From him I learned too how to wash substances to rid them of impurities and bring out the true colors. I used a series of shells as shallow bowls, and rinsed and rerinsed colors, sometimes thirty times, to get out the chalk or sand or gravel. It was long and tedious work, but very satisfying to see the color grow cleaner with each wash, and closer to what was needed.

The only color he did not allow me to handle was ultramarine. Lapis lazuli was so expensive, and the process of extracting a pure blue from the stone so difficult, that he worked with it himself.

I grew used to being around him. Sometimes we stood side by side in the small room, me grinding white lead, him washing lapis or burning ochers in the fire. He said little to me. He was a quiet man. I did not speak either. It was peaceful then, with the light coming in through the window. When we were done we poured water from a pitcher over each other’s hands and scrubbed ourselves clean.

It was very cold in the attic—although there was the little fire he used for heating linseed oil or burning colors, I did not dare light it unless he wanted me to. Otherwise I would have to explain to Catharina and Maria Thins why peat and wood were disappearing so fast.

I did not mind the cold so much when he was there. When he stood close to me I could feel the warmth of his body.

I was washing a bit of massicot I had just ground one afternoon when I heard Maria Thins’ voice in the studio below. He was working on the painting, the baker’s daughter sighing occasionally as she stood.

“Are you cold, girl?” Maria Thins asked.

“A little,” came the faint reply.

“Why doesn’t she have a footwarmer?”

His voice was so low that I didn’t hear his answer.

“It won’t show in the painting, not by her feet. We don’t want her getting sick again.”

Again I could not hear what he said.

“Griet can get one for her,” Maria Thins suggested. “She should be in the attic, for she’s meant to have a stomachache. I’ll just find her.”

She was quicker than I had thought an old woman could be. By the time I put my foot on the top rung she was halfway up the ladder. I stepped back into the attic. I could not escape her, and there was no time to hide anything.

When Maria Thins climbed into the room, she quickly took in the shells laid in rows on the table, the jug of water, the apron I wore speckled with yellow from the massicot.

“So this is what you’ve been up to, eh, girl? I thought as much.”

I lowered my eyes. I did not know what to say.

“Stomachache, sore eyes. We are not all idiots around here, you know.”

Ask him, I longed to tell her. He is my master. This is his doing.

But she did not call to him. Nor did he appear at the bottom of the ladder to explain.

There was a long silence. Then Maria Thins said, “How long have you been assisting him, girl?”

“A few weeks, madam.”

“He’s been painting faster these last weeks, I’ve noticed.”

I raised my eyes. Her face was calculating.

“You help him to paint faster, girl,” she said in a low voice, “and you’ll keep your place here. Not a word to my daughter or Tanneke, now.”

“Yes, madam.”

She chuckled. “I might have known, clever one that you are. You almost fooled even me. Now, get that poor girl down there a footwarmer.”

Rather like him.

The best part, however, was that I could spend more time in the studio. Sometimes I wrapped myself in a blanket and crept down late at night when the house was still. I looked at the painting he was working on by candlelight, or opened a shutter a little to let in moonlight. Sometimes I sat in the dark in one of the lion-head chairs pulled up to the table and rested my elbow on the blue and red table rug that covered it. I imagined wearing the yellow and black bodice and pearls, holding a glass of wine, sitting across the table from him.

There was one thing I did not like about the attic, however. I did not like being locked in at night.

Catharina had got the studio key back from Maria Thins and began to lock and unlock the door. She must have felt it gave her some control over me. She was not happy about my being in the attic—it meant I was closer to him, to the place she was not allowed in but where I could wander freely.

It must have been hard for a wife to accept such an arrangement.

It worked for a time, however. For a time I was able to slip away in the afternoons and wash and grind colors for him. Catharina often slept then—Franciscus had not settled, and woke her most nights so that she needed sleep during the day. Tanneke usually fell asleep by the fire as well, and I could leave the kitchen without always having to make up an excuse. The girls were busy with Johannes, teaching him to walk and talk, and rarely noticed my absence. If they did Maria Thins said I was running an errand for her, fetching things from her rooms, or sewing something for her that needed bright attic light to work by. They were children, after all, absorbed in their own world, indifferent to the adult lives around them except when it directly affected them.

Or so I thought.

One afternoon I was washing white lead when Cornelia called my name from downstairs. I quickly wiped my hands, removed the apron I wore for attic work and changed into my daily apron before climbing down the ladder to her. She stood on the threshold of the studio, looking as if she were standing at the edge of a puddle and tempted to step in it.

“What is it?” I spoke rather sharply.

“Tanneke wants you.” Cornelia turned and led the way to the stairs. She hesitated at the top. “Will you help me, Griet?” she asked plaintively. “Go first so that if I fall you will catch me. The stairs are so steep.”

It was unlike her to be scared, even on stairs she did not use much. I was touched, or perhaps I was simply feeling guilty for being sharp with her. I descended the stairs, then turned and held out my arms. “Now you.”

Cornelia was standing at the top, hands in her pockets. She started down the stairs, one hand on the banister, the other balled into a tight fist. When she was most of the way down she let go and jumped so that she fell against me, sliding down my front, pressing painfully into my stomach. Once she regained her feet she began to laugh, head thrown up, brown eyes narrowed to slits.

“Naughty girl,” I muttered, regretting my softness.

I found Tanneke in the cooking kitchen, Johannes in her lap.

“Cornelia said you wanted me.”

“Yes, she’s torn one of her collars and wants you to mend it. Wouldn’t let me touch it—I don’t know why, she knows I mend collars best.” As Tanneke handed it to me her eyes strayed to my apron. “What’s that there? Are you bleeding?”

I looked down. A slash of red dust crossed my stomach like a streak on a window pane. For a moment I thought of the aprons of Pieter the father and son.

Tanneke leaned closer. “That’s not blood. It looks like powder. How did that get there?”

I gazed at the streak. Madder, I thought. I ground this a few weeks ago.

Only I heard the stifled giggle from the hallway.

Cornelia had been waiting some time for this mischief. She had even managed somehow to get up to the attic to steal the powder.

I did not make up an answer fast enough. As I hesitated, Tanneke’s suspicion grew. “Have you been in the master’s things?” she said in an accusing tone. She had, after all, modelled for him and knew what he kept in the studio.

“No, it was—” I stopped. If I tattled on Cornelia I would sound petty and it would probably not stop Tanneke from discovering what I did in the attic.

“I think young mistress had better see this,” she decided.

“No,” I said quickly.

Tanneke drew herself up as much as she could with a sleeping child in her lap. “Take off your apron,” she commanded, “so I can show it to the young mistress.”

“Tanneke,” I said, gazing levelly at her, “if you know what’s best for you, you’ll not disturb Catharina, you’ll speak to Maria Thins. Alone, not in front of the girls.”

It was those words, with their bullying tone, that caused the most damage between Tanneke and me. I did not think to sound like that—I was simply desperate to stop her from telling Catharina any way I could. But she would never forgive me for treating her as if she were below me.

My words at least had their effect. Tanneke gave me a hard, angry look, but behind it was uncertainty, and the desire indeed to tell her own beloved mistress. She hung between that desire and the wish to punish my impudence by disobeying me.

“Speak to your mistress,” I said softly. “But speak to her alone.”

Though my back was to the door, I sensed Cornelia slipping away from it.

Tanneke’s own instincts won. With a stony face she handed Johannes to me and went to find Maria Thins. Before I settled him on my lap I carefully wiped away the red pigment with a rag, then threw it in the fire. It still left a stain. I sat with my arms around the little boy and waited for my fate to be decided.

I never found out what Maria Thins said to Tanneke, what threats or promises she made to keep her quiet. But it worked—Tanneke said nothing about my attic work to Catharina or the girls, or to me. She became much harder with me, though—deliberately difficult rather than unthinkingly so. She sent me back to the fish stalls with the cod I knew she had asked for, swearing she had told me to buy flounder. When she cooked she became sloppier, spilling as much grease as she could on her apron so that I would have to soak the cloth longer and scrub harder to get the grease out. She left buckets for me to empty, and stopped bringing water to fill the kitchen cistern or mopping the floors. She sat and watched me balefully, refusing to move her feet so that I had to mop around them, to find afterwards that one foot had covered a sticky puddle of grease.

She did not talk kindly to me any longer. She made me feel alone in a house full of people.

So I did not dare to take nice things from her kitchen to cheer my father with. And I did not tell my parents how hard things were for me at the Oude Langendijck, how careful I had to be to keep my place. Nor could I tell them about the few good things—the colors I made, the nights when I sat alone in the studio, the moments when he and I worked side by side and I was warmed by his presence.

All I could tell them about were his paintings.

“You look tired,” he said now. “Your eyes are red. They are working you too hard.”

Indeed, they were working me hard. My master had given me so much bone to grind that I had to get up very early to finish it. And the night before Tanneke had made me stay up late to rewash the kitchen floor after she spilled a pan of grease all over it.

I did not want to blame my master. “Tanneke has taken against me,” I said instead, “and gives me more to do. Then, of course, it’s getting warmer as well and we are cleaning the winter out of the house.” I added this so that he would not think I was complaining about her.

“Tanneke is an odd one,” he said, “but loyal.”

“To Maria Thins, yes.”

“To the family as well. Remember how she defended Catharina from her mad brother?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know what you mean.”

Pieter looked surprised. “It was the talk of the Meat Hall for days. Ah, but you don’t gossip, do you? You keep your eyes open but you don’t tell tales, or listen to them.” He seemed to approve. “Me, I hear it all day from the old ones waiting for meat. Can’t help but some of it sticks.”

“What did Tanneke do?” I asked despite myself.

Pieter smiled. “When your mistress was carrying the last child but one—what’s its name?”

“Johannes. Like his father.”

Pieter’s smile dimmed like a cloud crossing the sun. “Yes, like his father.” He took up the tale again. “One day Catharina’s brother, Willem, came around to the Oude Langendijck, when she was big with child, and began to beat her, right in the street.”

“Why?”

“He’s missing a brick or two, they say. He’s always been violent. His father as well. You know the father and Maria Thins separated many years ago? He used to beat her.”