“Can he not paint faster?” I knew even as I said it that he would not. He would always paint at his own pace.

“Mistress and young mistress disagree sometimes. Young mistress wants him to paint more, but my mistress says speed would ruin him.”

“Maria Thins is very wise.” I had learned that I could voice opinions in front of Tanneke as long as Maria Thins was in some way praised. Tanneke was fiercely loyal to her mistress. She had little patience with Catharina, however, and when she was in the right mood she advised me on how to handle her. “Take no notice of what she says,” she counseled. “Keep your face empty when she speaks, then do things your own way, or how my mistress or I tell you to do them. She never checks, she never notices. She just orders us about because she feels she has to. But we know who our real mistress is, and so does she.”

Although Tanneke was often bad tempered with me, I learned not to take it to heart, as she never remained so for long. She was fickle in her moods, perhaps from being caught between Catharina and Maria Thins for so many years. Despite her confident words about ignoring what Catharina said, Tanneke did not follow her own advice. Catharina’s harsh tone upset her. And Maria Thins, for all her fairness, did not defend Tanneke from Catharina. I never once heard Maria Thins berate her daughter for anything, though Catharina needed it at times.

There was also the matter of Tanneke’s housekeeping. Perhaps her loyalty made up for her sloppiness about the house—corners unmopped, meat burned on the outside and raw on the inside, pots not scrubbed thoroughly. I could not imagine what she had done to his studio when she tried to clean it. Though Maria Thins rarely scolded Tanneke, they both knew she ought to, and this kept Tanneke uncertain and quick to defend herself.

It became clear to me that in spite of her shrewd ways, Maria Thins was soft on the people closest to her. Her judgment was not as sound as it appeared.

Of the four girls, Cornelia was, as she had shown the first morning, the most unpredictable. Both Lisbeth and Aleydis were good, quiet girls, and Maertge was old enough to begin learning the ways of the house, which steadied her—though occasionally she would have a fit of temper and shout at me much like her mother. Cornelia did not shout, but she was at times ungovernable. Even the threat of Maria Thins’ anger that I had used on the first day did not always work. She could be funny and playful one moment, then turn the next, like a purring cat who bites the hand stroking it. While loyal to her sisters, she did not hesitate to make them cry by pinching them hard. I was wary of Cornelia, and could not be fond of her in the way I came to be of the others.

I escaped from them all when I cleaned the studio. Maria Thins unlocked the door for me and sometimes stayed a few minutes to check on the painting, as if it were a sick child she was nursing. Once she left, though, I had the room to myself. I looked around to see if anything had changed. At first it seemed to remain the same, day after day, but after my eyes grew accustomed to the details of the room I began to notice small things—the brushes rearranged on the top of the cupboard, one of the cupboard’s drawers left ajar, the palette knife balanced on the easel’s ledge, a chair moved a little from its place by the door.

Nothing, however, changed in the corner he was painting. I was careful not to displace any of it, quickly adjusting to my way of measuring so that I was able to clean that area almost as quickly and confidently as the rest of the room. And after experimenting on other bits of cloth, I began to clean the dark blue cloth and yellow curtain with a damp rag, pressing it carefully so that it picked up dust without disturbing the folds.

There seemed to be no changes to the painting, as hard as I looked for them. At last one day I discovered that another pearl had been added to the woman’s necklace. Another day the shadow of the yellow curtain had grown bigger. I thought too that some of the fingers on her right hand had been moved.

The satin mantle began to look so real I wanted to reach out and touch it.

I had almost touched the real one the day van Ruijven’s wife left it on the bed. I had just been reaching over to stroke the fur collar when I had looked up to see Cornelia in the doorway, watching me. One of the other girls would have asked me what I was doing, but Cornelia had just watched. That was worse than any questions. I had dropped my hand and she’d smiled.

The kite above our heads was shaped like a fish with a long tail, the wind making it look as if it were swimming through the air, with seagulls wheeling around it. As I smiled I saw Agnes hovering near us, her eyes fixed on Maertge. I still had not told Agnes there was a girl her age in the house—I thought it might upset her, that she would feel she was being replaced.

Sometimes when I visited my family at home I felt awkward telling them anything. My new life was taking over the old.

When Agnes looked at me I shook my head slightly so that Maertge would not see, and turned away to put the fish in my pail. I took my time—I could not bear to see the hurt look on her face. I did not know what Maertge would do if Agnes spoke to me.

When I turned around Agnes had gone.

I shall have to explain to her when I see her Sunday, I thought. I have two families now, and they must not mix.

I was always ashamed afterwards that I had turned my back on my own sister.

“Are they gone yet?” she asked suddenly.

“Who, madam?”

“Them, you silly girl. My husband and— Go and see if they’ve gone upstairs yet.”

I stepped cautiously into the hallway. Two sets of feet were climbing the stairs.

“Can you manage it?” I heard him say.

“Yes, yes, of course. You know it’s not very heavy,” another man replied, in a voice deep like a well. “Just a bit cumbersome.”

They reached the top of the stairs and entered the studio. I heard the door close.

“Have they gone?” Catharina hissed.

“They are in the studio, madam,” I responded.

“Good. Now help me up.” Catharina held out her hands and I pulled her to her feet. I did not think she could grow much bigger and still manage to walk. She moved down the hallway like a ship with its sails full, holding on to her bunch of keys so that they wouldn’t clink, and disappeared into the great hall.

Later I asked Tanneke why Catharina had been hiding.

“Oh, van Leeuwenhoek was here,” she answered, chuckling. “A friend of the master’s. She’s afraid of him.”

“Why?”

Tanneke laughed harder. “She broke his box! She was looking in it and knocked it over. You know how clumsy she is.”

I thought of my mother’s knife spinning across the floor. “What box?”

“He has a wooden box that you look in and—see things.”

“What things?”

“All sorts of things!” Tanneke replied impatiently. She clearly did not want to talk about the box. “Young mistress broke it, and van Leeuwenhoek won’t see her now. That’s why master won’t allow her in his room unless he’s there. Perhaps he thinks she’ll knock over a painting!”

I discovered what the box was the next morning, the day he spoke to me about things that took me many months to understand.

When I arrived to clean the studio, the easel and chair had been moved to one side. The desk was in their place, cleared of papers and prints. On it sat a wooden box about the size of a chest for storing clothes in. A smaller box was attached to one side, with a round object protruding from it.

I did not understand what it was, but I did not dare touch it. I went about my cleaning, glancing over at it now and then as if its use would suddenly become clear to me. I cleaned the corner, then the rest of the room, dusting the box so that I hardly touched it with my cloth. I cleaned the storeroom and mopped the floor. When I was done I stood in front of the box, arms crossed, moving around to study it.

My back was to the door but I knew suddenly that he was standing there. I wasn’t sure whether to turn around or wait for him to speak.

He must have made the door creak, for then I was able to turn and face him. He was leaning against the threshold, wearing a long black robe over his daily clothes. He was watching me curiously, but he did not seem anxious that I might damage his box.

“Do you want to look in it?” he asked. It was the first time he had spoken directly to me since he asked about the vegetables many weeks before.

“Yes, sir. I do,” I replied without knowing what I was agreeing to. “What is it?”

“It is called a camera obscura.”

The words meant nothing to me. I stood aside and watched him unhook a catch and lift up part of the box’s top, which had been divided in two and hinged together. He propped up the lid at an angle so that the box was partly open. There was a bit of glass underneath. He leaned over and peered into the space between the lid and box, then touched the round piece at the end of the smaller box. He seemed to be looking at something, though I didn’t think there could be much in the box to take such interest in.

He stood up and gazed at the corner I had cleaned so carefully, then reached over and closed the middle window’s shutters, so that the room was lit only by the window in the corner.