Souls and Purses
Cornelia dances around Johannes, having to be two servants. She puts his boots on, dropping small pies into his pockets, an apple, feeding him against her fears. Johannes pushes his arms through his jacket. ‘Where’s my brocade?’ he asks.
‘Trust you to ask that now,’ Marin mutters, grey with exhaustion.
‘I couldn’t find it, Seigneur,’ says Cornelia.
‘I’m going to check the docks,’ Johannes says. ‘Why did he run like that?’
‘Check the sugar too,’ calls Nella, chasing him outside.
Johannes looks at her in disbelief. ‘Toot comes first,’ he says. ‘We cannot lose him.’
But Nella cannot help thinking of Agnes’ blackened little loaf upstairs. It’s a sign – the miniaturist is trying to warn them, as she warned about Rezeki. Surely there is something to be done before they lose the sugar too? But Johannes has gone, and no wife can turn up to her husband’s warehouse unannounced.
There is no sign of a struggle in Otto’s bed, no broken furniture, the door unforced. A bag of clothes has gone.
‘He took the Seigneur’s jacket, I’m sure of it,’ Cornelia says.
‘Maybe he’ll sell it,’ Nella says.
‘It’s more likely he’ll keep it to wear. Why did he have to go?’
It strikes Nella that she has not asked Cornelia what she was doing looking for Otto in his bedroom at five o’clock in the morning. But Cornelia is literally unmanned, and to probe her now might do more harm than good.
‘Cornelia,’ Marin calls up the stairs. ‘Come here.’
Marin is in the salon, in three jackets, a shawl and two pairs of woollen stockings, clumsily trying to light a peat fire. When she straightens, she looks so bulky, so much taller than Nella and Cornelia. ‘I cannot light the peat,’ she says. Her speech slides like butter in a pan.
‘It’s Toot’s job to light fires, Madame.’ It is not on the peat’s thick smell that Cornelia appears to choke, tears welling in her eyes. ‘I’m not very good at this.’ The maid kneels before the grate, her body a folded mirror to her soul. ‘I asked along the canal,’ she murmurs. ‘No Africans taken into the Rasphuis or the Stadhuis prison.’
‘Cornelia,’ says Marin, lowering herself into the same chair Johannes had collapsed in at the news of Rezeki. Red-eyed and worrying at her layers, Marin cannot sit still. She takes a bite from a week-old slice of apple tart that Cornelia has brought for her, then puts it to one side.
Nella sends a prayer to the miniaturist, wherever she may be at this moment – Madame, send my husband a pair of wings. Fly him faster to the departing ships. Keep beloved Otto on this land.
‘He’ll escape,’ Marin says, rubbing her temples as if trying to solidify something restless shifting in her skull. ‘He’ll go to London. Down by the Thames he’ll have a hope of blending in.’
‘You sound so sure,’ says Nella.
‘I told him nothing would happen,’ Cornelia says. ‘Why didn’t he listen to me?’
‘Because he was frightened,’ Marin says, her breathing becoming heavier. She takes up the apple tart again and picks at it, almost talking to herself. ‘Better that he is gone. By removing himself he protected us. And what would happen to a man like Otto if the burgomasters got hold of him?’
‘Marin?’ Nella says. ‘Did you know he was going to leave?’
Marin betrays a glint of dismay at her question. ‘He is a man of sense,’ she replies, looking away and smoothing down her skirt.
‘And was it you who told him to go?’ Nella presses. The oblique answers behind which Marin hides are infuriating.
‘It was the lesser of two evils,’ she says. ‘I may have suggested it, but I forced nobody.’
‘I know how your suggestions work.’
Cornelia stares in abject horror. ‘You sent him away, Madame? You said Jack wouldn’t report him.’
‘Jack is infinite in his capacity to surprise. He is opportunistic. Say he took a chance to attack us – Otto would have no trial, he’d have no chance to live.’
‘How much you love to pull all our strings, Marin! Trial or not, Otto could die out there.’
Cornelia stands up. ‘He is the Seigneur’s servant.’
‘Is he not my servant too?’ Marin hurls her slice of apple tart against the wall, narrowly missing Cornelia. The maid jumps as the tart explodes upon the oil mural of the countryside, its currants spattering like dark bullets over the painted sheep. ‘Have I not got his best interests at heart?’ Marin cries. ‘Johannes doesn’t care.’
‘He’s out looking for him now!’
‘Johannes loves no one but himself,’ she hisses. ‘And that’s why we are here.’ The currants slide down the mural and lie on the floor, and Marin moves slowly from the room as if weighed down by her clothes.
Christmas, like a poor relation to the promise it once held, shuffles past, with still no sign of Otto. The donations of food are sent to the orphanages, and Johannes buries Rezeki in the wintry, hibernating garden. ‘I’ve never seen the Seigneur like this before,’ Cornelia says to Nella, her face white with worry. ‘He even read a passage from the Bible. It was like he wasn’t there.’
Diminished and withdrawn, Johannes goes out daily, claiming he is making enquiries for his missing servant and working on the sale of the Meermanses’ sugar. Sometimes, Nella thinks she should tell Marin that it is still all in the warehouse, that Frans is furious – but there seems little either of them could do, and Marin’s mood is so unpredictable.
The spores on the miniature cone play on Nella’s mind, and she checks them daily, certain they will have spread. The cone remains frozen in time, however – and Nella clings to this, by now a full believer in the prophetic power of the miniaturist. I will fight to emerge, she thinks – but the problem is that Nella has no idea where she is emerging. A dead end, she supposes. The end of a sack, a mute and feeble existence.
Otto is no place she can picture him, and his absence is a question none of them can answer. So far, his doll reveals nothing, so Nella relies on the household’s speculation on his whereabouts. Marin is adamant for London, Johannes reckons Constantinople. Cornelia is convinced he is still on these shores. It is too much for her to accept that Otto would willingly stray far.
‘Better for him in a port city,’ Nella says. ‘In Assendelft, people would shut their doors on him.’
‘What, in this cold?’ says Cornelia.
‘I believe it,’ Marin says.
‘I can’t believe he agreed to leave,’ says Nella, staring at her, but Marin looks away. ‘It just doesn’t seem like him.’
‘You’ve been here twelve weeks, Petronella,’ Marin snaps. ‘A lifetime isn’t enough to know how a person will behave.’
Cornelia begins to slack on her vinegar and lemon juice cleans, her sweeping and polishing, her laundering, cleaning, brushing and beating. Nella sends her letter to Lucas Windelbreke in Bruges, and waits for a reply. The winter weather might slow the messenger, she thinks, but it seems like her only resort.
She decides she must ask Marin if Johannes has spoken to her about the sugar still lying in the warehouse. She finds her in the hallway, where Marin has taken to pacing, staring at the space in the salon where she argued with her brother. The candied walnuts have emerged from her room, and piled in a bowl on a side table, their half-shells glint like beetles. Nella looks at them in surprise; this is not like Marin, eating sugary fripperies in plain view. I suppose if I’d had a fight like that with Carel, she thinks, I’d eat my weight in marzipan.
‘Marin, I must ask you something,’ she says.
Marin winces, clutching her shawl about her.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘The walnuts,’ Marin replies. ‘I ate too many.’ She turns upstairs towards her room and the moment for discussion vanishes.
Cornelia and Nella spend hours in the kitchen, where it is warmest. One late afternoon, when Marin is asleep and Johannes is out, there is a hard and heavy knocking on the front door.
‘What if it’s the militia, coming for Toot? God save us,’ whispers Cornelia.
‘Well, they won’t find him here, will they?’ Nella would never admit her relief to Marin, but she is glad that Otto has disappeared. She imagines Jack in the middle of a gang, pointing an accusing finger.
The knocking doesn’t stop. ‘I’ll go,’ Nella says, trying to keep at least the illusion of control. This topsy-turvy house, she thinks, where the mistress is the first to greet the guests.
But through the windowpane, just one broad-brimmed hat shimmers on top of a long, full face. Nella pulls the door open, her relief that it isn’t the militia only slightly subsiding as Frans Meermans removes his hat and walks straight in. The December cold rushes in with him and he bows, playing the brim through his fingers.
‘Madame Brandt,’ he says. ‘I’ve come to see your husband.’
‘He’ll be at the bourse,’ says Marin.
Nella jumps, turning to see Marin waiting on the stairs. It is as if Marin knew he was coming. The air feels charged, and Nella waits for the giveaway signs of affection between them both. None comes. Of course, Nella tells herself. Marin is well practised at keeping a surface calm.
‘I’ve been to the bourse,’ says Meermans. ‘And the VOC. And several taverns. I was surprised to find he wasn’t there.’
‘I am not my brother’s keeper, Seigneur,’ Marin says.
At this, Meermans raises his eyebrows. ‘And more’s the pity.’
‘Would you like some wine while you wait?’ asks Nella, for Marin refuses to emerge from the shadows.
He turns to her. ‘You told my wife at the Old Church that your husband had been selling our sugar in Venice.’
Nella can feel Marin’s scrutiny on the back of her neck. ‘Yes, Seigneur. He’s back now—’
‘I know he is, Madame. A man like that will find his every move observed. Brandt is well-returned from the Venetian papists. Christmas is gone and the New Year is almost upon us. So, I ask myself – where is my profit?’
‘I’m sure it’s coming—’
‘He didn’t write to me. So last night I went to the warehouse to find out how his Venice voyage had gone, and this time, I took Agnes. How I wish that I had not!’ He spins towards Marin, fury bulging his eyes. ‘Not a grain has been shifted, Madame. Not a single blasted grain. You are worse than useless – all our fortune, all our future, mouldering in the dark. I touched it – some of it was paste.’
Marin is visibly shocked, unable to grasp the situation and shake it into obedience. Guilt runs through Nella as Marin flails, unarmed against his fury.
‘Frans,’ Marin stutters, ‘that’s impossible—’
‘That would be reason enough to ruin Johannes Brandt, and God knows, I already had my reasons. But when we walked outside the warehouse, we saw something worse. Something much worse.’
Marin comes forward a little from the shadows. ‘He is selling it, Frans,’ she says, quietly. ‘Be assured—’
‘Do you know what we saw, Madame, pressed against the walls?’