Girl with a Pearl Earring Read Free Page B

the Virgin Mary, Mary Magdalene, and St. John. I tried not to stare but I was amazed by its size and subject. “Catholics are not so different from us,” my father had said. But we did not have such pictures in our houses, or our churches, or anywhere. Now I would see this painting every day.
    I was always to think of that room as the Crucifixion room. I was never comfortable in it.
    The painting surprised me so much that I did not notice the woman in the corner until she spoke. “Well, girl,” she said, “that is something new for you to see.” She sat in a comfortable chair, smoking a pipe. Her teeth gripping the stem had gone brown, and her fingers were stained with ink. The rest of her was spotless—her black dress, lace collar, stiff white cap. Though her lined face was stern her light brown eyes seemed amused.
    She was the kind of old woman who looked as if she would outlive everyone.
    She is Catharina’s mother, I thought suddenly. It was not just the color of her eyes and the wisp of grey curl that escaped her cap in the same way as her daughter’s. She had the manner of someone used to looking after those less able than she—of looking after Catharina. I understood now why I had been brought to her rather than her daughter.
    Though she seemed to look at me casually, her gaze was watchful. When she narrowed her eyes I realized she knew everything I was thinking. I turned my head so that my cap hid my face.
    Maria Thins puffed on her pipe and chuckled. “That’s right, girl. You keep your thoughts to yourself here. So, you’re to work for my daughter. She’s out now, at the shops. Tanneke here will show you round and explain your duties.”
    I nodded. “Yes, madam.”
    Tanneke, who had been standing at the old woman’s side, pushed past me. I followed, Maria Thins’ eyes branding my back. I heard her chuckling again.
    Tanneke took me first to the back of the house, where there were cooking and washing kitchens and two storage rooms. The washing kitchen led out to a tiny courtyard full of drying white laundry.
    “This needs ironing, for a start,” Tanneke said. I said nothing, though it looked as if the laundry had not yet been bleached properly by the midday sun.
    She led me back inside and pointed to a hole in the floor of one of the storage rooms, a ladder leading down into it. “You’re to sleep there,” she announced. “Drop your things there now and you can sort yourself out later.”
    I reluctantly let my bundle drop into the dim hole, thinking of the stones Agnes and Frans and I had thrown into the canal to seek out the monsters. My things thudded onto the dirt floor. I felt like an apple tree losing its fruit.
    I followed Tanneke back along the hallway, which all the rooms opened off—many more rooms than in our house. Next to the Crucifixion room where Maria Thins sat, towards the front of the house, was a smaller room with children’s beds, chamberpots, small chairs and a table, on it various earthenware, candlesticks, snuffers, and clothing, all in a jumble.
    “The girls sleep here,” Tanneke mumbled, perhaps embarrassed by the mess.
    She turned up the hallway again and opened a door into a large room, where light streamed in from the front windows and across the red and grey tiled floor. “The great hall,” she muttered. “Master and mistress sleep here.”
    Their bed was hung with green silk curtains. There was other furniture in the room—a large cupboard inlaid with ebony, a whitewood table pushed up to the windows with several Spanish leather chairs arranged around it. But again it was the paintings that struck me. More hung in this room than anywhere else. I counted to nineteen silently. Most were portraits—they appeared to be members of both families. There was also a painting of the Virgin Mary, and one of the three kings worshipping the Christ Child. I gazed at both uneasily.
    “Now, upstairs.” Tanneke went first up the steep stairs, then put a finger to her lips.