Chapter Twenty-One
AMSTERDAM, 1623
Clara gripped the finely carved taffrail, standing beside Henri on the afterdeck of the Prins Willem – one of his fluyts now on its way to take on additional cargo in Antwerp – sailing across the IJ towards the open sea. The cornflower blue sky was full of scudding, puffball clouds echoed below by deep-blue water topped by ranks of white-crested waves. The ship’s sails whipped and cracked in a stiff wind.
Clara had at first been reluctant to leave Nico with Fabritius’s veiled threat still hanging over him, though never acted on in the following months. She could not argue with his point that ‘the burgomeister may be less likely to haul me off to the Rasphuis without you there to weep for me.’ They had not given up trying to track down the two men eithe
