The house was too quiet. Even the clocks seemed hesitant, their ticks stretching thin through the corridors. Katelijne paused at Edwin's door. It stood half open, the air beyond faint with the smell of ash, ink, and oil. On the table lay his quills, one snapped clean at the neck; beside it, a single blank sheet, corners curled as if waiting for a hand that would not return.
She stepped inside. The chair had been pushed back abruptly, the cushion crushed and the floor scattered with flecks of charcoal. Against the wall hung the study her father had found the night before—now missing from its frame. Only the faint outline of dust remained.
Katelijne traced the mark with her fingertips. The emptiness left behind felt louder than any farewell.
From below drifted the uneven sounds of grief: her mother's muffled sobs, her father's steady pacing across the parlour tiles. Two different kinds of sorrow—one breaking, one contained.
A gull cried somewhere beyond the shuttered window. The sound tugged at her chest, the same mix of freedom and ache she had felt when she last saw Joseph on the quay.
She folded her hands tightly before her. There would be no comfort in standing here. What Edwin had chosen could not be undone, and what remained—her parents, the name, the business—must somehow be steadied.
Katelijne turned from the empty room and walked toward the stairs, the faint smell of charcoal clinging to her sleeves. Downstairs, the fire would be burning low and her father waiting for answers she did not yet have the strength to give.
The parlour still bore the marks of the night before. A chair half-turned from the table, a wine glass toppled, the faint scent of smoke lingering where the fire had gone out. Margriet sat near the window, her eyes swollen from weeping, the needle fallen from her sewing.
'He walked out as if the door belonged to him,' she said, voice shaking. 'No coat, no word of where he'd go. I thought he would cool his temper and return by morning.' She pressed a handkerchief to her mouth. 'But he hasn't.'
Jeroen stood at the hearth, staring into the dead ashes. The anger that had flared last night had burnt itself to exhaustion. What remained was a quiet, aching disbelief.
'I shouldn't have pressed him,' he said. 'I thought to reason with him — not drive him from his own house.' His hand tightened on the mantel. 'He's a good boy. I should have seen how much he struggled between us.'
'He's our son,' Margriet whispered. 'How could we not have known?'
Katelijne stood in the doorway, pale but steady. 'He's safe,' she said softly.
Her father turned, searching her face. 'You've seen him?'
For a moment she hesitated. The image rose sharp before her — Edwin in the grey light before dawn, the troupe's wagon drawn up by the quay, its wheels sunk deep in the mud. Isabelle at the reins, Joseph beside her, the others loading their instruments beneath the canvas. And Edwin, coat unbuttoned, sketch satchel slung across his shoulder, looking both terrified and free.
She had called his name once, low so as not to wake the city. He had turned, lifted a hand in farewell, and the wagon had rolled away toward the misted road that led to Mechelen, to Paris — to wherever he might become himself.
'He's not alone,' she said at last. 'He left with friends — good people who will see him safe on the road. He won't return soon, but you mustn't fear for him. He needs time to understand who he is and what he wants.'
Margriet's hands twisted in her lap. 'Paris?' she whispered, though Katelijne had not spoken the word.
'Perhaps,' Katelijne said quietly. 'He's following what he loves. And though it's hard, we must let him.'
Jeroen's expression softened, the ache in his eyes deepening. 'You speak as though you've lost him.'
'No,' she said. 'Only set him free.'
The morning light slanted across the study floor, catching the dust that hung motionless in the air. Jeroen sat behind his desk, his hands folded on the open ledger before him. The pages were covered in her brother's neat columns, her own smaller notations slipped between them like a second voice. He looked up as Katelijne entered, summoned by his call.
'Close the door,' he said. His voice was steady, though there was a weight in it she had not heard before.
She obeyed and waited, hands clasped before her.
He studied her for a long moment, as though seeing her properly for the first time. 'These figures,' he said at last, touching the page. 'They're not your brother's work, are they?'
She hesitated. 'Some of them,' she said quietly. 'He would grow tired, or uncertain, and I would help where I could. It was nothing of importance.'
Jeroen gave a faint, rueful breath. 'Nothing of importance,' he repeated. 'And yet it took a clever eye to see what even I had missed. The errors ran deep—cleverly disguised over months. I might never have known had you not marked them.'
Katelijne lowered her gaze. 'It was Edwin who noticed first. I only helped him trace the pattern.'
He nodded, but his expression softened with something like regret. 'You helped him, yes. And in doing so, you helped me. I was blind, Katelijne—too certain of the men I trusted.' His hand closed lightly over the ledger. 'Floris' deceit was not sudden. It was a slow rot, and I let it spread beneath my name.'
He rose, walked to the window, and stood looking out at the pale fog over the harbour. 'He came this morning,' he said, without turning. 'Ashamed, contrite, full of talk of mistakes and second chances. If you still wish to marry him, I will not stand in your way. I would take him at his word and call the matter done.'
Katelijne was silent for a moment, the weight of his offer heavy in the room. Then she said quietly, 'I do not wish it. Floris is not the man I thought him to be. Nor the sort of man I would bind my life to.'
Jeroen turned, and for the first time in many months, a true smile touched his face—worn, but genuine. 'Then we are agreed.'
He returned to his chair and gestured to the ledger. 'Tell me, what would you have instead?'
She met his eyes. 'If you will allow it, I would like to continue this work—keeping the books, understanding the trade as Edwin did.'
He was silent a long while, considering. 'It will not be simple,' he said at last. 'A woman cannot sit among merchants and call herself a factor. But perhaps there are quieter ways.'
She inclined her head. 'I am content with quiet ways.'
Jeroen nodded, closing the ledger with care. 'Then so be it. The marriage to Floris will not proceed. And when you next write to your brother, tell him this house remains his—whenever he is ready to return.'
Katelijne bowed her head in assent. The morning light had shifted, warming the dust to gold. For the first time, her father's voice held not command but trust.
The air outside was cool and still, the harbour mist thinning to a pale drift that clung to the edges of the street. Katelijne pulled her cloak close and walked without direction, her steps following the familiar curve of the quay.
The city was stirring again after the long days of Carnival. A faded banner hung limp from a window; a mask lay crushed in the gutter, its gilt flaking in the damp. She paused to pick it up, turning it over in her hand before setting it gently aside. Even joy, it seemed, left its debris.
Further along, the sound of a hurdy-gurdy drifted from a tavern door — thin, plaintive, the tune half-familiar. It made her think of the troupe and of Joseph, his voice low and certain in the fog. She smiled faintly, wondering where he might be by now — on some road beyond Mechelen perhaps, or sketching the dawn light on a river she had never seen. She hoped he would return, though hope itself felt like a fragile thing.
Her thoughts turned to Edwin. He had been her shadow since childhood, his laughter filling the corridors, his quiet sketches appearing in the margins of her books. The space he left behind seemed to echo with all that would never be said between them. She knew he had gone where he needed to — and that she must let him — yet the ache of it settled deep.
Of Floris she thought with a quieter detachment. The future that had once seemed certain now felt small, as though it had belonged to someone else entirely. There was no grief in its loss — only a kind of release.
The wind shifted, carrying the scent of salt and smoke. She turned toward the river, where the masts rose through the mist like a forest of bare trees. Somewhere beyond them, a bell tolled the hour.
When she looked back toward the city, she could see the outline of her father's house through the haze — solid, familiar, yet changed. For the first time she felt something stir that was not sorrow but anticipation. The work ahead would be hard, and the world would not make it easy, but it was hers now, in part.
Katelijne drew a steady breath and started home, her steps light against the cobbles. The fog was lifting. The air smelled faintly of spring.