Литагент HarperCollins - Midnight Blue - A gripping historical novel about the birth of Delft pottery, set in the Dutch Golden Age

Harper

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First published in the Netherlands by Ambo Anthos 2016

Published by HarperCollins Publishers 2017

The publisher gratefully acknowledges the support of the Dutch Foundation for Literature.

Copyright © Simone van der Vlugt

Translation copyright © Jenny Watson

Map of Delft: De Agostini / Biblioteca Ambrosiana / Getty Images

Simone van der Vlugt asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books

Source ISBN: 9780008212100

Ebook Edition © April 2017 ISBN: 9780008212124

Version: 2017-01-19

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Map

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Glossary

Afterword

Suggested Further Reading

Reading Group Questions

Acknowledgements

About the Author

About the Publisher

De Rijp, March 1654

The funeral was a week ago and I still feel more relieved than anything else. I know that’s indefensible, that I should be grieving, but it’s impossible.

I stand with my arms folded, gazing out of the top half of the kitchen door at the fields and meadows surrounding the farm, but don’t really see them.

It should never have come to this. Looking back, I can’t understand what came over me that night. For years I’d thought of Govert as just another man from the village, not someone I paid any particular attention to. I never gave him much thought at all. Not that he wasn’t an attractive man, in a certain way he was. The first time I noticed him was at the village fair, when he pulled me up to dance and held me to him. I’d been drinking, of course I had been drinking, but not so much that I couldn’t hear his heavy breathing or feel his body pressing against mine, his muscular arms clasping me so tentatively.

With every turn our hips brushed and the grip with which he steered me through the other dancing couples tightened. It was an exciting feeling. I realised he was in love with me. The off-putting way he stared at me whenever we passed one another, with that furrowed brow of his, had been an expression of desire rather than disapproval.

Did I feel flattered by his attention? Had I turned down too many potential suitors in the hope of something better? Was I afraid of being a spinster all my days? Or was I in love at that moment?

When he took my hand in his and led me outside to a quiet corner of the orchard I didn’t protest.

Govert was happy when I finally told him, four months later, that I was pregnant, all set to marry me and start a family. As a widower of around forty and not without means, he was a fair prospect, even if he wasn’t what I’d pictured.

Not that there was much choice. One moment of madness at the fair, one moment of total lunacy, and my future was set. Gone was the chance to someday leave the village and begin a new life, gone were my dreams.

The worst thing was that I wondered what I’d even seen in him that night. Whatever it had been, the next morning it was gone too.

We were married a month later, and six weeks after that my pregnancy ended in a premature birth. The child, a boy, was stillborn. That was over a year ago too.

And now Govert himself is lying beneath the cold, dark earth. The only mirror in the house is turned to the wall and the shutters have been closed for weeks. Today I’m opening them again. I let the morning light stream in with a feeling of utter pleasure. The living room, which was packed with visitors for days, is eerily quiet. I’ve lived in De Rijp all my life, and the support of relatives, neighbours and friends is heart-warming. My in-laws were notably absent. They probably find it hard to accept that I’m about to inherit all of Govert’s property after one year of marriage. It’s understandable, but there’s nothing I can do about it. And God knows I earned that inheritance.