The Wild Girl

by Kate Forsyth

  ‘That’s true,’ Dortchen replied.

  ‘He said, too, that poetry heals the wounds of reason. I often think of that. Does reason wound us?’

  ‘Sometimes,’ Dortchen answered, thinking of her father.

  Wilhelm looked at her with interest. She looked away, not wanting him to read her face. No one had ever spoken to her like this, as if she were an adult with a mind and a will of her own. ‘If poetry is medicine for the world, then it would be rather a fine thing to write it, don’t you think? You’d be like a doctor of the soul,’ she said.

  ‘I think so,’ he replied. ‘I’d rather be able to write than practise law. Not that that seems likely, anyway. It’s three months since I completed my last exam, and still no job. I don’t know what I’m meant to do.’

  ‘You should write something,’ she suggested.

  Wilhelm shredded the bread between his long, thin fingers. ‘I don’t know … I doubt I’ve the talent for it.’

  ‘You’ll never know unless you try,’ she answered.

  He smiled. ‘True. You’re wise beyond your years, Dortchen.’

  ‘What else did this poet say? What was his name again?’

  ‘Novalis. It’s not his true name – that was Georg von Hardenberg. I don’t know where he got the name Novalis from, but you must admit it sounds much more poetic. He was one of the Romantics, you know. He said, “To romanticise the world is to make us aware of the magic, mystery and wonder of the world; it is to educate the senses to see the ordinary as extraordinary, the familiar as strange, the mundane as sacred, the finite as infinite.”’

  ‘That’s beautiful,’ Dortchen said.

  ‘He was a great writer,’ Wilhelm said. ‘It’s so sad he died so young – just think of what he might have achieved, had he lived longer. He wrote a book about a young man who dreams about a blue flower. It was your bachelor’s button that made me think of him.’ He gestured towards the cornflower lying on the table next to his plate. ‘No one knows what the blue flower means. Death. Love. Beauty. Perhaps the yearning to express the inexpressible. The mystery of the blue flower is its power.’

  Silence fell between them. Dortchen was entranced by all he had told her. She hugged her knees, thinking over his words. To see the ordinary as extraordinary.

  Wilhelm put down his cup. ‘But I’m keeping you from your work. I should go.’

  ‘Oh, please don’t,’ she blurted, then added in a rush, ‘I want to hear more. I’d much rather talk about poetry than weed the garden beds.’

  ‘You’re as bad as Lotte,’ he teased. ‘All right. What more do you want to know?’

  ‘What did he die from?’

  ‘Tuberculosis,’ Wilhelm replied. ‘It was very sad. He fell in love at first sight with a young girl called Sophie. They were engaged when she was only thirteen.’

  ‘That’s how old I am.’

  ‘Yes, I know, and Lottechen too. Much too young to be married. They were told they had to wait until she was older, but she got sick with tuberculosis and died when she was only fifteen. He caught it from her, and four years later he was dead too.’

  ‘That is sad,’ Dortchen said. Her thoughts were busy with the poet who fell in love with a young girl. She wanted to ask Wilhelm what he thought about that but did not dare.

  ‘She must have been an extraordinary girl,’ Wilhelm said. He stood up. ‘Now I really must go. Jakob will get home from work tonight and want to know what I’ve been doing all day, and I can’t say I’ve been sitting around and chatting in the garden.’ He bowed to her gravely. ‘Thank you for the tea and the delicious lunch. If you see that wicked Lottechen of mine, will you send her home?’

  Dortchen nodded. He smiled at her and, on a sudden impulse, picked up the cornflower and tucked it behind Dortchen’s ear. ‘There. It suits you.’

  Once he had gone, she took the blue flower from her hair and kissed it, then she hid it safely in her bodice. Old Marie said that if you wore a cornflower next to your heart, it would bring love to you, whether a new love or a lost love. Dortchen thought she would keep this small blue flower forever.

  As Dortchen walked back towards the town, she heard shouting. A crowd of people were huddled around a proclamation nailed to the wall. ‘What is it?’ Dortchen asked a woman sobbing into her apron. ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘The Austrian emperor has abdicated,’ the woman answered, her voice rough with tears. ‘The … The Holy Roman Empire is to be disbanded.’

  For a moment Dortchen’s vision swam. ‘What does it mean?’

  ‘More war,’ the woman answered, and tears welled up in her eyes again. She sank down into the gutter, her face in her hands. ‘My boy! My boy!’

  Dortchen walked away, her movements as jerky as those of a marionette. Her steps quickened, then she began to run for home, her bonnet flapping on her back and her basket swinging. She left a trail of small blue flowers behind her, crushed beneath the feet of the jostling crowd.

  HOLLY THORNS

  November 1806

  Dortchen lay in her bed, listening to the skirl of pipes, the drum of tabors, the rhythmic beat of marching feet. The sound was thunderous, filling the night.

  She sat up and pressed her face to the window, but all she could see was dark rooftops and church spires, for her room faced the back of the house. She slipped from the bed, putting her feet into her slippers and catching up her shawl. Quietly she made her way down the stairs and through the house. She went into the parlour, but could see nothing through the windows for her father had locked the shutters. The sound of marching feet was very loud in here. ‘Aux armes, citoyens, formez vos bataillons, marchons, marchons …’ the French soldiers sang.

  What will happen now? Dortchen wondered. Will the soldiers break into our homes, and rob us and beat us and kill us?

  It had all happened so fast.

  Prussia had declared war against France on 9th October. Supremely confident, they bragged that clubs would be all they needed to thrash Napoléon’s ‘cobblers’.

  On 14th October, the French smashed the Prussian army at the twin battles of Jena and Auerstadt.

  On 27th October, Napoléon and his army had entered Berlin, his soldiers singing ‘La Marseillaise’. The Prussian king and queen had fled.

  On 31st October, Napoléon’s brother Louis had reached Cassel, bivouacking outside the town walls. Dortchen and her sisters had seen the innumerable red eyes of the French army’s campfires from the window of their sitting room.

  The Kurfürst escaped Cassel the next day, taking with him his family and a long train of baggage carts piled high with treasures. Weeping, Aunt Zimmer went with them. The Hessian troops had laid down their arms. Now Napoléon’s soldiers were marching into Cassel itself.

  I need to see it happen, Dortchen thought. I need to mark the moment we stopped being German and became French.

  For once, the kitchen was chilly. Old Marie had banked the fire, fearing that the French might use it to burn down the house. There was no sound from Mozart, whose cage was muffled by an old eiderdown.

  Dortchen lifted the latch of the back door and eased herself outside. She could see clearly, for a lurid red light filled the night sky, and the smell of smoke stung her nostrils. Her spirit quailed within her, but she could not bear to go back to her bed. She went down the step and into the kitchen garden, huddling her woolly brown shawl about her against the cold.

  Little grew at this time of year, and the wide garden beds stretched empty on either side, sleeping under their thick blankets of straw. The fruit trees were pale and spindly, the bean stakes lonely pyramids of bare sticks. Only the holly tree was still bushy and green, its black jagged leaves sharp against the starlit sky.

  An apple tree was espaliered nearby, and Dortchen tucked up her nightgown and climbed it nimbly, its horizontal branches thick and strong under her feet. She could hear the beat, beat, beat of the marching boots more clearly now, echoing down the main street. Her stomach jangled with nerves.

&nb
sp; She heaved herself up so that she was lying on her stomach on the top of the stone wall, and stared down into the alley. Craning her neck, Dortchen could see the market square, in which marched rows of soldiers in the famous blue, white and red uniforms of the French Grand Army. All were wearing tall cockaded hats and carrying bayonets over their shoulders. Dortchen’s eyes stung and she swallowed. It was hard to see the colours of France filling the Marktgasse, instead of the familiar green uniforms of the Hessian army.

  A row of drummers marched past, and Dortchen leant so far forward to see them that she overbalanced and toppled down. It was a sharp drop and she fell heavily on her hands and knees on the cobblestones, crying aloud in pain as a holly thorn drove into the soft flesh at the base of her thumb. A few soldiers turned their heads and stared suspiciously down the dark alley, unhitching their bayonets.

  Dortchen crouched still, clutching the dark shawl around her. She felt sick with fear. Had her father not warned all his daughters of the dangers of a town under French occupation? Had he not forbidden them all to set foot outside the walled garden? And here she was, naked under her nightgown, out in the street.

  The soldiers were coming towards her, bayonets at the ready. In an agony of terror, Dortchen could not move, or even breathe. Suddenly the door across the alleyway swung open, letting out a faint gleam of candlelight. Someone came forward in a few swift steps, lifted her up and swung her through the door. Quietly the door was shut and latched. Dortchen and her saviour limped as quietly as they could up the three flights of steps and into the Grimms’ apartment.

  ‘Shh …’ her rescuer said, holding a finger to his lips. It was Wilhelm. He looked pale and dishevelled, a lock of dark hair hanging over his brow. He took her into the kitchen and lifted her up onto the kitchen table, amidst a mess of dirty crockery, baskets of muddy vegetables and piles of thick, leather-bound books.

  Dortchen stared at him with wide eyes. He smiled at her reassuringly and stood by the window, listening. Someone rapped against the door downstairs, then rattled it. When no one responded, the soldiers moved away after a few moments, but Wilhelm and Dortchen stayed silent a good while longer, straining to listen.

  At last Wilhelm turned to smile at her. ‘That was close,’ he said. ‘What were you doing – watching over the wall?’

  She nodded shyly. ‘Father said he would beat us black and blue if we even peeked out the window, but I wanted to see …’

  ‘Well, how can I scold you when I was watching too?’ His smile faded away, replaced by an expression of angry misery. ‘Jakob told us all to keep to our beds, but I refuse to cower under the bedclothes as they take over our town without even a shot being fired. I felt … I felt I had to at least stand witness.’

  ‘That’s what I thought,’ Dortchen said.

  ‘But look – you’re bleeding! Did you hurt yourself?’

  Dortchen saw that blood was trickling down her wrist, and that her palms were grazed.

  ‘Let me wash that for you,’ Wilhelm said.

  Dortchen watched as he moved awkwardly around the room, searching for salves and bandages. It was obvious he knew where nothing was, and she hid a little smile. As he bathed her hand and bound it with his own handkerchief, Dortchen burst out, ‘I’m so glad the soldiers didn’t find me.’

  ‘Yes, indeed. I hate to think what might have happened. A pretty girl like you! Napoléon’s soldiers are not known for their kind hearts.’

  Dortchen looked away, trying to hide her pleasure and confusion. He poured some milk into a little beaker and brought it to her. ‘Here, drink this – it’ll warm you. Then I’d best take you home. I hate to think what my mother would say if she knew I was entertaining you alone, at this time of night, in the kitchen.’

  ‘Or my father.’ Dortchen gave a little shudder.

  ‘Exactly. So let’s get you home.’

  Dortchen drank the milk and hopped down from the table, smoothing down her mud-stained nightgown. ‘Thank you for the milk,’ she said. ‘And your hanky. And for coming to my rescue.’

  He made a courtly bow, waving his hand and bending till his nose almost touched his knee. ‘My pleasure, my lady.’

  Dortchen laughed.

  ‘I think I had better help you back over the wall,’ Wilhelm said. ‘I would not want to wake the household by ringing the bell.’

  ‘Oh, no, please don’t do that – my father would kill me!’

  ‘Well, we don’t want that. Though I pity him. It can’t be easy having six pretty daughters and the Grand Army marching into town. Poor man.’

  ‘There’s six of you, too,’ Dortchen pointed out. ‘Should I call your mother “poor woman”?’

  ‘Not at all, because most of us are sons and can make our own way in the world,’ Wilhelm said. ‘She has only one daughter to provide for.’

  ‘Well, why can’t we make our own way in the world too?’ Dortchen complained. ‘It’s so unfair. Just because we’re girls, we have to stay at home and sew and learn to cook and wait for someone to want to marry us. While boys get to work, and travel, and have adventures. My father never lets us go anywhere or do anything.’

  ‘Well, it’s his job to keep you safe in these dangerous times,’ Wilhelm answered gently, his hand on the latch.

  Dortchen huffed out her breath impatiently. ‘If I was a boy, I’d run away and join the army and fight against the Ogre and make my fortune and marry a princess, just like the boys in all the stories.’

  ‘I wish it were that easy.’

  He opened the door. It was cold and dark and quiet outside. The sound of marching feet had died away. Wilhelm’s breath puffed white as he bent to whisper in Dortchen’s ear: ‘I’ll give you a leg-up over the wall. Will you be able to get down on the far side?’

  She nodded, huddling her shawl about her, frightened to be out in the night again. She was very conscious of her bare legs under the nightgown.

  ‘Very well, then. Here you go.’ Wilhelm cupped his hands together, and she set a hand on the wall and a foot in the cradle of his hands. Swiftly, easily, he launched her up. Dortchen caught the top of the wall and managed to swing her leg over the top, tucking her nightgown down to preserve her modesty. She waved to Wilhelm, now a dark figure in the alleyway, then swung herself down into the apple tree.

  The bare branches were silvered with frost. The berries of the holly tree looked white with rime. Old Marie said that all holly berries had once been white, but that the crown of thorns had been made of holly, and the berries had turned red when touched with Jesus’s blood. She had a story to explain everything, Old Marie.

  Dortchen’s slipper touched the ground, and she clambered down and turned. The house loomed against the starry sky. To Dortchen’s dismay, a light shone dimly in one window. She stood for a moment, swallowing hard, wanting to flee back to the messy warmth of the Grimms’ kitchen. But there was no escape.

  Slowly, she moved forward, hoping it was Old Marie, unable to sleep because of her rheumatism, or one of her sisters, looking for a chamber pot. Or even her mother, searching for her drops.

  But it was Dortchen’s father. He was waiting in the hallway outside the kitchen. The light from the candle he held shook all over his face, making the shadows around his mouth leap and grimace.

  He looked her over, his eyes lingering on her tousled hair and mud-stained knees. ‘Where have you been?’

  ‘Father, I …’ Dortchen tried desperately to think of a reason, an excuse, for being out of her bed, out of the house, after midnight, on the very night Napoléon’s Grand Army marched into town. ‘I just wanted to see.’

  ‘You were outside! Look at you. Filthy slut. Into the study.’

  ‘Please, Father, no … I didn’t do any harm … I’m back again, safe and sound …’

  He seized her arm and began to haul her down the hall.

  ‘No, Father, please. I’m sorry!’

  Her sisters hung over the balustrade, clutching shawls over their nightgowns. No one said a word as Her
r Wild dragged Dortchen into his study and slammed the door.

  In a wooden frame nailed to the wall were switches of various sizes and thicknesses. Herr Wild muttered, ‘Disobeying me, dishonouring me. Does the Bible not say “Children, be obedient to your parents in all things, for this is well-pleasing to the Lord”?’

  ‘Father, please …’

  It was no use. When Dortchen would not lift her nightgown and lay her back bare, her father pushed her face down against the desk and ripped the nightgown away. When she would not lie still, turning and twisting and fighting him, he slapped her face hard, held her down with one great hand and reached for his heaviest switch. Then he proceeded to beat her, hard and long, till the blood was flowing down her back.

  After a while, Dortchen tried not to cry and grunt and moan, but it made no difference. Herr Wild beat her till he was no longer angry. Then he let go of her neck, wiped the blood from the switch, put it back neatly in its slot, muttered a prayer and went from the room, leaving his thirteen-year-old daughter lying face-down on his desk, unable to move for the white flame of agony that possessed her.

  It was Old Marie who came. Frau Wild would be up in the bedroom with her husband, praying with him, trying to avoid bringing his rage down upon her own head. It was always Old Marie who came. She took Dortchen, limping and weeping, into the kitchen, bathed her back with cool water that stung like acid, and gently soothed her wounds with a salve made from willow bark and comfrey. She gave Dortchen some of her father’s precious and closely guarded laudanum to drink, then helped her stumble up the stairs to her room.

  Mia was sitting up in bed, her arms wrapped around her knees, looking frightened. ‘Go sleep with Lisette, sweetling,’ Old Marie said. Obediently, Mia got up and tiptoed away. Once she reached the door, she turned, ran back and kissed Dortchen very gently on the cheek. Then she was gone, her nightgown fluttering behind her.

  Old Marie helped Dortchen lie down on her stomach. It hurt so much that Dortchen gasped and wept.