When she asks Catharina this question, her mistress smiles grimly. ‘No, but it would please me greatly. Imagine having such a gift! I would fly east each winter and I would not stop until I reached the tropics.’ She points at the ceiling. ‘You strap a rope around your waist and lash yourself to a platform like a baby tied to a swaddling board. Then you get another person to winch you up and hold the rope steady while you paint. Anyone could do it.’

‘I couldn’t,’ Anna admits. ‘Heights frighten me.’

Catharina nods. ‘Fair. The last time I had Lotte do it, she nodded off and dropped the rope such that I almost fell. An unpleasant feeling it was, sailing through the air like that. I imagine it’s how Icarus felt when his feathers singed and he could see the sea looming, the hungry waves ready to devour him whole. Griet was much better. She never let me fall.’

Anna’s ears prick up at the mention of Catharina’s apprentice. While sifting through Margriet’s clothes this morning before she dressed, Anna searched for clues to the woman’s disappearance, but the few skirts and kirtles told her nothing she didn’t already know. She had more luck with the combs, managing to locate a few strands of long red hair that gleamed on her palm like freshly spun copper. Coiling the strands up, she tied them in a handkerchief and buried them in the bottom of the dresser under her mother’s precious silk dress. She feels a little guilty for not informing Mrs Hartog about the dress’s presence. It could probably be altered. Worn over a chemise, padded at the hips, and with the accompanying accessories of stockings, shoes and ornamental headwear, it might just be suitable enough to be seen at court. But why shouldn’t she keep the knowledge of its existence to herself? If the dress is indeed a talisman, a way of warding off her own ill luck, she can’t afford to dilute its potency or risk losing it to someone else. She needs every scrap of good fortune for herself.

On an easel is a portrait of a richly dressed couple. The woman is at least three decades younger than her husband. Her cheeks are flushed with youth and her lips, curved in a smile, are the same blushing shade as the posy of tulips in her arms. The husband affects a more serious pose, legs planted wide, chin raised imperiously, the golden chains roped about his neck conveying his superior status as one of the city’s elite. In his left hand, he clasps a set of golden keys – the keys to the city, or his wife’s heart, perhaps.

‘I ought to finish it,’ Catharina mutters, throwing the portrait a dark look. ‘Crispijn will only bother me until I do. But I just cannot seem to summon up the will.’