The Miniaturist(86)
Entering the hallway and shaking off the raindrops, Nella hears the sound of Cornelia crying. Her quiet sobs quiver from the working kitchen. She drops the basket containing the blackened Surinam loaf and runs down the stairs, almost tripping over her own skirts.
Vegetable peelings are strewn across the floor, a mess of a meal of green and white ribbons.
‘What is it?’ Nella asks.
Cornelia points to the note upon the table. ‘Is it from her?’ Nella says, her spirit lifting. Finally, she thinks, the miniaturist has returned. She rushes to the paper. As she reads the words, a sharp slice of fear cuts her, Arnoud’s guilders and the excitement of the sugar evaporate to nothing.
‘My God,’ she cries. ‘Today?’
‘Yes,’ the maid replies. ‘Your Norwegian snoop didn’t predict this.’
Wild Beasts Must Be Tamed By Men
The trial chamber at the Stadhuis is a square room with high windows and a viewing gallery running round the top, something between a chapel and a sunken cell. There is no gold, no velvet, no sense of indulgence, just four walls of brilliant white, the furniture dark and plain. The rest of the Stadhuis is monumental, jaw-dropping. Arches soar to gilded cornicing, and wall maps carved from marble shimmer in the light – but in this room where the law is exercised, the atmosphere is sober. Nella and Cornelia take a seat up in the gallery and look down into the chamber.
The Schout, a man called Pieter Slabbaert, and six other men begin to file in and take their seats for Johannes’ hearing. ‘They must be the members of the schepenbank,’ Nella whispers to Cornelia, who nods, barely able to stop shaking. The six men are of varying ages; some look better-off than others, but none of them are cloaked and ribboned like the judging Schout. Individuality is a black mark in this city, and Nella worries that in the face of Johannes’ charge, they will coagulate into a self-righteous mass, unified in loathing.
Nella can hardly look at Schout Slabbaert. The man bears more than a passing resemblance to a toad; a bulbous face, broad-mouthed and glassy eyed. The gallery around her is beginning to fill up with city spectators, among them several women and even a handful of children. Nella thinks she recognizes the little snitch Christoffel who brought the news of Johannes’ capture.
‘They shouldn’t bring tiddlers,’ Cornelia mutters. The presence of so many little fish makes her anxious, as if they’re here to watch the snagging of a whale.
On the left side of the gallery from where she and Cornelia are sitting, Nella spies Hanna and Arnoud Maakvrede. So they do know, Nella thinks, nodding to them, her heart heavy. Arnoud taps his nose at her, and she tries to derive comfort from this conspiratorial gesture. Has he always known? The possibility that Arnoud is more Amsterdammer than angel consoles her – until she wonders if, depending on the outcome of this trial, he will come back and angle for the remaining sugar at an even more reduced rate.
On the front row of the opposite side of the gallery, Agnes Meermans is bundled up in her furs. ‘What’s wrong with her face?’ whispers Cornelia. Agnes’ features are indeed even more pronounced than when Nella saw her at the Old Church in December. She seems ill, her cheekbones and eye-sockets too prominent as she looks down into the chamber, playing with something in her lap. Agnes suddenly grips the wooden rail in front of her, her fingernails bitten to the quick. Her once perfect headband is askew, the seed pearls round it tarnished; her clothes have a thrown-on appearance. She looks like a trapped animal, eyes roving the gallery, looking for something.
‘I’ll tell you what it is, Madame,’ Cornelia says. ‘Guilty conscience, that’s what.’
But Nella is not so sure. What is it that Agnes fiddles with like a little girl – what is that tiny thing she’s tucking in her cuff?
Behind his wife, Frans Meermans sits under his broad-brimmed hat. Nella wonders why they are not sitting together. His large, handsome face looks damp from the rainy morning outside, and he readjusts his jacket, pulling at it as if he’s too hot. Nella pats her pocket, still containing the guilders from Arnoud. She needs to persuade Meermans that money is coming, and lots of it. Let us bury this mess, Seigneur – let us say we were mistaken – surely you see Agnes is in no fit state to bear witness. Running through these arguments, Nella tries to catch his eye, but Meermans will not look in her direction, staring instead over his wife’s head towards the arena below.
There is a sharp collective breath around the chamber when Johannes is brought in. Nella clamps her hand to her mouth, but Cornelia cannot help but cry out. ‘Seigneur,’ she says. ‘My Seigneur!’
Johannes shakes off the guards’ support, but he can barely walk. The schepenbank watch him, their faces tense. Johannes has clearly been put on the rack, injuring him badly but not enough to endanger his life. He stoops to one side, his ankles with barely any strength to move, dragging one foot behind him like a limp rag. Johannes said he could see horizons through the brickwork, but how changed he looks in so few days. His cloak is frayed, and yet when he takes his seat, he sweeps it behind him like a cloth spun out of gold.
But in one way, the brutality of bolts and straps has not worked. The ungainly prisoner has clearly held on to his secrets – had he not, none of them would be here now in the trial chamber. Has he told them nothing? The purpose of this hearing will be to force out some performance through a verbal humiliation instead, and this time it will be witnessed by the citizens, a different kind of brutality. What was it Johannes said in his cell? The more people who take part in a ritual, the more justified it seems.