Girl With a Pearl Earring. Tracy Chevalier

was strange to meet so many new people and see so many new things in one morning, and to do so apart from all the familiar things that made up my life. Before, if I met someone new I was always surrounded by family and neighbours. If I went to a new place I was with Frans or my mother or father and felt no threat. The new was woven in with the old, like the darning in a sock.

      Frans told me not long after he began his apprenticeship that he had almost run away, not from the hard work, but because he could not face the strangeness day after day. What kept him there was knowing that our father had spent all his savings on the apprentice fee, and would have sent him right back if he had come home. Besides, he would find much more strangeness out in the world if he went elsewhere.

      ‘I will come and see you,’ I whispered to the butcher, ‘when I am alone.’ Then I hurried to catch up with Tanneke and Maertge.

      They had stopped at a stall further along. The butcher there was a handsome man, with greying blond curls and bright blue eyes.

      ‘Pieter, this is Griet,’ Tanneke said. ‘She will be fetching the meat for us now. You’re to add it to our account as usual.’

      I tried to keep my eyes on his face, but I could not help glancing down at his blood-splattered apron. Our butcher always wore a clean apron when he was selling, changing it whenever he got blood on it.

      ‘Ah.’ Pieter looked me over as if I were a plump chicken he was considering roasting. ‘What would you like today, Griet?’

      I turned to Tanneke. ‘Four pounds of chops and a pound of tongue,’ she ordered.

      Pieter smiled. ‘And what do you think of that, miss?’ he addressed Maertge. ‘Don’t I sell the best tongue in Delft?’

      Maertge nodded and giggled as she gazed at the display of joints, chops, tongue, pigs’ feet, sausages.

      ‘You’ll find, Griet, that I have the best meat and the most honest scales in the hall,’ Pieter remarked as he weighed the tongue. ‘You’ll have no complaints about me.’

      I stared at his apron and swallowed. Pieter put the chops and tongue into the pail I carried, winked at me and turned to serve the next customer.

      We went next to the fish stalls, just beside the Meat Hall. Seagulls hovered above the stalls, waiting for the fishheads and innards the fishmongers threw into the canal. Tanneke introduced me to their fishmonger – also different from ours. I was to alternate each day between meat and fish.

      When we left I did not want to go back to the house, to Catharina and the children on the bench. I wanted to walk home. I wanted to step into my mother’s kitchen and hand her the pailful of chops. We had not eaten meat in months.

      Catharina was combing through Cornelia’s hair when we returned. They paid no attention to me. I helped Tanneke with dinner, turning the meat on the grill, fetching things for the table in the great hall, cutting the bread.

      When the meal was ready the girls came in, Maertge joining Tanneke in the cooking kitchen while the others sat down in the great hall. I had just placed the tongue in the meat barrel in one of the storage rooms – Tanneke had left it out and the cat had almost got to it – when he appeared from outside, standing in the doorway at the end of the long hall, wearing his hat and cloak. I stood still and he paused, the light behind him so that I could not see his face. I did not know if he was looking down the hallway at me. After a moment he disappeared into the great hall.

      Tanneke and Maertge served while I looked after the baby in the Crucifixion room. When Tanneke was done she joined me and we ate and drank what the family did – chops, parsnips, bread, and mugs of beer. Although Pieter’s meat was no better than our family butcher’s, it was a welcome taste after going so long without. The bread was rye rather than the cheaper brown bread we had been eating, and the beer was not so watery either.

      I did not wait on the family at that dinner and so I did not see him. Occasionally I heard his voice, usually along with Maria Thins’. From their tones it was clear they got on well.

      After dinner Tanneke and I cleared up, then mopped the floors of the kitchens and storage rooms. The walls of each kitchen were tiled in white, and the fireplace in blue and white Delft tiles painted with birds in one section, ships in another, and soldiers in another. I studied them carefully, but none had been painted by my father.

      I spent most of the rest of the day ironing in the washing kitchen, occasionally stopping to build up the fire, fetch wood, or step into the courtyard to escape the heat. The girls played in and out of the house, sometimes coming in to watch me and poke at the fire, another time to tease Tanneke when they found her asleep next door in the cooking kitchen, Johannes crawling around her feet. They were a little uneasy with me – perhaps they thought I might slap them. Cornelia scowled at me and did not stay long in the room, but Maertge and Lisbeth took the clothes I had ironed and put them away for me in the cupboard in the great hall. Their mother was asleep there. ‘The last month before the baby comes she’ll stay in bed much of the day,’ Tanneke confided, ‘propped up with pillows all around her.’

      Maria Thins had gone to her upstairs rooms after dinner. Once, though, I heard her in the hallway and when I looked up she was standing in the doorway, watching me. She said nothing, so I turned back to my ironing and pretended she wasn’t there. After a moment out of the corner of my eye I saw her nod and shuffle off.

      He had a guest upstairs – I heard two male voices as they climbed up. Later when I heard them coming down I peeked around the door to watch them go out. The man with him was plump and wore a long white feather in his hat.

      When it got dark we lit candles, and Tanneke and I had bread and cheese and beer with the children in the Crucifixion room while the others ate tongue in the great hall. I was careful to sit with my back to the Crucifixion scene. I was so exhausted I could hardly think. At home I had worked just as hard but it was never so tiring as in a strange house where everything was new and I was always tense and serious. At home I had been able to laugh with my mother or Agnes or Frans. Here there was no one to laugh with.

      I had not yet been down to the cellar where I was to sleep. I took a candle with me but was too tired to look around beyond finding a bed, pillow and blanket. Leaving the trap door of the cellar open so that cool, fresh air could reach me, I took off my shoes, cap, apron and dress, prayed briefly, and lay down. I was about to blow out the candle when I noticed the painting hanging at the foot of my bed. I sat up, wide awake now. It was another picture of Christ on the Cross, smaller than the one upstairs but even more disturbing. Christ had thrown his head back in pain, and Mary Magdalene’s eyes were rolling. I lay back gingerly, unable to take my eyes off it. I could not imagine sleeping in the room with the painting. I wanted to take it down but did not dare. Finally I blew out the candle – I could not afford to waste candles on my first day in the new house. I lay back again, my eyes fixed to the place where I knew the painting hung.

      I slept badly that night, tired as I was. I woke often and looked for the painting. Though I could see nothing on the wall, every detail was fixed in my mind. Finally, when it was beginning to grow light, the painting appeared again and I was sure the Virgin Mary was looking down at me.

      When I got up in the morning I tried not to look at the painting, instead studying the contents of the cellar in the dim light that fell through the window in the storage room above me. There was not much to see – several tapestry-covered chairs piled up, a few other broken chairs, a mirror, and two more paintings, both still lifes, leaning against the wall. Would anyone notice if I replaced the Crucifixion with a still life?

      Cornelia would. And she would tell her mother.

      I did not know what Catharina – or any of them – thought of my being Protestant. It was a curious feeling, having to be aware of it myself. I had never before been outnumbered.

      I turned my back on the painting and climbed the ladder. Catharina’s keys were clinking at the front of the house and I went to find her. She moved slowly, as if she were half asleep, but she made an effort to draw herself up when she saw me. She led me up the stairs, climbing slowly, holding tightly to the rail to pull her bulk