The Canker in the Orchard
That evening, Cornelia will not be dissuaded from going to the Stadhuis prison. In a fever of activity, she has made pasties of hen and veal, rosewater and sweetened pumpkin, cabbage and beef. They smell of home, of a solid kitchen with good utensils, a sensible cook at the helm.
‘I’m going, Madame,’ she says. Determination has put some colour back in her face.
‘Don’t tell him what’s happened here.’
Cornelia draws the warm package of her food to her body, her eyes welling with tears. ‘I would rather die than break his heart, Madame,’ she says, burying the pies deep in her apron.
‘I know.’
‘But if we did tell him about Thea, a baby, a beginning—’
‘It would give him more regret for the life he is about to leave. I don’t think he could bear it.’
Cornelia bridles at the awful decisions they are being forced to make. Nella watches the maid’s forlorn figure as she moves up the canal.
Lysbeth is in the working kitchen, folding fresh cloths for Thea. ‘Will you stay with her for a couple of hours while I go out?’ asks Nella.
Lysbeth looks up. ‘Gladly, Madame.’
It pleases Nella that Lysbeth doesn’t ask where she’s going; so unlike Cornelia. She wonders what Lysbeth might say about the carnage in her room, the damage wreaked by a child bride upon her toy. ‘There’s firewood upstairs,’ she says to the wet-nurse. ‘We should keep Thea warm.’
Nella is granted entry through the door of the kerkmeester’s room behind the organ of the Old Church. Pastor Pellicorne is at his desk. It is for Cornelia that Nella is here. She would rather have Marin buried quietly in St Anthonis’ church, away from public scrutiny. ‘Wouldn’t that have been what she wanted too?’ she’d asked Cornelia.
‘No, Madame. She’d have wanted the highest civic honour this city can bestow.’ This is normality, Cornelia stilling the surface. Thus Marin’s legacy lives on; that the most obsessive of Marin’s preoccupations should remain alive in her maid is a bitter heartening.
Pellicorne looks at Nella, trying to bury the glint of his distaste. You know who I am, she thinks, her hatred budding. You were standing outside the Stadhuis, bellowing for all to hear. Nella has come armed in her wealth, but pearls and a silver dress feel like flimsy armour in the face of Pellicorne’s disdain.
‘I have come to report a death,’ she says, looking straight at him, her voice clear.
Pellicorne dips his chin upon his abundant collar. ‘I thought that wasn’t till Sunday?’ he says, pulling his bulging burial register towards him, a large leather-covered book accounting for all the bodily traffic of this city, leaving for Heaven or Hell. He dips his pen in the ink.
Nella steadies herself, breathing deeply. ‘I’ve come to report the death of Marin Brandt.’
Pellicorne’s pen hovers. He peers at Nella, his hard face craning forward over the ledger. ‘Death?’ he utters.
‘Yesterday afternoon.’
The pen is laid down, Pellicorne leans back. ‘May God bless her soul,’ he says eventually. He narrows his eyes. ‘Tell me, how did our sister Marin Brandt leave the world?’
Nella pictures Marin’s corpse, the bloodied sheets, newborn Thea, then she travels back; Otto and Marin intertwined, their secret buried deep in Marin’s living body.
‘She died of a fever, Pastor.’
He looks alarmed. ‘The sweating sickness, you think?’
‘No, Seigneur. She was sick for a while.’
‘True, I have not seen her in church these last weeks.’ Pellicorne draws his hands together, rests his chin upon the tips of his tapering fingers. ‘I had wondered if her absence was anything to do with her brother.’
‘The shock would not have helped, Seigneur. She was already very weak,’ Nella says quietly, hatred blooming within her, barely letting her breathe.
‘It most certainly would not’ Nella keeps silent – she does not want to give this man the fuel he craves. ‘Has your gebuurte come to help?’ he asks.
She remembers her father’s funeral in Assendelft, how the neighbours had come to aid her grieving mother; undressing his corpse, putting him in a nightgown, lifting his stiffening body onto an iron sheet, laying straw for leakage. Then the young unmarried females of the village, coming to lay palms and flowers, laurel leaves. There was no such gebuurte for Marin, just Cornelia and herself, desolation creeping through their panic – and Lysbeth, a woman who’d never even met her alive. At least Cornelia has lit those oil burners.
Nella is pained by the lack of dignity Marin is suffering in death. There should have been a gebuurte, for Marin was a good person, she was strong. In another life she could have led an army. But in the end, Marin kept no friends close – only one, and he is missing.
‘Yes, Pastor,’ she replies. ‘The neighbours have come. But we have to move her soon. We have to bring her to the church.’
‘She never married,’ Pellicorne says. ‘A waste.’
For some of us, Nella thinks, it’s a waste to be married.
It is completely dark outside. In the main body of the church, she can hear the organist practising on his pipes, torches being lit for evening prayer. The pastor stands up, smoothing his black tunic as if it is an apron. ‘If you have come to bury her here,’ he says, ‘that is impossible.’
There is a moment of silence. Nella keeps her feet upon the floor, her back straight.
‘Why, Pastor?’
Her voice is strong and reasonable, because she’s made it so. She will not let it trill, or give way to emotion. Pellicorne closes the burial register and looks at her, surprised, as if he is not used to being asked to elaborate. ‘We cannot have her, Madame. She is tainted by association. As are you.’ He pauses, boring into her with his stony eyes. ‘You have all of my pity, Madame.’
‘And yet none of your mercy.’
‘We are overflowing. I give my sermons to more skeletons than flesh. Dear God, the stink,’ he says to himself. ‘All the perfumes of Araby cannot mask these rotting Dutchmen.’ To Nella, he merely adds, ‘I am sorry for her death, but I cannot have her here.’
‘Seigneur—’
‘Go to the men at St Anthonis’, they will help you.’
‘No, Pastor. Not beyond the city walls. She worshipped here.’
‘Burial within the city is not an option for most these days, Madame.’
‘It must be for Marin Brandt.’
‘I have no more room. Do you hear?’