she said, trying to keep hold of the thought.

‘Yes?’

‘When you drew your empty glass, you drew it as you knew it was, as your reason told you, and it looked all wrong?’ Pieter nodded. ‘So it was only when you forgot about reason and drew what your senses told you was there, that the glass appeared?’

‘Yes, I hadn’t been using my eyes.’