The Miniaturist(80)
‘London. I was hoping I’d find Otto. Marin was so convinced he was there. How is my sister?’
‘You’re powerful, Johannes.’ Nella feels compelled to rush past his question, knowing that otherwise her face will let the truth about Marin slip. ‘I saw you at the silversmiths’ feast. You said it yourself – the burgomasters cannot touch you.’
He lowers himself onto the pallet beside her. ‘It’s the crimen nefandum, Nella. Two men together. In the face of that accusation no one has power, only God. To do nothing would be to condone it, and the burgomasters must be seen to act.’
‘Then we must make Meermans change his mind!’
Johannes runs a shaking hand over the crown of his head, as if to find some answer there. ‘It was years ago now,’ he says, ‘but I did something to make Frans very unhappy. And then I committed the greater crime of being successful. It echoes on and now comes back to haunt me.’
Nella imagines the younger Johannes turning Frans away from the house, his sister watching hidden at a window, the ugly humiliation which has now enwrapped them all.
‘I had thought that accepting their commission of the sugar might perhaps bring about an entente’ Johannes says. ‘But Frans has . . . curdled. He has waited a long time to take his revenge on the Brandts. I am everything he hates, and wants to be. And Agnes – well. Agnes will always follow the path of his poison crumbs.’
‘I believe Agnes admires you.’
‘Well, that will only make it worse.’ Johannes’ eyes glitter like two grey beads in the bad light. ‘I’m so glad you’ve come. I don’t deserve it,’ he says, taking her hand.
Nella supposes it is something to be appreciated at least, if she cannot be loved. Finding substitutes for the real thing – when will that ever stop? And yet, she would rather stay next to him than be anywhere else.
‘If I don’t confess, there’ll be a trial,’ Johannes says. ‘In a few weeks. Either way, I don’t expect to get out of here alive.’
‘Don’t talk like that.’
‘I’ll make arrangements. You, Marin, Cornelia. And Otto, if he ever comes back.’ Johannes sounds brisk all of a sudden, a notary dividing up someone else’s will. ‘There’ll be a few men of the Amsterdam schepenbank at the hearing, although Schout Pieter Slabbaert will oversee it.’
‘Why not just the Schout?’
‘Because of the severity of the charge. Because it’s me. Because the more scandalous the case, the more our goodly citizens become involved.’ He pauses. ‘But I imagine it will be quickly done.’
‘Johannes—’
‘Severe charges usually end in death.’ His voice begins to catch. ‘And the Schout likes to share the blame. The more people take part in a ritual, the more justified it seems.’
‘I’ll find Jack,’ Nella says, ‘I’ll pay him more to change his story.’ She pictures Johannes’ emptying chest of guilders, the blackening sugar piled up on the sixth floor of his warehouse. ‘And I’ve thought of a plan—’
‘There’s a guard,’ Johannes says. ‘They call him the Bloody Shepherd.’ He grips her hand tighter. ‘A priest by profession, by nature a monster.’
The last word hangs in the damp air, gigantic, undefeatable. Nella touches her face. The moisture in the air has made it so cold. How has Johannes survived in here one day?
‘I’ve seen his victims carried past,’ Johannes says. ‘Their bones popped out of every socket – and you can’t put them back. Legs no longer legs, limbs of soggy cotton, guts like addled meat. They’ll twist me open to make me say things. I’ll say them, Nella, and that will be that.’
Johannes buries his face as deep as he can in her shoulder. Nella feels the plane of his nose pointing into her flesh, and she puts her arms around him. She wants to wash him from tip to toe, to make him fresh again, make him smell of spice, cardamom caught in the nail. ‘Johannes,’ she whispers. ‘Johannes. You have a wife. You have me. Isn’t that proof enough?’
‘It would never have been enough.’
Then what about a child? she wants to ask. What about a child? Marin’s secret is on the tip of her tongue. More time, she thinks – all I want is more time. Who knows what story we could have told with two months’ grace?
‘Johannes,’ she says, ‘I wish I’d been enough.’
Johannes pulls back from her, and clasps the sides of her face. ‘You have been a miracle.’
The light is fading in the cell, the guard will be back soon. Nella has not spent this much time alone with her husband in the whole of their four-month marriage. She remembers telling Johannes in his study how much he fascinated her. Looking at him now, those words hold true. His conversation and knowledge, his dry accommodation of the world’s hypocrisies, his desire to be what he is. He lifts his hand to the candlelight, and the strong, hard ridges of his fingers are beautiful. How much she wants him to live.
This talk of transformation, how things can change, of rooms inhabited and emptied, sibling bodies stretched to reveal two such different secrets – it makes her want to tell him about the miniaturist. It seems a lifetime ago that she walked down the staircase and saw the cabinet waiting on the marble tiles. How offended she was, how angry Marin had been.