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

each other's skin — only the bumps and textures of wool, the rough outlines of our limbs.

      Pieter's touch did not always repel me. Sometimes, if I looked over his shoulder at the sky, and found the colours besides white in a cloud, or thought of grinding lead white or massicot, my breasts and belly tingled, and I pressed against him. He was always pleased when I responded. He did not notice that I avoided looking at his face and hands.

      That Sunday of the linseed oil, when my father and mother looked so puzzled and unhappy, Pieter led me to the alley later. There he began squeezing my breasts and pulling at their nipples through the cloth of my dress. Then he stopped suddenly, gave me a sly look, and ran his hands over my shoulders and up my neck. Before I could stop him his hands were up under my cap and tangled in my hair.

      I held my cap down with both hands. ‘No!’

      Pieter smiled at me, his eyes glazed as if he had looked too long at the sun. He had managed to pull loose a strand of my hair, and tugged it now with his fingers. ‘Some day soon, Griet, I will see all of this. You will not always be a secret to me.’ He let a hand drop to the lower curve of my belly and pushed against me. ‘You will be eighteen next month. I'll speak to your father then.’

      I stepped back from him — I felt as if I were in a hot, dark room and could not breathe. ‘I am still so young. Too young for that.’

      Pieter shrugged. ‘Not everyone waits until they're older. And your family needs me.’ It was the first time he had referred to my parents' poverty, and their dependence on him — their dependence which became my dependence as well. Because of it they were content to take the gifts of meat and have me stand in an alley with him on a Sunday.

      I frowned. I did not like being reminded of his power over us.

      Pieter sensed that he should not have said anything. To make amends he tucked the strand of hair back under my cap, then touched my cheek. ‘I'll make you happy, Griet,’ he said. ‘I will.’

      After he left I walked along the canal, despite the cold. The ice had been broken so that boats could get through, but a thin layer had formed again on the surface. When we were children Frans and Agnes and I would throw stones to shatter the thin ice until every sliver had disappeared under water. It seemed a long time ago.

      A month before he had asked me to come up to the studio.

      ‘I will be in the attic,’ I announced to the room that afternoon.

      Tanneke did not look up from her sewing. ‘Put some more wood on the fire before you go,’ she ordered.

      The girls were working on their lace, overseen by Maertge and Maria Thins. Lisbeth had patience and nimble fingers, and produced good work, but Aleydis was still too young to manage the delicate weaving, and Cornelia too impatient. The cat sat at Cornelia's feet by the fire, and occasionally the girl reached down and dangled a bit of thread for the creature to paw at. Eventually, she probably hoped, the cat would tear its claws through her work and ruin it.

      After feeding the fire I stepped around Johannes, who was playing with a top on the cold kitchen tiles. As I left he spun it wildly, and it hopped straight into the fire. He began to cry while Cornelia shrieked with laughter and Maertge tried to haul the toy from the flames with a pair of tongs.

      ‘Hush, you'll wake Catharina and Franciscus,’ Maria Thins warned the children. They did not hear her.

      I crept out, relieved to escape the noise, no matter how cold it would be in the studio.

      The studio door was shut. As I approached it I pressed my lips together, smoothed my eyebrows, and ran my fingers down the sides of my cheeks to my chin, as if I were testing an apple to see if it was firm. I hesitated in front of the heavy wooden door, then knocked softly. There was no answer, though I knew he must be there — he was expecting me.

      It was the first day of the new year. He had painted the ground layer of my painting almost a month before, but nothing since — no reddish marks to indicate the shapes, no false colours, no overlaid colours, no highlights. The canvas was a blank yellowish white. I saw it every morning as I cleaned.

      I knocked louder.

      When the door opened he was frowning, his eyes not catching mine. ‘Don't knock, Griet, just come in quietly,’ he said, turning away and going back to the easel, where the blank canvas sat waiting for its colours.

      I closed the door softly behind me, blotting out the noise of the children downstairs, and stepped to the middle of the room. Now that the moment had come at last I was surprisingly calm. ‘You wanted me, sir.’

      ‘Yes. Stand over there.’ He gestured to the corner where he had painted the other women. The table he was using for the concert painting was set there, but he had cleared away the musical instruments. He handed me a letter. ‘Read that,’ he said.

      I unfolded the sheet of paper and bowed my head over it, worried that he would discover I was only pretending to read an unfamiliar hand.

      Nothing was written on the paper.

      I looked up to tell him so, but stopped. With him it was often better to say nothing. I bowed my head again over the letter.

      ‘Try this instead,’ he suggested, handing me a book. It was bound in worn leather and the spine was broken in several places. I opened it at random and studied a page. I did not recognise any of the words.

      He had me sit with the book, then stand holding it while looking at him. He took away the book, handed me the white jug with the pewter top and had me pretend to pour a glass of wine. He asked me to stand and simply look out the window. All the while he seemed perplexed, as if someone had told him a story and he couldn't recall the ending.

      ‘It is the clothes,’ he murmured. ‘That is the problem.’

      I understood. He was having me do things a lady would do, but I was wearing a maid's clothes. I thought of the yellow mantle and the yellow and black bodice, and wondered which he would ask me to wear. Instead of being excited by the idea, though, I felt uneasy. It was not just that it would be impossible to hide from Catharina that I was wearing her clothes. I did not feel right holding books and letters, pouring myself wine, doing things I never did. As much as I wanted to feel the soft fur of the mantle around my neck, it was not what I normally wore.

      ‘Sir,’ I spoke finally, ‘perhaps you should have me do other things. Things that a maid does.’

      ‘What does a maid do?’ he asked softly, folding his arms and raising his eyebrows.

      I had to wait a moment before I could answer — my jaw was trembling. I thought of Pieter and me in the alley and swallowed. ‘Sewing,’ I replied. ‘Mopping and sweeping. Carrying water. Washing sheets. Cutting bread. Polishing windowpanes.’

      ‘You would like me to paint you with your mop?’

      ‘It's not for me to say, sir. It is not my painting.’

      He frowned. ‘No, it is not yours.’ He sounded as if he were speaking to himself.

      ‘I do not want you to paint me with my mop.’ I said it without knowing that I would.

      ‘No. No, you're right, Griet. I would not paint you with a mop in your hand.’

      ‘But I cannot wear your wife's clothes.’

      There was a long silence. ‘No, I expect not,’ he said. ‘But I will not paint you as a maid.’

      ‘What, then, sir?’

      ‘I will paint you as I first saw you, Griet. Just you.’

      He set a chair near his easel, facing the middle window, and I sat down. I knew it was to be my place. He was going to find the pose he had put me in a month before, when he had decided to paint me.

      ‘Look out the window,’ he said.

      I looked out at the grey winter day and, remembering when I stood in for the baker's daughter, tried not to see anything but to let my thoughts become