The afternoon light fell softly through the parlour window, thin as silk and warm against the polished floor. Katelijne sat at the small desk that had once been Edwin's, the grain of the wood still bearing faint smudges of charcoal. The ledgers lay open before her — neat columns of figures, steady and sure. Her quill moved slowly, the tip glinting as she traced each line with a care that was neither fear nor duty, but choice.
Outside, the street hummed with the gentle rhythm of spring. A fishmonger's call drifted through the shutters; the scent of tar and the river mixed faintly with the smell of beeswax and ink. Somewhere above, a gull cried — a bright, distant sound that made her lift her head and smile, though her eyes were misted with thought.
On the corner of the desk rested one of Edwin's drawings. The paper had yellowed slightly at the edges, but the lines were alive — quick and certain. It showed the harbour at dusk, cranes bending like tall shadows over the water, sails half furled. Beneath his confident hand, even the fog seemed to move.
She brushed a thumb along the margin, her chest tightening with pride and ache in equal measure. It no longer hurt to look at his work — not in the way it once had. He had found his own path, and though it carried him far from Antwerp, she had begun to understand that distance did not mean absence.
News had reached them, in quiet fragments, of Floris van den Berg. The Guild had accepted his apology but not his excuses. His father, anxious to spare what remained of the family's name, had sent him to London to work in a counting house far from Antwerp's talk. When Katelijne passed his sisters in the marketplace a week ago, they had mumbled a greeting and moved on, their heads lowered. She felt no triumph — only relief that the matter was done, its shadow no longer reaching her father's door.
The house itself had begun to mend, in small, patient ways. Her father was learning to trust her at the ledgers, though it came slowly, as trust always does. At first he hovered behind her chair, offering quiet corrections; now, he asked her opinion on shipments and tariffs, the weight of his faith carried in the simple phrase, What do you think? It was enough.
Her mother had taken longer to adjust. Margriet still sighed at times, smoothing the table linen as if wishing it could smooth their altered fortunes, but she no longer spoke of marriage as a solution for every uncertainty. She accepted that her daughter's place might be found not in a husband's house, but here — at the desk, the quill steady in her hand.
A knock sounded at the half-open door. Her mother's voice followed, softer now than it had been in months. 'You'll strain your eyes in this light, my dear.'
'I'll be down soon,' Katelijne replied.
'Don't work too long,' Margriet said, and her footsteps faded toward the hall.
Katelijne smiled faintly, dipping her quill once more. The ink flowed smooth across the page, joining columns that balanced cleanly, as though the numbers themselves wished to be set right. She paused, listening to the faint ticking of the hall clock, then turned a page and began the next line — her father's business, now written in her own hand.
The letter lay beside the inkstand, the seal long broken, the paper creased from rereading. She hesitated before unfolding it again, though she already knew every word.
Joseph's hand had grown steadier since Antwerp, the lines firmer, the tone more assured. He wrote from Paris — of crowded streets and tavern songs, of Edwin sketching faces along the riverbanks, of laughter that asked for nothing in return.
There was pride in his words, and gentleness too. He told her he would come back — not as a fool, but as a man who had earned his place beside her. Until then, he'd written, tell your brother that what he makes with light endures.
Katelijne read the line again, smiling through the ache that came with it. She could almost see them both — Joseph watching from the bridge, Edwin bent over his sketchbook, sunlight trembling on the water.
She folded the page carefully, slipping it between the covers of her ledger where no one would think to look. Beside it lay another scrap, worn thin from handling — the first note he had sent her, carried by a boy through the fog.
So much had begun with ink and paper.
She rested her hand on the ledger, the weight of the book grounding her. Outside, the bells of St. Andries marked the hour. She dipped her quill again, the motion steady, her pulse no longer racing but sure.
The afternoon deepened, light shifting across the room until it pooled gold along the edge of the desk. Katelijne rose and crossed to the window. Below, the harbour murmured with the soft rhythm of daily life — carts rattling over cobbles, the distant call of traders, the hum of a city finding its balance again.
The world had changed in such small, relentless ways. Carnival's garlands were gone from the streets, yet now and then she still glimpsed a tattered ribbon caught in a gutter, or a painted mask left to weather on a stall. Their colours had faded, but something in them made her smile — reminders of laughter, of daring, of beginnings that no one had planned.
She thought of Joseph then, and of the road that carried him beyond the river's edge. She imagined him walking through markets of unfamiliar tongues, or standing in the glow of some Paris tavern, his hand brushing Edwin's shoulder as they spoke of paintings and promises. The ache that rose in her chest was tender, no longer sharp. He had left her with hope, not emptiness — and that was enough.
Turning back, her gaze fell on the open ledger. The ink had dried clean and even, her own handwriting running steady beside her father's older lines. The sight filled her with quiet pride. It was work that mattered — not for its coin or its measure, but because it built something that could last.
From below came the muffled sound of her father's voice, calling to the steward about a shipment due upriver. His tone was calm again, lighter than it had been in months. There would be trust between them now — not easily, not quickly, but it would grow.
Katelijne moved to the mantel and straightened one of Edwin's smaller sketches that leaned there, the corner catching the sunlight. It showed a street in Antwerp — a narrow lane of crooked roofs, alive with the bustle of traders and dogs and children. She smiled, brushing a thumb over the edge where the charcoal had blurred.
'Be well, brother,' she whispered. 'And find what you were meant for.'
Outside, the bells of St. Andries began to toll the evening hour. She watched as the light caught the roofs beyond the harbour, turning their damp tiles briefly to silver. Somewhere, a ship was casting off; she could almost hear the creak of ropes, the flap of sails filling with wind.
Katelijne closed the window against the chill and stood for a moment longer in the fading glow. The house behind her still held its silences and its scars, but it also held promise — a future shaped not by fear or duty, but by choice.
She turned once more to the harbour, where the last of the daylight slipped through the mist, silvering the roofs and the restless water below. The air was cool and salt-sweet, alive with the faint sounds of the city settling toward evening — a cart rolling home, a gull's distant cry, a bell marking the hour.
This, she thought, was how it begins again: not in the clamour of Carnival, nor in the ache of parting, but here — in the quiet, in the work, in the stillness where the light falls.