Chapter Forty-Two
GRIETE HOUSE, ANTWERP, 1630
The next morning, a change in the light woke her. There was a cold whiteness to it that penetrated her eyelids through the bed drapes. At the window, she parted the curtains to find the inside coated with ice. When she scraped it with a fingernail, the outside was also silvered and opaque. She had never seen it happen before, wondering for a moment whether she might be dreaming. Dreams had certainly haunted her here.
She left her chamber to see if other windows were obscured in this way. In the room that had been Henri and Constanza’s – and her parents’ too – which he had chosen not to use the night before, she found those at the front of the house were iced only on the inside. She shivered. This room was especially cold, with no fire lit. W
