This audiobook is narrated by an AI Voice. In the candlelit studio of a Dutch master, the young apprentice Godfried Schalken loves his teacher's beautiful niece, Rose – and dares to dream she might one day be his. Then a stranger comes to the door: Mynheer Vanderhausen of Rotterdam, immensely rich, his face the colour and stillness of something that should be in the grave. He buys Rose's hand with a casket of gold, and she is carried away to a fate no one will speak of. When at last she returns – wild-eyed, raving that the dead and the living should never wed – the truth begins to close in, and Schalken learns that some bargains are sealed beyond the reach of any earthly church. A tale told to explain one strange, terrible painting, and the night that inspired it.