The Golden Tulip [antikvár]

CHAPTER ONE For as long as ten-year-old Francesca Visser could remember she had been intensely aware of the colours of her world. The golden gleam of her mother's neatly dressed hair. The azure sparkle of Amsterdam's many canals vmder a summer sky and their frosty grey-green brilliance when frozen. Tall russet roofs made pale by mist and the ruby hues of tulips in the flower beds of the rear courtyard of her home. Above all else the treasure trove of her father's studio, where a few drops of linseed oil could make the powdery pigments, dark in their storage jars, burst gloriously into vermilion, lime yellow, deep blue and velvet purple for his palette and her own. Yet today as she posed for him, wearing her best gown and seated on the studio rostrimi, everything seemed sombre and shaded. A great crisis was looming up in the household and at the present time only she knew about it. She hugged the secret knowledge to herself, her heart heavy, and was afraid. The house and the studio itself were as normal. There was the famiUar slap of Hendrick Visser's dog's-hair brush against his canvas and the distant clatter of pots in the kitchen, where Griet, the maidservant, was preparing the noon meal under the direction of old Maria, who had been nurse to Francesca's mother and aunt before taking charge of the next generation. From beyond the diamond-paned windows came the slow clop of a horse's hooves as it pulled a loaded barge along the canal that divided the length of the street outside. 'You're letting your head droop, Francesca. Raise your chin,' 'Yes, Papa.' As Francesca obeyed, shaking back her coppery hair.