‘Was it not a little presumptuous of him, Madam?’ Anna says when they are alone. ‘To arrange the outfit if the marriage wasn’t already agreed upon?’ They are standing in a small chamber that opens off the grand library and has been adapted as something of a makeshift dressing room. She tightens the laces on Blanche’s bodice as gently as she can, avoiding the faded bruises on the girl’s shoulders and back. At least there are no fresh ones. Since the sittings have begun, Anna has noticed no further injuries on Blanche’s person and she has started to wonder if she imagined the abuse. Perhaps Maarten was right and Blanche was choking and he was trying to help her. Perhaps his cruelty does not extend to his wife, although he is driving them all mad with his demands about the portrait. Outside the door, she can hear him now, barking orders at Henrick. The poor manservant has been recruited to help Maarten into his costume since Maarten has no valet of his own. Henrick’s fingers are gnarled and he struggles to pin Maarten’s suit together. Anna hears him mumbling a string of apologies and Maarten’s terse rejoinder. If Crispijn were here, she thinks, he would do a better job. But he would probably refuse to help. The servants have no power to do anything but follow Catharina’s orders. Crispijn would not last a day in this tense atmosphere.

‘Oh, we were very grateful that he considered me at all,’ Blanche says. ‘When we fled England, we left with nothing and disguised ourselves as peasants to escape the notice of Cromwell’s soldiers. It would have been improper for me to be seen in the Oude Kerk wearing a shabby blouse and kirtle. Maarten tells me this gown is worth more than what an artist working in The Hague makes in one year and I think it is very fine.’

She touches the gown’s sleeves delicately, a half-smile on her lips, and Anna wonders if Blanche missed the hidden sting in Maarten’s boast, his belittling of Catharina’s work.

‘He bought me other things, too,’ Blanche says. ‘But later. A velvet purse and a set of wooden combs. I had nothing to my name when we married. Nothing. Now I am rich, with a husband who adores me. It’s a situation many women would envy. That’s why the other wives are not so friendly when we meet them at court. They’re jealous of my good fortune.’

‘I’m sure that’s true, Madam,’ Anna says. She fixes a band of seed pearls on Blanche’s hair, tucking away the stray wisps under the fabric. Lijsbeth might have asked her to do this one day, she thinks. Instead, Anna dressed her corpse.