Free I Am Rembrandt's Daughter by Lynn Cullen Page B

return on Friday to pay.”
    The baker’s voice is not nice. “Whom shall I record on the bill?”
    Moeder touches her beads. “Hendrickje Stoffels.”
    I look at Moeder. Why doesn’t she say that she’s the wife of Rembrandt van Rijn? Vader is famous. He knows rich people .
    “We live at 4 Breestraat.”
    What is wrong with her? That was our old address. We moved four years ago. I tug at her elbow .
    “Good day, mijnheer.” She grabs my hand and pulls me out of the bakery. I’m so surprised I forget to jump the cracks. When I remember, it’s too late .
    “Oh!”
    “What’s wrong?” She gives me a bun before I can answer. “Here.”
    I look at the bun. It’s not even de noen. She always makes me wait until de noen to eat after we have had breakfast .
    “Go ahead. Eat it.”
    I take a bite. Bah! Moeder was wrong. This bun is not as good as the buns from the other bakery; it is dry and hardly sweet. I don’t wait to empty my mouth to tell her the bad news .
    “Shhh, puss,” she says. “I am trying to find our way.”
    The houses here are different from our neighborhood. Taller. Cleaner. “Where are we?” When I look up at my moeder, there are tears in her eyes .
    She wipes her eyes when she sees me looking. “It’s from the cold.” She smiles. “How would you like to see the biggest house in Amsterdam?”
    I nod yes, though I don’t want to. I want to go home .
    “It’s on the Kloveniersburgwal,” Moeder says. “Isn’t that a funny name?”
    “Klo-Klov—”
    “Kloveniersburgwal. You had better learn it, puss. It is the name of money.” Her voice is happy, but her smile goes away when she turns to look around .
    “Here,” she says after we walk a minute, “this is the passage.”
    We are hurrying so fast I cannot eat my bun. We come to a canal. It is much wider than ours, with beautiful painted boats on it, and there are big trees, their bare arms reaching into the cloudy sky. A shiny green carriage drawn by six white horses clatters by. I stare at it in wonder. Carriages drawn by six matched horses don’t come down the Rozengracht .
    “How much farther?”
    “Just a few more houses—it is right up there. We are on the Kloveniersburgwal now. Isn’t it pretty here?” She keeps her face pointed ahead, even though there is a boy with pretty gold hair watching us from the porch next to us. Someone opens the door to the house and pulls him inside .
    Moeder seems not to have seen him. “You will like this mansion,” she says lightly. “For two years I have watched it rise out of the ground. It belongs to the Trip family. Your vader is painting the portraits of the Trippen for it—how do you like that?”
    I nod as if I like it, though I hope they don’t send the picture back like they did from the Town Hall. Since then, many days Vader goes away in the morning and comes back at nighttime smelling of ale .
    I stumble on a cobblestone and drop my bun. When I open my mouth to protest, I see Moeder staring at something down the street .
    “Moeder?”
    She puts her hand to her hidden beads with a little cry, but I see nothing different, just a group of men in black hats and capes, coming down the walkway like you see everywhere in Amsterdam .
    She pulls me away from the dropped bun. We start running in the other direction. We run past one big building and another, my clompen slipping on the bricks, to the end of the street, where there is a big castle with five pointy-topped towers .
    “What is this place?” My cap tips off my head as I look up at the main door. A giant could fit through it .
    Moeder doesn’t answer, just throws open the door, her basket banging against the wood, and tugs me inside, my cap flapping. The group of men passes by. One of them looks over his shoulder at us, his golden curls under his big black hat catching on his collar. I wriggle out of Moeder’s grip to see him better. Could it be—is it my gold mustache man? I hope it is him so I can ask Moeder who he