The Miniaturist(90)

Lad. Softening English slang – poor Jack the Lad, caught in the dark by Lucifer himself. In light of this clear declaration of where Slabbaert’s sympathies lie, Johannes looks weighed down, as if his bones are made of stone.

‘He did,’ says Jack. At this Johannes looks up. Hastily, Jack turns to the schepenbank. ‘And he beat me. I could barely walk.’

‘This is all lies,’ Johannes interrupts.

‘He can’t speak to me, Schout Slabbaert,’ Jack says. ‘Tell him he can’t speak to me.’

‘Silence, Brandt. You’ll have your chance. Mr Philips, you are entirely sure that the man assaulting you that night was Johannes Brandt?’

‘I am entirely sure,’ Jack says, but his knees begin to sag.

‘The boy’s about to faint,’ Johannes says as Jack staggers towards the floor.

‘Take him out,’ says Slabbaert, waving a hand at Jack. Two guards scoop him up. ‘We will adjourn until tomorrow morning at seven o’clock.’

‘Schout Slabbaert,’ says Johannes. ‘Today was just supposed to be the reading of the charges, and yet you bring out my accuser. What is the game you are playing? When will it be my turn to ask questions? You have sought to defame me and shock the crowd. I must have my say.’

‘You speak too much as it is. We haven’t even had the witnesses yet.’

‘It is written down that it must be so,’ says Johannes. ‘We must both of us have our chance.’ He points at the Bible. ‘Do not show partiality in judging; hear both small and great alike. Bring me any case too hard for you, and I will hear it.’ ‘Deuteronomy. In case you want to check.’

‘You will have your moment, Brandt,’ Slabbaert replies. ‘But for now, we adjourn. Seven o’clock tomorrow.’

Johannes and Jack are led out through different doors. Jack keeps his head down, but Johannes turns briefly to the gallery, where Cornelia and Nella are already on their feet. She holds up her hand, and he nods at her before being bundled off.

People stretch their limbs and exchange expressions of surprise and consternation, morbid picnickers rustling in their pockets for their bags of nuts, their curls of cheese and ham. Agnes hurries down the aisle. Nella is surprised again at the narrowness of her frame, her birdlike steps. Frans Meermans has already disappeared.

She knows she hasn’t got much time. ‘I won’t be long,’ she says to Cornelia. ‘Go back to Marin.’

Immediately, Hanna looks curious, but Nella can only throw Cornelia a warning glance. Not even Hanna can know. Cornelia answers with an almost imperceptible nod.

Making her way round to where Agnes has exited, Nella notices that something has fallen on the floorboards where she was sitting, lying in the dust amid fresh orange peel. Two tiny feet poke out from under the bench, wrapped in a pair of pattens. I know those feet, she thinks, kneeling down in the dirt.

The feet belong to a small doll, dressed in gold. The face is Nella’s, her hair escaping in wisps from a saffron-coloured headband. ‘By all the angels,’ she breathes. This version of herself looks less surprised than the doll back home in the cabinet. It is more level-gazed. Instinctively, she searches the miniature body – for wounds, she tells herself, to arm against any coming danger. But in a dark, rarely visited pocket of her mind, she knows she’s doing it to find any sign of a child. There is none; no hidden bump. Nella pushes away the sadness. At least you have no cuts and breaks, she tells herself. Now is not your time.





The Guilder and the Doll


Agnes could have had this doll for months. She was jealous of my cabinet, Nella thinks – pretending she had one, giving herself away on the outside steps after the sugar party. I want mine to be better than hers, she’d said to Frans. And surely there can be only one place Agnes procured me? This doll is so pertinent, so accurate. It is painful to accept it’s been made for someone else.

Nella puts her shining self in her pocket with Arnoud’s guilders and rushes down the steps in search of Meermans. The rain has eased a little, the light is misty. Spectators hang around in the narrow street, avoiding the puddles. Nella spies the old-fashioned white ruff, the tall black smock of Pastor Pellicorne. His immaculate face, his crown of grey hair, those maddened-preacher eyes. Others have gathered round him, like burrs on wool. ‘This is sin,’ he pronounces as the rain patters down. ‘You can smell it. Johannes Brandt has led a sinful life.’

‘It’s the consequence of luxury,’ the woman next to him observes.

‘But he’s made the city money,’ says a man. ‘He’s made us rich.’

‘Who exactly has he made rich? And look what it’s done to his soul,’ says Pellicorne. He whispers the word, as if disposing with one last breath the abomination of Johannes Brandt.

Nella can hardly breathe. Smells of rotting food rise as the thick, smoky stench of tavern meat rolls down the walls. Pellicorne glides his eyes over her.

‘Are you not well, girl?’ asks one of the women with Pellicorne, but Nella does not answer.

‘The wife,’ someone whispers, and more heads turn.

Look at me then, Nella thinks. Look at the wife. ‘Yes,’ she shouts. ‘I am his wife.’

‘God sees through doors, Madame,’ says the first woman. ‘He sees it all.’