Light of Her Own Read online

  Amberjack Publishing

  1472 E. Iron Eagle Drive

  Eagle, Idaho 83616

  http://amberjackpublishing.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author′s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2018 by Carrie Callaghan

  Printed in the United States of America. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, in part or in whole, in any form whatsoever without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication data

  Title: A light of her own / by Carrie Callaghan.

  Description: New York : Amberjack Publishing, 2018.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018017976 (print) | LCCN 2018019558 (ebook) | ISBN 9781944995911 (eBook) | ISBN 9781944995898 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781944995904 (pbk. : alk. paper)

  Classification: LCC PS3603.A44188 (ebook) | LCC PS3603.A44188 L54 2018 (print) | DDC 813/.6--dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018017976

  Cover Design: David Provolo

  To Patrick, my love.

  Chapter 1

  FEBRUARY 1633

  JUDITH LEANED AGAINST THE SMALL window ledge and looked inside. The frigid twilight air seeped past her cloak into her many layers of tunics and her well-worn bodice, and the painted ledge below her numb fingertips had dulled to the gray of a low sky. Behind the glass, the inn’s golden light beckoned, and though it was not yet suppertime, already drinkers dressed in shades of brown sat at small tables. Her teeth chattered with cold and nerves. She scrutinized the scene for any telling detail, but she saw nothing unusual, to her disappointment.

  She wished she could step out of the back garden, around the corner, and through the inn door, but entering would be too risky. Even though the inn was public, anyone who knew her would realize she wasn’t visiting for the ale. Respectable women didn’t socialize in taverns or inns. But an artist showing up the night of a clandestine auction? Someone might recognize her and report her to the Guild, whose leaders would delight in an excuse to ban her. No artist, particularly not an apprentice like herself, could sell outside approved Guild channels. She stamped her feet against the cold and watched.

  Inside the inn’s common room, located at the back of the building, a trio of musicians played in the far corner. Judith anxiously tapped her finger against the windowsill along with the muffled beat, until the cold pinched her skin too deeply and she hugged her hands against herself.

  Nothing suggested an auction was taking place, illegal or otherwise. No art, no passed canvases or wooden painting supports. Only pewter tankards and a few plates moved from hand to hand while bearded men gulped down ale or, less often, wine. A knot tightened in her stomach. The man with the misshapen nose had deceived her. For a moment Judith pressed her fingertips—smelling of linseed oil and ochre—against her eyelids. If he had misled her, stolen her painting, he would cost her four months. Or longer. She was twenty-three and still a student.

  She opened her eyes and watched as, along the side of the room, a thin man dressed in an azurite-colored doublet stood up from a bench. She didn’t recognize him, but his distinctive clothing caught her attention. He seemed to be speaking, then bent down and straightened again, and as he did, he lifted a linen draping and revealed a painting beneath. Judith exhaled.

  She wondered which artist had produced that credible painting of a shepherd strumming a lute. Earth tones, with flashes of soft green. Who else would need to resort to illegal auctions? Obviously not the city of Haarlem’s most prominent masters, like the brothers Frans and Dirck Hals. They sold under the St. Luke’s Guild auspices. Maybe a mature apprentice like herself, someone on the cusp of recognition. She hoped the artist on display now was reputable, or close. If the other paintings fetched high prices, hers might as well. Twenty, even thirty guilders would be enough. She had never earned that much money before, not at one time. That is, assuming the auctioneer gave her a fair share.

  The man with the canvas carried the painting to another table, where four card players frowned at their hands. Judith conjured up every detail of her own painting. Her woman holding a wineglass aloft had precisely the right tilt to her head. But the magenta wine glowing behind the etched glass had been tricky. Judith had struggled with the refracted light, and she had resolved her difficulties by moving the woman’s fingers to block the view a bit. She loved how paint granted her mobility, the power to reshape the world in the most beautiful way she could imagine, but she hoped none of these buyers would notice her correction. They were shopkeepers and petty merchants hoping to display a little luxury alongside their wares or in their once-bare visiting rooms. It wouldn’t matter to the merchants if they were displaying Judith’s paintings, those fragments of her soul, or some mediocre depiction of a rustic cottage along a winding road. Judith needed her own workshop soon, a chance to establish herself as a serious painter before the public’s fascination with paintings as ornaments for their homes faded. So many young men had left Frans de Grebber’s workshop to set out on their own, but Judith still lingered there in her apprenticeship. Even though she was just as good as them.

  Her fogged breath clouded the glass, so she stepped back. She bit her lip and rubbed at her rough woolen sleeves to spark some warmth. The light revealed the paint still stuck to the back of her scrubbed hand, and doubt wound through her veins like a cool fog. She should have offered the coarse man a different work, like the picture of the two men at cards with the boy chasing a dog nearby. Three figures made the canvas far more valuable, and the subtle critique of games—the warning implied in the boy’s foolish play—would appeal to buyers. But the man made her wary. He had sidled up to her as she exited church one Sunday morning, both of them jostled by the crowd streaming from the echoing central cathedral. He offered no money up front, and he gave her a nearly illegible receipt, as if he had not expected her to be literate. Only after she delivered her painting did she realize he had let her assume when, and thus if, she would be paid. That night she cried silent tears into her threadbare blankets.

  The first canvas the auctioneer displayed had disappeared in the room’s haze. Judith shifted. The setting sun turned the glass into a mirror for a moment, and she was irritated to see her small face and thin lips instead of the room. Judith knew she was no beauty. She moved again, trying to see past the reflection. At her height, she had to stand on her toes to see around the heads of the drinkers in the elevated room, and this was the only window. The auctioneer sat at a table with two older men, and their backs obscured his face, though his doublet’s unusual color glowed—a reason for optimism. To wear clothes of that hue, the man must make money doing this. Maybe he had traveled to Haarlem from bustling Amsterdam, and certainly he would know how to extract a high price for her painting. She shifted again. Her toes were growing numb from cold inside her battered shoes.

  “You’re plain for a strumpet, but I’ll give it a try,” said a voice behind her. She spun around, and a waft of alcohol enfolded her. A man with greasy brown hair pasted to his forehead below his wide-brimmed hat stood between her and the narrow street that ran along the side of the inn. He leaned toward her and tried to prop an arm against the wall, but missed and stumbled.

  “I’m not a whore, you fool.” Judith stepped away from the window, further into the shadow of the kitchen garden. She glanced behind the man at the street and saw o
nly empty dusk. Her heart surged, as if to run away without her.

  “Don’t be coy, now. That won’t earn you a penning more. Come on, where’s it to be? Not here, I hope. Though,” he looked her up and down, “I’d manage.”

  “Leave me,” she said. “I’m not for sale. I’ll call the watchman.” She had no idea where the patrol might be at the moment, but she hoped she sounded confident. Her blood rushed in her ears. “Get out of here, or you’ll regret it.”

  The man gave her an appraising look and spit on the muddy stones lining the garden patio.

  He reached out toward her. She stepped back again into the dark, and her eyes widened. She needed to go forward, toward the street and anyone who might be walking past. He grinned and shuffled closer.

  She took a deep breath and shoved him.

  The man shook his head, surprised. He gave her a sneer, and she held her hands up, ready still. Then he spat again. He walked away, muttering. The ribbons tying his breeches off at his calves were orange, and for a moment, the color flooded Judith’s mind. She leaned her shoulder against the inn’s freezing wall and, with her eyes pinched shut for a moment, tried to steady her breath. The cold air ripped at her lungs.

  Judith peered again into the window, but each time she turned away from the street, she felt the gaping, uncertain evening lurking over her shoulder. The auction inside had continued, and, for a moment, she glimpsed painted fingers around a glittering wineglass. Or so she thought, but the crowd swallowed the image. She should have thought to bring Abraham, her younger brother. During the day, women in Haarlem could easily wander alone, but as the light faded, so did her safety. She scanned the garden and adjacent side street again. At twenty, Abraham was old enough to protect her and canny enough not to ask questions about the auction.

  She looked back inside the inn, but now she couldn’t locate the auctioneer. The tables were still crowded with half-emptied tankards, stacks of ivory gaming tiles, and even a few women. But there was no sign of the man in the azurite-colored doublet.

  She dug her fingernails into the windowsill, and her gaze fluttered between the street and her anxious search for the auctioneer. Shame held her fixed, yet a panic began to circle in her gut. The supplies for that painting were expensive, and each week she remained trapped in her apprenticeship with Frans de Grebber was a week that saw another young painter set up shop. Soon, the blacksmiths’ and bakers’ walls would hold all the moralizing paintings and Bible scenes they could hold, and no one would take a chance on an unknown woman artist. The evening’s low light eased toward darkness. She had not brought a lantern and would have to leave before curfew and winter’s early sunset consigned all law-abiding citizens to the safety of their hearths. A church bell tolled, but she lost count of the chimes as she switched her attention back and forth between the street and the window. A cloud of male voices rumbled somewhere nearby, and she froze. After the sound passed, Judith counted to twenty, mustered her courage, and walked around to the front of the inn. She stepped through the door.

  Inside, a chaos of voices and music greeted her. She whispered a prayer that no one she knew would be present, or none would recognize her. Still, a few heads turned, likely surprised at the sober brown dress and simple white cambric cap covering her chestnut hair, so different from the brightly dressed women scattered about the room like harvested flowers. And the fool had taken her for a whore.

  She paused and blinked, overwhelmed for a moment. She grabbed the elbow of a passing serving girl.

  “Excuse me. Is the man in the azurite doublet here? With the pictures. Do you know where he is?”

  The girl held four empty tankards from her fingers as though they were misbehaving kittens caught by the scruff of the neck. She tilted her nose upwards while she looked over Judith’s head, evidently weighing the balance of courtesy and her pressing work.

  “I didn’t see any pictures,” she said finally. Her eyes settled upon Judith. “It’s been busy, we don’t always notice those things. Unless you’ve got a name? Maybe it’s someone I know.” She gave a smile but took a half step away.

  “An azurite-colored doublet. Blue, I mean. With a touch of green. He was wearing a blue doublet. He was here.” Judith reached toward her but did not have the courage to grab her again.

  The serving maid shrugged. “Sorry.” She walked away.

  Judith looked around and tried to quell the distress rising in her throat. Brown doublets and moss-green bodices filled the room, but she saw no auctioneer. She had been foolish to imagine she could monitor the sale.

  The drinkers made the room throb around her. She must be wrong, he must be here, and she searched through the flushed crowd. A face caught her attention, but it was a young man who painted in Dirck Hals’s workshop. The sort of man to ask questions and tell tales about her presence in the inn. She spun on her heel and rushed outside.

  She rubbed her arms and wished her safety did not depend on abiding by the curfew. The auctioneer could not have gone far. She could look for him. Then a stranger strode past her and gave her a lurid glance. She turned toward her master’s home in the smothered light.

  There was nothing left to do but try to sleep and hasten dawn’s arrival. Judith quietly climbed the stairs to the room in Frans de Grebber’s loft that she shared with his daughter, Maria. Without lighting a candle, she pulled on her nightdress. In Maria’s bed, a few feet away, her friend’s breath ebbed and flowed in peaceful sleep. Barefoot, Judith crossed the cold floorboards to Maria’s bedside, where she could see her friend’s form in the shadows. She reached out and held her hand over Maria’s head, and Maria’s wayward hairs brushed her palm. Maria exhaled and stirred but did not wake. Judith turned away and crawled onto her own straw-stuffed mattress. She pulled the quilt to her chin. Maria, her only real friend, would not have to worry about scraping together enough coins for the St. Luke’s Guild fee. Her father was a successful, prominent painter. Though no woman had yet joined the Guild as a master, Judith suspected Maria, if she worked hard at it, could gain the other members’ approval. But as far as Judith knew, Maria had no interest in a painter’s life. Judith had little else. Of course, she could try to find a husband. She was plain but hardworking enough to attract a weaver or cobbler, some humble man. But she hoped for something far better than a husband: a life spent turning colors and oil into wonder. She stared up toward the invisible ceiling, concealed by the dark night. She had her talent and her dreams, but if only she had not lost that painting. And it was gone. The agony of those vanished hours and coins pressed upon her, and she exhaled a near-growl that caused Maria to murmur in her sleep. Judith clenched her jaw and watched the darkness.

  Chapter 2

  THE MORNING LIGHT WAS STILL low, and Maria squinted in concentration. She tapped the painting with her tiny brush, leaving more air than pigment on the small flame she was coloring. A little brighter. She had forgotten to put on her extra sleeves and the new woolen stockings, and her skin prickled with goosebumps beneath her two tunics. The house was too cold for her to be up painting, yet she had no choice. She had little work time left, as her father and the apprentices were rumbling about the house and beginning their morning habits and breakfast. Soon they would wander into the workshop, and her brief solitude would end.

  The household knew by now how she spent her mornings, up to seize the sun’s light at the first hint of late dawn, while everyone else dressed and ate breakfast, but still she insisted on keeping the painting veiled in their presence. The portrait was for her eyes, and her purposes, only. Maria could not explain her project to anyone, not even Judith. She took a deep breath. She looked at the sheen of the wet paint upon her wooden panel, and she wished she could allow herself to show Judith. But, no, someone else’s eyes upon the painting would stain her work. Every night, Maria silently invoked her intention as her fingers roamed the circle of her rosary, and she prayed nothing would happen to her before she could purge her sins with this painting. Now, more th
an ever, she needed an offering. She could not marry Samuel Ampzing. The poet was almost two decades her senior and, worse, a minister in the Reformed Church. His affection was a punishment she deserved, yes, for her endless litany of failings. But she hoped to earn herself a way out.

  She intensified the black behind the flame to sharpen the contrast. With her brush poised, she nibbled at her lip and examined the whole painting. Perhaps she had exhausted her inspiration for today. But she could work endlessly, seize the muscles in her wrists with the agony of precision, and the painting might never be good enough. With less than two weeks left before Samuel was coming to Haarlem, time was running out.

  The woman’s large eyes were pools of ebony surrounded by soft gray. The picture displayed Maria’s full lips, heavy eyebrows, and long face. She had used a mirror to paint this portrait, but she did not think of the woman in the painting as herself. When Maria had started the work, she wanted to ask Judith to model for the portrait, even though she doubted her friend would rest her own brush and sit. One morning, while the two women dressed in the cool dawn, Maria had opened her mouth to ask. But she saw Judith’s sure fingers tying the knot on her bodice before rushing to her latest picture, and Judith’s lips murmured the list of painting tasks she recited each morning. The question disappeared back into Maria’s throat.

  Now, across the room, the floorboards creaked. Judith stood in the entryway, a slice of bread still in her hand and a crumb upon her dark bodice. The smell of the morning loaf wafted after her, and Maria could hear the hum of young voices coming from the kitchen at the rear of the house. She draped a cloth over her painted wood panel, but left her fingers resting at the edge.

  “I won’t spy,” Judith said. She took a step closer and held out the bread. “You’ve been so busy, so I brought this for you. And there’s a little cheese left in there. In case you wanted some.”