The Miniaturist(99)

She must have been watching me in the Old Church that day, Nella thinks – when Otto went to pray and Agnes grabbed me by the sleeve. Surely the only way she would have known I wanted a verkeerspel board was to creep up and pick my pocket? They say that watchers are always watched in Amsterdam, even those who cannot see.

Yet all this smacks too much of Cornelia’s spy, and not enough of Nella’s prophetess. She inhales the papers, as if to catch the miniaturist’s scent – a Norwegian pine perhaps, or the cooling scent of lakeside mint. But there is only dry paper, smelling vaguely of Nella’s own room. This letter was intended for the miniaturist, and somehow she received it.

There are annotations down the side of her letters. Parakeet – green. Husband – yes, Johannes Brandt. She fights to emerge. Many doors without a key, and more than one explorer. The dog. The sister, the servant. Maps that cannot span their world. A constant searcher, a tulip planted in my soil who won’t have space to grow. Don’t go back. Loneliness. Talk to the English boy. Try and make him see.

A tulip planted in my soil, Nella repeats.

Someone is downstairs, closing the front door, clomping around in heavy boots. Nella looks desperately for somewhere to hide, and scurries along into the upper back room. The only thing in it is an unmade narrow bed. Crawling under its frame, she waits.

‘Are you up there?’ calls a voice. It is a man’s voice, soft and slightly querulous. He sounds strange to Nella’s ears, not from this city. ‘I’ve come,’ he says. ‘There’ve been too many letters. I warned you again and again not to do this.’

He waits, Nella waits. The dust from the floor gets into her nose and before she can stop it, she sneezes. The sound of the boots becomes louder. He’s coming up the wooden stairs. Now he begins shuffling around the workshop, tutting as he picks things up and places them back down, muttering as he rummages through the miniaturist’s handiwork. ‘Such a talent,’ Nella hears him say. ‘Such a waste.’

He stops. Nella freezes, barely breathing.

‘Petronella, why are you hiding under the bed?’ he calls through the other room. Nella doesn’t move, a chill creeping through her, blood pounding in her head. Her throat constricts, her eyes feel hot. How does he know my name?

‘I can see your feet,’ he goes on. ‘Come on, child. We haven’t time for this.’ This last comment makes him chuckle. Nella thinks she might vomit from the terror.

‘Come, Petronella. Let us discuss your strange events.’

His voice is not unkind. Although Nella would rather spend the rest of this awful day hiding under the miniaturist’s slovenly bed than face the world – his invitation, delivered so gently, so temptingly, makes her crawl out from her hiding place.

On seeing an old man before her, she cries out in surprise. He is so small, she feels twice his size. ‘Who are you?’ she asks.

His rheumy eyes widen, and he backs away. A solitary puff of white hair rests on top of his head like an afterthought. ‘But you’re not Petronella,’ he says, mystified.

‘Yes I am,’ Nella says, her panic beginning to rise. You are Petronella, she tells herself. Of course you are. ‘Who are you?’ she demands again, trying to make her voice a challenge.

The old man looks at her suspiciously. ‘I’m Lucas Windelbreke.’ Nella sinks onto the bed. ‘She’s gone,’ he says sadly, looking around the corners of the room. ‘I know it.’

‘The miniaturist?’

‘Petronella.’

Nella shakes her head, as if to knock her own name out of her ears. ‘Petronella? Seigneur – the woman who lived here was called Petronella?’

‘Indeed she was, Madame. In our tongue, is it such an uncommon name?’

Nella supposes not – her own mother shares her name, and Agnes made the same observation back at the silversmiths’ feast. ‘But she’s from Norway,’ Nella says, trying to control her confusion. ‘She’s from Bergen.’

A cloud passes over Lucas Windelbreke’s face. ‘Her mother was from Bergen. Petronella grew up with me in Bruges.’

‘But why?’

‘Why?’ echoes Windelbreke, looking forlornly round the room. ‘Because Petronella is my daughter.’

Nella hears the last word he utters, but it doesn’t make sense. It seems impossible to call the miniaturist daughter – it conjures Assendelft, a mother, a strange safety, the comfort of human flaw. ‘I don’t believe you,’ she says. ‘She’s the miniaturist, she doesn’t—’

‘We all have to come from somewhere, Madame,’ Windelbreke says. ‘Do you think she was born from an egg?’

The question jars in Nella’s mind. She’s sure she’s heard it before. ‘Her mother’s family wouldn’t have her,’ he says.

‘Why not?’

Windelbreke says nothing, looking away.

‘I wrote to you, Seigneur,’ Nella says, feeling dizzy, sitting back down on the bed.

‘If you did, your letter was one of many.’

Nella’s eyes flick to the pile of letters, visible on the worktop through the other room. ‘It was because your daughter was beginning to frighten me,’ she says. ‘But she never replied, and neither did you. I wanted to know why she was sending me these pieces.’