Nella swivels towards the speaker. He is a little way off from her, sitting outside what appears to be a wool shop. Nella swallows. It’s smallpox man – Hole-Face – the one who called Otto an animal, whom Cornelia yelled at in the street. Up close, his skin is like a sea-sponge, full of pinkish craters.
Nella looks back to the window. The woman has gone, the pane empty, and the house has a sudden deadened aspect, as if no one lives there at all. She rushes to the door and starts hammering, as if to beat the building back to life.
‘I told you, she doesn’t answer. She’s a law unto herself,’ Hole-Face remarks.
Nella spins round and presses her back against the door. ‘Who is she? Tell me who she is.’
He shrugs. ‘She doesn’t talk much. Funny accent. Nobody knows.’
‘Nobody? I don’t believe you.’
‘Well, we’re not all civic-minded, Madame,’ he says. ‘She keeps herself to herself.’
Nella pauses for breath. ‘In Smit’s List, a miniaturist advertised under this address. Are you telling me, Seigneur, that the only person who lives here is a woman?’
Hole-Face brushes wisps of wool from his trousers. ‘I am, Madame. And who knows what she’s getting up to in there?’
‘All and yet nothing,’ Nella replies.
‘Is that what you ladies call it.’
It cannot be possible that a woman lives alone in the heart of Amsterdam, under the eye of the burgomasters, the guilds, the hypocritical puritans like Hole-Face. What thoughts whir under her pale hair, why does she send out these breathtaking, unasked-for pieces?
I just want to know, thinks Nella, closing her eyes, remembering the inexpressible sensation of the woman’s gaze in the church and before that, out here on the Kalverstraat. This is too wonderful to be believed – a woman! Shame courses through Nella for what she wrote in her second letter – Sir . . . I will curtail our transactions forthwith. But it hasn’t seemed to matter. The woman seems to enjoy disobeying rules.
‘A woman alone like that can only mean one thing,’ Hole-Face goes on. ‘She’s a strumpet. And the boy who came to take her parcels was another foreigner. Those goings on should be kept for the Eastern Islands. Honest people who just want to work and live well shouldn’t have to—’
‘How long has she been here?’
‘Three or four months, I suppose. Why’s she so important to you?’
‘She’s not,’ says Nella, the fib jarring in her mouth. It feels the same as a betrayal. She girds herself, feeling protective towards the woman but not knowing exactly why. ‘She isn’t important at all.’
From one of the higher windows Nella thinks she sees movement, but it’s muddled by the reflection of another woman in the window above the wool shop, beating a rug into the street and looking irritated by the fuss outside her door.
‘Seigneur, if you speak to her—’
‘I won’t be doing that,’ Hole-Face interrupts. ‘She’s got the devil in her.’
Nella fumbles for a guilder, placing it in his filthy palm. ‘If you do speak to her,’ she turns and calls up to the window. ‘Tell her Nella Brandt is sorry! And to ignore her last letter. I only want to know why. And tell her – I’m looking forward to what she sends next.’
Even as she shouts these words up to the window, Nella wonders if they are exactly truthful. Only widows and whores live alone, some happily, others unwilling – so what exactly is the miniaturist doing up there, sending out her pieces, wandering the city alone? Nella has no idea what she’s playing with, but it certainly doesn’t feel like a toy.
She drags her heels back up the Kalverstraat. The miniaturist’s extraordinary existence is wasted on people like Hole-Face, she thinks. And it will be extraordinary – whatever it turns out to be – those eyes alone, that stare, these incredible packets full of clues and stories. The back of Nella’s neck prickles and she turns quickly, believing herself connected to that house at the sign of the sun.
But the Kalverstraat is once again quiet, unaware of the presence hiding in its heart.
Nella returns home and rushes upstairs to the cabinet, running her fingers over the miniaturist’s pieces. They are charged with a different energy, laden with a meaning she cannot penetrate, yet even more addictive in their mystery. She’s chosen me, Nella thinks, glowing with this discovery, yearning to know more.
Cornelia’s voice and approaching footsteps pull her from her reverie. Hastily, she draws the cabinet’s curtains as the maid pokes her head round the door. ‘The Meermanses are coming within the hour,’ Cornelia gabbles, ‘and the Seigneur still isn’t home.’
Downstairs, Cornelia and Otto have exhausted themselves with extra polishing, sweeping, mopping, beating the curtains, pummelling the cushions, as if the house is out of shape and needs a realignment which cannot be achieved. The faience and China-ware glitter in the best kitchen, the mother-of-pearl winks from inlays, and seeing how all the tallow candles have been replaced with those of beeswax, Nella takes the chance to inhale their lovely scent.
‘Chores over chaos will only go so far,’ Otto murmurs to himself as he passes by, and she wonders what he means.
Marin has dressed in her finest black. Not stooping so low as perfume but armed with a shield of voluminous skirts, she now paces the salon, her stride long and regular as the pendulum clock. Her slender fingers worry her psalter, her hair screened off her face by a stiff white lace headband, handsome features stern. Nella sits, dressed by Cornelia in another of her altered gowns, this one the colour of gold. ‘Where is Johannes?’ she asks.
‘He’ll be here,’ Marin says.
With every restless footfall Marin makes across the polished floor, Nella wishes she could go back upstairs and search her miniatures for some clue as to what might come next, if anything, and what the mottoes mean.
By the time the Meermanses arrive, the cold blast of canal-side air shooting behind them into the hall, Johannes has still not returned. All the windows have been washed by Otto and the panes catch the reflection of twenty burning candles winking in the early twilight, their honey scent mingling with the sharper tang of vinegar and lye.
If Agnes notices the effort Marin has exerted on her servants, she makes no comment. Gliding in, her poise perfect now, all traces of the childlike girl at church are quite evaporated. They curtsey to each other, their silence broken only by the crush of their wide skirts towards the floor. Frans comes forward, a look of strain upon his face. Marin raises her hand and he takes it, the gold of his wedding ring gaudy on her pale skin. Time appears to slow, the lights twinkling in the air around them.
‘Seigneur,’ says Marin.
‘Madame.’
‘Come in, both of you, please.’ She extricates her hand and leads them to the salon.
‘Is your Negro here?’ Agnes calls, but Marin pretends not to hear.
It takes the women a few minutes to arrange themselves in the chairs around the fire, due to the amount of material that swathes them. Meermans stands by one of the windows, looking out. Nella eyes the green velvet seats – their copper studs and carved wooden lions – and thinks about their shrunken doubles upstairs in the cabinet. How on earth did the miniaturist know to send me those? she wonders, desperate to know.
But a pulse of fear beats inside her. She has chosen me, but for what? Who is this woman, watching from afar, who comments on my life? Instinctively, she turns to the windows, thinking she might see a face there, peering from the street. But the light outside has darkened further, and Meermans’ bulk would scare a person off.
‘Cornelia should draw the curtains,’ Marin says.
‘No,’ says Nella.
Marin turns to her. ‘It’s cold, Petronella. It would be best.’
‘Sit by me,’ says Agnes, interrupting.
Nella obeys, rustling over in her golden dress. ‘You look like a coin!’ exclaims Agnes – and the ridiculous comment, thrown hard and bright in the air, falls to the floor with a thud.
‘Where’s Johannes?’ asks Meermans.
‘He’s coming, Seigneur,’ says Marin. ‘He’s been delayed by unexpected business.’
Agnes glances at her husband. ‘We are rather tired.’
‘Oh?’ Marin replies. ‘Why is that, Madame?’
‘Oh, Agnes, call me Agnes. Marin, I don’t know why, after twelve years, you can’t do it.’ Agnes laughs, the ha that makes Nella wince.
‘Agnes,’ says Marin quietly.
‘Feasts, mainly,’ Agnes goes on, sounding conspiratorial. ‘So many weddings before the winter. Did you know Cornelis de Boer has married Annetje Dirkmans?’
‘I do not know the name,’ says Marin.
Agnes demurs, jutting her lower lip. ‘Always the same,’ she says to Nella, her tone a mix of playful admonishment and deliberate barb. ‘I love a wedding,’ she goes on. ‘Don’t you?’
Neither Marin nor Nella say anything. ‘Marriage is—’ Agnes stops deliberately, considering her audience.
Marin’s hands are so still in her lap, they could be carved upon a tomb. Nella feels the jangle of this conversation, the dead ends of it and the unsaid words forming a knot in her mind. The only sound is the crackling of the fire and the occasional creak of Meermans’ leather boots as he shifts his weight at the window. From the working kitchen, the smells of Cornelia’s cooking waft, capons in mace and rosemary, a parsley pigeon in ginger.
‘I have to know,’ Agnes announces. Marin turns to her, alarm in her eyes. ‘What did Brandt buy you for your wedding gift, Nella?’
Nella’s eyes meet Marin’s. ‘A house,’ she says.
‘How wicked of him! Is it a hunting lodge? We’re buying a lodge in Bloemendaal.’
‘This one is enamelled with tortoiseshell,’ Nella says, beginning to enjoy herself, as Agnes’ eyes saucer in their sockets. ‘You . . . couldn’t possibly live inside it.’
Agnes seems puzzled. ‘Why not?’
‘It is this house, shrunk to the size of a cabinet,’ says Marin. From the window, Meermans turns.
‘Oh, one of those,’ Agnes tuts. ‘I thought you meant a real house.’
‘Do you have one, Agnes? Petronella’s is shot through with pewter,’ Marin says.
Agnes’ girlishness rises up once again, a momentary defiance flickering over her face. ‘Of course I do. Mine is covered in silver,’ she replies.
Her hard boast melts to a raw fib, pooling between the silent women. Each of them examines the material of her dress, unable to look up. ‘Whom did you pay to furnish yours?’ Agnes finally asks.