The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton

Author:Jessie Burton [Burton, Jessie]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
ISBN: 9781447250913
Publisher: Picador
Published: 2014-07-02T22:00:00+00:00

THREE

December, 1686

His mouth is most sweet: yea, he is altogether lovely.

This is my beloved, and this is my friend, O daughters of Jerusalem.

Song of Solomon 5:16

Stains

‘The Seigneur found Rezeki in a sack,’ Cornelia says in the hallway, her voice murky with grief. She watches Nella shuck the dog’s rigid body into an empty grain bag. ‘Around the back of the VOC, eight years ago. They were all dead – all the puppies, except for her.’

‘We need a mop, Cornelia. Lemon juice and vinegar.’ Cornelia nods. There are still red sweeps of blood across the marble tiles, but the maid doesn’t move. The picture frame attacked by Jack is now propped against the panelling. Marin ordered it to be hollowed out. ‘He won’t care, Madame,’ Otto had advised, but she insisted. ‘It is not for him,’ she said. ‘I cannot stand to see it half-ravaged.’ Otto completed Jack’s handiwork, his hand shaking slightly as he carved the canvas from the wood.

Now in the kitchen, Marin and Otto talk in low voices. It’s my fault, Nella thinks – I carried Jack’s doll inside after Marin threw him out. There he was the next morning, laid out on the front step, an omen of what was to come. If it was the miniaturist who laid him there, a horrid presage of what was to happen in this hall – why would she do that – why insist that this poisonous creature should stay close at all? ‘Cornelia,’ she says, rousing herself. ‘We need to clean this up.’

She tries to push Rezeki’s legs into the bag, but they are too long.

When Nella and Cornelia go down to the kitchen, Rezeki’s paws protruding inelegantly from the sack, an air of aftermath hangs between the gleam of pans. So near to Christmas, the killing of a master’s beloved dog feels like the opening act of some macabre carnival. The dog-murderer is out there somewhere, nursing more than simply a physical wound.

Otto places his trembling hands on the ancient oak of the table. Nella’s thoughts are clogged. She wants to comfort him, but he won’t even look at her. Dhana is slumped by the fire, whining at the sack in Nella’s hand.

‘Please can we bury her now?’ asks Cornelia.

There is an uneasy pause. ‘No,’ Marin says.

‘But she’ll start to smell—’

‘Just put her in the cellar.’

It is Nella who places Rezeki down gently, in the dark, upon the damp loam and potatoes. ‘Poor, poor girl,’ she says, choking on her breath. ‘Godspeed.’

‘What if Jack reports what I did?’ says Otto, back in the kitchen. ‘He’s got the knife, the wound to prove it and a tongue in his head to tell tales. He mentioned evidence, attempted murder. The militia will arrest me. And what if they ask him why he was here?’

‘Exactly,’ Marin says, banging her fist on the table. ‘I know a bit about Jack Philips. He likes the taste of life. Jack is a bragger but he would never go to the authorities. He would be signing his own death warrant and he knows it.

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