lowered his voice, afraid that he would shout to make himself heard over the blood pounding in his ears. He must ask the question as if the answer made no difference. ‘So he knew the Duchess?’
He was suddenly hungry to hear of her. No one had spoken of his mother since she had died.
‘The Duchess was a great patroness of his,’ Katrine said. ‘He wove a special length and sent it to her every year until she died twenty years ago.’
‘Nineteen.’
She looked puzzled, but did not ask him how he knew. ‘He never wove it again after that.’
‘Why?’
‘He said there is a craft and an art to weaving, and the art must come from the heart. I think he lost heart for it after she died.’
A woman’s romantic notion. The truth was certainly simpler. De Vos was a merchant. The money had stopped. ‘He didn’t even make some for your mother?’
‘My…my mother?’
‘You say your father only made this cloth for the Duchess. Surely he wove some for his wife.’
She shook her head, flinching as if in pain. ‘My mother’s not…’
Her voice cracked again. He wondered whether she had lost a mother, too.
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