The Wild Girl

by Kate Forsyth

  Old Marie made tea for them and they drank it together in silence, Dortchen standing before the hearth as she could not sit down.

  Frau Wild came down to the kitchen, her face drawn. ‘Dortchen, darling, you must not enrage him so,’ she said. ‘He finds it hard … He does his best … And you’re growing up now …’

  ‘I know. I’m sorry.’

  But Dortchen was not sorry. She had known what the penalty would be for creeping out of the house before dawn. It was worth it for those handfuls of spidery silver oak moss hidden in the pantry.

  On the night of the next full moon, Dortchen waited till it was almost midnight before she crept from her bed. In her long white nightgown, she went barefoot across the room and lifted up the blanket on the little white cot in the corner. There, hidden beneath the lacy dress of her doll, Wilhelmine, was a small white candle, a vial of acorn oil infused with ground oak moss, and a small silver coin that had been minted in 1786.

  Dortchen had ground the oak moss to powder with the same mortar and pestle that she had used to grind the gall nuts for the dye to stain Lotte’s clothes black. No amount of scrubbing had turned the stone of the mortar and pestle white again. They were dyed indelibly black. Somehow this seemed right to Dortchen. There was darkness in this thing she was doing, no matter how she looked at it.

  If her father caught her making spells, he would kill her.

  The silver moonlight shone through her bedroom window, showing Lotte’s dark hair spread out on the pillow. It had been more than a month since Frau Grimm had died but Lotte refused to go home. She never went walking in the park with the Wild girls, nor, most shockingly of all, would she go to church.

  The spell was as much for Lotte as it was for Wilhelm.

  Dortchen poured water into her washing bowl and set it on the windowsill so the moonlight gleamed upon it. She poured a small amount of the acorn oil into her palm. It smelt woody, like an ancient forest. Dortchen breathed it in deeply, thinking with a bitter sting in her eyes that it would be a long time before she would smell the forest again. She rubbed the oil on the coin, then dropped it into the water. She wiped her oily hands on her towel, then struck a spark with her flint. She put a twist of old paper to her tinder and lit the candle.

  Golden candlelight glimmered on the water, mingling with the silver moonlight. Dortchen whispered the words that Old Marie had told her, the words that she had learnt from her grandmother long ago.

  ‘Lady of the moon,

  Bring him good fortune,

  Fill his hands with silver and gold,

  As much as he can hold.’

  She sat watching the candle burn away, hoping with all her might that the spell would work, that her sacrifice had been worth it. At last the flame guttered away. She poured the water back into the jug and climbed into bed. It smelt as if she were lying on a bed of moss, under a ceiling of dark, shifting leaves, instead of in her own small bedroom.

  Comforted, she slept.

  A STROKE OF LUCK

  July 1808

  A week after Dortchen’s moonlit spell, Jakob was offered a job as librarian at the palace.

  It was not what Dortchen had been hoping for, but it did mean that Wilhelm and Lotte did not have to move away. There was now enough money for them to pay their rent and buy some food.

  ‘I must admit, it was a stroke of luck, getting the job just when we were so desperate,’ Jakob said. ‘I only wish it had come before Mother died.’

  There was a fraught silence.

  ‘Are you enjoying the job, Jakob?’ Dortchen said quickly.

  ‘Surprisingly, yes,’ he answered. ‘All I’ve had to do so far is put a big sign on the door saying “Library of the King”. He doesn’t read and neither does the Queen, so I can do what I like, as long as I observe the etiquette of the court.’

  They were sitting in the Grimms’ kitchen. Lotte had reluctantly moved home again, and Dortchen had crept out to bring her some lentils and herbs to make soup. Dortchen had not seen Wilhelm all week, for her father had forbidden her to leave the house, except to go to church. Dortchen would have loved a chance to be alone with Wilhelm, to hear for herself how his breathing was, to measure his heartbeat with her hand, to smooth back the sweat-tousled curls from his brow. But that was impossible.

  Dortchen’s love for Wilhelm had long since ceased to be a source of secret joy for her. It was a leaden weight, a never-easing ache. He still thought of her as a child, perhaps even as another sister, but Dortchen knew her love was just as intense and true as that of any woman. There were times when she longed to be free of the fetters that bound her to him, just as she longed to burst free of the chains of duty to her family. Yet, as they were invisible and incorporeal, there was no hammer that could break those chains, no key that could unlock the shackles.

  ‘Any news?’ Ferdinand wanted to know.

  ‘King Jérôme has borrowed more money from the Jews, and his first wife is causing trouble,’ Jakob answered wearily. He loosened his stiff collar. ‘Oh, and his spies have discovered that the Kurfürst hid many of his art treasures at the old castle at Sababurg. He has had them all fetched and is very smug to have them hanging on the palace walls again.’

  ‘Spies everywhere,’ Wilhelm said. ‘You cannot have an innocent conversation in the street without someone eavesdropping on it, or throw away a bonbon wrapper without someone swooping to examine it for secret messages.’

  ‘Napoléon fears an insurrection,’ Jakob said. ‘He has written to his brother, warning him to take care and not trust anyone, but Jérôme just laughs. He thinks he is loved because everyone comes to his parties. Well, I refuse to go, no matter how pressing the invitation. You know he has summoned his mistress to court, some painted actress who is to perform at this new theatre he is building? It’s scandalous, the way he behaves.’

  ‘Yet you work for him,’ Ferdinand pointed out.

  Jakob scowled. ‘I work for him so you all don’t starve, Ferdinand. Believe me, I’d much rather lounge around all day like you do.’

  Ferdinand started up angrily, but Wilhelm dropped a hand on his shoulder and squeezed it. ‘He hasn’t lounged around all day, and neither have I, old man. I’ve been copying stories and Ferdinand has been transcribing songs for Herr von Arnim. Look what an elegant job he has made of it.’ He passed a sheaf of papers to Jakob, whose face lightened.

  ‘Well, that is good. Herr von Arnim will be pleased, I know.’

  ‘What of the war, Jakob?’ Ludwig asked.

  Jakob laid down the papers and sighed. ‘Only bad news. Or good, if you’re a supporter of Napoléon. The eldest Bonaparte brother has given up his throne in Naples and gone to be king in Spain, but the Spanish rose up against him. Napoléon’s generals have defeated them, though they had only fourteen thousand men and the Spanish forty thousand.’

  ‘It is like he has conjured demons from hell to fight on his side,’ Lotte said in a low voice. ‘Soon he will rule the whole world.’

  ‘He and his brothers,’ Ludwig said.

  ‘His brothers are just puppets,’ Jakob said. ‘Why, look at Jérôme. He gave up his wife and his little son to marry at his brother’s bidding.’

  ‘I think that’s terrible,’ Wilhelm said with vigour. ‘A man shouldn’t desert his family like that. That poor boy will grow up never knowing his father.’

  Dortchen’s lips twisted wryly but she said nothing, giving the soup one last stir and then putting on her bonnet and gloves. ‘I must go,’ she said. ‘Old Marie will be serving up our supper now.’

  Lotte got to her feet. ‘I wish you’d stay a little longer. Have supper with us?’

  Dortchen shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, I cannot. I’ll see you tomorrow maybe.’

  Lotte hugged her and gave her a kiss. ‘For five minutes, if I’m lucky.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Dortchen said again, and she let herself out. She went down the stairs and hurried across the alley, easing open the gate into the garden. All was quiet and she could
n’t see anyone standing at the windows, so she slipped through the garden and into the kitchen, taking off her bonnet and hanging it on her hook.

  ‘Is all well?’ she asked Old Marie, who nodded, her round face creased with anxiety.

  Dortchen let out her breath in a long sigh of relief. A feeling of compression about her ribs eased. ‘Thank heavens,’ she said. ‘Shall I serve the soup?’

  Mozart flew to her shoulder, running his beak lovingly through her hair, which was tightly plaited about her head. ‘Pretty girl, naughty girl,’ he crooned.

  ‘You are naughty,’ Old Marie said. ‘What if your father realises you’ve gone?’

  Dortchen squared her shoulders. ‘Lotte needs help. She’s the only girl in a household of men and they expect her to do all the work we do here – and we have six girls, and Mother, and you. She’s not been raised to it, and she’s still crushed by grief. I can’t not help her, I just can’t.’

  ‘You’ve a kind and loving heart, sweetling, but you’re risking bringing trouble down on your own head.’

  Dortchen nodded, beginning to ladle out the soup. She thought of the girl with six brothers turned into swans. She’d had to weave six shirts from nettles, without speaking or laughing, if she was to save her brothers. She had still been weaving the last one as she was sentenced to be burnt to death for witchcraft. One sleeve had been unfinished, and so when she flung the shirts to her swan-brothers, one was left with a wing in place of his arm.

  Risking a beating was nothing compared to risking being burnt to death.

  Sometimes you had to face danger if you were to help others.

  A week later, all anyone could talk about was the Maid of Zaragoza.

  A young Spanish woman, she had carried a basket of apples to feed the soldiers defending her home town of Zaragoza but saw them overcome by the relentless fire of the French. The French stormed the gateway, shooting down the fleeing soldiers, stabbing them with their bayonets. The Maid of Zaragoza had run forward, loaded one of the ancient cannons and lit the fuse with a match, crying, ‘Zaragoza still has one defender!’

  The cannonball tore the attacking French battalion to pieces. Undaunted, the Maid of Zaragoza had stayed at her post, loading and firing the cannon till the French had retreated. Although the small town later fell to the French, and most of its inhabitants were slaughtered, the story of the Maid of Zaragoza spread like wildfire.

  Within weeks, one disaster after another had befallen the French army in Spain. A squadron of French battleships in the harbour of Cadiz were fired upon till they surrendered. Another French battalion was defeated at Baylen in Andalusia; the new King of Spain, Joseph Bonaparte, had to flee Madrid, which was then occupied by the insurgents. It seemed as if the heroic action of one young woman had broken Napoléon’s charm of invincibility.

  ‘She was just a girl, an ordinary girl,’ Lisette said in the drawing room, adding an extra frill of muslin to Mia’s dress to accommodate her growing length.

  ‘But to load a cannon, to shoot people down – how ever did she dare?’ Gretchen cried.

  ‘She was so brave,’ Dortchen said. She felt ashamed. No one in Hessen-Cassel had tried to stop the French taking over. Once the Kurfürst had fled, everyone had just cowered behind their closed shutters while the French marched through the streets, singing ‘La Marseillaise’. She had crept out to watch them, it was true, but it had never occurred to her to take up arms against them.

  ‘The Emperor has gone to Erfurt to meet with the Tsar again,’ Hanne cried. ‘That’s only a day’s march from here, if he should travel at his usual lightning speed. Oh, do you think he will come here to Cassel? Wouldn’t he like to see his brother? Imagine if the Emperor came here – we’d see him!’

  ‘I don’t want to see him,’ Gretchen said with a theatrical shudder. ‘I think I’d swoon with fright.’

  ‘Only if there was a handsome soldier standing nearby to catch you,’ Hanne responded.

  The Emperor had no time to visit his feckless younger brother. He was too busy raising an army to march into Spain. Battalions of soldiers marched through Cassel on their way south, demanding food, ammunition and medical supplies. Dortchen and her sisters worked from dawn till midnight in the garden and the stillroom, harvesting plants and grinding them to powder, distilling essences, making up cordials, and cutting and rolling bandages. Dortchen had no time even to think of slipping across the road to the Grimms, nor was she ever left alone.

  Wilhelm knocked on the door once or twice, hoping Dortchen could spare the time to tell him some more stories, but she did not dare. The third time he came, Frau Wild took pity on him and told him a tale about a straw, a coal and a broad bean that explained how beans got the black seam down their middle.

  Dortchen came into the parlour to collect the newspapers and tear them into strips, which she then twisted tightly, ready to be used to light the fire, or candles, or her father’s pipe, just so she could listen to the scratch of Wilhelm’s quill on the paper, and his occasional soft phrases: ‘Could you repeat that, please … Just a moment …’ He smiled at the sight of her but did not pause in his hurried scribbling, and soon she had no excuse to linger and had to go away again.

  At the end of July, Wilhelm went to stay with his Aunt Zimmer in Gotha. The knowledge of his absence was a cold hollow inside Dortchen. She was wretched, and unable to confess her misery to anyone.

  It did not help when he came back excited by the discovery of some old manuscripts in the library there. His dark eyes glowed and his thin cheeks were hectic with colour; all his talk was of the poetic beauty and darkness and grandeur of the works he had found. Although he smiled at Dortchen and asked her how she had been, his concern seemed to be motivated more by politeness than any real interest.

  Nor did he seek her out after church but stayed talking with Jakob, their dark heads bent close together, their speech filled with strange words that had no meaning to Dortchen. Indeed, it was as if they were speaking another language entirely.

  That night, in bed, Dortchen wept, her chest shuddering with the need to keep her despair secret.

  In late October, on a cold, blustery day, Lotte came rushing into the garden, calling Dortchen’s name. ‘Dortchen, it’s so terrible …’ she sobbed.

  ‘What? What is it?’ Dortchen straightened from the bed of herbs, her back aching and her gloves thick with dirt.

  ‘It’s Jakob …’

  ‘What’s happened? Is he ill, hurt?’ Dortchen scanned her friend’s face anxiously. Lotte was thin and pale, and her dark hair was in a mess, straggling away from its hasty braid.

  Lotte shook her head and tried to catch her breath, tears spilling down her cheeks. ‘He’s been called up for the conscription lottery. Oh, Dortchen, it’s so unfair. What shall we do if he gets a low number? He’ll be sent to Spain, he’ll have to fight, he might die. He’s the gentlest soul – how can they even think of making him a soldier? And what shall we do if he goes away? How shall we survive?’

  Dortchen bit her lip. The conscription lottery was the very worst of Napoléon’s harsh rules, she thought. Young men had no choice in the matter at all. If they were aged between eighteen and twenty-five, and over five-foot-one in height, their names would be put into a barrel and pulled out, one by one, till the army’s quota was reached. Hundreds and thousands of men had been sent to fight in Napoléon’s never-ending war. Hundreds and thousands had died. And still Napoléon’s hunger for conquest had not been satisfied.

  ‘Is there nothing we can do?’ Lotte sobbed.

  Dortchen hesitated. Only a medical certificate from a doctor allowed conscripts to escape their fate. Those rich enough paid doctors for the exemption. Those influential enough called upon favours, as Herr Wild had done for Rudolf. The Grimms were neither rich nor influential.

  She took hold of both of Lotte’s hands. ‘All you can do is hope for the best,’ she said. ‘But Lotte …’

  Her friend raised a tear-streaked face. ‘Yes?’

&nb
sp; ‘I’m sure all will be well. I feel it in my heart. But if he draws a low number, come to me. I’ll give you some holly berries for him to eat, which will purge his bowels. They won’t take him into the army if they think he has dysentery.’

  Lotte squeezed both Dortchen’s hands. ‘Thank you,’ she wept. ‘Oh, thank you. What would I do without you?’

  ‘It’ll be fine,’ Dortchen said.

  And it was. When Napoléon and his Grand Army marched for Spain in late October, Jakob did not march with them.

  His luck had held.

  PART THREE

  The Forbidden Chamber

  CASSEL

  The Kingdom of Westphalia, 1808–1810

  Then the sorcerer also wanted the third daughter. He captured her in his pack basket, carried her home, and then, before he left, gave her the egg and the key. However, the third sister was crafty and cunning. She hid the egg first, and then she went into the forbidden chamber. When she saw her sisters all cut up in the basin of blood, she found all of their parts and put them back in their right place: head, body, arms, and legs. The parts started to move, and then they joined together, and the two sisters were alive again.

  From ‘Fitcher’s Bird’, a tale told to Wilhelm Grimm by Dortchen Wild before 1812

  SPANISH LACE

  November 1808

  In late November, Achim von Arnim wrote, asking if he might come and stay with the Grimms.

  Lotte told Dortchen the news while they walked to church that Sunday. It was a nasty cold day and the girls huddled together, sharing Dortchen’s old shawl.

  ‘What are we to do?’ Lotte asked, her breath hanging white before her. ‘It’s a great honour … and of course he’s been such a help to us already, paying for Ludwig to go to art school and publishing so many of Jakob and Wilhelm’s articles in his magazine. Yet our house is so shabby and poor … where is he to sleep?’