Death in Delft Read online

  DEATH IN DELFT

  Master Mercurius Mysteries

  Book One

  Graham Brack

  Table of Contents

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  EPILOGUE

  A NOTE TO THE READER

  ALSO BY GRAHAM BRACK

  Click here to see a map of Delft in the seventeenth century.

  PROLOGUE

  Now that I have arrived at the final chapter of my life, it occurs to me that everything in my head will be lost unless I write it down. I am vain enough to believe that at least some of my activities will be of interest to my fellow men, and if I have not glowed as brightly as others at least I have reflected some brilliant lights.

  It is possible that in these pages I have been indiscreet to some extent. I would ask your pardon if that is the case, except that I don’t give a fig.

  I have enjoyed a long life. I have never gone hungry, I have avoided torture and imprisonment, and I have been of some service to others. What more can a man want? And if my homeland is less glorious now than it was when I first dropped into it in the Year of Our Lord 1638, well, it is still a desirable place to live. I once went to France and everywhere else has seemed much better since then.

  I have done some things I ought not to have done, and I have left undone some things that I ought to have done. So be it. It’s too late to cry over spilt milk. I have confessed and I carry some private griefs, but that’s how they’re going to stay — private.

  Sometimes I wonder what happened to some of the people I describe in these journals. Oh, we all know about the famous ones. But it’s the maids and the serving wenches, the boot-boys and the working men who fascinate me. Nobody puts up marble monuments to honest men who tramp the world looking for work to keep their family fed, but perhaps they should. And there are worse legacies for a woman than to have a tidy, well-swept house and some grandchildren to play with.

  This story begins in 1671. I was three-and-thirty years old, just making my way in the world. I ask myself sometimes if things might have been different if I hadn’t been so predictable that the boy knew where to find me.

  You’ve got a brain. Judge for yourself.

  CHAPTER ONE

  When the boy found me, I was in an inn along the Langebrug, reading a book and drinking beer. The painter Jan Steen bought the inn shortly afterwards, which was no surprise, given that he contributed substantially to its income when he was a customer, but it was a prosperous enough place even without his money. Nobody in Leiden drinks water. If you saw what the woolworkers throw into it, you would understand why. Drinking water is a sure way to shorten your life.

  I could have stayed in the university hall after supper; beer was available, and someone else would be paying for the fire and the candles, and I would have done, were it not for Master Cornelius. He is a fellow lecturer in the university, who has for some reason decided that I am best placed to discuss the infinitely tedious theories regarding the population of the world that he has expounded in an execrable and thankfully unpublished pamphlet, De Generatione Populi.

  Each time he discusses this pamphlet with me, I find a new objection to his logic, which he then works upon for some time before pressing a revised version on me. I had, at supper, spotted him hastily reading through a few leaves and instantly decided that the inn was the place for me to pass the evening, knowing that Master Cornelius thought it a low place, much favoured by women of the commercial class. That is true, but they do not bother me for three reasons. First, because we are all sinners, and who is to say which sin God abhors most? Second, because I am a cleric. Third, because I work for the university and I cannot afford to pay for their services anyway.

  The boy pushed the door open and saw me. I usually sit under the wall candles on the left side, the best light for reading being there. He marched boldly in and stood before me.

  ‘The Rector wants you.’

  Kitchen lads are rarely respectful, and were I not opposed to violence in all its forms I could cheerfully have clipped his ear. Of course, he knows which lecturers are clerics, and therefore which he can irritate with impunity.

  ‘Me? Why?’

  ‘He won’t tell the likes of me that, will he?’ said the impudent scallywag.

  I finished my tankard with one draught and followed him back to the Academy Building. It was dark and the cobbles were slippery. A man could easily tumble into a canal, and many do, though this possibility seemed lost on the boy, who skipped happily along at speed. It took only a few minutes to walk to the Academy, where the Rector’s candles shone from an upper window.

  The boy insolently tapped the door with his hand. ‘This is the place,’ he said.

  ‘I know,’ I told him. ‘I work here.’

  The boy shrugged. ‘Rector’s upstairs. He said I could have a piece of pie if I brought you inside half an hour, so I’m off to the kitchens.’

  I made my way up the stairs to the Rector’s chambers. He seemed pleased to see me and invited me to sit by the fire, abandoning the work on his desk to come and stand beside me.

  The Rector was a slight man, old-fashioned in his appearance and usually dressed in severe black with a small skullcap of black wool. His beard was white, trim, pointed, and his eyes were a bright blue. In this light they appeared even brighter than usual. He rested an arm on the mantelpiece and poked a log with his toe.

  ‘You will, no doubt, wonder why I have summoned you by night, and chose to use a butcher’s lad instead of my servant to do so. You may also wonder why it could not have waited until the morning.’

  I judged that the question was rhetorical and made no effort to answer.

  ‘I have received a letter from the mayor of Delft. They have urgent need of an educated man and so, naturally, they sought one from Leiden — more specifically, from me. They ask for someone with “a quick wit, a knowledge of God’s law and abundant energy”. I see all these in you, and more beside.’

  ‘May I ask why someone is needed?’

  He rubbed his chin. ‘You may, but I won’t answer. I want you to travel with a blank mind, a tabula rasa upon which anything may be written by God’s grace. I know very little anyway, so I will leave it to the mayor to explain. There is a meeting of the leading citizens of Delft at three o’clock tomorrow afternoon in the town hall. Please be there.’

  He returned to his desk and handed me a pouch. ‘A letter of introduction and commendation, and some expenses towards the journey. Keep an account and any shortfall will be defrayed on your return. The mayor may offer you some too, which you may accept but must record and receipt. A barge will leave at six tomorrow morning from the fish market. The skipper will take you along the Vliet to Delft.’

  I nodded. I would prefer not to rise so early, but it ill becomes a religious man to say so, since he would miss the first prayers of the day.

  ‘I am at your service, Rector,’ I replied, with a formal bow, and walked towards the door. I have never mastered the combination of walking backwards and bowing at the same time, and fortunately the Rector does not expect it, though I think he prefers his members of staff to be able to manoeuvre their backsides between the doorposts without banging a hip on the open door, as I managed to do.

  ‘One last thing,’ he said, so I stopped retreating and stood up straight. The Rector was sitting at his desk and declined to look me in the eye, preferring to sign papers as
he spoke.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘I have no influence in Delft. If you find yourself in difficulty, I will not be able to help you. Therefore, Master, I bid you be discreet.’

  I knew what he meant, but not how he knew it needed saying, and that worried me rather more. I had a secret, which he must have known or guessed, which is the cause of certain difficulties. In a Reformed land, I am a Catholic. If this were generally known, a lot of doors would be closed to me. When I was ordained a few years ago in France, the bishop bade me to keep my ordination secret for the time being. His reasoning was simple. From time to time the Protestants rounded up all the priests they could find and burned them, and while this had never been great sport in Holland, he saw fit not to take the chance. It is my belief that His Grace had it in mind to create a church in reserve that could be activated if the original were paralysed. In fact, the position in Holland today for Catholics is tolerable. We can build churches provided they do not front a main road. We must not gather outside to talk, and must leave services in small numbers. We must not advertise anything happening in our church, and we must not upset the neighbours.

  This would be a minor awkwardness were it not the case that I was also ordained as a Protestant minister. I never intended to act as one, but it was a condition of the stipend that kept me at the university and, at the time I accepted it, I had not yet been ordained a Catholic priest. I admitted it to but one man, the French bishop I mentioned earlier, who simply smiled and said it was very ecumenical of me. He then observed that if the Protestants were prepared to pay for my keep, that meant he could support someone else instead, and that therefore I should not trouble myself over it. But I confess that I do. Obviously the Rector must know of the Protestant ordination and, if he has discovered that I am a Catholic, it must puzzle him, but he has said nothing.

  CHAPTER TWO

  It was a bitingly cold morning as I walked to the Vliet shortly before six o’clock. There was no snow, but there was a keen frost that crunched underfoot. The fish market was busy even at that hour, the sailors unloading their catch and the buyers calling out incomprehensible numbers and waving their arms to indicate offers made and bargains accepted. A small number of serving women picked their way through the barrels, early shoppers hoping to get the best of the catch. They were mainly older women; the young ones prefer to snatch a few more minutes in a warm bed.

  ‘Master Mercurius!’ a cheery voice announced.

  ‘Good morning, Katja,’ I replied, having identified the pink pig-like face of the Langebrug inn’s cook swathed in a woollen scarf inside the hood of her cloak.

  ‘Good morning to you, sir. There’ll be some fine haddock for supper tonight, if it pleases you.’

  ‘I wish I could,’ I answered honestly, ‘but I’m bound for Delft for a few days.’

  ‘Delft? Then you’ll be the gentleman old Marten is waiting for.’ She indicated a barge a little to one side of us. ‘He’s taking his catch to Delft in the hope of a better price, I bet.’

  Katja nodded a farewell, and soon I was sitting in the bow of the barge, as far as possible from the oily fish that old Marten apparently specialised in. The north wind was keen and bore an icy sleet that left me in a quandary. Either I braved the sting on my face, or I turned my back on my host. I could — conceivably — avoid both by retreating to the stern and sitting amongst the fish but I decided to stay as I was and accept reddened cheeks as a mortification of the flesh.

  The distance from Leiden to Delft is not quite five leagues, and in good weather a man might walk it in a morning, but the icy ground and the difficulty of seeing the path when it is overlaid with snow made the barge a better choice. I have known too many men take an involuntary plunge when they mistook the route.

  In the early afternoon I arrived at Delft, walked to the Town Hall and presented my credentials, before being ushered into a spacious chamber to await the meeting.

  You could tell that the two men didn’t really like each other. Respect, yes, of course, but not like. They tried to hide it for obvious reasons, but even an outsider like me could see it within a few minutes. Perhaps only an outsider could see it?

  Mijnheer Van Leeuwenhoek stood at the window, his cane planted by his foot and its top held out in his left hand like the bowsprit of a ship so the sail of his cloak opened to its full extent. He was a tall, lean man, with straight hair parted in the middle, a narrow, long, pinched nose — and a narrow, long, pinched mind. He was not a man you would warm to, but I imagined that if you made the effort, it would be rewarded with loyalty on his part, though without much affection. I was surprised to learn later that he was not yet forty years old; his gravity placed him in his middle years.

  Mijnheer Vermeer, on the other hand, was a friendly, open fellow. He breezed in, slightly surprised that we had not started without him, largely because — for once — he was not late. You could not call Vermeer boisterous. In fact, he became very quiet as the meeting progressed, but when the subject was something he knew about, he held tenaciously to his view.

  Van Leeuwenhoek was a plain dresser, a Calvinist in every sense, happiest in blacks and browns. Vermeer also dressed plainly, largely as a result of economy, but a bright sash or a feather in his hat drew your eye. On our first meeting he wore a buff coloured coat with a broad blue sash which he kept adjusting as he sat listening. In a room of men in severe black with white collars, he brought a small spark of colour.

  The clock in the Nieuwe Kerk struck three with its fine peal, and the mayor invited us to sit. Everyone in the room knew why they were there — except, needless to say, me.

  The mayor began by explaining that three young girls had been abducted from their homes. ‘The first was Gertruyd Lievens, who disappeared on the eighteenth day of January. Her body was found last week in a shallow grave to the north of the town. She had not been molested, so far as our surgeon could determine.’

  ‘May I ask the cause of her death?’ I asked.

  The mayor turned to a portly man to his left, who must have been the surgeon in question.

  ‘I believe that she had been made insensible with wine and smothered, sir.’

  Vermeer produced a piece of paper from his sleeve. ‘I made a sketch of the scene,’ he said diffidently. ‘It’s not too good — the light was poor and I had to work quickly.’

  I unfolded the sheet. It was as if I were there. A path of some sort ran along a dyke, and the field was a little lower. The body had been laid to rest in the corner of the field. Vermeer had depicted the scene in several ways on the same page. In the top left corner was a view of the grave after the surface soil had been removed. I was puzzled to see a crude cross at her head.

  ‘Was the cross placed there by the discoverer?’

  ‘No, we think the murderer did so,’ the mayor answered.

  ‘That is most unusual.’

  ‘Murder itself is unusual in Delft,’ said the mayor.

  To the right of the view of the grave, there was a version made from the field, showing the grave’s setting hard against the bank. Below that there was a picture of the young girl’s face, and to the left of that, a second version showing Gertruyd as she might have been in life.

  ‘Is this from memory, mijnheer?’

  Vermeer shook his head. ‘I asked her father to tell me what was different about my first drawing from the living girl. He vouches for the accuracy of the second image.’

  To my surprise, Van Leeuwenhoek spoke sharply. ‘This is fancy,’ he said. ‘You will not find the murderer by examination of the fruit of an artist’s imagination.’

  ‘I draw what I see,’ Vermeer retorted.

  Van Leeuwenhoek tapped the page with the top of his cane. ‘This snowflake — was it here, or perhaps a hand’s-breadth to the left? Were there exactly six snowflakes falling when she was found?’

  ‘Obviously not. I convey only that it was snowing.’

  ‘But it is exactly that precision of detail that is needed to trap this vill
ain! A man is condemned by facts, not fantasies. And facts are the basis of all science.’

  The mayor sighed. No doubt he had heard all this before. ‘But, mijnheer, the surgeon has made an inspection, distressing as that was to the family. What more could your science add?’

  Van Leeuwenhoek spoke urgently. ‘The cross — of what wood was it made? Where did it come from? There are no trees nearby to furnish it, so the murderer must have brought it. How did he transport the body without discovery, since the road atop the dyke can be seen from a distance? Why did he choose this place to bury her? Above all, why did he kill her, since he appears not to have slaked his lust upon her?’

  His passion spent, Van Leeuwenhoek returned to the window and turned his back on us. I feared that he had already discounted the prospect of any help from me. There was a cough that appeared to have been forced.

  ‘Sergeant?’

  ‘If we are to view the sites today, sir, we should go now before darkness falls.’

  ‘Indeed. We may resume here later. Let us take our cloaks and follow the sergeant, who will show us the relevant places.’

  We stepped out into the sharp wind, treading gingerly on the icy cobbles. The sergeant led us over the Boterbrug, past, I was later to discover, Van Leeuwenhoek’s old house, and along Oude Delft to the Armamentarium. There we crossed to the west side of the canal and proceeded into a maze of courtyards and small alleys connecting them. The houses were two storeys tall for the most part, and women sat at the upper windows leading me, I confess, to an incorrect assumption about their trade. As if reading my thoughts, Vermeer dipped his head and muttered an explanation.

  ‘Weavers, sir. We are in one of the weaving quarters. They work upstairs where the light is better. They’re paid much less for their labours if there is a mistake in the weave.’

  I nodded my understanding. ‘It is a hard life, mijnheer Vermeer.’