The Golden Tulip Read Online Free Page A

plenty of news to tell her sister, mostly domestic but including snippets about friends and neighbors that she knew would be of interest. Inevitably there were times when there were sad tidings to impart, and she shed tears that blotted the ink on the paper when she wrote that once again tragedy had struck Rembrandt in the death of Hendrickje Stoffels. He had aged noticeably afterward, but work still flowed from him and recently he had been commissioned to paint the likenesses of a mutual acquaintance and his betrothed after their marriage. It was not to be a pair of bridal portraits, which was usual and had been expected. Instead he intended to paint them side by side. When Anna called on him one day, bringing him one of her cakes and a basket of plums from the tree in the courtyard, he explained his reason when answering her inquiry as to whether he would be attending the wedding.
    “No, I’ll not be there,” he replied, biting into one of the juicy plums. “I don’t go anywhere socially these days. Work is my heartbeat. It’s my eating and my sleeping, my going out and my coming in. I’m an old man now, you know.”
    She was facing him on the bench by the open parlor window, where they sat in the sun, and she exclaimed in protest, for to her he seemed ageless. “No, Rembrandt, no! Nobody would ever think of you as an old man!”
    He smiled wryly. “That’s kind of you, but nowadays I often feel at least a hundred years old!”
    “You could come to the wedding with us. We’ll all be going.”
    “No, Anna. It’s thoughtful of you, just as it was to bring me cake and fruit today. But I don’t want to see the bridal couple on the wedding day. They’ll both be nervous and under strain. I want to create my first impression of them in their happiness when they have tasted the tender joys and sweet passion of love.” He looked toward the door with his eyes narrowed as if visualizing their entrance into his house. “Why should they be separated on individual canvases when their lives together are in first bloom. There are too many partings of lovers in this life. I’ll take no hand in that, even in paint.”
    She knew that Saskia and Hendrickje were in his thoughts. Two women quite different in character and from opposite backgrounds, but each had loved him and been loved, Saskia dying at thirty and Hendrickje only eight years older. She shivered as if a shadow had fallen across her path. He had noticed.
    “Is there a draft? Are you cold?” He would have closed the window, but she stayed him.
    “No! Please leave it. Somebody must have stepped on my grave.” Then she regretted her use of the old saying in a house that death had visited again only a while ago. He saw her dismay and leaned forward to put his hand over hers and give it a friendly reassuring shake.
    “Whoever it was will have to wait a long time for that chance!” His tone was deliberately cheerful, gaining a little smile from her, even if her eyes did not quite echo it. He tried a change of subject. “How are your daughters progressing with their art? Is their father pleased with them?”
    Before replying she glanced out of the window to where Aletta and Sybylla were playing with Cornelia. Francesca was not with them, for she had left school on her twelfth birthday in January, the age when girls were expected to receive increased instruction at home in the field of domestic arts in preparation for marriage. Today Francesca was being entrusted with the planning and cooking of the noonday meal for the family and the dinner in the evening, something she had done with success a good number of times before. Anna returned her gaze to Rembrandt, unable to keep a note of maternal pride from her voice.
    “Hendrick continues to be astounded by Francesca’s artistic ability at her age. Aletta is also far better than average.” She gave a wry half smile as she took a different tone. “As for Sybylla, she likes to play at being a painter sometimes, but