‘They will kill him,’ Cornelia says, hunched over on the hallway stairs.
Nella crouches down, placing her hands on Cornelia’s knees. ‘Hush, hush. We must follow him to the Stadhuis.’
‘You cannot do that.’ Marin has emerged, wrapped in her shawl, her silhouette thrown long in the candlelight.
‘What?’
‘You will only draw attention.’
‘Marin, we need to know what they’re going to do to him!’
‘They will kill him,’ Cornelia repeats, beginning to shake. ‘They will drown him.’
‘Cornelia, for God’s sake.’
Marin closes her eyes, rubbing her temples, Nella feels rage at her inertia, her reluctance to grab the scruff of the situation and shake it down into submission. ‘Where is your heart, Marin? I would never abandon my brother to his fate.’
‘But that’s exactly what you did, Petronella. You left him in Assendelft and made your own escape.’
‘I would not call this an escape.’
‘What do you know of the burgomasters?’ says Marin. ‘You, who have eked your life out in fields, drinking cream from your country cows?’
‘That isn’t fair. What’s wrong with you?’
Marin starts moving down towards Nella at the bottom of the staircase, step by step with slow and strange precision. ‘Do you know what Johannes used to say to me?’ she asks. The venom in her voice cuts the winter air and the hairs on Nella’s arms rise up. ‘ “Freedom is a glorious thing. Free yourself, Marin. The bars on your cage are of your own making.” Well, it’s all very well freeing yourself, but there’s always someone who has to pay.’
‘Your self-pity is what keeps us from doing anything. You had your chance—’
Marin lashes out her arms and pins Nella by the wrists against the wall. ‘Get off me!’ Nella cries, weakened by the magnificence of Marin’s fury. Cornelia staggers back in horror.
‘I’m not abandoning my brother,’ Marin says. ‘He has abandoned me. I have kept our secrets, as he never could, I have paid his debts as much as I’ve paid mine – and I know you think that now you understand us, but you don’t.’
‘I do.’
Marin releases her. Nella sags against the panelling. ‘No, Petronella,’ Marin says. ‘The knot’s tied too tight for you.’
Hidden Bodies
Nella stands on the step of Johannes’ house, the eve of new year passing with no ceremony. She wants to be splintered by the cold, transfigured by the light. The canal path is empty, the ice a ribbon of white silk between the Herengracht houses. The moon above is larger than she has ever seen it, larger even than last night; an astonishing pale circle of power. It looks as if she could reach out and touch it, that God has pushed it down from the heavens for her human hand to hold.
She hopes Johannes can see this moon through the bars of his cell, somewhere in the bowels of the Stadhuis. His attempt at escape has made him look so guilty. Where is Otto now – where is the miniaturist, still hiding from view? If it weren’t for Cornelia, Nella thinks, I might run away too. While the house dwindles, occupant by occupant, the cabinet feels fuller, ever more alive.
From the open door behind her a strange smell has begun to emanate, and Nella comes back into the house. It is not coming from the kitchens. From upstairs, she hears a distant gulping, caught gasps of air. She follows the odd scent and sound up the staircase and along the dark corridor, to where a fine line of candlelight runs round Marin’s door. No sweet lavender nor sandalwood this time; this is a rotting-vegetable stench that makes Nella gag.
It’s some awful incense Marin’s burning, she thinks, some misguided perfume block. But the gulping sound is a sob. Nella listens, bending down to look through the keyhole, and discovers it has been blocked.
‘Marin?’ she whispers.
There is no reply, just the sobbing. Nella pushes on the slightly open door. The rooms stinks – a tang of matted undergrowth, roots and bitter leaves macerated to release their secret properties. Marin is on her bed, holding a glass of green mixture the colour of canal water, as if the very silt off the Herengracht has been ladled in. Her collection of animal skulls has been swept to the floor, some broken into uneven shards of yellow bone. A map on the wall has been ripped in two.
‘Marin? What by all the angels—’
At the sound of Nella’s voice, Marin looks up, her face tear-streaked, her eyes closing in relief. Her hand goes slack and she lets Nella remove the glass. Nella places her hand on the side of Marin’s face, on her neck, her chest, attempting to calm her shaking body, her unending tears. ‘What is it?’ she asks. ‘We will save him, I promise.’
‘Not him. I’m not—’
Marin cannot make a sentence. The strange pliancy of Marin’s body still beneath her fingers, Nella smells the vile mixture, and it makes her feel ill. She thinks of Marin’s sicknesses, her headaches, the new appetite for sugar, for apple tarts and candied nuts. Marin’s tiredness, her moodiness; the hive you mustn’t kick for fear of being stung. Her bulky clothes, her slower way of moving. Marin’s black dresses lined with fur, her secret love note, ripped to nothingness. I love you. I love you. From back to front, I love you. ‘What have you done?’ Marin had cried into the air, lying in her lavender bath.
Marin does not stop Nella’s probing hands, and so further Nella goes, slower, over her sister-in-law’s full, firm breasts, to the top of her stomach, hidden deep beneath swathes of high-waisted skirts.
When she presses down, Nella utters a cry.
Time stops. There are no words. Just a hand on a womb, and wonder and silence. Marin’s concealed stomach is hard and huge, full as the moon. Marin? Nella whispers her name, not sure if she’s even spoken out loud.
She exhales as the baby turns in its tiny home, and when a small foot kicks she drops to her knees. Still Marin stays silent, head erect, eyes pouched with tiredness, fixed on an invisible horizon before her, the exertion of keeping the secret draining from her face.
This is not a small baby. This is a baby that is nearly ready to arrive.
‘I wouldn’t have drunk it,’ is all Marin says.
The walls of the room seem nothing more than the flats of a stage set, falling, and beyond them another landscape never glimpsed. An unpainted place stretching out in all directions, no signposts or landmarks; just endless space. Marin sits very still.
Nella thinks of the little cradle in the cabinet house and a shiver runs up her body. How did the miniaturist know about this? Marin’s gaze is on the candle – beeswax, no burning tallow, just the pleasant smell of honey. The flame dances like a sprite, a little god of light mocking their paralysis of thought. How to start, what to say?
‘You tell no one,’ Marin whispers finally.
‘Marin, there must be no more secrets within this house. Cornelia will have to know.’
Marin sighs. ‘If she doesn’t already. I’ve been soaking my rags in pig’s blood so she wouldn’t be suspicious.’ Her eyes flick toward Nella. ‘And you know full well this house’s keyholes.’
‘So that’s what you were doing in the cellar. I thought you were cleaning them.’
‘You saw what you wanted to see.’
Nella closes her eyes, conjuring Marin in the cellar with her reddened hands aloft. Such lengths she has gone to in the name of her secret; preparing her ghostly menstruation, keeping up the appearance that her body is just the same. Marin’s profound convex is mesmerizing. She has duplicated herself – two hearts, two heads, four arms, four legs – like a monster to be recorded in a ship’s log, annotated on one of Johannes’ stolen maps. She’s hidden it so well.
How many times has it happened, the snatched chances out of sight of Agnes, Johannes, the whole city? It is shocking, and the fact that it’s Marin’s deed even more so. Fornication, skin on skin, throwing the Bible out the window. But this is love, Nella thinks. This is what it makes you do.
Marin lowers her head into her hands. ‘Frans,’ she says, his name enough to convey all that she has hidden, the truth that could ruin her life.
‘He was just angry about the sugar, Marin. He loves you.’ Marin looks up, an expression of surprise blooming on her exhausted face. ‘Tell him about the child. Once he knows, he won’t hurt Johannes because such action will endanger you.’
‘No, Petronella,’ Marin says. ‘This isn’t one of Cornelia’s stories.’
They sit in silence for a moment. Nella remembers Meermans’ ugly aggression, his look of triumph when he broke the news of what he and Agnes had seen.
‘People needn’t know about this, Marin. We’re good at hiding things.’
Marin rubs her eyes. ‘I’m not so sure.’ She takes a deep breath. ‘If he survives, this child will be stained.’
‘Stained?’
‘By his mother’s sin, his father’s sin—’
‘It’s a baby, Marin, not a devil. We can go away,’ Nella says more gently. ‘Take you to the countryside.’
‘There’s nothing to do in the countryside.’