I Am Rembrandt's Daughter by Lynn Cullen

and claiming I’d over-watered the ale, which I had. Now he was being sweet?
    “You act so surprised.” Vader uncovers the canvas. “So, Neel, what do you think of it?”
    I close my eyes and pray for Neel to use his best flattery. Keep Vader jolly, so he does not notice his precious family-group painting is missing. Maybe he does know and is toying with me, ready to spring when I least expect it.
    “I know not what to think, mijnheer,” Neel says. “It is just a beginning.”
    “Quite right, quite right. I didn’t want anyone to see it before I knew I had it down. I was afraid the image in my head would dry up. But I think I have it now, even though on the canvas it may not look like much.”
    “May I ask, mijnheer, whom you are portraying?”
    Vader smiles. “Not portraits. An allegory.”
    Neel considers the canvas. “The subject?”
    Vader puffs up like a peacock that has wandered over from the New Maze Park. “Tenderest love.”
    Neel raises his eyebrows.
    Vader laughs, then takes a yellow chunk of ochre from its linen wrapping. “I know. An impossible task.” He puts the ochre on the hollowed-out grinding slab and begins to pulverize it with a bell-shaped stone pestle. “How do you capture love or hate or any emotion, for that matter? It escapes the painter’s brush. We can only hope to simulate how it looks.”
    Neel nods sadly. “So I have found. Here—let me take that.” I cannot help but notice how his forearms bulge as he grinds with the heavy pestle.
    “This will be the exception,” Vader says, watching him, too. “God is guiding my hand.”
    Neel does not flinch. He seems not to find Vader the least bit mad. Could he really think God would work through such an imperfect person? “Which biblical story do you use to convey it?” Neel asks as he grinds. “Jesus and his moeder? Anna and Tobit? David”—he glances at me—” and Bathsheba?”
    Why does he squirm so when he mentions Bathsheba? I have no care for the story of the silly woman. Let her have her king David. No difficult choice.
    “This time, no story,” Vader says. “No Bible, no classics, no writings of the ancients. Just two people, embodying love.”
    Neel pauses. A blind man could read the doubt on his plain face. “Mijnheer, if anyone could do it, it would be you—but love? It is not like portraying apples in a still life. Love is not an object.”
    I think of Carel and his pride in painting lemons. “It is better to get a real object right,” I say staunchly, “than to be thought mad for painting the impossible.”
    Vader laughs. “What care I about what people think of me? They’ve already thought the worst. Anyhow, I am not afraid. I shall trust in God.” Vader smiles fondly at the unfinished picture as Neel fetches a jar of linseed oil to work into the ground pigment. “This shall be a present for Titus. To make amends.”
    A mad picture in exchange for putting a curse on his marriage? Some compensation.
    I watch as Vader pours the oil into the pile of yellow powder and Neel mixes it with the edge of a paint knife—a quiet team, working together to make color. Vader has never let me help him.
    Anger at them both burns in my belly. Why do they leave me out?
    There is a knock on the door.
    Glad to get away from the cozy pair, I run down the stairs to answer it.
    I open the door to a bright spring morning and Carel the Handsome, bent-kneed under the weight of a rolled-up canvas.
    Even as my heart leaps, I gasp and put my hand to my cap. I am a mess.
    “The buyer has turned it down,” he says. Through my own dismay of being caught in disarray, I notice his golden face is troubled.
    The family group? “But it was requested.” I can feel my cheeks flame. Now he knows what a failure my vader is, rejected by all, respected by none. I brush desperately at my wrinkled apron.
    “I am sorry, Cornelia. It should have sold. I think it is interesting.” He shuffles in place. “Where would you like this?”
    Vader