The Miniaturist(87)

Nella pictures him at the silversmiths’ feast. The charm he had, such expertise and wit, the way he drew all people near. Where are those people now – why have only children and clerks come to see him fight?

‘He should be using a stick to walk,’ Cornelia whispers to her.

‘No, Cornelia. He wants us to understand their brutality.’

‘And test our pity too.’ Hanna Maakvrede has moved to sit with them, and takes Nella’s hand in hers. As the three women form a chain, Nella feels her heart might split. All this time, she’d thought Johannes had denied Marin the life she wanted, when really he’d tried to set her free. Johannes’ own heart is a powerful thing, but look where it has led him.

If only Marin could repay the favour right now, when it is most needed. It might be too late to persuade Jack to change his story or sate Frans’ wrath, and now the state is involved, what can stand up to the outraged machinery which has spied a possible sodomite in its midst? You cannot really touch my wealth, Johannes once said. It is in the air. But a baby is made of solid flesh. Lend us your soon-to-be child, Marin, lend us at least the charade of a normal marriage.

Picturing the miniature cradle, Marin’s tiny, swollen belly, the sugar loaf in Agnes’ hand and Jack’s unblemished doll, Nella curses the miniaturist for not alerting her to what needed to be done, to what could have been prevented. What use is a prophetess who doesn’t make clear the inevitable?

Hanna leans towards her. ‘We have already promised half the loaves we took this morning, Madame. Arnoud wants to load some to the Hague where he has family. I’m sure it won’t be long before we take some more – do bear that in mind when you see those other . . . interested parties.’

Nella tries to tamp down her embarrassment. She doesn’t mind bluffing with Arnoud. He almost seems to invite it, but with Hanna it feels dishonourable. ‘Do any of his customers know whose sugar it is?’ she asks.

At this, Hanna is the one to blush. ‘Arnoud is omitting to mention the source,’ she says. ‘But it’s excellent sugar, Madame. I think if it came from Beelzebub himself, my husband would still sell it.’

Hanna’s words still give Nella hope – but here, in the trial chamber, it feels as if Johannes’ plight has gained a momentum out of her control. The rain is falling heavier now, a quiet roar upon the roof.

‘Good people of Amsterdam, we are fortunate,’ Schout Slabbaert begins. His voice is deep and fluid, and rises up to where the normal folk are sitting on their hard wooden benches. Here is a man in the prime of his life, at the peak of his legislative power, holding citizens’ lives in the clam of his fist. He eats well, Nella supposes, sleeps deep. The horrors of the torture chambers below his feet are as distant to him as the isles of Molucca.

‘We have made a success of our city,’ Slabbaert says. The gallery ruffles with a prideful acknowledgement, and the schepenbank nod in agreement. ‘We’ve tamed our lands and seas; we feast on its bounty. You are all righteous people. You have not wasted yourselves in the surfeit of your good luck.

‘But . . .’ Slabbaert pauses, holding his finger aloft before pointing to Johannes. ‘Here is a man who grew complacent. A man who thought he was above his own family, above the city, the Church, the state. Above God.’ Slabbaert pauses again, letting silence engorge his rhetoric with power. ‘Johannes Brandt thinks he can buy anything. For him everything has a price. Even the conscience of a young man, whom he took for the pleasure of his body and tried to bribe for his silence.’

There is a ripple of excitement. Complacent, pleasure, body – these forbidden words give the people in the chamber a thrill. But Nella feels a fear unfurling, like one of Marin’s poison plants.

‘You cannot make such an accusation.’ Johannes’ voice is cracked and harsh. ‘The schepenbank have not made their decision and you cannot make it for them. Give them some credit, Seigneur. They are sensible men.’

A couple of the schepenbank glow with self-importance. The rest eye Johannes with a mix of awe and disgust.

‘They are good counsel,’ says Slabbaert, ‘but I will be the one who has the final say. You deny the charge of sodomitic attack?’

Here are the words the gallery has been waiting for. It is almost as if they move through the spectators, daring their sinews to absorb them, to taste their rare transgression.

‘I do,’ Johannes says. He sticks out his crippled legs. ‘Despite your best efforts.’

‘Just simple answers, please,’ says Slabbaert, sorting through his papers. ‘On Sunday, the twenty-ninth day of December last year, at the warehouses on the Eastern Islands, Jack Philips of Bermondsey, London, says you attacked and sodomized him. On God’s day, he was battered and bruised until he could barely walk.’

The gallery explodes. ‘Quiet,’ shouts Slabbaert. ‘Be quiet in the chamber up there.’

‘It was not me,’ says Johannes, speaking over the clamour.

‘Witnesses will swear on the Holy Bible that they saw you.’

‘And how do they know me to identify me?’

‘You’re a familiar face, Seigneur Brandt. Now is not the time to pretend humility. You are powerful, a rich leader in example. You are often by the docks, the warehouses, the wharves. The act you committed—’

‘Allegedly committed—’