Nella blushes. If the reverse was true – after their measly ceremony, she and Johannes should never have left their bedchamber.
‘Frans and Agnes have been married twelve years – and still no children,’ Cornelia says. ‘And then comes Agnes’ sugar plantation, straight into his lap! For him, it’s better than an heir. He may be counting on that sugar to make a legacy, but it doesn’t change his love for Madame Marin.’
She hands Nella the first olie-koeck. It is still warm, and the fried crust breaks apart under Nella’s teeth, releasing the perfect blend of almond, ginger, clove and apple. ‘And Marin still loves him?’ Nella asks.
‘Oh, I’m sure of it. He sends her a gift every year. Pigs and partridges – once a haunch of deer. And Madame Marin won’t send them back. It’s like a silent conversation they want to maintain. Of course, I’m the one who has to deal with it all. Pluck, chop, stuff, fry, boil. A necklace would be easier.’ Cornelia wipes out the batter bowl with a damp cloth. ‘That’s how Madame Marin found out that the Seigneur had rejected Frans’ proposal. It was soon after Agnes’ wedding when the first gift came.’
‘What was it?’
‘I’d just arrived. I remember Madame Marin quite clearly, holding up a salted piglet in the hallway. She looked so unhappy. “Why is he sending me a present, Johannes?” she asked, and the Seigneur took her to the study, where I suppose he had to explain.’
‘My goodness.’
Cornelia looks grim. ‘And Meermans has sent something ever since. Although he never puts his name, we all know it’s him.’ She rubs her forehead. ‘But a love note’s different,’ she says. ‘A love note’s dangerous. Oh, close your eyes to it, Madame Nella, and pretend you never saw.’
Nella goes back upstairs to give Peebo the leftover crumbs of the olie-koeck, her head filled with images of a young Marin, throwing blushed glances in the direction of princely Meermans. It is like trying to imagine her parents as young people, falling in love. I’d prefer to rise in love, she thinks – lifting up to the clouds, not plunging to the earth. She pictures herself, weightless and adored, delirious in ecstasy.
The rafters are empty. She wanders through the ground-floor rooms, calling Peebo’s name, her arm out, expecting him to beat the air and land upon her, his familiar body, his beady little eyes. She walks up to the first floor, even checking that he hasn’t climbed inside the cabinet house for shelter. ‘Peebo?’ she calls. Marin’s room is shut; she’s trying to sleep. A sudden nightmare of a plucked corpse, feathers hanging, crosses Nella’s mind.
Johannes’ sparsely furnished chamber is also empty. ‘Peebo?’ Nella calls again. Dhana bounds up, sensing in her voice there is some problem to be chased. Nella imagines the parakeet mauled in the dog’s teeth, a chance snap, Nature following her cruellest course. A sense of dread charges through her stomach and she runs down the stairs. ‘Cornelia?’ she calls. ‘Do you know where—?’
And then she sees it. The hall window, no longer ajar but swinging open, the cold air rushing in.
Eight Dolls
All afternoon and into evening, Cornelia and Nella have called up and down the canal for the bird, to no avail. Indoors, the rafters are empty, no thrum of wings. Disorientated and freezing cold, it is impossible Peebo will last long. The temperature has dropped overnight, ice is forming a thin veneer over the Heren canal, and the last thread of her old life has unravelled across the sky. ‘I’m sorry,’ Nella whispers. ‘I’m so sorry.’
Exhausted from worry and lack of sleep over Peebo’s disappearance, Nella finds a small posy of bright red and blue flowers with a note the next morning, left outside her door. She is gripped with the hope that it’s from the miniaturist, but to her surprise, a large capital letter of her name launches the missive, the handwriting rushing forward, a keen slant towards the full stop.
Nella:
Blue periwinkle for early friends, Persicaria for restoration — I would buy you a new bird, but it would pale in imitation.
Johannes
Nella smells the flowers in the semi-darkness of her room, their gentle scent battling with her grief and resurging feelings of humiliation.
What will it mean, for the rest of her life, married to this pleasure-loving, complicated man – but without a marriage bed? Johannes will include her in his social gatherings, his guild parties and feasts. He even wants to be her friend. But there will be all those endless nights of loneliness, those daytimes filled with longing, as love is sealed up for good. She hopes the miniaturist sends her something soon. The fear of what it might be is worth the distraction alone.
Nella twines two of the periwinkles behind her ear. She has never envisaged a lifetime of being untouched, and yet deep inside, a tiny voice rises to be heard. You’re relieved he isn’t going to do it. She admits the shock of witnessing Johannes naked. Since arriving, a great part of her has urged, even attempted, to transform herself into what she has long assumed is a real wife, a proper woman. She has spent so long craving this transformation, solidifying it in her mind, she has become oblivious to its ambiguity. Now, the proper woman loses all her meaning. Nella’s solid desire is fragmenting, a mist inside her head. What does it even mean, to be a real wife?
A knock on the door rouses her from the wandering circle of her thoughts. ‘I’ve asked Otto,’ Cornelia says, peering her head round the door. She hesitates at the sight of Nella’s puffy eyes. ‘He didn’t leave the window open, and it wasn’t me—’
‘I’m not blaming anyone, Cornelia.’
‘He might fly back.’
‘He won’t. I was a fool.’
‘Here,’ Cornelia says, proffering a parcel inked with the sign of the sun. ‘It was left outside for you.’
Nella’s blood sings. It’s as if she hears me, she thinks, even when I’m silent. What is she trying to say?
‘Was it – Jack who delivered this?’ she asks, her fingers trembling lightly on the package, desperate to pull it apart.
Cornelia winces at the name, her eyes on her mistress’s shaking hand. ‘It was there when I went to wash the front step,’ she says. ‘I dare say that Englishman’s keeping away. Madame – what is in these parcels?’
Nella knows she is not ready to share the woman on the Kalverstraat. Having rejected the idea of privacy, now she craves it, desperate to be alone with what the miniaturist has to show.
‘Nothing. Pieces I’ve ordered for my cabinet,’ she says.
‘Pieces?’
‘You may go.’
Once Cornelia has left with one last glance over her shoulder, Nella tips out the package on her bed. Nothing prepares her for what she sees.
Eight dolls are laid out on a strip of blue velvet. So lifelike, so delicate; they are items of such humanly unreachable perfection. Nella feels like a giant, picking one up as if it might break. Johannes lies in her palm, a cloak of dark indigo slung over his broad shoulders, one hand balled into a fist. The other hand is open, palm offered and welcoming. His hair is longer than Nella has seen it, reaching just below his shoulders. Dark-eyed, the shadows on his face make him look weaker than he is in real life. At his waist is a heavy bag of coin, nearly the length of his leg, and he is thinner. The bag burdens the joints in his hips, weighing him crookedly to one side.
The hair of Nella’s own doll escapes its cap, as in reality it is wont to do. Wearing a neat grey dress, her miniature stares straight up, a look of faint surprise across her frozen face. In one of her tiny hands is an empty birdcage, its door swinging open wide. Nella feels a strange sensation in her body, as if pins are pricking the inside of her skin.
In the doll’s other hand, is a minuscule note written in neat black capitals:
THINGS CAN CHANGE