Tracy Chevalier 3-Book Collection: Girl With a Pearl Earring, Remarkable Creatures, Falling Angels. Tracy Chevalier

around the bed. The curtains had been drawn back and Catharina lay propped against pillows, cradling the baby. Though exhausted, she was smiling, happy for once. My master stood near her, gazing down at his new son. Aleydis was holding his hand. Tanneke and the midwife were clearing away basins and bloody sheets while the new nurse waited near the bed.

      Maria Thins came in from one of the kitchens with some wine and three glasses on a tray. When she set them down he let go of Aleydis' hand, stepped away from the bed, and he and Maria Thins kneeled. Tanneke and the midwife stopped what they were doing and kneeled as well. Then the nurse and children and I kneeled, Johannes squirming and crying out as Lisbeth forced him to sit.

      My master said a prayer to God, thanking Him for the safe delivery of Franciscus and for sparing Catharina. He added some Catholic phrases in Latin which I did not understand, but I did not mind much — he had a low, soothing voice that I liked to listen to.

      When he was done Maria Thins poured three glasses of wine and she and he and Catharina drank good health to the baby. Then Catharina handed the baby to the nurse, who put him to her breast.

      Tanneke signalled to me and we left the room to get bread and smoked herring for the midwife and the girls. ‘We'll begin preparing for the birth feast now,’ Tanneke remarked as we were setting things out. ‘Young mistress likes a big one. We'll be run off our feet as usual.’

      The birth feast was the biggest celebration I was to witness in that house. We had ten days to prepare for it, ten days of cleaning and cooking. Maria Thins hired two girls for a week to help Tanneke with the food and me with the cleaning. My girl was slow-witted but worked well as long as I told her exactly what to do and kept a close eye on her. One day we washed, whether they were clean already or not, all the tablecloths and napkins that would be needed for the feast, as well as all the clothes in the house — shirts, robes, bonnets, collars, handkerchiefs, caps, aprons. The linens took another day. Then we washed all the tankards, glasses, earthenware plates, jugs, copper pots, pancake pans, iron grills and spits, spoons, ladles, as well as those from the neighbours who lent them for the occasion. We polished the brass and the copper and the silver. We took curtains down and shook them outside, and beat all the cushions and rugs. We polished the wood of the beds, the cupboards, the chairs and tables, the windowsills, until everything gleamed.

      By the end my hands were cracked and bleeding.

      It was very clean for the feast.

      Maria Thins placed special orders for lamb and veal and tongue, for a whole pig, for hare and pheasant and capons, for oysters and lobsters and caviar and herring, for sweet wine and the best ale, for sweet cakes prepared specially by the baker.

      When I placed the meat order for Maria Thins with Pieter the father, he rubbed his hands. ‘So, yet another mouth to feed,’ he proclaimed. ‘All the better for us!’

      Great wheels of Gouda and Edam arrived, and artichokes, and oranges and lemons and grapes and plums, and almonds and hazelnuts. Even a pineapple was sent, gift of a wealthy cousin of Maria Thins. I had never seen one before, and was not tempted by its rough, prickly skin. It was not for me to eat anyway. None of the food was, except for the odd taste Tanneke allowed us. She let me try a tiny bit of caviar, which I liked less than I admitted, for all its luxury, and some of the sweet wine, which was wonderfully spiced with cinnamon.

      Extra peat and wood were piled in the courtyard, and spits borrowed from a neighbour. Barrels of ale were also kept in the courtyard, and the pig was roasted there. Maria Thins hired a young boy to look after all the fires, which were in use all night once we began roasting the pig.

      Throughout the preparations Catharina remained in bed with Franciscus, tended by the nurse, serene as a swan. Like a swan too, though, she had a long neck and sharp beak. I kept away from her.

      ‘This is how she would like the house to be every day,’ Tanneke grumbled to me as she was preparing jugged hare and I was boiling water to wash the windows with. ‘She wants everything to be in a state around her. Queen of the bedcovers!’ I chuckled with her, knowing I shouldn't encourage her to be disloyal but cheered none the less when she was.

      He stayed away during the preparations, locked in his studio or escaping to the Guild. I saw him only once, three days before the feast. The hired girl and I were polishing candlesticks in the kitchen when Lisbeth came to find me. ‘Butcher's asking for you,’ she said. ‘Out front.’

      I dropped the polishing cloth, wiped my hands on my apron and followed her up the hallway. I knew it would be the son. He had never seen me in Papists' Corner. At least my face was not chapped and red as it normally was from hanging over the steaming laundry.

      Pieter the son had pulled up a cart in front of the house, loaded with the meat Maria Thins had ordered. The girls were peering into it. Only Cornelia looked round. When I appeared in the doorway Pieter smiled at me. I remained calm and did not blush. Cornelia was watching us.

      She was not the only one. I felt his presence at my back — he had come down the hallway behind me. I turned to look at him, and saw that he had seen Pieter's smile, and the expectation there as well.

      He transferred his grey eyes to me. They were cold. I felt dizzy, as if I had stood up too quickly; I turned back round. Pieter's smile was not so wide now. He had seen my dizziness.

      I felt caught between the two men. It was not a pleasant feeling.

      I stood aside to let my master pass. He turned into the Molenpoort without a word or glance. Pieter and I watched him go in silence.

      ‘I have your order,’ Pieter said then. ‘Where would you like it?’

      That Sunday when I went home to my parents I did not want to tell them that another child had been born. I thought it would remind them of losing Agnes. But my mother had heard of it at the market and so I was made to describe to them the birth and praying with the family and all the preparations that had been made so far for the feast. My mother was concerned about the state of my hands, but I promised her the worst was done.

      ‘And a painting?’ my father asked. ‘Has he begun another painting?’ He always hoped that I would describe a new painting to him.

      ‘Nothing,’ I replied. I had spent little time in the studio that week. Nothing there had changed.

      ‘Perhaps he is idle,’ my mother said.

      ‘He is not that,’ I answered quickly.

      ‘Perhaps he does not want to see,’ my father said.

      ‘I don't know what he wants,’ I said more sharply than I had intended. My mother gazed at me. My father shifted in his seat.

      I said nothing more about him.

      The guests began to arrive around noon on the feast day. By evening there were perhaps a hundred people in and out of the house, spilling into the courtyard and the street. All sorts had been invited — wealthy merchants as well as our baker, tailor, cobbler, apothecary. Neighbours were there, and my master's mother and sister, and Maria Thins' cousins. Painters were there, and other Guild members. Van Leeuwenhoek was there, and van Ruijven and his wife.

      Even Pieter the father was there, without his blood-stained apron, nodding and smiling at me as I passed with a jug of spiced wine. ‘Well, Griet,’ he said as I poured him some, ‘my son will be jealous that I'm spending the evening with you.’

      ‘I think not,’ I murmured, pulling away from him, embarrassed.

      Catharina was the centre of attention. She had on a green silk dress altered to accommodate her belly, which had not yet shrunk. Over it she wore the ermine-trimmed yellow mantle van Ruijven's wife had worn for the painting. It was odd to see it around another woman's shoulders. I didn't like her wearing it, though it was of course hers to wear. She also wore a pearl necklace and earrings, and her blonde curls were dressed prettily. She had recovered quickly from the birth, and was very merry and graceful, her body relieved of some of the burden it had been carrying over the months. She moved easily through the rooms, drinking and laughing with her guests, lighting candles, calling for food, bringing people together.