Girl with a Pearl Earring

1666

“You smell of linseed oil.”

My father spoke in a baffled tone. He did not believe that simply cleaning a painter’s studio would make the smell linger on my clothes, my skin, my hair. He was right. It was as if he guessed that I now slept with the oil in my room, that I sat for hours being painted and absorbing the scent. He guessed and yet he could not say. His blindness took away his confidence so that he did not trust the thoughts in his mind.

A year before I might have tried to help him, suggest what he was thinking, humor him into speaking his mind. Now, however, I simply watched him struggle silently, like a beetle that has fallen onto its back and cannot turn itself over.

My mother had also guessed, though she did not know what she had guessed. Sometimes I could not meet her eye. When I did her look was a puzzle of anger held back, of curiosity, of hurt. She was trying to understand what had happened to her daughter.

I had grown used to the smell of linseed oil. I even kept a small bottle of it by my bed. In the mornings when I was getting dressed I held it up to the window to admire the color, which was like lemon juice with a drop of lead-tin yellow in it.

I wear that color now, I wanted to say. He is painting me in that color.

Instead, to take my father’s mind off the smell, I described the other painting my master was working on. “A young woman sits at a harpsichord, playing. She is wearing a yellow and black bodice—the same the baker’s daughter wore for her painting—a white satin skirt and white ribbons in her hair. Standing in the curve of the harpsichord is another woman, who is holding music and singing. She wears a green, fur-trimmed housecoat and a blue dress. In between the women is a man sitting with his back to us—”

“Van Ruijven,” my father interrupted.

“Yes, van Ruijven. All that can be seen of him is his back, his hair, and one hand on the neck of a lute.”

“He plays the lute badly,” my father added eagerly.

“Very badly. That’s why his back is to us—so we won’t see that he can’t even hold his lute properly.”

My father chuckled, his good mood restored. He was always pleased to hear that a rich man could be a poor musician.

It was not always so easy to bring him back into good humor. Sundays had become so uncomfortable with my parents that I began to welcome those times when Pieter the son ate with us. He must have noted the troubled looks my mother gave me, my father’s querulous comments, the awkward silences so unexpected between parent and child. He never said anything about them, never winced or stared or became tongue-tied himself. Instead he gently teased my father, flattered my mother, smiled at me.

Pieter did not ask why I smelled of linseed oil. He did not seem to worry about what I might be hiding. He had decided to trust me.

He was a good man.

I could not help it, though—I always looked to see if there was blood under his fingernails.

He should soak them in salted water, I thought. One day I will tell him so.

He was a good man, but he was becoming impatient. He did not say so, but sometimes on Sundays in the alley off the Rietveld Canal, I could feel the impatience in his hands. He would grip my thighs harder than he needed, press his palm into my back so that I was glued in his groin and would know its bulge, even under many layers of cloth. It was so cold that we did not touch each other’s skin—only the bumps and textures of wool, the rough outlines of our limbs.

Pieter’s touch did not always repel me. Sometimes, if I looked over his shoulder at the sky, and found the colors besides white in a cloud, or thought of grinding lead white or massicot, my breasts and belly tingled, and I pressed against him. He was always pleased when I responded. He did not notice that I avoided looking at his face and hands.

That Sunday of the linseed oil, when my father and mother looked so puzzled and unhappy, Pieter led me to the alley later. There he began squeezing my breasts and pulling at their nipples through the cloth of my dress. Then he stopped suddenly, gave me a sly look, and ran his hands over my shoulders and up my neck. Before I could stop him his hands were up under my cap and tangled in my hair.

I held my cap down with both hands. “No!”

Pieter smiled at me, his eyes glazed as if he had looked too long at the sun. He had managed to pull loose a strand of my hair, and tugged it now with his fingers. “Some day soon, Griet, I will see all of this. You will not always be a secret to me.” He let a hand drop to the lower curve of my belly and pushed against me. “You will be eighteen next month. I’ll speak to your father then.”

I stepped back from him—I felt as if I were in a hot, dark room and could not breathe. “I am still so young. Too young for that.”

Pieter shrugged. “Not everyone waits until they’re older. And your family needs me.” It was the first time he had referred to my parents’ poverty, and their dependence on him—their dependence which became my dependence as well. Because of it they were content to take the gifts of meat and have me stand in an alley with him on a Sunday.

I frowned. I did not like being reminded of his power over us.

Pieter sensed that he should not have said anything. To make amends he tucked the strand of hair back under my cap, then touched my cheek. “I’ll make you happy, Griet,” he said. “I will.”

After he left I walked along the canal, despite the cold. The ice had been broken so that boats could get through, but a thin layer had formed again on the surface. When we were children Frans and Agnes and I would throw stones to shatter the thin ice until every sliver had disappeared under water. It seemed a long time ago.

A month before he had asked me to come up to the studio.

“I will be in the attic,” I announced to the room that afternoon.

Tanneke did not look up from her sewing. “Put some more wood on the fire before you go,” she ordered.

The girls were working on their lace, overseen by Maertge and Maria Thins. Lisbeth had patience and nimble fingers, and produced good work, but Aleydis was still too young to manage the delicate weaving, and Cornelia too impatient. The cat sat at Cornelia’s feet by the fire, and occasionally the girl reached down and dangled a bit of thread for the creature to paw at. Eventually, she probably hoped, the cat would tear its claws through her work and ruin it.

After feeding the fire I stepped around Johannes, who was playing with a top on the cold kitchen tiles. As I left he spun it wildly, and it hopped straight into the fire. He began to cry while Cornelia shrieked with laughter and Maertge tried to haul the toy from the flames with a pair of tongs.

“Hush, you’ll wake Catharina and Franciscus,” Maria Thins warned the children. They did not hear her.

I crept out, relieved to escape the noise, no matter how cold it would be in the studio.

The studio door was shut. As I approached it I pressed my lips together, smoothed my eyebrows, and ran my fingers down the sides of my cheeks to my chin, as if I were testing an apple to see if it was firm. I hesitated in front of the heavy wooden door, then knocked softly. There was no answer, though I knew he must be there—he was expecting me.

It was the first day of the new year. He had painted the ground layer of my painting almost a month before, but nothing since—no reddish marks to indicate the shapes, no false colors, no overlaid colors, no highlights. The canvas was a blank yellowish white. I saw it every morning as I cleaned.

I knocked louder.

When the door opened he was frowning, his eyes not catching mine. “Don’t knock, Griet, just come in quietly,” he said, turning away and going back to the easel, where the blank canvas sat waiting for its colors.

I closed the door softly behind me, blotting out the noise of the children downstairs, and stepped to the middle of the room. Now that the moment had come at last I was surprisingly calm. “You wanted me, sir.”

“Yes. Stand over there.” He gestured to the corner where he had painted the other women. The table he was using for the concert painting was set there, but he had cleared away the musical instruments. He handed me a letter. “Read that,” he said.

I unfolded the sheet of paper and bowed my head over it, worried that he would discover I was only pretending to read an unfamiliar hand.

Nothing was written on the paper.

I looked up to tell him so, but stopped. With him it was often better to say nothing. I bowed my head again over the letter.

“Try this instead,” he suggested, handing me a book. It was bound in worn leather and the spine was broken in several places. I opened it at random and studied a page. I did not recognize any of the words.

He had me sit with the book, then stand holding it while looking at him. He took away the book, handed me the white jug with the pewter top and had me pretend to pour a glass of wine. He asked me to stand and simply look out the window. All the while he seemed perplexed, as if someone had told him a story and he couldn’t recall the ending.

“It is the clothes,” he murmured. “That is the problem.”

I understood. He was having me do things a lady would do, but I was wearing a maid’s clothes. I thought of the yellow mantle and the yellow and black bodice, and wondered which he would ask me to wear. Instead of being excited by the idea, though, I felt uneasy. It was not just that it would be impossible to hide from Catharina that I was wearing her clothes. I did not feel right holding books and letters, pouring myself wine, doing things I never did. As much as I wanted to feel the soft fur of the mantle around my neck, it was not what I normally wore.

“Sir,” I spoke finally, “perhaps you should have me do other things. Things that a maid does.”

“What does a maid do?” he asked softly, folding his arms and raising his eyebrows.

I had to wait a moment before I could answer—my jaw was trembling. I thought of Pieter and me in the alley and swallowed. “Sewing,” I replied. “Mopping and sweeping. Carrying water. Washing sheets. Cutting bread. Polishing windowpanes.”

“You would like me to paint you with your mop?”

“It’s not for me to say, sir. It is not my painting.”

He frowned. “No, it is not yours.” He sounded as if he were speaking to himself.

“I do not want you to paint me with my mop.” I said it without knowing that I would.

“No. No, you’re right, Griet. I would not paint you with a mop in your hand.”

“But I cannot wear your wife’s clothes.”

There was a long silence. “No, I expect not,” he said. “But I will not paint you as a maid.”

“What, then, sir?”

“I will paint you as I first saw you, Griet. Just you.”

He set a chair near his easel, facing the middle window, and I sat down. I knew it was to be my place. He was going to find the pose he had put me in a month before, when he had decided to paint me.

“Look out the window,” he said.

I looked out at the grey winter day and, remembering when I stood in for the baker’s daughter, tried not to see anything but to let my thoughts become quiet. It was hard because I was thinking of him, and of me sitting in front of him.

The New Church bell struck twice.

“Now turn your head very slowly towards me. No, not your shoulders. Keep your body turned towards the window. Move only your head. Slow, slow. Stop. A little more, so that—stop. Now sit still.”

I sat still.

At first I could not meet his eyes. When I did it was like sitting close to a fire that suddenly blazes up. Instead I studied his firm chin, his thin lips.

“Griet, you are not looking at me.”

I forced my gaze up to his eyes. Again I felt as if I were burning, but I endured it—he wanted me to.

Soon it became easier to keep my eyes on his. He looked at me as if he were not seeing me, but someone else, or something else—as if he were looking at a painting.

He is looking at the light that falls on my face, I thought, not at my face itself. That is the difference.

It was almost as if I were not there. Once I felt this I was able to relax a little. As he was not seeing me, I did not see him. My mind began to wander—over the jugged hare we had eaten for dinner, the lace collar Lisbeth had given me, a story Pieter the son had told me the day before. After that I thought of nothing. Twice he got up to change the position of one of the shutters. He went to his cupboard several times to choose different brushes and colors. I viewed his movements as if I were standing in the street, looking in through the window.

The church bell struck three times. I blinked. I had not felt so much time pass. It was as if I had fallen under a spell.

I looked at him—his eyes were with me now. He was looking at me. As we gazed at each other a ripple of heat passed through my body. I kept my eyes on his, though, until at last he looked away and cleared his throat.

“That will be all, Griet. There is some bone for you to grind upstairs.”

I nodded and slipped from the room, my heart pounding. He was painting me.

“ Pull your cap back from your face,” he said one day.

“Back from my face, sir?” I repeated dumbly, and regretted it. He preferred me not to speak, but to do as he said. If I did speak, I should say something worth the words.

He did not answer. I pulled the side of my cap that was closest to him back from my cheek. The starched tip grazed my neck.

“More,” he said. “I want to see the line of your cheek.”

I hesitated, then pulled it back further. His eyes moved down my cheek.

“Show me your ear.”

I did not want to. I had no choice.

I felt under the cap to make sure no hair was loose, tucking a few strands behind my ear. Then I pulled it back to reveal the lower part of my ear.

The look on his face was like a sigh, though he did not make a sound. I caught a noise in my own throat and pushed it down so that it would not escape.

“Your cap,” he said. “Take it off.”

“No, sir.”

“No?”

“Please do not ask me to, sir.” I let the cloth of the cap drop so that my ear and cheek were covered again. I looked at the floor, the grey and white tiles extending away from me, clean and straight.

“You do not want to bare your head?”

“No.”

“Yet you do not want to be painted as a maid, with your mop and your cap, nor as a lady, with satin and fur and dressed hair.”

I did not answer. I could not show him my hair. I was not the sort of girl who left her head bare.

He shifted in his chair, then got up. I heard him go into the storeroom. When he returned, his arms were full of cloth, which he dropped in my lap.

“Well, Griet, see what you can do with this. Find something here to wrap your head in, so that you are neither a lady nor a maid.” I could not tell if he was angry or amused. He left the room, shutting the door behind him.

I sorted through the cloth. There were three caps, all too fine for me, and too small to cover my head fully. There were pieces of cloth, left over from dresses and jackets Catharina had made, in yellows and browns, blues and greys.

I did not know what to do. I looked around as if I would find an answer in the studio. My eyes fell on the painting of The Procuress —the young woman’s head was bare, her hair held back with ribbons, but the old woman wore a piece of cloth wrapped around her head, crisscrossing in and out of itself. Perhaps that is what he wants, I thought. Perhaps that is what women who are neither ladies nor maids nor the other do with their hair.

I chose a piece of brown cloth and took it into the storeroom, where there was a mirror. I removed my cap and wound the cloth around my head as best I could, checking the painting to try to imitate the old woman’s. I looked very peculiar.

I should let him paint me with a mop, I thought. Pride has made me vain.

When he returned and saw what I had done, he laughed. I had not heard him laugh often—sometimes with the children, once with van Leeuwenhoek. I frowned. I did not like being laughed at.

“I have only done what you asked, sir,” I muttered.

He stopped chuckling. “You’re right, Griet. I’m sorry. And your face, now that I can see more of it, it is—” He stopped, never finishing his sentence. I always wondered what he would have said.

He turned to the pile of cloth I had left on my chair. “Why did you choose brown,” he asked, “when there are other colors?”

I did not want to speak of maids and ladies again. I did not want to remind him that blues and yellows were ladies’ colors. “Brown is the color I usually wear,” I said simply.

He seemed to guess what I was thinking. “Tanneke wore blue and yellow when I painted her some years ago,” he countered.

“I am not Tanneke, sir.”

“No, that you certainly are not.” He pulled out a long, narrow band of blue cloth. “Nonetheless, I want you to try this.”

I studied it. “That is not enough cloth to cover my head.”

“Use this as well, then.” He picked up a piece of yellow cloth that had a border of the same blue and held it out to me.

Reluctantly I took the two pieces of cloth back to the storeroom and tried again in front of the mirror. I tied the blue cloth over my forehead, with the yellow piece wound round and round, covering the crown of my head. I tucked the end into a fold at the side of my head, adjusted folds here and there, smoothed the blue cloth round my head, and stepped back into the studio.

He was looking at a book and did not notice as I slipped into my chair. I arranged myself as I had been sitting before. As I turned my head to look over my left shoulder, he glanced up. At the same time the end of the yellow cloth came loose and fell over my shoulder.

“Oh,” I breathed, afraid that the cloth would fall from my head and reveal all my hair. But it held—only the end of the yellow cloth dangled free. My hair remained hidden.

“Yes,” he said then. “That is it, Griet. Yes.”

He would not let me see the painting. He set it on a second easel, angled away from the door, and told me not to look at it. I promised not to, but some nights I lay in bed and thought about wrapping my blanket around me and stealing downstairs to see it. He would never know.

But he would guess. I did not think I could sit with him looking at me day after day without guessing that I had looked at the painting. I could not hide things from him. I did not want to.

I was reluctant, too, to discover how it was that he saw me. It was better to leave that a mystery.

The colors he asked me to mix gave no clues as to what he was doing. Black, ocher, lead white, lead-tin yellow, ultramarine, red lake—they were all colors I had worked with before, and they could as easily have been used for the concert painting.

It was unusual for him to work on two paintings at once. Although he did not like switching back and forth between the two, it did make it easier to hide from others that he was painting me. A few people knew. Van Ruijven knew—I was sure it was at his request that my master was making the painting. My master must have agreed to paint me alone so that he would not have to paint me with van Ruijven. Van Ruijven would own the painting of me.

I was not pleased by this thought. Nor, I believed, was my master.

Maria Thins knew about the painting as well. It was she who probably made the arrangement with van Ruijven. And besides, she could still go in and out of the studio as she liked, and could look at the painting, as I was not allowed to. Sometimes she looked at me sideways with a curious expression she could not hide.

I suspected Cornelia knew about the painting. I caught her one day where she should not be, on the stairs leading to the studio. She would not say why she was there when I asked her, and I let her go rather than bring her to Maria Thins or Catharina. I did not dare stir things up, not while he was painting me.

Van Leeuwenhoek knew about the painting. One day he brought his camera obscura and set it up so they could look at me. He did not seem surprised to see me sitting in my chair—my master must have warned him. He did glance at my unusual head cloth, but did not comment.

They took turns using the camera. I had learned to sit without moving or thinking, and without being distracted by his gaze. It was harder, though, with the black box pointed at me. With no eyes, no face, no body turned towards me, only a box and a black robe covering a humped back, I became uneasy. I could no longer be sure of how they were looking at me.

I could not deny, however, that it was exciting to be studied so intently by two gentlemen, even if I could not see their faces.

My master left the room to find a soft cloth to polish the lens. Van Leeuwenhoek waited until his tread could be heard on the stairs, then said softly, “You watch out for yourself, my dear.”

“What do you mean, sir?”

“You must know that he’s painting you to satisfy van Ruijven. Van Ruijven’s interest in you has made your master protective of you.”

I nodded, secretly pleased to hear what I had suspected.

“Do not get caught in their battle. You could be hurt.”

I was still holding the position I had assumed for the painting. Now my shoulders twitched of their own accord, as if I were shaking off a shawl. “I do not think he would ever hurt me, sir.”

“Tell me, my dear, how much do you know of men?”

I blushed deeply and turned my head away. I was thinking of being in the alley with Pieter the son.

“You see, competition makes men possessive. He is interested in you in part because van Ruijven is.”

I did not answer.

“He is an exceptional man,” van Leeuwenhoek continued. “His eyes are worth a room full of gold. But sometimes he sees the world only as he wants it to be, not as it is. He does not understand the consequences for others of his point of view. He thinks only of himself and his work, not of you. You must take care then—” He stopped. My master’s footsteps were on the stairs.

“Take care to do what, sir?” I whispered.

“Take care to remain yourself.”

I lifted my chin to him. “To remain a maid, sir?”

“That is not what I mean. The women in his paintings—he traps them in his world. You can get lost there.”

My master came into the room. “Griet, you have moved,” he said.

“I am sorry, sir.” I took up my position once more.

Catharina was six months pregnant when he began the painting of me. She was large already, and moved slowly, leaning against walls, grabbing the back of chairs, sinking heavily into one with a sigh. I was surprised by how hard she made carrying a child seem, given that she had done so several times already. Although she did not complain aloud, once she was big she made every movement seem like a punishment she was being forced to bear. I had not noticed this when she was carrying Franciscus, when I was new to the house and could barely see beyond the pile of laundry waiting for me each morning.

As she grew heavier Catharina became more and more absorbed in herself. She still looked after the children, with Maertge’s help. She still concerned herself with the housekeeping, and gave Tanneke and me orders. She still shopped for the house with Maria Thins. But part of her was elsewhere, with the baby inside. Her harsh manner was rare now, and less deliberate. She slowed down, and though she was clumsy she broke fewer things.

I worried about her discovering the painting of me. Luckily the stairs to the studio were becoming awkward for her to climb, so that she was unlikely to fling open the studio door and discover me in my chair, him at his easel. And because it was winter she preferred to sit by the fire with the children and Tanneke and Maria Thins, or doze under a mound of blankets and furs.

The real danger was that she would find out from van Ruijven. Of the people who knew of the painting, he was the worst at keeping a secret. He came to the house regularly to sit for the concert painting. Maria Thins no longer sent me on errands or told me to make myself scarce when he came. It would have been impractical—there were only so many errands I could run. And she must have thought he would be satisfied with the promise of a painting, and would leave me alone.

He did not. Sometimes he sought me out, while I was washing or ironing clothes in the washing kitchen, or working with Tanneke in the cooking kitchen. It was not so bad when others were around—when Maertge was with me, or Tanneke, or even Aleydis, he simply called out, “Hello, my girl,” in his honeyed voice and left me in peace. If I was alone, however, as I often was in the courtyard, hanging up laundry so it could catch a few minutes of pale winter sunlight, he would step into the enclosed space, and behind a sheet I had just hung, or one of my master’s shirts, he would touch me. I pushed him away as politely as a maid can a gentleman. Nonetheless he managed to become familiar with the shape of my breasts and thighs under my clothes. He said things to me that I tried to forget, words I would never repeat to anyone else.

Van Ruijven always visited Catharina for a few minutes after sitting in the studio, his daughter and sister waiting patiently for him to finish gossiping and flirting. Although Maria Thins had told him not to say anything to Catharina about the painting, he was not a man to keep secrets quietly. He was very pleased that he was to have the painting of me, and he sometimes dropped hints about it to Catharina.

One day as I was mopping the hallway I overheard him say to her, “Who would you have your husband paint, if he could paint anyone in the world?”

“Oh, I don’t think about such things,” she laughed in reply. “He paints what he paints.”

“I don’t know about that.” Van Ruijven worked so hard to sound sly that even Catharina could not miss the hint.

“What do you mean?” she demanded.

“Nothing, nothing. But you should ask him for a painting. He might not say no. He could paint one of the children—Maertge, perhaps. Or your own lovely self.”

Catharina was silent. From the way van Ruijven quickly changed the subject he must have realized he had said something that upset her.

Another time when she asked if he enjoyed sitting for the painting he replied, “Not as much as I would if I had a pretty girl to sit with me. But soon enough I’ll have her anyway, and that will have to do, for now.”

Catharina let this remark pass, as she would not have done a few months before. But then, perhaps it did not sound so suspicious to her since she knew nothing of the painting. I was horrified, though, and repeated his words to Maria Thins.

“Have you been listening behind doors, girl?” the old woman asked.

“I—” I could not deny it.

Maria Thins smiled sourly. “It’s about time I caught you doing things maids are meant to do. Next you’ll be stealing silver spoons.”

I flinched. It was a harsh thing to say, especially after all the trouble with Cornelia and the combs. I had no choice, though—I owed Maria Thins a great deal. She must be allowed her cruel words.

“But you’re right, van Ruijven’s mouth is looser than a whore’s purse,” she continued. “I will speak to him again.”

Saying something to him, however, was of little use—it seemed to spur him on even more to make suggestions to Catharina. Maria Thins took to being in the room with her daughter when he visited so that she could try to rein in his tongue.

I did not know what Catharina would do when she discovered the painting of me. And she would, one day—if not in the house, then at van Ruijven’s, where she would be dining and look up and see me staring at her from a wall.

He did not work on the painting of me every day. He had the concert to paint as well, with or without van Ruijven and his women. He painted around them when they were not there, or asked me to take the place of one of the women—the girl sitting at the harpsichord, the woman standing next to it singing from a sheet of paper. I did not wear their clothes. He simply wanted a body there. Sometimes the two women came without van Ruijven, and that was when he worked best. Van Ruijven himself was a difficult model. I could hear him when I was working in the attic. He could not sit still, and wanted to talk and play his lute. My master was patient with him, as he would be with a child, but sometimes I could hear a tone creep into his voice and knew that he would go out that night to the tavern, returning with eyes like glittering spoons.

I sat for him for the other painting three or four times a week, for an hour or two each time. It was the part of the week I liked best, with his eyes on only me for those hours. I did not mind that it was not an easy pose to hold, that looking sideways for long periods of time gave me headaches. I did not mind when sometimes he had me move my head again and again so that the yellow cloth swung around, so that he could paint me looking as if I had just turned to face him. I did whatever he asked of me.

He was not happy, though. February passed and March arrived, with its days of ice and sun, and he was not happy. He had been working on the painting for almost two months, and though I had not seen it, I thought it must be close to done. He was no longer having me mix quantities of color for it, but used tiny amounts and made few movements with his brushes as I sat. I had thought I understood how he wanted me to be, but now I was not sure. Sometimes he simply sat and looked at me as if he were waiting for me to do something. Then he was not like a painter, but like a man, and it was hard to look at him.

One day he announced suddenly, as I was sitting in my chair, “This will satisfy van Ruijven, but not me.”

I did not know what to say. I could not help him if I had not seen the painting. “May I look at the painting, sir?”

He gazed at me curiously.

“Perhaps I can help,” I added, then wished I had not. I was afraid I had become too bold.

“All right,” he said after a moment.

I got up and stood behind him. He did not turn round, but sat very still. I could hear him breathing slowly and steadily.

The painting was like none of his others. It was just of me, of my head and shoulders, with no tables or curtains, no windows or powder-brushes to soften and distract. He had painted me with my eyes wide, the light falling across my face but the left side of me in shadow. I was wearing blue and yellow and brown. The cloth wound round my head made me look not like myself, but like Griet from another town, even from another country altogether. The background was black, making me appear very much alone, although I was clearly looking at someone. I seemed to be waiting for something I did not think would ever happen.

He was right—the painting might satisfy van Ruijven, but something was missing from it.

I knew before he did. When I saw what was needed—that point of brightness he had used to catch the eye in other paintings—I shivered. This will be the end, I thought.

I was right.

This time I did not try to help him as I had with the painting of van Ruijven’s wife writing a letter. I did not creep into the studio and change things—reposition the chair I sat in or open the shutters wider. I did not wrap the blue and yellow cloth differently or hide the top of my chemise. I did not bite my lips to make them redder, or suck in my cheeks. I did not set out colors I thought he might use.

I simply sat for him, and ground and washed the colors he asked for.

He would find it for himself anyway.

It took longer than I had expected. I sat for him twice more before he discovered what was missing. Each time I sat he painted with a dissatisfied look on his face, and dismissed me early.

I waited.

Catharina herself gave him the answer. One afternoon Maertge and I were polishing shoes in the washing kitchen while the other girls had gathered in the great hall to watch their mother dress for a birth feast. I heard Aleydis and Lisbeth squeal, and knew Catharina had brought out her pearls, which the girls loved.

Then I heard his tread in the hallway, silence, then low voices. After a moment he called out, “Griet, bring my wife a glass of wine.”

I set the white jug and two glasses on a tray, in case he chose to join her, and took them to the great hall. As I entered I bumped against Cornelia, who had been standing in the doorway. I managed to catch the jug, and the glasses clattered against my chest without breaking. Cornelia smirked and stepped out of my way.

Catharina was sitting at the table with her powder-brush and jar, her combs and jewelry box. She was wearing her pearls and her green silk dress, altered to cover her belly. I placed a glass near her and poured.

“Would you like some wine too, sir?” I asked, glancing up. He was leaning against the cupboard that surrounded the bed, pressed against the silk curtains, which I noticed for the first time were made of the same cloth as Catharina’s dress. He looked back and forth between Catharina and me. On his face was his painter’s look.

“Silly girl, you’ve spilled wine on me!” Catharina pushed away from the table and brushed at her belly with her hand. A few drops of red had splashed there.

“I’m sorry, madam. I’ll get a damp cloth to sponge it.”

“Oh, never mind. I can’t bear to have you fussing about me. Just go.”

I stole a look at him as I picked up the tray. His eyes were fixed on his wife’s pearl earring. As she turned her head to brush more powder on her face the earring swung back and forth, caught in the light from the front windows. It made us all look at her face, and reflected light as her eyes did.

“I must go upstairs for a moment,” he said to Catharina. “I won’t be long.”

That is it, then, I thought. He has his answer.

When he asked me to come to the studio the next afternoon, I did not feel excited as I usually did when I knew I was to sit for him. For the first time I dreaded it. That morning the clothes I washed felt particularly heavy and sodden, and my hands not strong enough to wring them well. I moved slowly between the kitchen and the courtyard, and sat down to rest more than once. Maria Thins caught me sitting when she came in for a copper pancake pan. “What’s the matter, girl? Are you ill?” she asked.

I jumped up. “No, madam. Just a little tired.”

“Tired, eh? That’s no way for a maid to be, especially not in the morning.” She looked as if she did not believe me.

I plunged my hands into the cooling water and pulled out one of Catharina’s chemises. “Are there any errands you would like me to run this afternoon, madam?”

“Errands? This afternoon? I don’t think so. That’s a funny thing to ask if you’re feeling tired.” She narrowed her eyes. “You aren’t in trouble, are you, girl? Van Ruijven didn’t catch you alone, did he?”

“No, madam.” In fact he had, just two days before, but I had managed to pull away from him.

“Has someone discovered you upstairs?” Maria Thins asked in a low voice, jerking her head up to indicate the studio.

“No, madam.” For a moment I was tempted to tell her about the earring. Instead I said, “I ate something that did not agree with me, that is all.”

Maria Thins shrugged and turned away. She still did not believe me, but had decided it did not matter.

That afternoon I plodded up the stairs, and paused before the studio door. This would not be like other times when I sat for him. He was going to ask me for something, and I was beholden to him.

I pushed open the door. He sat at his easel, studying the tip of one of his brushes. When he looked up at me I saw something I had never before seen in his face. He was nervous.

That was what gave me the courage to say what I said. I went to stand by my chair and placed my hand on one of the lion heads. “Sir,” I began, gripping the hard, cool carving, “I cannot do it.”

“Do what, Griet?” He was genuinely surprised.

“What you are going to ask me to do. I cannot wear it. Maids do not wear pearls.”

He stared at me for a long moment, then shook his head a few times. “How unexpected you are. You always surprise me.”

I ran my fingers around the lion’s nose and mouth and up its muzzle to its mane, smooth and knobbled. His eyes followed my fingers.

“You know,” he murmured, “that the painting needs it, the light that the pearl reflects. It won’t be complete otherwise.”

I did know. I had not looked at the painting long—it was too strange seeing myself—but I had known immediately that it needed the pearl earring. Without it there were only my eyes, my mouth, the band of my chemise, the dark space behind my ear, all separate. The earring would bring them together. It would complete the painting.

It would also put me on the street. I knew that he would not borrow an earring from van Ruijven or van Leeuwenhoek or anyone else. He had seen Catharina’s pearl and that was what he would make me wear. He used what he wanted for his paintings, without considering the result. It was as van Leeuwenhoek had warned me.

When Catharina saw her earring in the painting she would explode.

I should have begged him not to ruin me.

“You are painting it for van Ruijven,” I argued instead, “not for yourself. Does it matter so much? You said yourself that he would be satisfied with it.”

His face hardened and I knew I had said the wrong thing.

“I would never stop working on a painting if I knew it was not complete, no matter who was to get it,” he muttered. “That is not how I work.”

“No, sir.” I swallowed and gazed at the tiled floor. Stupid girl, I thought, my jaw tightening.

“Go and prepare yourself.”

Bowing my head, I hurried to the storeroom where I kept the blue and yellow cloths. I had never felt his disapproval so strongly. I did not think I could bear it. I removed my cap and, feeling the ribbon that tied up my hair was coming undone, I pulled it off. I was reaching back to gather up my hair again when I heard one of the loose floor tiles in the studio clink. I froze. He had never come into the storeroom while I was changing. He had never asked that of me.

I turned round, my hands still in my hair. He stood on the threshold, gazing at me.

I lowered my hands. My hair fell in waves over my shoulders, brown like fields in the autumn. No one ever saw it but me.

“Your hair,” he said. He was no longer angry.

At last he let me go with his eyes.

Now that he had seen my hair, now that he had seen me revealed, I no longer felt I had something precious to hide and keep to myself. I could be freer, if not with him, then with someone else. It no longer mattered what I did and did not do.

That evening I slipped from the house and found Pieter the son at one of the taverns where the butchers drank, near the Meat Hall. Ignoring the whistles and remarks, I went up to him and asked him to come with me. He set down his beer, his eyes wide, and followed me outside, where I took his hand and led him to a nearby alley. There I pulled up my skirt and let him do as he liked. Clasping my hands around his neck, I held on while he found his way into me and began to push rhythmically. He gave me pain, but when I remembered my hair loose around my shoulders in the studio, I felt something like pleasure too.

Afterwards, back at Papists’ Corner, I washed myself with vinegar.

When I next looked at the painting he had added a wisp of hair peeking out from the blue cloth above my left eye.

The next time I sat for him he did not mention the earring. He did not hand it to me, as I had feared, or change how I sat, or stop painting.

He did not come into the storeroom again to see my hair either.

He sat for a long time, mixing colors on his palette with his palette knife. There was red and ocher there, but the paint he was mixing was mostly white, to which he added daubs of black, working them together slowly and carefully, the silver diamond of the knife flashing in the grey paint.

“Sir?” I began.

He looked up at me, his knife stilled.

“I have seen you paint sometimes without the model being here. Could you not paint the earring without me wearing it?”

The palette knife remained still. “You would like me to imagine you wearing the pearl, and paint what I imagine?”

“Yes, sir.”

He looked down at the paint, the palette knife moving again. I think he smiled a little. “I want to see you wear the earring.”

“But you know what will happen then, sir.”

“I know the painting will be complete.”

You will ruin me, I thought. Again I could not bring myself to say it. “What will your wife say when she sees the finished painting?” I asked instead, as boldly as I dared.

“She will not see it. I will give it directly to van Ruijven.” It was the first time he had admitted he was painting me secretly, that Catharina would disapprove.

“You need only wear it once,” he added, as if to placate me. “The next time I paint you I will bring it. Next week. Catharina will not miss it for an afternoon.”

“But, sir,” I said, “my ear is not pierced.”

He frowned slightly. “Well, then, you will need to take care of that.” This was clearly a woman’s detail, not something he felt he need concern himself with. He tapped the knife and wiped it with a rag. “Now, let us begin. Chin down a bit.” He gazed at me. “Lick your lips, Griet.”

I licked my lips.

“Leave your mouth open.”

I was so surprised by this request that my mouth remained open of its own will. I blinked back tears. Virtuous women did not open their mouths in paintings.

It was as if he had been in the alley with Pieter and me.

You have ruined me, I thought. I licked my lips again.

“Good,” he said.

I did not want to do it to myself. I was not afraid of pain, but I did not want to take a needle to my own ear.

If I could have chosen someone to do it for me, it would have been my mother. But she would never have understood, nor agreed to it without knowing why. And if she had been told why, she would have been horrified.

I could not ask Tanneke, or Maertge.

I considered asking Maria Thins. She may not yet have known about the earring, but she would find out soon enough. I could not bring myself to ask her, though, to have her take part in my humiliation.

The only person who might do it and understand was Frans. I slipped out the next afternoon, carrying a needlecase Maria Thins had given me. The woman with the sour face at the factory gate smirked when I asked to see him.

“He’s long gone and good riddance,” she answered, relishing the words.

“Gone? Gone where?”

The woman shrugged. “Towards Rotterdam, they say. And then, who knows? Perhaps he’ll make his fortune on the seas, if he doesn’t die between the legs of some Rotterdam whore.” These last bitter words made me look at her more closely. She was with child.

Cornelia had not known when she broke the tile of Frans and me that she would come to be right—that he would split from me and from the family. Will I ever see him again? I thought. And what will our parents say? I felt more alone than ever.

The next day I stopped at the apothecary’s on my way back from the fish stalls. The apothecary knew me now, even greeting me by name. “And what is it that he wants today?” he asked. “Canvas? Vermilion? Ocher? Linseed oil?”

“He does not need anything,” I answered nervously. “Nor my mistress. I have come—” For a moment I considered asking him to pierce my ear. He seemed a discreet man, who might do it without telling anyone or demanding to know why.

I could not ask a stranger such a thing. “I need something to numb the skin,” I said.

“Numb the skin?”

“Yes. As ice does.”

“Why do you want to numb the skin?”

I shrugged and did not answer, studying the bottles on the shelves behind him.

“Clove oil,” he said at last with a sigh. He reached behind him for a flask. “Rub a little on the spot and leave it for a few minutes. It doesn’t last long, though.”

“I would like some, please.”

“And who is to pay for this? Your master? It is very dear, you know. It comes from far away.” In his voice was a mixture of disapproval and curiosity.

“I will pay. I only want a little.” I removed a pouch from my apron and counted the precious stuivers onto the table. A tiny bottle of it cost me two days’ wages. I had borrowed some money from Tanneke, promising to repay her when I was paid on Sunday.

When I handed over my reduced wages to my mother that Sunday I told her I had broken a hand mirror and had to pay for it.

“It will cost more than two days’ wages to replace that,” she scolded. “What were you doing, looking at yourself in a mirror? How careless.”

“Yes,” I agreed. “I have been very careless.”

I waited until late, when I was sure everyone in the house was asleep. Although usually no one came up to the studio after it was locked for the night, I was still fearful of someone catching me, with my needle and mirror and clove oil. I stood by the locked studio door, listening. I could hear Catharina pacing up and down the hallway below. She was having a hard time sleeping now—her body had become too cumbersome to find a position she could lie in comfortably. Then I heard a child’s voice, a girl’s, trying to speak low but unable to hide its bright ring. Cornelia was with her mother. I could not hear what they said, and because I was locked into the studio, I could not creep to the top of the stairs to listen more closely.

Maria Thins was also moving about in her rooms next to the storeroom. It was a restless house, and it made me restless too. I made myself sit in my lion-head chair to wait. I was not sleepy. I had never felt so awake.

Finally Catharina and Cornelia went back to bed, and Maria Thins stopped rustling next door. As the house grew still, I remained in my chair. It was easier to sit there than do what I had to do. When I could not delay any longer, I got up and first peeked at the painting. All I could really see now was the great hole where the earring should go, which I would have to fill.

I took up my candle, found the mirror in the storeroom, and climbed to the attic. I propped the mirror against the wall on the grinding table and set the candle next to it. I got out my needlecase and, choosing the thinnest needle, set the tip in the flame of the candle. Then I opened the bottle of clove oil, expecting it to smell foul, of mould or rotting leaves, as remedies often do. Instead it was sweet and strange, like honeycakes left out in the sun. It was from far away, from places Frans might get to on his ships. I shook a few drops onto a rag, and swabbed my left earlobe. The apothecary was right—when I touched the lobe a few minutes later it felt as if I had been out in the cold without wrapping a shawl around my ears.

I took the needle out of the flame and let the glowing red tip change to dull orange and then to black. When I leaned towards the mirror I gazed at myself for a moment. My eyes were full of liquid in the candlelight, glittering with fear.

Do this quickly, I thought. It will not help to delay.

I pulled the earlobe taut and in one movement pushed the needle through my flesh.

Just before I fainted I thought, I have always wanted to wear pearls.

Every night I swabbed my ear and pushed a slightly larger needle through the hole to keep it open. It did not hurt too much until the lobe became infected and began to swell. Then no matter how much clove oil I dabbed on the ear, my eyes streamed with tears when I drove the needle through. I did not know how I would manage to wear the earring without fainting again.

I was grateful that I wore my cap over my ears so that no one saw the swollen red lobe. It throbbed as I bent over the steaming laundry, as I ground colors, as I sat in church with Pieter and my parents.

It throbbed when van Ruijven caught me hanging up sheets in the courtyard one morning and tried to pull my chemise down over my shoulders and expose my bosom.

“You shouldn’t fight me, my girl,” he murmured as I backed away from him. “You’ll enjoy it more if you don’t fight. And you know, I will have you anyway when I get that painting.” He pushed me against the wall and lowered his lips to my chest, pulling at my breasts to free them from the dress.

“Tanneke!” I called desperately, hoping in vain that she had returned early from an errand to the baker’s.

“What are you doing?”

Cornelia was watching us from the doorway. I had never expected to be glad to see her.

Van Ruijven raised his head and stepped back. “We’re playing a game, dear girl,” he replied, smiling. “Just a little game. You’ll play it too when you’re older.” He straightened his cloak and stepped past her into the house.

I could not meet Cornelia’s eye. I tucked in my chemise and smoothed my dress with shaking hands. When finally I looked up she was gone.

The morning of my eighteenth birthday I got up and cleaned the studio as usual. The concert painting was done—in a few days van Ruijven would come to view it and take it away. Although I did not need to now, I still cleaned the studio scene carefully, dusting the harpsichord, the violin, the bass viol, brushing the table rug with a damp cloth, polishing the chairs, mopping the grey and white floor tiles.

I did not like the painting as much as his others. Although it was meant to be more valuable with three figures in it, I preferred the pictures he had painted of women alone—they were purer, less complicated. I found I did not want to look at the concert for long, or try to understand what the people in it were thinking.

I wondered what he would paint next.

Downstairs I set water on the fire to heat and asked Tanneke what she wanted from the butcher. She was sweeping the steps and tiles in front of the house. “A rack of beef,” she replied, leaning against her broom. “Why not have something nice?” She rubbed her lower back and groaned. “It may take my mind off my aches.”

“Is it your back again?” I tried to sound sympathetic, but Tanneke’s back always hurt. A maid’s back would always hurt. That was a maid’s life.

Maertge came with me to the Meat Hall, and I was glad of it—since that night in the alley I was embarrassed to be alone with Pieter the son. I was not sure how he would treat me. If I was with Maertge, however, he would have to be careful of what he said or did.

Pieter the son was not there—only his father, who grinned at me. “Ah, the birthday maid!” he cried. “An important day for you.”

Maertge looked at me in surprise. I had not mentioned my birthday to the family—there was no reason to.

“There’s nothing important about it,” I snapped.

“That’s not what my son said. He’s off now, on an errand. Someone to see.” Pieter the father winked at me. My blood chilled. He was saying something without saying it, something I was meant to understand.

“Your finest rack of beef,” I ordered, deciding to ignore him.

“In celebration, then?” Pieter the father never let things drop, but pushed them as far as he could.

I did not reply. I simply waited until he served me, then put the beef in my pail and turned away.

“Is it really your birthday, Griet?” Maertge whispered as we left the Meat Hall.

“Yes.”

“How old are you?”

“Eighteen.”

“Why is eighteen so important?”

“It’s not. You mustn’t listen to what he says—he’s a silly man.”

Maertge didn’t look convinced. Nor was I. His words had tugged at something in my mind.

I worked all morning rinsing and boiling laundry. My mind turned to many things while I sat over the tub of steaming water. I wondered where Frans was, and if my parents had heard yet that he had left Delft. I wondered what Pieter the father had meant earlier, and where Pieter the son was. I thought of the night in the alley. I thought of the painting of me, and wondered when it would be done and what would happen to me then. All the while my ear throbbed, stabbing with pain whenever I moved my head.

It was Maria Thins who came to get me.

“Leave your washing, girl,” I heard her say behind me. “He wants you upstairs.” She was standing in the doorway, shaking something in her hand.

I got up in confusion. “Now, madam?”

“Yes, now. Don’t be coy with me, girl. You know why. Catharina has gone out this morning, and she doesn’t do that much these days, now her time is closer. Hold out your hand.”

I dried a hand on my apron and held it out. Maria Thins dropped a pair of pearl earrings into my palm.

“Take them up with you now. Quickly.”

I could not move. I was holding two pearls the size of hazelnuts, shaped like drops of water. They were silvery grey, even in the sunlight, except for a dot of fierce white light. I had touched pearls before, when I brought them upstairs for van Ruijven’s wife and tied them round her neck or laid them on the table. But I had never held them for myself before.

“Go on, girl,” Maria Thins growled impatiently. “Catharina may come back sooner than she said.”

I stumbled into the hallway, leaving the laundry unwrung. I climbed the stairs in full view of Tanneke, who was bringing in water from the canal, and Aleydis and Cornelia, who were rolling marbles in the hallway. They all looked up at me.

“Where are you going?” Aleydis asked, her grey eyes bright with interest.

“To the attic,” I replied softly.

“Can we come with you?” Cornelia said in a taunting voice.

“No.”

“Girls, you’re blocking my way.” Tanneke pushed past them, her face dark.

The studio door was ajar. I stepped inside, pressing my lips together, my stomach twisting. I closed the door behind me.

He was waiting for me. I held my hand out to him and dropped the earrings into his palm.

He smiled at me. “Go and wrap up your hair.”

I changed in the storeroom. He did not come to look at my hair. As I returned I glanced at The Procuress on the wall. The man was smiling at the young woman as if he were squeezing pears in the market to see if they were ripe. I shivered.

He was holding up an earring by its wire. It caught the light from the window, capturing it in a tiny panel of bright white.

“Here you are, Griet.” He held out the pearl to me.

“Griet! Griet! Someone is here to see you!” Maertge called from the bottom of the stairs.

I stepped to the window. He came to my side and we looked out.

Pieter the son was standing in the street below, arms crossed. He glanced up and saw us standing together at the window. “Come down, Griet,” he called. “I want to speak to you.” He looked as if he would never move from his spot.

I stepped back from the window. “I’m sorry, sir,” I said in a low voice. “I won’t be long.” I hurried to the storeroom, pulled off the headcloths and changed into my cap. He was still standing at the window, his back to me, as I passed through the studio.

The girls were sitting in a row on the bench, staring openly at Pieter, who stared back at them.

“Let’s go around the corner,” I whispered, moving towards the Molenpoort. Pieter did not follow, but continued to stand with his arms crossed.

“What were you wearing up there?” he asked. “On your head.”

I stopped and turned back. “My cap.”

“No, it was blue and yellow.”

Five sets of eyes watched us—the girls on the bench, him at the window. Then Tanneke appeared in the doorway, and that made six.

“Please, Pieter,” I hissed. “Let’s go along a little way.”

“What I have to say can be said in front of anyone. I have nothing to hide.” He tossed his head, his blond curls falling around his ears.

I could see he would not be silenced. He would say what I dreaded he would say in front of them all.

Pieter did not raise his voice, but we all heard his words. “I’ve spoken to your father this morning, and he has agreed that we may marry now you are eighteen. You can leave here and come to me. Today.”

I felt my face go hot, whether from anger or shame I was not sure. Everyone was waiting for me to speak.

I drew in a deep breath. “This is not the place to talk about such things,” I replied severely. “Not in the street like this. You were wrong to come here.” I did not wait for his response, though as I turned to go back inside he looked stricken.

“Griet!” he cried.

I pushed past Tanneke, who spoke so softly that I was not sure I heard her right. “Whore.”

I ran up the stairs to the studio. He was still standing at the window as I shut the door. “I am sorry, sir,” I said. “I’ll just change my cap.”

He did not turn round. “He is still there,” he said.

When I returned, I crossed to the window, though I did not stand too close in case Pieter could see me again with my head wrapped in blue and yellow.

My master was not looking down at the street any longer, but at the New Church tower. I peeked—Pieter was gone.

I took my place in the lion-head chair and waited.

When he turned at last to face me, his eyes were masked. More than ever, I did not know what he was thinking.

“So you will leave us,” he said.

“Oh, sir, I do not know. Do not pay attention to words said in the street like that.”

“Will you marry him?”

“Please do not ask me about him.”

“No, perhaps I should not. Now, let us begin again.” He reached around to the cupboard behind him, picked up an earring, and held it out to me.

“I want you to do it.” I had not thought I could ever be so bold.

Nor had he. He raised his eyebrows and opened his mouth to speak, but did not say anything.

He stepped up to my chair. My jaw tightened but I managed to hold my head steady. He reached over and gently touched my earlobe.

I gasped as if I had been holding my breath under water.

He rubbed the swollen lobe between his thumb and finger, then pulled it taut. With his other hand he inserted the earring wire in the hole and pushed it through. A pain like fire jolted through me and brought tears to my eyes.

He did not remove his hand. His fingers brushed against my neck and along my jaw. He traced the side of my face up to my cheek, then blotted the tears that spilled from my eyes with his thumb. He ran his thumb over my lower lip. I licked it and tasted salt.

I closed my eyes then and he removed his fingers. When I opened them again he had gone back to his easel and taken up his palette.

I sat in my chair and gazed at him over my shoulder. My ear was burning, the weight of the pearl pulling at the lobe. I could not think of anything but his fingers on my neck, his thumb on my lips.

He looked at me but did not begin to paint. I wondered what he was thinking.

Finally he reached behind him again. “You must wear the other one as well,” he declared, picking up the second earring and holding it out to me.

For a moment I could not speak. I wanted him to think of me, not of the painting.

“Why?” I finally answered. “It can’t be seen in the painting.”

“You must wear both,” he insisted. “It is a farce to wear only one.”

“But—my other ear is not pierced,” I faltered.

“Then you must tend to it.” He continued to hold it out.

I reached over and took it. I did it for him. I got out my needle and clove oil and pierced my other ear. I did not cry, or faint, or make a sound. Then I sat all morning and he painted the earring he could see, and I felt, stinging like fire in my other ear, the pearl he could not see.

The clothes soaking in the kitchen went cold, the water grey. Tanneke clattered in the kitchen, the girls shouted outside, and we behind our closed door sat and looked at each other. And he painted.

When at last he set down his brush and palette, I did not change position, though my eyes ached from looking sideways. I did not want to move.

“It is done,” he said, his voice muffled. He turned away and began wiping his palette knife with a rag. I gazed at the knife—it had white paint on it.

“Take off the earrings and give them back to Maria Thins when you go down,” he added.

I began to cry silently. Without looking at him, I got up and went into the storeroom, where I removed the blue and yellow cloth from my head. I waited for a moment, my hair out over my shoulders, but he did not come. Now that the painting was finished he no longer wanted me.

I looked at myself in the little mirror, and then I removed the earrings. Both holes in my lobes were bleeding. I blotted them with a bit of cloth, then tied up my hair and covered it and my ears with my cap, leaving the tips to dangle below my chin.

When I came out again he was gone. He had left the studio door open for me. For a moment I thought about looking at the painting to see what he had done, to see it finished, the earring in place. I decided to wait until night, when I could study it without worrying that someone might come in.

I crossed the studio and shut the door behind me.

I always regretted that decision. I never got to have a proper look at the finished painting.

Catharina arrived back only a few minutes after I had handed the earrings to Maria Thins, who immediately replaced them in the jewelry box. I hurried to the cooking kitchen to help Tanneke with dinner. She would not look at me straight, but gave me sideways glances, occasionally shaking her head.

He was not at dinner—he had gone out. After we had cleared up I went back to the courtyard to finish rinsing the laundry. I had to haul in new water and reheat it. While I worked Catharina slept in the great hall. Maria Thins smoked and wrote letters in the Crucifixion room. Tanneke sat in the front doorway and sewed. Maertge perched on the bench and made lace. Next to her Aleydis and Lisbeth sorted their shell collection.

I did not see Cornelia.

I was hanging up an apron when I heard Maria Thins say, “Where are you going?” It was the tone of her voice rather than what she said that made me pause in my work. She sounded anxious.

I crept inside and along the hallway. Maria Thins was at the foot of the stairs, gazing up. Tanneke had come to stand in the front doorway, as she had earlier that day, but facing in and following the look of her mistress. I heard the stairs creak, and the sound of heavy breathing. Catharina was pulling herself up the stairs.

In that moment I knew what was going to happen—to her, to him, to me.

Cornelia is there, I thought. She is leading her mother to the painting.

I could have cut short the misery of waiting. I could have left then, walked out the door with the laundry not done, and not looked back. But I could not move. I stood frozen, as Maria Thins stood frozen at the bottom of the stairs. She too knew what would happen, and she could not stop it.

I sank to the floor. Maria Thins saw me but did not speak. She continued to gaze up uncertainly. Then the noise on the stairs stopped and we heard Catharina’s heavy tread over to the studio door. Maria Thins darted up the stairs. I remained on my knees, too weary to rise. Tanneke stood blocking the light from the front door. She watched me, her arms crossed, her face expressionless.

Soon after there was a shout of rage, then raised voices which were quickly lowered.

Cornelia came down the stairs. “Mama wants Papa to come home,” she announced to Tanneke.

Tanneke stepped backwards outside and turned towards the bench. “Maertge, go and find your father at the Guild,” she ordered. “Quickly. Tell him it’s important.”

Cornelia look around. When she saw me her face lit up. I got up from my knees and walked stiffly back to the courtyard. There was nothing I could do but hang up laundry and wait.

When he returned I thought for a moment that he might come and find me in the courtyard, hidden among the hanging sheets. He did not—I heard him on the stairs, then nothing.

I leaned against the warm brick wall and gazed up. It was a bright, cloudless day, the sky a mocking blue. It was the kind of day when children ran up and down the streets and shouted, when couples walked out through the town gates, past the windmills and along the canals, when old women sat in the sun and closed their eyes. My father was probably sitting on the bench in front of his house, his face turned towards the warmth. Tomorrow might be bitterly cold, but today it was spring.

They sent Cornelia to get me. When she appeared between the hanging clothes and looked down at me with a cruel smirk on her face, I wanted to slap her as I had that first day I had come to work at the house. I did not, though—I simply sat, hands in my lap, shoulders slumped, and watched her show off her glee. The sun caught glints of gold—traces of her mother—in her red hair.

“You are wanted upstairs,” she said in a formal voice. “They want to see you.” She turned and skipped back into the house.

I leaned over and brushed a bit of dust from my shoe. Then I stood, straightened my skirt, smoothed my apron, pulled the tips of my cap tight, and checked for loose strands of hair. I licked my lips and pressed them together, took a deep breath and followed Cornelia.

Catharina had been crying—her nose was red, her eyes puffy. She was sitting in the chair he normally pulled up to his easel—it had been pushed towards the wall and the cupboard that held his brushes and palette knife. When I appeared she heaved herself up so that she was standing, tall and broad. Although she glared at me, she did not speak. She squeezed her arms over her belly and winced.

Maria Thins was standing next to the easel, looking sober but also impatient, as if she had other, more important things to attend to.

He stood next to his wife, his face without expression, hands at his sides, eyes on the painting. He was waiting for someone, for Catharina, or Maria Thins, or me, to begin.

I came to stand just inside the door. Cornelia hovered behind me. I could not see the painting from where I stood.

It was Maria Thins who finally spoke.

“Well, girl, my daughter wants to know how you came to be wearing her earrings.” She said it as if she did not expect me to answer.

I studied her old face. She was not going to admit to helping me get the earrings. Nor would he, I knew. I did not know what to say. So I did not say anything.

“Did you steal the key to my jewelry box and take my earrings?” Catharina spoke as if she were trying to convince herself of what she said. Her voice was shaky.

“No, madam.” Although I knew it would be easier for everyone if I said I had stolen them, I could not lie about myself.

“Don’t lie to me. Maids steal all the time. You took my earrings!”

“Are they missing now, madam?”

For a moment Catharina looked confused, as much by my asking a question as by the question itself. She had obviously not checked her jewelry box since seeing the painting. She had no idea if the earrings were gone or not. But she did not like me asking the questions. “Quiet, thief. They’ll throw you in prison,” she hissed, “and you won’t see sunlight for years.” She winced again. Something was wrong with her.

“But, madam—”

“Catharina, you must not get yourself into a state,” he interrupted me. “Van Ruijven will take the painting away as soon as it is dry and you can put it from your mind.”

He did not want me to speak either. It seemed no one did. I wondered why they had asked me upstairs at all when they were so afraid of what I might say.

I might say, “What about the way he looked at me for so many hours while he painted this painting?” I might say, “What about your mother and your husband, who have gone behind your back and deceived you?”

Or I might simply say, “Your husband touched me, here, in this room.”

They did not know what I might say.

Catharina was no fool. She knew the real matter was not the earrings. She wanted them to be, she tried to make them be so, but she could not help herself. She turned to her husband. “Why,” she asked, “have you never painted me?”

As they gazed at each other it struck me that she was taller than he, and, in a way, more solid.

“You and the children are not a part of this world,” he said. “You are not meant to be.”

“And she is?” Catharina cried shrilly, jerking her head at me.

He did not answer. I wished that Maria Thins and Cornelia and I were in the kitchen or the Crucifixion room, or out in the market. It was an affair for a man and his wife to discuss alone.

“And with my earrings?”

Again he was silent, which stirred Catharina even more than his words had. She began to shake her head so that her blond curls bounced around her ears. “I will not have this in my own house,” she declared. “I will not have it!” She looked around wildly. When her eyes fell on the palette knife a shiver ran through me. I took a step forward at the same time as she moved to the cupboard and grabbed the knife. I stopped, unsure of what she would do next.

He knew, though. He knew his own wife. He moved with Catharina as she stepped up to the painting. She was quick but he was quicker—he caught her by the wrist as she plunged the diamond blade of the knife towards the painting. He stopped it just before the blade touched my eye. From where I stood I could see the wide eye, a flicker of earring he had just added, and the winking of the blade as it hovered before the painting. Catharina struggled but he held her wrist firmly, waiting for her to drop the knife. Suddenly she groaned. Flinging the knife away, she clutched her belly. The knife skidded across the tiles to my feet, then spun and spun, slower and slower, as we all stared at it. It came to a stop with the blade pointed at me.

I was meant to pick it up. That was what maids were meant to do—pick up their master’s and mistress’s things and put them back in their place.

I looked up and met his eye, holding his grey gaze for a long moment. I knew it was for the last time. I did not look at anyone else.

In his eyes I thought I could see regret.

I did not pick up the knife. I turned and walked from the room, down the stairs and through the doorway, pushing aside Tanneke. When I reached the street I did not look back at the children I knew must be sitting on the bench, nor at Tanneke, who would be frowning because I had pushed her, nor up at the windows, where he might be standing. I got to the street and I began to run. I ran down the Oude Langendijck and across the bridge into Market Square.

Only thieves and children run.

I reached the center of the square and stopped in the circle of tiles with the eight-pointed star in the middle. Each point indicated a direction I could take.

I could go back to my parents.

I could find Pieter at the Meat Hall and agree to marry him.

I could go to van Ruijven’s house—he would take me in with a smile.

I could go to van Leeuwenhoek and ask him to take pity on me.

I could go to Rotterdam and search for Frans.

I could go off on my own somewhere far away.

I could go back to Papists’ Corner.

I could go into the New Church and pray to God for guidance.

I stood in the circle, turning round and round as I thought.

When I made my choice, the choice I knew I had to make, I set my feet carefully along the edge of the point and went the way it told me, walking steadily.