The Wild Girl

by Kate Forsyth

  ‘Well, at least we’re casting off the chains of oppression,’ Hanne said. ‘We’ll be the first country in any of the German states to have a constitution. This is a landmark day.’

  Jakob turned on her angrily. ‘Do you realise this so-called “constitution” was thrown together in Paris by a mob of half-drunk revolutionaries with blood on their hands? They fought and bickered over every single article, each pushing his own barrow, and paying no heed at all to centuries of tradition and custom. Not one of these articles has been tested in a court of law.’

  ‘Fuddy-duddy,’ Hanne said.

  The young man in the red scarf laughed.

  THE MERRY KIN

  December 1807

  Herr Wild was in a rage.

  Glass shattered. Metal crashed. Pots smashed.

  ‘What is it? What’s wrong?’ Dortchen whispered to Lisette, anxiety a cold stone in her gut.

  ‘It’s the new weights and measurements,’ Lisette whispered back. ‘The King has ordered all shopkeepers and tradesmen to adopt them. All of father’s old jugs and scales and spoons are useless. He has to order in all new things, and it’ll cost a lot. He still hasn’t been paid for all the drugs the soldiers took when they first invaded. And, of course, it is the French who are selling the new measuring tools.’

  ‘Confounded parasites,’ Herr Wild shouted. ‘Sucking my lifeblood away.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s a good time to ask him about the ball,’ Gretchen said.

  ‘It’s never a good time to ask him about anything,’ Hanne said.

  ‘Girls,’ Frau Wild called in a low voice from the top of the stairs. ‘Come away. Don’t let him hear you.’

  Disconsolately, the sisters trailed upstairs to the drawing room, where they took up their sewing and knitting. Outside, stray flurries of snow drifted down out of a pewter-grey sky, but it was warm and cosy inside. Frau Wild was lying on the couch, a small table crowded with drops and smelling salts and pillboxes at her elbow, and so Dortchen and Mia had to sit on the hearth rug with cushions behind them.

  ‘Mother, won’t you speak to him?’ Gretchen wheedled. ‘He’ll listen to you.’

  ‘I don’t know why you think so,’ Frau Wild said.

  ‘But how are we supposed to meet any eligible gentlemen if we’re never permitted to go anywhere?’ Gretchen pleaded. ‘Mother, you must appeal to him. I don’t want to be left on the shelf like Lisette.’

  ‘I’m only twenty-five,’ Lisette protested.

  ‘Only,’ Gretchen shuddered.

  ‘Please, girls, not so vulgar,’ Frau Wild said.

  ‘Tell him you fear Gretchen will form a mésalliance with that boy next door,’ Hanne suggested, squinting as she rethreaded her needle.

  ‘I am not so foolish,’ Gretchen replied angrily. ‘I admit that Wilhelm is very handsome, but have you seen his clothes? How could he afford to set up a house?’

  ‘No prospects,’ Frau Wild said.

  ‘Exactly,’ Hanne said. ‘Father will be so horrified at the idea that he’ll start looking around for alternatives at once. And what better place to meet suitable young men than at a ball at the King’s palace?’

  ‘I must say, it sounds so much nobler to talk of going to a ball at the King’s palace instead of at a mere Kurfürst’s palace,’ Gretchen said.

  ‘You shouldn’t speak so,’ Lisette chided her.

  ‘The poor Kurfürst,’ Dortchen said, remembering the stout man in the shabby clothes and powdered wig who had called her pretty.

  ‘You should not be so lacking in taste,’ Frau Wild said. ‘It is most unbecoming.’

  Gretchen tossed her head. ‘Well, it’s true. And you all must admit that the palace is a far merrier place now. It’s been one ball after another. And we’re invited to this one.’

  ‘I can’t believe Rudolf managed to secure us invitations,’ Hanne said. ‘Who would have thought any good would have come out of him going out carousing all night with those new cronies of his?’

  ‘He’s hardly showing up in the shop at all any more,’ Lisette said. ‘And when he does he’s like a bear with a sore head.’

  ‘Well, that’s not surprising.’ Gretchen giggled. ‘Did you hear him trying to get up the stairs last night?’

  ‘Last night? This morning, more like it,’ Röse said. ‘I thought we were being invaded by intoxicated soldiers. I was most discomposed.’

  ‘Father is giving me more and more responsibility in the shop,’ Lisette said.

  ‘Who’d have thought?’ Frau Wild said.

  ‘I know! To think how reluctant he was to let me serve at all. He’s always made me stay in the stillroom before. Yet with Rudolf always off at the theatre and the races …’

  ‘And at gambling dens,’ Hanne said with relish. ‘I do wish we were allowed to go too. I’d love to see a gambling den. It sounds so decadent.’

  ‘Not at all the thing,’ Frau Wild said.

  ‘Well, I’m glad Father doesn’t let me serve in the shop,’ Gretchen said. ‘All those squalling babies and suppurating boils – I can’t imagine anything more horrid.’

  ‘You aren’t allowed to serve in the shop because your French is so bad,’ Mia pointed out.

  ‘I don’t think serving in a shop is at all ladylike,’ Gretchen said, putting her nose in the air. ‘Really, Lisette, I don’t know how you stand it.’

  ‘Father doesn’t let me actually serve the soldiers,’ Lisette said. ‘I have to sit behind the counter and tell him in a low voice what they asked for and then fetch it from the stillroom for him. He handles all the weighing and wrapping, and the money. I’m supposed to pretend I’m invisible.’

  ‘Pride is hard to swallow,’ Frau Wild said.

  Sometimes their mother’s pronouncements were hard to decipher. Dortchen thought she must be trying to say that Herr Wild’s pride was bruised by needing his eldest daughter’s assistance, and that was why she had to pretend to be invisible. Hanne and Gretchen giggled and rolled their eyes, and Mia looked perplexed, but Lisette smiled gently at her mother. ‘Yes, I know,’ she answered.

  ‘Anyway, what does it matter? All that matters is that Rudolf has got us invitations to the ball, and we have to convince Father to let us go,’ Gretchen said. ‘Surely he could not be so cruel and heartless as to forbid us?’

  ‘Yes, he could,’ Hanne said.

  ‘Father won’t like it,’ Frau Wild agreed.

  Frau Wild must have taken some opportunity to drop a hint in her husband’s ear, because the next morning, at breakfast, he put down his coffee cup and said, ‘What’s this about a ball?’

  The elder sisters exchanged nervous glances. ‘King Jérôme is holding a Christmas ball, Father,’ Lisette answered meekly. ‘Many of the girls in town have been invited, including us.’

  ‘Ridiculous,’ he said. ‘There’s no reason for you all to go off hobnobbing with that Corsican tomfool.’

  Gretchen and Hanne exchanged agonised glances.

  ‘Not at all,’ Rudolf said, looking up from his paper. He was looking rather rumpled, with his golden locks in disarray and his eyes bloodshot and heavy-lidded. ‘It’s good business practice, Father, to cultivate contacts at court.’

  ‘Don’t preach good business practice to me, you insolent pup,’ his father roared. ‘Is it good business practice to be out carousing instead of getting a decent night’s sleep and being at work at a godly hour?’

  ‘It is when you’re carousing with the King’s quartermaster,’ Rudolf replied, pouring himself more coffee. ‘He’s promised to look into that debt you’re still owed, Father.’

  Herr Wild had begun to answer angrily, but at that he paused. ‘What was that? My debt is to be repaid?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Rudolf said. ‘If we stay on the King’s good side. King Jérôme is most generous to those he likes, and he certainly seems to have plenty of money to throw around. It’s a great honour for the girls to be invited, and it would be short-sighted, not to say rude, to refuse his invitation.’
>
  No one spoke, their eyes fixed on their plates. Herr Wild was scowling, but at least he was not yelling.

  Frau Wild cleared her throat. ‘A good chance for the girls, dear. To meet new people.’

  Greatly daring, Hanne said, ‘Yes, really, the only people we ever meet are those who go to church or those who live across the street.’ She turned to Gretchen. ‘Which reminds me, Gretchen, what about that handsome Grimm boy? Is he still pretending to write down any old tales you know, to have an excuse to spend an hour in your dazzling presence?’

  Gretchen laughed and tossed her ringlets. ‘Poor boy. He’s so eager. Have you seen his coat, though? It’s the shabbiest thing.’

  Dortchen wanted to defend Wilhelm but did not dare.

  Herr Wild’s scowl deepened. ‘Those Grimm fellows are a disgrace. Five of them, and only one has a job. Plenty of opportunities around for up-and-coming young fellows, but all they do all day is scribble, scribble, scribble, and go about looking like scarecrows.’

  Dortchen could keep quiet no longer. ‘But, Father, it is not their fault they are poor.’

  ‘No? Then whose is it? Can’t they get a job?’

  ‘They’re scholars,’ she said. ‘They’re collecting old stories to make into a book.’

  ‘Faugh,’ Herr Wild said with the utmost contempt. ‘Waste of paper.’ He eyed Dortchen and she quickly looked down at her plate, biting her lip.

  ‘It’s a shame,’ Frau Wild said.

  ‘I’ll not have it,’ Herr Wild said. ‘No more running over there at any time of day or night.’ He stared hard at Dortchen, and she felt herself beginning to burn a fiery red.

  ‘But what of our reading circle?’ Lisette interjected.

  ‘It will look very odd,’ Hanne said. ‘The Grimms are well connected, you know.’

  ‘Their aunt is in exile with Princess Wilhelmine,’ Gretchen said. ‘And they know the von Arnims.’

  Herr Wild frowned. ‘Rackety lot they are too. Isn’t he the fellow who eloped with that girl?’

  ‘That was Herr Brentano,’ Dortchen said.

  ‘The poet,’ Herr Wild said with the utmost disgust.

  ‘Well, Father, if you let us go to the ball at the King’s palace, we shall have a chance to meet someone apart from poets and impoverished scholars,’ Hanne said with spirit. ‘The King has collected many men of taste and influence around him.’

  ‘Bankers,’ Gretchen said. ‘Noblemen.’

  ‘I haven’t the money to spend on new dresses and furbelows,’ Herr Wild said. ‘The coffers are empty.’

  ‘That’s the beauty of this ball,’ Lisette cried. ‘It’s a fancy-dress party, Father. All the guests are to come in old-fashioned outfits.’

  ‘You know Mother never throws anything out,’ Hanne said. ‘There are boxes and boxes of things up in the garret. I’m sure we’d be able to find something to wear.’

  His frown deepened. ‘I simply don’t understand why you want to go gadding about all the time. Home is best.’

  ‘Yes, Father,’ the sisters replied obediently, but all were trying to keep smiles off their faces. He had not forbidden them to go.

  After the morning chores had been finished, Frau Wild and her daughters went up to the garret, which was piled high with chests, broken chairs, cracked chamber pots, a cobwebbed spinning wheel, chipped ceramic jars and an old box-bed that smelt suspiciously of mice. Lisette and Hanne wrestled one of the chests out and flung open its lid, pulling out old gowns of gold brocade, blue flowered satin and crimson velvet stripes. ‘How hideous!’ Gretchen cried. ‘Did you really wear all those petticoats, Mother? Look, it’s hooped. What a scream!’

  ‘Panniers were all the fashion,’ her mother replied, sounding wistful. She took one of the gowns and held it against herself.

  ‘You must’ve looked an absolute fright,’ Gretchen said.

  ‘I’m sure you were the prettiest girl in town,’ Lisette said.

  Frau Wild smiled tiredly at her. ‘Not at all, I’m afraid.’

  ‘I’m sure Father thought so when he met you.’

  ‘Did you fall in love at first sight?’ Dortchen asked.

  Frau Wild folded the gown and put it down. ‘Our marriage was arranged by our fathers. We did not meet until a week before our wedding.’

  ‘Did you like him when you met him?’ Mia wanted to know.

  ‘My feelings were of no importance,’ Frau Wild said. She sat down on a rickety old stool, one hand pressed to her chest. ‘He has always been a good provider.’

  Gretchen had not been listening, holding one dress against her, then throwing it down and trying another. She had pulled the hooped petticoat on over her own slim muslin dress, then swayed from side to side so the stiff hoops – which extended a foot to either side of her body – rocked back and forth. ‘How ever did you sit down?’

  ‘We didn’t, much of the time,’ Frau Wild replied. ‘Though it was possible, as long as you approached your chair backward and sat only on the very edge of it.’

  ‘How did you get through the door?’ Mia wanted to know.

  Her mother smiled faintly. ‘Well, we had to go sideways, of course.’

  The girls shrieked with laughter. Mia seized a floppy straw hat with a wide satin ribbon and crammed it on her head, while Hanne held the crimson velvet against her and waltzed around, knocking over one of the old chamber pots. ‘I can’t believe you used to wear all this,’ Lisette said, holding up a dress with waterfalls of yellowed lace from elbow to fingertip. ‘Look at all the frills and ruffles. Wouldn’t your sleeves trail in your soup?’

  ‘We thought it very pretty back then,’ Frau Wild sighed.

  Röse had not joined the other girls rummaging through the chest. She liked to think she was above such worldly preoccupations. Instead, she was writing her name in the dust on a sideboard with her finger. ‘Are there any books in that old chest?’ she asked.

  ‘No, I’m sorry,’ her mother said. ‘Your grandfather was not one for books.’

  Röse sighed. ‘I’m afflicted with illiterate forebears. Perhaps I’m adopted?’

  Her mother shook her head. ‘I’m afraid not, Rösechen. It was my poor old body that bore the brunt of your birth, and I suffer for it to this day.’

  ‘I remember the day you were born very clearly,’ Gretchen said. ‘You bawled so loudly that all the windowpanes rattled and our neighbours thought we were slaughtering the pig.’

  ‘You’re the pig,’ Röse said disdainfully, and began poking through the dresser’s drawers.

  Dortchen lifted a beautiful dress from out of the chest. Made of blue silk, it was sprigged with flowers and butterflies and worn over foaming white petticoats. She stepped into it and drew it over her own muslin. Lisette tied up the ribbons for her.

  ‘How ever did you breathe?’ Hanne asked, struggling to tie up the bodice of a brocade dress the colour of clementines.

  ‘You got used to it,’ her mother said. ‘It did mean you couldn’t walk too fast or dance too much.’

  Another trunk was opened and riffled through. Hats were flung back and forth, and laughed over, and Gretchen and Hanne bickered over a faded silk shawl. Dortchen bent – as much as she could in the stiff bodice – and looked through the chest. She found, at the very bottom, a white wig resting upon a wooden head. Its hair was arranged high, with rolls of stiff curls over the ears. She lifted the wig out and put it upon her head. ‘I look like Marie Antoinette,’ she cried, whirling in front of an old spotted mirror. She looked quite unlike herself, like a princess out of an old tale, like a ghost.

  ‘I want it! I’ll wear that. I’ll look like a queen.’ Gretchen seized the wig and put it on.

  ‘But I saw it first,’ Dortchen protested.

  ‘You won’t be going to the ball anyway – you’re too young,’ Gretchen told her. ‘Oh, look, it’s perfect. I’ll be the belle of the ball.’ She spun in front of the mirror. With red spots of excitement burning high on her cheekbones and her large blue eyes sparkling, she loo
ked very pretty indeed.

  ‘Oh, but Mother—’ Dortchen protested.

  ‘There’ll be other balls, my dear,’ her mother told her.

  ‘There’s no need for Dortchen to go to a ball,’ Herr Wild said from the doorway, startling them all.

  ‘Oh … but why?’ Dortchen blurted.

  ‘No need for all of you to be married,’ he said. ‘Someone has to stay and look after your poor old parents.’ Although he said it in a jocular way, his words still cut at Dortchen like a knife.

  ‘But that’s not fair,’ she cried.

  His brows began to lower. ‘Come, now, that’s no way to talk to your father. Six daughters are altogether too many to try to settle in these uncertain times. No one should expect it of me.’

  ‘But … but what if I want to get married?’

  He glared at her. ‘You’ll do as you’re told, Dortchen, and that’s the last I want to hear on the subject.’ He then glared around at his other daughters. ‘And keep your noise down. I have sick patients who expect some peace and quiet when they come to visit me.’

  He clattered back down the bare wooden steps, leaving silence behind him. Mia took off the floppy shepherdess’s hat and laid it back down on the chest. ‘I suppose I’m not permitted to go either,’ she said in a small voice.

  ‘You’re only twelve, Mia, of course you’re not going,’ Gretchen said.

  ‘But we’ll tell you all about it in the morning,’ Lisette promised.

  ‘And Mother’s right, there’ll be other balls, lots of them,’ Hanne said. ‘Aren’t they calling him the “Merry King” already?’

  ‘Well, I don’t want to go,’ Röse said. ‘Really, I do think you girls think of nothing but your own frivolous pleasure. I shall stay home and study my prayer book and keep poor Father company.’

  ‘I don’t want to go either,’ Mia said, not at all convincingly.

  ‘You’re just afraid no one will ask you to dance,’ Gretchen said. ‘And why would they, Mia? You’d stomp all over their toes and break them.’

  ‘I would not! That’s got nothing to do with it. I don’t want to go because I have better things to do.’