"I was told before I came that Master Vermeer rents out the tavern," Francesca said after Clara had knocked and they stood waiting.

"That is correct. He gave up everything to do with it after his father died, which was shortly before his marriage."

The maidservant who admitted them was an amiable-looking young woman, her hair hidden under a white kerchief knotted at the back, while her blue ap.r.o.n showed that she had been engaged in the usual morning routine of washing every floor throughout the house.

"The master is not in at the moment, Juffrouw Huys," she said to Clara while her bright eyes took in Francesca from head to foot with a surrept.i.tious side glance. "He has gone to send a picture by ca.n.a.lboat to Leiden, but my mistress wishes me to take Juffrouw Visser straight to her."

"Very well, Elizabeth." Clara turned to Francesca. "I'll leave you now, but I'll be back at six when your day here ends."

The door was shut after her. Elizabeth bobbed as she said, "This way, if you please, mejuffrouw."

The house seemed so light and bright after the one in which Francesca had awakened that morning that she almost blinked. It was well furnished in the spa.r.s.e Dutch style that set off each piece to advantage with pastel walls hung with maps and paintings, checkered marble floors and bronze chandeliers suspended from white plastered ceilings with black crossbeams. There were the usual steps between different levels on the ground floor and a maze of corridors through which Elizabeth led her before stopping to tap on a door. A woman's voice replied from within.

"Enter!"

Elizabeth opened the door for Francesca, who went into the room alone. Catharina Vermeer sat serenely suckling her baby, at whom she was gazing. With her blue bodice unlaced to reveal the whiteness of her chemise and the pale curve of her naked breast, she could have been posing for a painting of the Madonna and Child. An aura of light from the window shone about her neatly dressed head, giving a sheen to her light brown hair and touching the down on the infant's head. Slowly she looked up and for a moment the illusion held, for her expression was one of sweet contentment. Then, like an awakening sleeper, she emerged from the euphoria of single-minded motherhood and became alert again to her other duties as mistress of the house, her face animated and smiling.

"You're here! I hadn't heard you arrive. I'm Catharina. There's no need for any formality between us. Come and sit down. Have you breakfasted? You can't paint on an empty stomach and I can send to the kitchen-Oh, you have eaten. I've heard Vrouw Wolff keeps a good table. Jan won't be long. Oh yes, I call him Jan, although he is Johannes to most of those who have known him longer than I. That's eighteen years and we've been married for seventeen of them. Our elder son is named Johannes too."

Francesca had warmed to her immediately, for she exuded an open friendliness that was entirely without guile. She had a round face with a creamy complexion, very sparkling brown eyes under arched brows, a pretty nose with a slight tilt and when her smile was wide it curved her mouth like a crescent moon lying horizontally. In all it was a well-formed, expressive face that any artist would want to paint, and Francesca thought it not surprising Willem had said that Catharina was her husband's favorite model.

"What is your baby's name?" Francesca peeped down at the infant guzzling its milk.

"This is Ignatius-a long name for such a mite, but I'm almost running out of names that I like for our children. I've been put off so many by people I know. I would have invented lovely names if it had been possible, but then children have to live with them all through school and you know how children hate to be different from one another."

Francesca was highly amused, for it had all been said with tongue in cheek and yet with a basis of truth. This was a charming woman who, in spite of constant pregnancies and all the many tasks a large family created, had lost neither her sense of fun nor her youthful looks.

"It might have been possible to name them after tulips," Francesca joked. "Semper Augustus would have sounded very grand, or there's Laprock, which would suit a prince in a fairy tale as well as a handsome male child."

Full of laughter, Catharina plucked the baby from her breast and held him high to look into his sleepy little face. "You might have been called Catolejn's Red and Yellow! How would you have liked that, my sweeting?" The baby burped just as if he had made a disparaging reply and she gave a shriek of mirth, which blended with Francesca's laughter, and hugged him to her before removing him to her shoulder and patting his back. With dancing eyes she looked across at her husband's new pupil. "You must be a gardener or a great lover of flowers to know those names."

"Both. I could say the same about you."

Catharina shook her head. "No, but I've heard so much about flowers from my mother, who lives in Oude Langendijk, the street near where you are staying. She has a garden with parterres and trees that is quite perfect and yet she lets my children play there. We have no garden here. Look out of the window and you will see."

Francesca went to the window and leaned out. Below her a narrow ca.n.a.l shimmered alongside the rear wall of the house and those of its neighbors as far as she could see up and down the length of the street of Voldersgracht. Small bridges gave access to it from the alleyways leading through from the square. She saw at a glance that the almshouse of redbrick opposite had been depicted in a painting that she had noticed on her way to this room and that only could have been painted from this very window.

"I saw this view on the corridor wall," she said, having retained an instant impression of the painting's beauty and peacefulness. One of the inhabitants of the almshouse was sitting in an open doorway with some sewing, exactly as another woman had been portrayed in the picture.

"That's one of my favorite works by Jan," Catharina said happily. "He called it A Little Street in Delft. When I particularly like one of his paintings he lets me keep it. That's why when people come to his art gallery, thinking to buy one of his works, they find nothing there and do not know what we have in the house."

Francesca returned to where she had been sitting. "My father painted several portraits of my mother that he'll never part with. To return to the subject of your mother's garden, how often do your children go there?"

"As often as they can. I'm afraid they run riot when they get there, but my mother never minds. She grows the most superb tulips and one year two of the children tripped and fell among some of the best. You should have seen that array of broken stalks!" Catharina rolled her eyes in dismay.

"Perhaps your mother would let me make some sketches of her flowers and then I could create a floral painting later on."

"I'm sure she would. Mind you, I don't think you'll get much flower painting with Jan, although I'm sure he'll let you please yourself sometimes as to what subjects you choose. You won't find him a hard taskmaster, although he can be terribly strict at times. He has to be with the children and so do I, or else he'd get no peace in which to work. I think that's why the children get so exuberant when they're in my mother's garden. There they can make as much noise as they like."

"Does Master Vermeer paint many portraits of them?"

"No! They're far too fidgety and restless. He has drawings of them, but if you didn't know we had offspring you'd think when viewing his paintings that there was not a child in the house. Except," she added as an afterthought, "he has painted me during two or three of my pregnancies."

"How many children have you?"

"Eight now." Then Catharina's face clouded and her eyes went to the baby in her arms. "We have lost two children, the second only last summer."

"I'm so sorry."

"I can't talk about it."

"I would not expect you to," Francesca declared sympathetically. Out of consideration for the woman's feelings she took up another subject. "Is there one of your husband's paintings in this room?"

Catharina looked up again and shook her head. "There are a few in other rooms in the house and a half-finished one in the studio. Maybe you would like to go along there and see where you will be working while I change the baby's linen before putting him down to sleep?"

"Yes. How do I find it?"

Francesca would have found her way easily from the clear directions Catharina gave her, but before she reached the studio she met three little girls waiting for a glimpse of her.

"Good day, children," she greeted them. "I'm Francesca Visser and, as I expect you know, I've come to complete my training as an artist with your father. Would you like to tell me your names?"

The tallest girl, with a prim air and hair the color of honey, bobbed respectfully. "I'm named Catharina after my mother, but Papa started calling me Rina and that is how it stayed. I'm nine."

"Are you the eldest girl?"

"Oh no, that's Maria, who is fifteen."

Francesca spoke to the second girl, who was bright-eyed and freckled. "And you?"

"I'm Lysbeth. On my next birthday I'll be eight."

The youngest, a merry-looking child with impish eyes, jumped up and down now that it was her turn to speak. "I'm Beatrix and I'll soon be five!"

Rina gave her a shove. "Be still now. You'll wake the baby with all that noise." To Francesca she added, "Our new brother is three months old."

"I saw him. He is a fine baby." Francesca knelt down and put an arm around Beatrix, drawing her close.

Both the other girls knelt down too, Rina to move into the crook of Francesca's free arm while Lysbeth, conscious of her appearance at all times, spread her skirts carefully around her. They started to ask Francesca many questions about her home and family, wanting to know if she had any more sisters and if she had brothers too. In the animated conversation none of them noticed the sound of footsteps along the corridor until Francesca saw out of the corner of her eye that someone in a pair of bucket-topped boots had come to a halt beside her.

She looked up from where she knelt. Master Jan Vermeer, hands resting on his hips with elbows jutting, a black hat thrust to the back of his head, was grinning down at her. His face registered with her before he spoke. It was long and oval, framed by a shoulder-length ma.s.s of frizzy brown hair, eyebrows arched over twinkling eyes. The thin nose, turned down at the end with a slight crookedness to it as if at some time it had been broken, had nostrils flaring back. The mouth was wide and sensual, revealing small, uneven teeth, and his chin was firmly rounded. He leaned over her, thoroughly entertained by finding her in the midst of three of his offspring.

"Are you a new nursemaid or my apprentice?"

"Both at the moment!"

He reached a friendly hand down to her and raised her to her feet. "Welcome to Delft, Francesca!"

Chapter 12.

AS JAN LED THE WAY THROUGH SEVERAL ROOMS TO THE STUDIO he asked Francesca about the training she had received from her father and nodded approval when he heard that basically it had followed the pattern of Hendrick's own apprenticeship.

"Here we are!" He flung open the studio door for her to enter. It proved to be a somewhat grand room for an atelier and was a full twenty feet or more in length. Situated at the front of the house, it looked out on the market square, but as the ground floor was above street level there was no question of anyone being able to look in, even though one of the windows with its coat of arms set in colored gla.s.s was open. An ornately fashioned chandelier flashed back the brightness of the morning and the walls were cream-colored, one half draped in a rich wool tapestry in shades of russet, dark orange, yellow, green and a sharp blue. A darker blue cloth over a brown one covered one table and on another was all his artist paraphernalia. In the middle of the black-and-white-tiled floor stood two easels with stools in front of them. She guessed that one was for her, but she went to the other, on which was propped a painting that was all but finished.

She saw at once that Jan Vermeer was an artist who used pure light like paint on the tip of his brush. It was as if she was seeing her own aims made visible, for here was the masterly technique that she had always worked for without ever having seen anything that came near it. What had always been in her head and in her heart was before her in this painting of Catharina, the whole scene bathed in clearest daylight that caused textures and surfaces to refract, absorb and reflect its intensity, all there for a purpose, nothing by chance. Francesca's grat.i.tude sped out to Willem, who had seen something in her work that was akin, in a small undeveloped way, to that of this master. She was too choked to speak and took in every detail of the subject matter in silence.

The painting showed Catharina in a yellow silk jacket trimmed with ermine and a skirt of slightly deeper hue, sitting with a lute in her left hand as if interrupted while playing. Her right hand was upraised and holding a letter that had just been handed to her by Elizabeth, who was clad in the same white kerchief and blue ap.r.o.n in which she had opened the door that morning.

Both Elizabeth and Catharina were viewed through a doorway and not only was the painting astonishingly beautiful but there was also much symbolism in it. The maidservant's encouraging smile and the woman's half-startled, half-wary look showed that she was uncertain whether the letter would contain good news or bad. That it was from a lover was made clear by her lute, linking music with the pleasures of love, and there were several sheets of music on a chair in the foreground. Lying on the tiled floor was a pair of shoes, a symbol of s.e.xual pa.s.sion. Yet Francesca knew, as any other viewer would have known, that all would be well with the romance, for a seascape hanging on the wall behind the woman was of a ship on a calm sea. Had it depicted a storm with rough waves then the outcome would have been different. A broom, shown propped by the shoes, further endorsed that the woman would be a good housewife. In all it told a story full of love and desire that was destined for a happy ending.

"There can be only one t.i.tle to this painting," Francesca said quietly, "and that is The Love Letter."

"Correct," he answered.

She glanced keenly about the studio. "You didn't paint it in here, did you?"

"Not in the beginning. I chose the dining hall. I wanted part of that colonnaded fireplace for the composition and the richness of the gilded leather on the walls. I wasn't popular with Catharina," he added with a rumbling laugh, "for choosing to stand my easel in that doorway at intermittent intervals, blocking the way. We all had to eat in the kitchen until the painting had reached its present stage, when I could move back here."

"I like the theme of the letter."

"It's one I've used many times before and I daresay I'll use it again." He did not offer an explanation and she did not question him. Her gaze was held again by the painting. Suddenly she spoke low and intently as she turned a desperately serious face to him.

"Teach me to paint with those condensations of crystal light! That quicksilver play over silks and satins! Nothing in this work of yours is indifferent to the brilliance of day and yet, whether figure or object, all is in total harmony. Show me what I must do!"

He did not answer her immediately but rested a hand on the corner of the painting's stretcher frame, his eyes narrowing at her. "I would say from your painting of your two sisters that you're more than halfway there."

She became pale at his praise. "I thank you, but there is still a long way to go."

"Agreed, but I wouldn't have taken you on as a pupil if you had not been thus far advanced. As you may or may not know, I simply don't have the time to start from first rules. The instruction and advice you receive from me will be concentrated and that is what you need."

"You'll find me attentive to all you say."

"Good. De Hartog told me that your training with your father had all but faded out. Yet you should always be grateful to Hendrick Visser, because it is he who has given you the rocklike foundation on which to build your work."

"I realize that. I've heard him say often enough that so much can be taught and so much is basic talent, but the interpretation of a visual experience onto canvas comes from the very soul of an artist."

"Indeed it does."

"Long before I understood its meaning, my father used to quote Leonardo da Vinci's advice-observation, experimentation and a.n.a.lysis."

"A golden rule for any artist." His gaze became more speculative. "I see you as one of those diamonds that find their way to the gem dealers of Amsterdam. Your ability as an artist has been rough-cut by an experienced hand. My role is that of polisher. What happens during that latter process will be entirely up to you."

"I want only to strive forward."

"Then I foresee a future of achievement for you, perhaps beyond the realms of your present imaginings, but time will tell." He relaxed on a more jovial note. "At least by coming into my studio with so much training behind you, all the ch.o.r.es usually allotted to an apprentice in the first year are far behind you."

She gave a little laugh. "I was well taught in that respect. Everything from making brushes to binding drawing pads!"

"My daughters Maria and Aleydis are my willing a.s.sistants when I require their help in that respect. My elder son Johannes used to be mainly in the studio, but gradually he realized a painter's path was not the one he wished to follow. Now he is apprenticed in Haarlem to a silk merchant, learning to design silks, as did my father at that age. By rights I should have done the same, because that was what I was taught when I was growing up in my childhood home on Voldersgracht. My father still had his silk business when he became more prosperous and began to deal in works of art. When he bought the Mechelin he continued to buy and sell paintings as well as spirits, wine and beer."

"You have only kept to art dealing in addition to painting yourself?"

"That's right."

"So who is to follow in your footsteps?"

He shook his head. "If you mean as a painter, none of my children as far as I can tell. Unless Ignatius should surprise me one day." He grinned as he mentioned his youngest son.

"May I see your gallery when you have time one day to show me?"

"What better time than now?" He threw out his hands. "You can't work this first morning when you are getting to know us all. You'll meet the rest of the family at the noon meal, except, that is, Johannes. As he is an apprentice, he is not often at home."

The gallery had once been an extra-wide corridor with a wooden floor along which barrels had been rolled to a door into the Mechelin's taproom. That door was now locked, but Jan had retained the corridor when leasing the tavern, for it had its own entrance from the side alley with good light from two large windows. Down the length of it was a long oaken table stacked with etchings and drawings for customers to browse through and the walls were covered with paintings of every size. A cool place in summer and able to be kept moderately warm in winter, it was perfect for paintings, especially for those on wood, for panels would crack or split apart in extremes of temperature.

She wandered around looking at the work. "I'm sure you sometimes get paintings to sell that you'd prefer to keep."

"Quite often. I've a little masterpiece here by someone who taught me much about painting when I was young, but as I have three of his works already, I have to let this one go." He beckoned her across to a painting on the wall that she had not yet reached. "It's by the late Carel Fabritius, a former pupil of Rembrandt. I'll be offering it to de Hartog next time he's here, but I'll not like to see it go. Superb, isn't it?"

She nodded and yet the subject matter saddened her. It was a goldfinch perched on a wall box and held by a chain about its leg that was only long enough to let it flutter a few inches into the air. Many people kept captive birds, but there had never been one in her home, because that would have gone against Hendrick's principles of freedom. It was odd that he should have deprived her of that same freedom now. She was chained as securely by his and Geetruyd's restrictions as that beautiful painted goldfinch on its box.

Something of her thoughts must have shown in her face, for Jan's gaze became hard on her. Leisurely he perched his weight on the edge of the table, speaking straightforwardly.

"What's all this about your having to be escorted everywhere? Vrouw Wolff came to see me yesterday, full of demands that you should never be allowed out of this house to sketch anywhere on your own and other such tomfoolery. I heard her out and I'd like to hear your side of things. I abhor tyranny and all that Geetruyd Wolff said smacked strongly of it."

Francesca explained fully. Since she was to spend many months under his tutorage she was glad to have the situation clear from the start. Jan listened to all she had to say, frowning deeply when he heard of Geetruyd's ugly threat about the inst.i.tution.

"Are you sure there is no other reason why these stipulations should be laid down?" he queried when he had heard everything. "Has your father any cause for personal dislike of Pieter van Doorne?"

"None at all. I would have known. My father can never hide his feelings. Yesterday, when I was leaving home, he welcomed Pieter to the table to eat with him. Yet all the time that letter had been written to Geetruyd Wolff. I simply don't understand and, as I said to you, I can only blame it on some quirk of his melancholia. Even a while ago when Pieter asked his permission to court me, my father did not just send him away, which was an arrangement he and I had about suitors. Instead he gave me the chance to think again about Pieter. That can be summed up as my father encouraging me toward a courtship as never before, except that I stipulated friendship with Pieter instead."

"So what are you going to do?"

"For the moment my hands are tied. Until my father relents, which I hope won't take too long, I am a prisoner of Geetruyd Wolff's unnecessarily harsh discipline."

He smiled grimly. "I do advise you most strongly to beware of her power. She is a tartar, the scourge of many a committee, and will not be crossed. I could have saved you all this if I had insisted in the first place that you had bed and board under my roof, as is usual for apprentices, but I thought that, as you were older, it would be better for you to be accommodated with some liberty away from the studio. Also-to be frank-I wanted to spare my wife from having another adult female in the house. It did not work when my late mother lived under the same roof for the first year of our marriage, and although the circ.u.mstances would have been entirely different, I vowed then that it should never happen again."

"I quite understand."

"I do sympathize with your predicament, and should you find yourself in special difficulties at any time, please remember Catharina and I are here to help."

"I appreciate that."