“How were the auctions today?” I asked awkwardly. I was never good at making everyday talk.

Pieter shrugged. He took my elbow to steer me around a pile of dung, then dropped his hand.

I gave up. “There has been gossip about me in the market,” I said bluntly.

“There is gossip about everyone at one time or another,” he replied neutrally.

“It’s not true what they say. I’m not going to be in a painting with van Ruijven.”

“Van Ruijven likes you. My father told me.”

“But I’m not going to be in a painting with him.”

“He is very powerful.”

“You must believe me, Pieter.”

“He is very powerful,” he repeated, “and you are but a maid. Who do you think will win that round of cards?”

“You think I will become like the maid in the red dress.”

“Only if you drink his wine.” Pieter gazed at me levelly.

“My master does not want to paint me with van Ruijven,” I said reluctantly after a moment. I had not wanted to mention him.

“That’s good. I don’t want him to paint you either.”

I stopped and closed my eyes. The close animal smell was beginning to make me feel faint.

“You’re getting caught where you should not be, Griet,” Pieter said more kindly. “Theirs is not your world.”

I opened my eyes and took a step back from him. “I came here to explain that the rumor is false, not to be accused by you. Now I’m sorry I bothered.”

“Don’t be. I do believe you.” He sighed. “But you have little power over what happens to you. Surely you can see that?”

When I did not answer he added, “If your master did want to paint a picture of you and van Ruijven, do you really think you could say no?”

It was a question I had asked myself but found no answer to. “Thank you for reminding me of how helpless I am,” I replied tartly.

“You wouldn’t be, with me. We would run our own business, earn our own money, rule our own lives. Isn’t that what you want?”

I looked at him, at his bright blue eyes, his yellow curls, his eager face. I was a fool even to hesitate.

“I didn’t come here to talk about this. I’m too young yet.” I used the old excuse. Someday I would be too old to use it.

“I never know what you’re thinking, Griet,” he tried again. “You’re so calm and quiet, you never say. But there are things inside you. I see them sometimes, hiding in your eyes.”

I smoothed my cap, checking with my fingers for stray hairs. “All I mean to say is that there is no painting,” I declared, ignoring what he had just said. “Maria Thins has promised me. But you’re not to tell anyone. If they speak to you of me in the market, say nothing. Don’t try to defend me. Otherwise van Ruijven may hear and your words will work against us.”

Pieter nodded unhappily and kicked at a bit of dirty straw.

He will not always be so reasonable, I thought. One day he will give up.

To reward him for his reasonableness, I let him take me into a space between two houses off the Beast Market and run his hands down my body, cupping them where there were curves. I tried to take pleasure in it, but I was still feeling sick from the animal smell.

Whatever I said to Pieter the son, I myself did not feel reassured by Maria Thins’ promise to keep me out of the painting. She was a formidable woman, astute in business, certain of her place, but she was not van Ruijven. I did not see how they could refuse him what he wanted. He had wanted a painting of his wife looking directly at the painter, and my master had made it. He had wanted a painting of the maid in the red dress, and had got that. If he wanted me, why should he not get me?

When they got it up the stairs they took it to the studio, my master supervising them. After the men left, he called down to Catharina. Maria Thins followed her up. A moment later we heard the sound of the harpsichord being played. The girls sat on the stairs while Tanneke and I stood in the hallway, listening.

“Is that the mistress playing? Or your mistress?” I asked Tanneke. It seemed so unlike either of them that I thought perhaps he was playing and simply wanted Catharina to be his audience.

“It’s the young mistress, of course,” Tanneke hissed. “Why would he have asked her up otherwise? She’s very good, is the young mistress. She played when she was a girl. But her father kept their harpsichord when he and my mistress separated. Have you never heard young mistress complain about not being able to afford an instrument?”

“No.” I thought for a moment. “Do you think he will paint her? For this painting with van Ruijven?” Tanneke must have heard the market gossip but had said nothing of it to me.

“Oh, the master never paints her. She can’t sit still!”

Over the next few days he moved a table and chairs into the setting, and lifted the harpsichord’s lid, which was painted with a landscape of rocks and trees and sky. He spread a table rug on the table in the foreground, and set the bass viol under it.

One day Maria Thins called me to the Crucifixion room. “Now, girl,” she said, “this afternoon I want you to go on some errands for me. To the apothecary’s for some elder flowers and hyssop—Franciscus has a cough now that it’s cold again. And then to Old Mary the spinner for some wool, just enough for a collar for Aleydis. Did you notice hers is unravelling?” She paused, as if calculating how long it would take me to get from place to place. “And then go to Jan Mayer’s house to ask when his brother is expected in Delft. He lives by the Rietveld Tower. That’s near your parents, isn’t it? You may stop in and visit them.”

Maria Thins had never allowed me to see my parents apart from Sundays. Then I guessed. “Is van Ruijven coming today, madam?”

“Don’t let him see you,” she answered grimly. “It’s best if you’re not here at all. Then if he asks for you we can say you’re out.”

For a moment I wanted to laugh. Van Ruijven had us all—even Maria Thins—running like rabbits before dogs.

My mother was surprised to see me that afternoon. Luckily a neighbor was visiting and she could not question me closely. My father was not so interested. He had changed much since I’d left home, since Agnes had died. He was no longer so curious about the world outside his street, rarely asking me about the goings-on at the Oude Langendijck or in the market. Only the paintings still interested him.

“Mother,” I announced as we sat by the fire, “my master is beginning the painting that you were asking about. Van Ruijven has come over and he is setting it up today. Everyone who is to be in the painting is there now.”

Our neighbor, a bright-eyed old woman who loved market talk, gazed at me as if I had just set a roast capon in front of her. My mother frowned—she knew what I was doing.

There, I thought. That will take care of the rumors.

The next morning the studio gave few clues about what had happened the afternoon before. Two chairs had been placed, one at the harpsichord, the other with its back to the painter. There was a lute on the chair, and a violin on the table to the left. The bass viol still lay in the shadows under the table. It was hard to tell from the arrangement how many people were to be in the painting.

Later Maertge told me that van Ruijven had come with his sister and one of his daughters.

“How old is the daughter?” I could not help asking.

“Seventeen, I think.”

My age.

They came around again a few days later. Maria Thins sent me on more errands and told me to amuse myself elsewhere for the morning. I wanted to remind her that I could not stay away every day they came to be painted—it was getting too cold to idle in the streets, and there was too much work to do. But I did not say anything. I could not explain it, but I felt something was to change soon. I just did not know how.

I could not go to my parents again—they would think something was wrong, and explaining otherwise would make them believe even worse things were happening. Instead I went to Frans’ factory. I had not seen him since he had asked me about the valuables in the house. His questions had angered me and I had made no effort to visit him.

The woman at the gate did not recognize me. When I asked to see Frans she shrugged and stepped aside, disappearing without showing me where to go. I walked into a low building where boys Frans’ age sat on benches at long tables, painting tiles. They were working on simple designs, with nothing of the graceful style of my father’s tiles. Many were not even painting the main figures, but only the flourishes in the corners of the tiles, the leaves and curlicues, leaving a blank center for a more skilled master to fill.

When they saw me a chorus of high whistles erupted that made me want to stop my ears. I went up to the nearest boy and asked him where my brother was. He turned red and ducked his head. Though I was a welcome distraction, no one would answer my question.

I found another building, smaller and hotter, housing the kiln. Frans was there alone, with his shirt off and the sweat pouring from him and a grim look on his face. The muscles in his arms and chest had grown. He was becoming a man.

He had tied quilted material around his forearms and hands that made him look clumsy, but when he pulled trays of tiles in and out of the kiln, he skillfully wielded the flat sheets so that he did not burn himself. I was afraid to call to him because he would be startled and might drop a tray. But he saw me before I spoke, and immediately set down the tray he held.