Francesca felt cheered after talking to him. Just before the noon meal she met his three other daughters, Maria and Aleydis, who had been spending the morning with friends, and Truyd back from school. The girls were full of talk and not in the least shy, all pretty and slender and vibrant.

"If you want any pigments mixed," Maria offered willingly, "Aleydis and I know exactly what to do and even Truyd is learning."

Aleydis nodded, brown curls dancing, a myriad of dimples in her laughing face. "We are experts, especially if you favor yellows and blues and grays and whites as Father does."

Catharina had appeared from the direction of the dining hall and Francesca, remembering those colors had dominated the painting in the studio, looked at her inquiringly. "Doesn't your husband like to use the whole palette?"

"He did in his earlier work and he has painted me twice in red gowns, but I admit he does prefer a softer range now and always his beloved yellow."

As soon as they reached the dining hall Francesca recognized it instantly from the setting of the studio painting. There was the colonnaded fireplace, the handsome wall covering of gilded leather and the seascape hanging above the chair where Catharina had sat. During the noon meal Catharina told her that originally it had been arranged, in agreement with Willem de Hartog, that Francesca should stay next door with some good neighbors during her apprenticeship.

"It would have been so convenient for you, Francesca," she continued, "being so near. It was such a surprise and disappointment to us yesterday when Vrouw Wolff arrived to inform us she had been given sole responsibility for you."

Jan supported her words from the head of the table. "At least we must be thankful you are not farther away."

Catharina nodded encouragingly at Francesca. "We hope that you'll spend time with us after working hours whenever it is convenient."

Francesca smiled appreciatively. "I should like that very much. It's good to know that I have friends in this house."

That afternoon Francesca started work, deciding she would paint the market square within the frame of the window. Jan provided a small wooden platform for her to stand on to improve her view and stayed to discuss what she was doing. It was time for her to go back to Geetruyd's house almost before she realized it.

Jan showed her out through the drawing room, which had been hidden from her view by closed double doors when she had arrived at the house that morning. Now, coming into it by another door, she saw it could have been called a music room. At one end of the long room was a clavichord, a particularly large and graceful instrument with a shaped lid that was raised when the keys were being played. Beside it was a viola da gamba and on the wall hung a lute. At the opposite end of the room were two virginals set apart and a guitar lay on one of them. She looked at Jan with delight.

"I can see this is a house of music as well as art!"

"It is. Do you play?"

"The virginal."

"Then you must join in our family concerts."

"I should enjoy that so much." She had paused to look at another painting of Catharina. Again there was the theme of a letter, but the atmosphere was entirely different. It showed her in the last months of pregnancy, dignified and beautiful, wearing a blue silk jacket that swelled out over her extended figure and was tied with ribbons. She was standing in front of the studio table with the light streaming over her while the tranquillity and tenderness that prevailed were almost palpable.

"You see," Jan said at Francesca's side, "even when my good wife is pregnant she poses for me."

"She told me about that."

"The t.i.tle is simply A Woman in Blue Reading a Letter."

Francesca was studying it keenly. "I know exactly what is portrayed here. This is a woman who has just received a letter from her husband, who is far away. Perhaps he is at sea and has sent it from a foreign port. Or else he's on business in a distant Dutch town. Either way he is concerned about her bearing their first child. She's very alone and aware of it. Even that chair in the foreground on the right creates a barrier between her and us. Yet she is full of love because it is a married love letter that he has sent her."

There was a pause before he spoke. "What can I say? That is what I aimed for and you have voiced it all. When I told Catharina what I wanted to bring out in this painting she took all the love letters I had written to her during our courtship and reread a different one every day."

She felt her heart contract on some emptiness within herself. Her voice came quietly. "It sounds as if you and Catharina exchanged many letters."

"We did. They were of extreme importance to us when it seemed as if we were never to be allowed to marry. Both our families were strongly against the match. I was twenty-one, only recently finished with my apprenticeship, a brand-new member of the Guild with no money and little prospect of ever having any. Since Catharina was Catholic and came from a well-to-do background while I was the Calvinist son of a tavernkeeper who didn't want me to take on the responsibility of marriage so soon, I suppose it was not a surprising impa.s.se."

"How did you win through?"

"My parents finally gave in when they realized how resolved I was to have Catharina, and her mother relented when my former master made an appeal on my behalf."

"No wonder you showed such understanding of my simpler problem over a friendship."

"There is nothing new under the sun, is there?"

She returned his smile. "I suppose not."

Outside the double doors, which would be opened for social occasions, Francesca found Clara patiently waiting for her, seated on one of the sapphire-blue, lion-headed chairs. She was eager for talk and questioned Francesca all the way home.

That evening after dinner, Francesca sat down in her own room to write another letter to Pieter. This time she explained the situation in full. She wrote a different letter to Hendrick and her sisters. After telling them about the Vermeer family and her first day she added a description of Fabritius's painting of the chained bird. She knew it would hold a message for her father, aware that she was using the symbolism of it in her letter much as it might have been used in a work of art. Hendrick would a.s.sociate her with the captive bird and himself as the one who had fashioned the chain. It would touch his sensibilities far more than any written plea would have done.

Catharina had also been writing letters to invite family and friends to come to Beatrix's fifth birthday party in July. When the last invitation had been written she arose from the table at which she had been sitting in the upstairs room where Jan dealt with all business matters. Picking up the branched candlestick that had illumined her task, she left the room, crossed the landing and went into every bedchamber where her children lay sleeping. All was well.

This was the time of day that was important to her, when she could feel free to spend a little time on her own with Jan. The candlelight showed the way for her as she set off downstairs, knowing where her husband was to be found, for the resonant notes of the viola de gamba came from the drawing room, sounding much like the hum of a particularly melodious bee.

When she hastened across the hall her new silk petticoat, a gift from her generous mother, rustled about her ankles. Catharina thought it was a measure of Jan's tolerance that he never showed resentment over his mother-in-law's generosity or the children receiving gifts, which were often ill timed. They frequently came when he was going through a lean period with a lack of sales in his art dealing and debts began mounting up again. Yet he knew that nothing his wife received from any other source could compare with the gift of large pearl earbobs that he gave her as a marriage-morning gift after their first night together.

Their marriage was satisfying in every way. Jan with his kind heart was both her lover and her friend, which made the essential qualities in a good husband. Kindness in a man covered everything from shared pleasure in bed to concern for everything else important in family and everyday life. If anything, she loved him more now than in those first halcyon days of their pa.s.sionate union. She was also proud of him for being held in such high regard in Delft. It was to him that the local authorities turned for advice on works of art, and he who had to approve paintings offered for public auction in the town.

Catharina pa.s.sed a richly carved cupboard on her way to find Jan at his music. It was one of the items that had come with her as part of her dowry, together with some lavish furnishings, including the costly Turkish rug that draped a table in the drawing room.

But the house was not without its own grandeur, for Jan's father had been in comfortable circ.u.mstances when he died and the house had been furnished accordingly. His widow had not been able to take everything she would have liked when moving from the Mechelin after a year of living under the same roof with her son's wife-a year filled with domestic conflict. Digma Vermeer had left behind those items of furniture she knew Jan preferred, for he had been the apple of her eye, even if she had never approved his choice of a wife.

Catharina entered the drawing room. Jan was seated at the far end on one of the lion-headed chairs that his mother had bequeathed him. He had the large viola da gamba propped at a comfortable angle and supported by his spread knees on each side of it, the fingers of his left hand high on the strings, his right hand drawing the bow. She thought how, at that moment, he personified the close link between painting and music. He looked up and smiled as she came toward him, but did not interrupt his playing. She put down the branched candlestick and seated herself to listen quietly until the last note hummed into silence.

"I like that piece," she said approvingly. "Are you going to play it on the evening of the party?"

"I thought I would." He rose from the chair and carried the instrument across the room to prop it in its place near the clavichord. "Is everything quiet upstairs?"

"Yes, peace at last! How did you get on with your pupil today?" She patted the velvet cushion of the couch for him to join her there by the fire, for it had turned unseasonably cold that evening and Elizabeth had lit it for him at his music.

"I think Francesca will excel, given time and the chance to strengthen certain aspects of her work. My only anxiety is that she is already balking at the conditions laid down for her by Vrouw Wolff." He gave his wife a full account of all Francesca had told him. "So I hope there is not going to be so much hara.s.sment as to interfere with her concentration."

"You'll have to put your foot down with Vrouw Wolff if it does." Catharina made a little grimace. "Five minutes with that self-righteous woman was more than enough for me." He had put an arm about her and she rested comfortably against him.

"In addition to everything else, it appears that Francesca has been forbidden to see or write to a young fellow of whom her father previously approved even to the extent of encouraging her to agreeing to courtship."

"Who is the young man?" she asked.

"His name is Pieter van Doorne, a horticulturist of Haarlem. Did Vrouw Wolff mention him to you?"

"No. It was all the stupid nonsense that she spouted to you. She seemed to take it for granted that you would always accompany the girl and I didn't disillusion her."

"With this threat of incarceration in a house of correction hanging over her, Francesca had to write and let Vrouw Wolff read and approve a letter telling van Doorne not to visit Delft."

"That's despicable!" Catharina was outraged.

"I agree." He leaned forward without taking his arm from her to boot a piece of burning peat, which was threatening to topple, deeper into the heart of the fire. When he sat back again his hand rested familiarly and caressingly on her breast. "I can't understand what all the fuss is about. Francesca told Vrouw Wolff, as she told me, that she and van Doorne should be able to meet as often as they wished since there is only friendship between them. The girl is really upset about it."

Catharina half raised herself to look with mock surprise into his face. "You believe it's only friendship, do you?"

"Francesca was quite definite about it."

"It sounds to me as if she were trying to convince herself more than you." She tapped his chest with a forefinger. "Women don't go up in the air about friendship. There must be more to it than that."

"You've missed the point. There is a principle at stake and I agree with her. If she's responsible enough to be apprenticed like a man, then she should be equally capable of looking after the social side of her life without interference."

"Agreed, but I'm sticking to my romantic theory." Catharina raised herself higher and kissed him on the lips. His arms closed around her and he held her to him, lengthening and deepening their kiss.

"Let's lock the doors," he said softly.

She leaned her head back to regard him playfully. "We have a perfectly good bed upstairs."

"Do as I say, sweeting."

There was a velvet look in his eyes that in itself was a promise of all sorts of sweet treats for her. She slipped from his arms to cross to the double doors and then to another through which she had come into the room, turning the key in each. He was a man who needed the width of a bed for his lovemaking and there was no question of the narrow couch being used, although he had taken the cushions from it to toss them down in front of the fire. These were followed in a swirl by the Turkish rug, whose rich hues made an exotic spread for her. He pulled off his jacket and she released her ribbons. Within seconds of her petticoat being discarded he encircled her warm nakedness in his arms and drew her down to the rug with him. They surrendered to their mutual pa.s.sion in the combined glow of the candles and the fire.

IN THE MORNING Francesca placed the letter to her father and sisters in a silver bowl in the hall. Geetruyd had told her it was for incoming and outgoing post. She knew it would reach her father swiftly, for Holland had an excellent postal service with sorting offices in all the main towns, which she had heard was without parallel in Europe, but it was expensive. Although her sisters had spoken of corresponding with her, she could be sure they would have to wait and send letters to her only when someone they knew personally could deliver them, Vrouw Wolff had mentioned what the postal rates were the previous evening and she put the necessary money on top of Hendrick's letter.

As soon as Clara had left her at the Vermeers' house, Francesca went to Catharina to ask if Elizabeth could take her letter to Pieter to the postal office. "I had to tell him the truth of this bizarre situation," she explained after ensuring that Jan had told Catharina everything as he had promised he would.

"Of course Elizabeth shall post your letter for you," Catharina said willingly. "Give it to her now and then it will be sent without delay. Afterward go along to the studio and forget your troubles. Things have a way of working out and I'm sure that eventually it will be like that for you."

Francesca pa.s.sed a peaceful day in the studio. Jan was also there for the morning and she was not surprised to learn that he spent nine or ten months over each of his paintings, for his brushwork was meticulous, deep thought behind every stroke. He had some business that took him away from the house in the afternoon, but she had enough of the market square on her canvas for his helpful words to have had effect. She found herself using small angular touches such as he had shown her, and took note of his warning that if she should create the foliage of the trees by placing blue on yellow, which he favored in his work, she should remember that with time the blue would predominate and allow for that.

As on the previous evening, Clara was waiting for her and the little woman's question was the same. "What have you accomplished today, Francesca?"

It was clear that a pattern had been set, but Francesca answered her tolerantly, aware of feeling much more relaxed than she did after a similar day's work in her father's studio. The reason dawned on her. At home there were so many interruptions. Maria or Griet frequently sought her advice on some domestic issue, or she would have to stop work herself to go to the market, receive a visitor or make some obligatory call on a neighbor. Here she was completely free to concentrate on her work with nothing else to think about. It could have been like that to a degree when she was painting in Ludolf's house, except that there were distracting influences of another kind. Foremost had been the strain that his presence put on her, almost as if it had been a tiger instead of a man she was painting, never quite sure when danger might spring on her. There were also those bewildering emotions over Pieter that had troubled her before everything had been settled as friendship between them. She would never want to go to Ludolf's house again now that Amalia was gone. Pieter was due to start the landscaping of the garden there this week, but, as he had told her on the way to the stage wagon that last morning, the beautiful little bower he had planned for that sweet-natured invalid was no longer to be included. At least it was possible to be certain that Sybylla's bright company and her playing of the viol had brought Amalia much pleasure and comfort in her last days.

Clara led the way into the Wolff house. Francesca, following after her, saw Geetruyd standing in the hall to await them-with one hand behind her back as if she was hiding something from view.

"Good evening to you, Francesca," the widow greeted her. "We have something to discuss."

Out of the corner of her eye Francesca saw Clara scuttle away. It could only mean some new trouble ahead. "What could that be?" she queried coolly.

"This!" Dramatically Geetruyd brought forward her hand from behind her back and waved to and fro a letter with Francesca's own handwriting on it. It was the one to Pieter that had been dispatched by Elizabeth only that morning.

"Where did you get that?" Francesca demanded furiously.

"It was sent to me from the postal office by the official in charge. I told you I was not without influence in this town. It is not the first time he has been alerted by me to intercept forbidden correspondence, and I had warned him that you were likely to bribe Vermeer's servant or one of his children to send a letter secretly on your behalf."

"How dare you interfere with my private correspondence!" Francesca was trembling in her fury and she held out her hand for the letter.

"It has not been read." Geetruyd held up the letter and turned it about almost with the air of a conjurer to show that the seal had not been broken. Then deliberately she tore it into several pieces. "I shall see that this evidence of your disobedience is burnt. Mark this as a last warning, because you know what will happen if you attempt to disobey me again."

Francesca went with dignity to the stairs, her head high, but torn by wrath and frustration within. How was she ever to endure such close surveillance? It was imprisonment! She felt she could not breathe. If only there were a flower garden to the house where at least she could escape its four walls. Then she thought of Catharina's mother, Vrouw Thin, who had a garden and lived nearby. Perhaps after she had met Vrouw Thin she might be allowed to sit there sometimes to draw the blossoms and the trees. This small ray of hope, linked as it was to the chance of some liberty, helped her to bear up under Geetruyd's new act of tyranny.

When an opportunity arose during the next day Francesca told Catharina what had happened to the letter. Catharina advised her to write it again here in the Mechelin and Jan would post it when he visited some other town, but Francesca declined the kindly intended offer.

"I don't want to cause any bone of contention between you and Geetruyd. As you know, she is a dangerous woman. I must be patient and await a chance of my own to send a letter to Pieter. I feel it will not be long before Willem de Hartog comes to Delft again and he would take letters for me." She then broached the subject as to whether Vrouw Thin might allow her to visit now and again, explaining the reason why.

Catharina immediately gave her approval to the idea. "Nothing would please my mother more than to have a fellow flower enthusiast appreciating her garden. It is not right that you should have to spend summer evenings cooped up with Vrouw Wolff. Leave everything to me."

When Clara called for Francesca at the usual time, she flew into a panic at hearing that her charge had finished work early and had gone home with Vrouw Thin to the house on Oude Langendijk. She set off for the address, almost running, but before she reached it she met Catharina, who took her by the arm and turned her around to retrace her steps, walking with her.

"I've introduced Francesca and my mother to each other," Catharina explained. "When they have finished inspecting and discussing every bloom in the garden, Francesca is going to dine there."

"So late! When am I to fetch her?"

"There's no need. She will come home in my mother's sedan chair borne by two of the most reliable bearers in Delft. Neither you nor Vrouw Wolff have any cause to worry."

At Vrouw Thin's house Francesca spent another hour with her new acquaintance in the lovely formal garden with its neat parterres and straight paths, its sundial and shady mature trees. She and Catharina's mother were now choosing which blooms should be the ones to start her off on a flower painting, which she had decided she would paint stage by stage as other flowers came into bloom, just as she had thought of doing at home in Amsterdam before she knew she was to go to Delft. It would be in addition to the painting she had begun of the market square and any others that might follow. They had agreed that morning picking was essential and that Francesca would come for the first of the flowers on her way to work one morning when the canvas was prepared and she was ready to begin this new venture.

"It's a pity the tulips are over," Vrouw Thin said regretfully. She was diminutive and full-bosomed, friendly in face and manner, handsomely gowned in dark green satin. Her eyes were round and blue with thin little eyebrows of a shape that made her appear permanently surprised by all she saw, which would not be the case, for she was a worldly woman. "I would have let you pick the choicest of them all."

"But remember, this flower painting will be a year on canvas," Francesca said smilingly. "I'll add the tulips when spring comes again."

"Splendid! Of course you will!"

When Francesca arrived back at Vrouw Wolff's house in the sedan chair Geetruyd was surprisingly amiable about the unexpected outing. The reason was soon revealed, if unwittingly.

"Vrouw Thin is most generous to the fund for maintaining the almshouses of which I am a regentess," Geetruyd said smugly. "I and my committee invite her to meet the inmates once a year. You have my permission to visit her whenever she is gracious enough to ask you to her home."

Francesca breathed an inward sigh of relief that there was to be no opposition. She had been given an open invitation by Vrouw Thin to go to the garden whenever she wished.

AS THE WEEKS went by, the Delft jug, which had been given a permanent place on a table in Jan's studio, was to hold a succession of choice flowers morning-picked from the Thin garden. As peonies gave way to clematis and then to roses and gillyflowers, Francesca's first impression that Jan was the best master possible for her had been more than confirmed. He was the type of teacher who could fling doors wide to a new vision and understanding, able to make more penetrating that precious inner eye. In a few words, or with the demonstration of a brushstroke, he could give the exact knowledge she needed.

Unlike her father, who could never have followed such methodical ways, Jan planned every detail of a painting in advance. For as long as anyone knew, artists had used gadgetry to help them in their craft, not all as free-painting as Frans Hals and Hendrick, and the camera obscura had been employed for over a hundred years. Jan introduced Francesca into the use of it, as Hendrick never had. The principle of the device was that a lens, inserted in a box, would reflect in reverse into a darkened area whatever the artist had set up to paint in the light. A canvas or a piece of paper was pinned to the wall to hold the image while the artist drew around the shapes reflected. When the drawing was put the right way again, the artist had his subject matter ready for painting.

Jan had enlarged on the idea. With the aid of screens and a lid he could erect a large box against a wall into which he could step into complete darkness. A fine lens, locally made in Delft, where the fashioning of high-quality lenses was fast becoming an industry, gave a perfect reflection in full color of the subject matter he intended to paint, a great improvement on the smaller boxes, and she admired his ingenuity. It was not that Jan or any other artist could not have drawn the subject matter of a painting in free hand, but the camera obscura saved time while shadows, forms and architectural detail were captured with perfect accuracy. Francesca found Jan's version most helpful at times, although-like her master-she did not use it for every work.

Jan was away from home more than Francesca had antic.i.p.ated, but since art dealing was his princ.i.p.al means of livelihood it took priority over his painting. She asked him once why he did not paint more himself and make dealing in other people's work a sideline.

"As you've seen for yourself," he replied, "I am a slow painter. Even if I were not, my work has no appeal outside Delft. I've no idea why that should be, but I'm not complaining, because everything I paint finds an immediate buyer within the town itself. My neighbor Heer van Buyten, a master baker, has purchased some of my works. The book printer Jacob Abrahansz Dissius is also a keen collector of my paintings and has twenty. There are others locally who will buy whenever one becomes available. The prices I receive are far higher than I could expect to obtain in places where I'm not known, although I do have a good patron in Antwerp. I never sell my own paintings to de Hartog because he could only raise a few guilders for anything of mine in Amsterdam."

She knew that on the very day Jan had declared The Love Letter finished it had been snapped up by Heer Dissius. She wondered if the fact that Jan painted so little and had such ready purchasers was a double handicap to his work reaching a wider field and surely the general acknowledgment that it deserved. It would be interesting to talk this over with Willem when he should come, but that had not happened as yet.

At the present time Jan was making preliminary drawings of Catharina in various poses for another painting with a letter theme. When she saw him crumple up and throw away those that did not please him, she asked if she might have the next that would otherwise be cast out. He agreed, saying she could have her pick of them. She chose three of these exquisite drawings and at her request he signed them for her, his signature consisting of "Meer" with a vertical dash above, one of several variations of it that she had seen on his other work.

These three drawings were the first works of art to be displayed on the walls of her bedchamber. They were a distance away from her own drawing of Pieter, which was propped on her table and tucked away in a drawer when she was absent. She could never be sure that Geetruyd would not destroy it if she should see it and guess whose likeness it was.

Daily she yearned for a letter from home. She knew there was no chance of hearing from Pieter after the brusque message she had been forced to write to him. If she had known then that the second letter was not going to reach him she would have written more fully the first time. Yet this was easy to feel with hindsight and she reminded herself that she had been almost too distressed to think properly that first terrible evening.

Her daily routine had settled to light and shade, the bright hours being those she spent at the Mechelin Huis and the clouded ones those pa.s.sed under Geetruyd's roof. Often when her day's work in the studio was at an end she would stay on to dine with the Vermeers, a concession that Catharina had won on her behalf from Geetruyd. Then she would help put the younger children to bed, enjoy a card game with the older girls and sometimes play the virginal when dinner was over. It had not surprised her that music should be appreciated in this house as much as art, for there were few homes where families did not encourage singing and playing of musical instruments. Jan always escorted her home, Catharina often coming as well when the evening was fine and she felt in need of a walk. It was usual at these times for a long detour to be made in order that Francesca could have interesting and historic features of the town pointed out to her. She had been for walks with Geetruyd and Clara and went to church with them every Sunday, but their company lay heavily upon her and it was not the same as being with the Vermeers.

Francesca was overjoyed one evening to see that there was a letter for her in the silver bowl. It was from Aletta and had been delivered by hand. A wave of homesickness swept over her and as soon as she was on her own she brushed a hand across her eyes before the swim of tears subsided to allow her to read. As she had hoped, it was full of family news. Hendrick's knuckles were much improved and the mobility of his fingers had fully returned. Maria boasted that the cure was her doing, but not in his hearing in case he became contrary and refused to drink her decoction of herbs another time should the need arise. He insisted that extra work had done the trick. Two commissions had come in for history paintings and Ludolf had bought through Willem the painting of the tax collector, although at a moderate price. The best of the good news was that Hendrick was not gambling. He met his drinking companions in the taverns most evenings, but frequently came home sober. As a result there were no tradesmen hammering on the door for money, and life was comparatively peaceful.

I have seen Pieter several times, Aletta continued. Whatever has made you change your mind about seeing him in Delft? I have no idea what you wrote to him, but whatever it was he is far from pleased over it. Your letter to us was most welcome, although I have to remind you on Sybylla's behalf not to forget to describe Vrouw Vermeer's clothes next time. Our neighbor Heer Zegers will be delivering this letter when pa.s.sing through Delft, but will have no time to delay. I hope next time we may find a bearer who will be able to collect a reply from you. We all miss you, especially Father, who was morose and irritable for days after we heard from you, which is a sure sign that your well-being is much on his mind.