His words linger in the charged silence. Anna watches him disappear, wishing she, too, could be excused. She stays rooted to her chair, afraid Catharina will snap at her if she dares rise. The artist has turned her head resolutely towards the window, her gaze fixed outside as if the answers she seeks lie somewhere beyond the wet woodland glimpsed through the glass. A girl in a white cap and apron appears at the table to clear away the breakfast things. This must be the young servant Susanna mentioned last night – Lotte. The girl peers curiously at Anna as she piles the baskets and silverware together and sweeps up the crumbs. Catharina ignores her as well as Anna, seeming to prefer her own thoughts to any comfort or comment they might offer. Shooting Anna one last glance, Lotte vanishes into the corridor. In her absence, Anna’s thoughts grow louder, the doubts circling like noisy crows inside her head. Should she have defended Catharina against Crispijn’s attacks? What are the protocols? To whom does her loyalty lie – the man who employed her or the mistress she now serves? What if they are both displeased and order her gone? Where will she go?

Despair creeps under her skin and she shivers. Outside, it has begun at last to snow.

From the sitting room window, Anna watches the flakes drift, hoping for softness, for pincushion hills and trees fringed like ladies’ parasols. What sluices down from the sky is a sleeting rain that litters the drive with dirty white pellets. Catharina sits in a velvet chair beside the fire, reading a translation of Seneca’s Philologus and taking furious notes for a treatise she plans to write on the education of modern women. The argument with her brother has put her in a dark mood. She refuses Anna’s offer to scribe.

‘Just stay within shouting distance,’ she snaps when Anna works up the courage to offer. ‘I will send for you if I require your services.’

Feeling miserable, Anna retreats to the far window of the sitting room to watch the furious wind thrashing the trees. Will it always be this way? Catharina, sullen and cross, Crispijn absent, Susanna ensconced in the kitchen while Mr Hartog runs back and forth between the stables, ensuring the horses are safe and dry, shielding himself from the downpour with the aid of a patched oilcloth. Last night as she escorted Anna to her bedroom upstairs, Susanna explained that the head servants would usually sleep up in the attic but Crispijn had given up his quarters on the second floor, since he preferred the attic with its pulleyed trapdoor, affording open access to the night sky. Catharina’s brother, Anna was told, has a keen interest in all things stargazing and astronomy. Lotte, however, sleeps in a space no bigger than a broom closet behind the two kitchens. Catharina’s extensive rooms occupy the entire west side of the house and include a summer studio and portrait workshop.