The Miniaturist(72)

‘Aalbers, Madame.’

‘What are you doing here, Seigneur Aalbers? You’re a better man than this. Go and catch your murderers, go and catch your thieves.’ It isn’t working, and she can hear herself, desperate and frightened. ‘My husband has helped make this republic great, has he not?’

‘I will make sure your husband is treated well.’

‘You’ll go home to your wife. And then you will forget.’

‘Your husband’s in trouble, Madame Brandt,’ says the first guard, tramping round the glory of Johannes’ hallway. ‘And none of this will save him.’

Fury stings her; a careless rage. ‘How dare you?’ she shouts, moving towards them, and the rest break apart like a shoal of surprised fish. ‘You imperfect men, dressed in borrowed glories!’

‘Madame!’ Cornelia pleads.

‘Get out,’ she hisses. ‘All of you. You speak to me in my house like brutes—’

‘Madame,’ the first guard calls across the tiles, ‘the far more brutish thing is your husband’s sodomy.’

The word hangs in the air. Nella is winded by it, frozen between the hush of men. It is a word that sets dynamite under Amsterdam’s buildings, beneath its churches and across its lands, splintering apart its precious life. After greed and flood it is the worst word in the city’s lexicon – it means death and the guards know it. Silenced by their leader’s bravado, they cannot look Nella in the eye.

From upstairs comes the almost imperceptible click of a closing door. A sound of running footsteps outside breaks the strange, suspended moment. They all turn and a young boy, no older than nine, Nella supposes, pokes his head around the front door, his face alive with glee, his mouth hanging open as he catches his breath. ‘We found him,’ he cries.

‘Dead?’ asks Aalbers.

The boy grins. ‘Alive. Sixty miles upland. We’ve got him.’

Nella feels her stomach pitching, her knees sliding to the cold hard ground. Someone holds her before she falls – it is Aalbers, setting her gently on her feet. She sways as the boy’s information forces itself into her, hardly able to breathe. She feels so alone with all these men, who do not care whether her husband receives fair justice.

‘Where was he, Christoffel?’ asks the first guard.

‘He was on a ship, sir, up in the Texel.’ Christoffel advances into the hall, his eyes on sticks at the majesty around him. ‘The advance party got him. He whimpered like a kitten.’ He makes a mewling sound.

‘For the love of Christ,’ mutters Aalbers.

‘No,’ Nella whispers. ‘You’re lying.’

The boy sneers. ‘He joked he’d never been to the Stadhuis. Well, he won’t be joking now.’

Aalbers slaps the boy round the head. ‘Show some respect,’ he shouts as the child squeals in pain.

The first guard restrains Aalbers. ‘Christoffel just did the republic a great service,’ he says.

‘So did my husband,’ Nella retorts. ‘For twenty years.’

He turns to her. ‘We need keep you no longer.’

They move towards the door. ‘Wait,’ Nella says, hardly able to muster up the words. ‘What – will you do to him?’

‘That’s not for me to say, Madame. The Schout will examine the evidence. A hearing followed by a trial. A brief one, I expect, if what we hear is true.’

They make their way down the front steps, Christoffel a triumphant mascot between them, moving up the canal towards the city. Aalbers looks back once, giving Nella a peremptory, embarrassed nod. The militia’s walking rhythm is uneven, as if the excitement of their success has overpowered discipline. Before long they are casually strolling, jostling one another, Christoffel’s laughter echoing until they disappear from view.

Nella shivers in the blue air of the December day. Up and down the Herengracht, a few shadows in window casements shrink from her regard. There are many eyes watching her, it seems, but no one comes to help.



‘They will kill him,’ Cornelia says, hunched over on the hallway stairs.

Nella crouches down, placing her hands on Cornelia’s knees. ‘Hush, hush. We must follow him to the Stadhuis.’

‘You cannot do that.’ Marin has emerged, wrapped in her shawl, her silhouette thrown long in the candlelight.

‘What?’

‘You will only draw attention.’

‘Marin, we need to know what they’re going to do to him!’

‘They will kill him,’ Cornelia repeats, beginning to shake. ‘They will drown him.’

‘Cornelia, for God’s sake.’

Marin closes her eyes, rubbing her temples, Nella feels rage at her inertia, her reluctance to grab the scruff of the situation and shake it down into submission. ‘Where is your heart, Marin? I would never abandon my brother to his fate.’

‘But that’s exactly what you did, Petronella. You left him in Assendelft and made your own escape.’

‘I would not call this an escape.’

‘What do you know of the burgomasters?’ says Marin. ‘You, who have eked your life out in fields, drinking cream from your country cows?’

‘That isn’t fair. What’s wrong with you?’

Marin starts moving down towards Nella at the bottom of the staircase, step by step with slow and strange precision. ‘Do you know what Johannes used to say to me?’ she asks. The venom in her voice cuts the winter air and the hairs on Nella’s arms rise up. ‘ “Freedom is a glorious thing. Free yourself, Marin. The bars on your cage are of your own making.” Well, it’s all very well freeing yourself, but there’s always someone who has to pay.’