TWO
November, 1686
Doth a fountain send forth at the same place sweet water and bitter?
James 3:11
Inside Out
An irresistibly sweet smell wakes her up. Nella opens her eyes and sees Marin at the end of her bed, deep in thought, a plate of wafers in her lap. Marin unawares looks so much softer, her grey eyes lidded low, her mouth a dejected line. For seven days she has come to sit at the end of Nella’s bed, and on every one of those days Nella has pretended to sleep.
The image of Johannes and Jack Philips thrummed for days inside Nella’s skull, like a moth with constantly beating wings. Through the force of her own will Nella has made it flightless. She has stupefied it and removed its wings. But it has not disappeared.
What else did the two men do before she arrived in that office – their bed a rolled-out atlas, gods above their paper world? I am not capable of this life in Amsterdam, Nella thinks, wishing herself far away. I feel younger than eighteen but burdened as an eighty-year-old. It is as if her entire life has come at once, and she is wading through a sea of suppositions with no way of bailing. How foolish I was, to imagine I could make Amsterdam my own, that I could ever match Johannes Brandt! I have pulled my own wings off. I have no dignity.
The cabinet house, unpeopled, looms in the corner. Someone has opened its curtains, and it seems to grow as the rays of sunlight illuminate its frame. It captures Marin’s attention too – she places the plate of wafers on the floor and walks slowly towards it, putting her free hand inside the miniature salon. Pulling out the cradle, she rocks it back and forth across her palm.
‘Don’t touch that,’ Nella snaps, the first words she has spoken in a week. ‘Those things don’t belong to you.’
Marin jumps and puts the cradle back. ‘There are rosewater wafers for you,’ she says. ‘With cinnamon and ginger. Cornelia has a new griddle.’
Nella wonders what Cornelia has done to deserve a new griddle. The fire has been lit, bright and cheering in the grate. Outside, winter has made its true arrival, and within the room she can feel a trace of cold.
‘I thought you said an empty belly was better for the soul?’ she says, although she has been accepting the bowls of hutspot and the slices of Gouda Cornelia has been leaving outside the door. She feels the accusations boiling up inside her, ready to burst forth.
‘Eat,’ says Marin. ‘Please. Then let us talk.’
Nella takes the plate, a Delft pattern of flowers and intricate leaves. Marin plumps her pillows, resuming her perch at the end of the bed. The wafers are gold and crisped to perfection and the rosewater mingles with the warming ginger. From the corner Peebo squawks in his cage, as if he senses Nella’s reluctant pleasure.
What will Marin say, she wonders, when I tell her what I’ve seen?
‘Perhaps you would like to get out of bed?’ Marin sounds like a queen trying to be friends with a peasant.
Nella points towards the cabinet. ‘I suppose you’d be happier to see me in there.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘My life here is over.’
Marin stiffens at this, and Nella pushes the plate of unfinished wafers towards her sister-in-law. ‘No more of your orders, Marin. I understand it all.’
‘But I wonder if you do?’
‘I do.’ Nella takes a deep breath. ‘There is something you must know.’
Blood flushes into Marin’s pale face. ‘What?’ she says. ‘What is it?’
Nella, made momentarily powerful by her withheld knowledge, crosses her hands on the coverlet and stares into Marin’s grave eyes. Her body feels heavy, anchored to the bed.
‘There’s a reason I’ve stayed in here all week, Madame. Johannes – your brother – no, I can barely say it.’
‘Say what?’
‘Johannes is – your brother is – a sodomite.’
Marin blinks. The hardened image of Johannes and Jack bursts to fresh life in Nella’s mind. A flake of pastry sticks in her throat. Still Marin does not speak, examining instead the embroidery of the bedcover, the fat Bs swirled amongst the foliage and woodland birds.
‘I’m very sorry you are upset, Nella,’ Marin says in a quiet voice. ‘Johannes is unlike most husbands, I admit.’
At first, Nella does not understand. Then Marin’s face opens towards her, a book showing its pages. A prickling sensation runs over her. It pinks her cheeks, it rushes through her blood.
‘You knew? You knew?’ She feels the sob come – this is almost worse than seeing her husband naked on his office couch with Jack. ‘Dear God. I am your fool – I’ve been a fool since the moment I arrived.’
‘We have not laughed at you, Petronella. Ever. You are no one’s fool.’
‘You’ve humiliated me. And I’ve seen it with my own eyes now. The disgusting, awful thing he did with – that boy—’
Marin stands up and walks to the window. ‘Does Johannes disgust you in his entirety?’
‘What? Yes. Sodomites – beware them all, Pellicorne said. God’s fury will seep into the land. I’m his wife, Marin!’ Words pour out of her, words she never thought she’d say. Letter by letter, she feels lighter, as if she might take off.
Marin spreads her fingers wide against the windowpane until the tips go white. ‘Your memory of that sermon is prodigious.’
‘You knew that Johannes would not love me!’
When Marin speaks, her voice is cracked. ‘I wondered how he could not. I – do not always understand.’ She pauses. ‘He likes you.’
‘Like a pet. And he likes Rezeki more. I cannot forgive this trick, this shame – you knew what this would be for me. The nights I waited—’
‘I did not see it as a trick, Nella! It was an opportunity. For everyone.’
‘You? Did Johannes even pick me himself?’
Marin hesitates. ‘Johannes was – reluctant. He did not want – but – I made enquiries. One of your father’s friends in the city mentioned your family’s financial predicament he’d left behind. Your mother was more than enthusiastic. I thought it would satisfy everyone.’
Nella pushes the plate onto the floorboards where it breaks in three pieces. ‘And what opportunity have I had, Marin?’ she cries. ‘You’ve controlled everything. You’ve ordered my clothes, you hold the ledger book, you drag me to church, you push me into guild feasts where everyone stares at me. I was so grateful when you let me play the lute. Pathetic. I’m supposed to be the wife in this house but I’m no better than Cornelia.’
Marin covers her face with her hands as the air thickens between them. Nella feels her own vitality surge as she watches Marin’s struggle to remain composed.
‘Marin, stop pretending to be so calm! This is a disaster.’ Tears bubble up and Nella wills them to stop, but they run down her face despite her. ‘How can I be happy with a man who is going to burn in Hell?’
Marin’s face turns into a mask of rage. ‘Be quiet. Be quiet. Your family had nothing but your name. Your father left you paupers. You would have ended up a farmer’s wife.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with that.’
‘You say that in ten years’ time when the dams break, when your hands are raw and ten children are running around your feet, needing to be fed. You needed security, you wanted to be a merchant’s wife!’ Nella stays silent. ‘Petronella? What are you going to do?’
As the panic in Marin’s speech intensifies, it begins to dawn on Nella that some real power is finally hers. Does Marin think I’m going to the burgomasters? She stares in wonder at Marin’s contorted, pale features, feeling giddy that she – an eighteen-year-old from Assendelft – could go and tell the fathers of Amsterdam that her respectable merchant husband is possessed by the Devil.
Oh, you could do it, Nella tells herself. Right now, she feels like doing it. You could report Jack Philips, too. Who could stop you, if you wanted to go? You could crush this woman’s life in one sentence and free yourself of all humiliation.
As if she has read her mind, Marin speaks again. ‘You’re part of this family, Petronella Brandt. Its truth sticks to you like oil on a bird. What do you want, a pauper’s life again? And what would happen to Otto and Cornelia if you let our secret out?’
She spreads her arms wide like wings, and Nella feels her own body contract into the bed.
‘We can do nothing, Petronella – we women,’ Marin says. ‘Nothing.’ Her eyes burn with an intensity Nella has never seen in her before. ‘All we can do if we’re lucky is stitch up the mistakes that other people make.’
‘Agnes is happy enough.’
‘Agnes? Oh, Agnes plays her role, but what will happen when her lines run out? That plantation was her father’s and now she’s handed it to her husband. It astonishes me how she can feel so clever about it. And some of us can work,’ Marin cries, ‘back-breaking work, for which they won’t even pay us half of what a man could earn. But we can’t own property, we can’t take a case to court. The only thing they think we can do is produce children who then become the property of our husbands.’
‘But you have not married, you do not—’
‘There are some women whose husbands don’t leave them alone. Baby after baby till their body’s like a wrinkled sack.’
‘I’ll be a wrinkled sack if it means I’m not alone! A public wife, a private life – isn’t that the way the motto goes?’
‘And how many women die on the birthing bed, Petronella? How many girls become a housewife corpse?’
‘Stop shouting at me! There were funerals at Assendelft too, you know – I understand the danger.’
‘Petronella—’
‘Did my mother know what he was? Did she?’
Marin, breathless, stops. ‘I do not think so. But she told me that you were a girl with imagination – strong and capable – and that you would thrive in the city. “Nella will find a way”, she wrote – “Assendelft is too small for a mind like hers.” I was happy to believe it.’
‘That may be,’ Nella says. ‘But to decide that I was never going to live as a proper woman was not your choice to make.’
Marin’s sneer scrapes Nella’s skin. ‘What do you mean – a proper woman?’
‘A proper woman marries – she has children—’
‘Then what does that make me? Am I not a proper woman? Last time I looked I certainly was.’
‘We neither of us are.’
Marin sighs, rubbing her forehead. ‘God’s blood. I do not mean to lose my temper. It slips from me and I cannot catch it. I’m sorry.’
The true quality of this apology creates a moment of peace. Exhausted, Nella lies back on her bed and Marin breathes deeply. ‘Words are water in this city, Nella,’ she says. ‘One drop of rumour could drown us.’
‘Did you and Johannes sacrifice my future,’ Nella says, ‘because your own were in such peril?’
Marin closes her eyes. ‘The marriage has benefited you, has it not?’
‘Well, I wouldn’t have drowned in Assendelft.’