Rembrandt's Mirror Read Online Free PDF Page B

of either deliverance or doom.
    He hauls himself up, at last awake enough to feel embarrassed. He must have screamed, but at least he did not soil himself. Why is she staring at him like this? Ah. She probably fears his wrath because she’s struck him. He nearly laughs out loud at the idea. A gust of air sweeps through the open door from behind her, cooling his sweaty arms and bringing her smell to his nose. Unlike her wrinkled brow, it is enticing. He wants more but the air is still.
    Maybe he is still asleep; there are no rules in dreams. He moves towards her, eyes half closed. His hands reach out and touch coarse fabric and a hint of warmth beyond. His nose finds the nook of her neck. He inhales the scent. Divine. He sniffs along her neckline, with each breath more and more awake. Wait. She has not stopped him. And if she has not stopped him, she might let him go further.
    He pushes aside the obstructing collar and buries his mouth and nose in the nape of her neck, steals a taste of her skin with a lick of his tongue, disguised as a kiss. Her neck arches. He disbelieves his luck, but goes on. Neck, collarbone, shoulder. Her.
    He remembers he has hands. They grab and rumple the linen,finding flesh through fabric. Hips, clutched and possessed. And there, the fat roundness of her breasts. He seizes them, such malleable softness. No matter how he sculpts and holds them, they resolutely resume their wondrous shape.
    How lithe she has become. He never would have thought it. Her thighs pressing against him. A message in that. She wants you, you fool. But he still cannot trust this new world; the nightmare still too real to him. He reaches for her, blindly pulling her towards him. They stumble on to the bed or has she pushed him there? Her skin, so warm. Something else makes itself known: Yes, he’s feeling good ; and his pain . . . ? He can’t locate it anywhere. He is capable of feeling good. Perhaps he can have a life, some kind of life.
    He pushes up the cloth of her nightshirt and lets his fingers dwell on her upper thighs, trying to discern their secret workings, the bones inside and the strands of muscles. Yes, they carry, they bear up and now they tremble softly where he’s touching them. He wants to do more – merely to worship is not enough. He runs his hands up from knee to hip, over and over again, to where the shock of thick hair beckons him.
    Just as he is thinking of laying his fingertips at her entrance, her hand folds around his cock, and he is lost in her frenzied touch.
    At last he knows it. She is his. She has given him back the world and by God he would fill it. And then he enters her with all the languor of certainty, almost laughing when she claws at him for more.
    Their encounter becomes dedicated to only one thing. It’s a smithy of joy. They forge their pleasure, this way and that, foldingit like steel, strengthening it, until it is sharp and bright – so all consuming it at last expunges who they are.
    And so the sword comes down and cuts them loose.

PART II
    Five years later

Winter
    Bredevoort, Gelderland, Dutch Republic, January 1647
    â€˜Hendrikje,’ my mother shouted through several closed doors, ‘the sheets are frozen solid on the line!’
    The morning had been so bright and sunny that I’d forgotten it was freezing. I imagined her taking them down and folding them with a crunching sound, angry that I was not rushing out to help.
    My hands carried on with the lacework. I felt the bellied bobbins, the wood worn smooth by generations. My fingers crossed two pearly threads in a twirl around one another and then placed them on the side. Twirling, placing, picking up a new pair. The lace on the black cushion on my lap grew like an ice crystal on a window.
    My back ached. I’d been resisting the impulse to stop but at last I put the cushion on the chair next to me and let my gaze drift out of the window. I wanted to put my palms on the cool glass.