The Wild Girl

by Kate Forsyth

  ‘The King is here. That must mean news from Spain.’ Jakob had a few quick words with one of the King’s aides, then returned to their side, saying in a low voice, ‘Napoléon has taken back Madrid. They say the Spanish rebellion has failed.’

  ‘Ah, no,’ Bettina cried. ‘Those poor people! The Ogre will crush them like a flea.’

  ‘Keep your voice down, you fool,’ Jakob said. ‘You may dress and act as you please, but do not bring danger down upon my family. We may not like what has happened to our country but we still must live here.’

  Bettina pushed out her lip sulkily but said no more.

  Dortchen stood back, watching wide-eyed as the young king made his way up the stairs to his box, dressed in white satin, medals glittering on his chest. He was laughing and waving to the crowd, who all bowed low or curtsied. Then he saw Bettina in her Spanish gown. His eyebrows shot up. He raised his quizzing-glass and swept her from the crest of her mantilla to the hem of her red velvet gown. Undaunted, Bettina dropped him a curtsey, smiling. He laughed and went on.

  Dortchen wished she had Bettina’s bravado.

  UPRISING

  April 1809

  ‘I’ve come to say goodbye.’ Wilhelm stood very straight in the doorway, holding his hat in both hands. His face and body were in shadow, as the square outside was bright with spring sunshine.

  ‘Why? Where are you going?’ Dortchen cried.

  ‘I’m going to Halle. There’s a doctor there who may be able to help me.’

  ‘You’re still not well?’ she asked. ‘The yarrow has not helped?’

  ‘It’s been a hard winter,’ he said. ‘I cough all the time. Sometimes I find it so hard to breathe.’

  ‘What does the doctor say?’

  ‘He’s tried different remedies. The mercury fumes did not help at all – in fact, I’m sure they made me feel worse. But it’s my heart he’s most concerned about.’

  Dortchen pressed her hand to her own heart, which had accelerated as if in sympathy. ‘It is still giving you trouble?’

  ‘It’s like being stabbed with a red-hot arrow,’ Wilhelm said. ‘A few days ago my heart beat so fast and so erratically for so long – a good twenty hours – that I was sure I was going to die. Oh, Dortchen, I cannot tell you how sick and anxious it makes me feel. What if I was to die? I’ve done nothing I want to do in this world. I’ve not written a word worth reading, or made anything. I’ve never even …’ Abruptly he stopped.

  ‘What?’ Dortchen asked.

  ‘Nothing. It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Does the doctor think you might die?’

  ‘He shakes his head and pulls his beard and tells me to try sleeping sitting up – which is awful, if you’ve never tried it. Now he says it’s beyond his ken and I must go to this heart specialist in Halle. It’s going to cost a great deal of money, which of course we don’t have.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. She wanted to reach out a hand to him but did not dare. They were standing right outside the shop window. ‘I hope the doctor can help you.’

  His mouth twisted. ‘So do I.’

  ‘When will you be back?’

  ‘I don’t know. Not for a while.’

  Maybe not forever, her aching heart cried.

  ‘Good luck, and God bless,’ she said.

  ‘Yes. Thank you.’ He raised his hat to her, then turned and walked slowly away. She stood and watched him till he had climbed into the travelling carriage and the coachman had urged the horses into motion. By the time the coach had turned the corner towards the bridge, she could see nothing through the blur of her tears. She turned, dabbing at her eyes with the corner of her apron.

  Her father stood in the doorway of his shop. ‘He’s not for you, Dortchen,’ he said harshly. ‘He’s poor and improvident and, by the look of him, not long for this world. It’s foolish to set your heart on him.’

  ‘I know,’ Dortchen said.

  A few days later, war broke out again.

  The entire front page of the newspaper was blackened out by the censors, so the townsfolk of Cassel had to rely on gossip and rumour. Dortchen, accompanying Old Marie to market, heard the same snippets over and over again.

  ‘Have you heard? Austria has invaded Bavaria,’ the grocer said, pouring lentils into his scales.

  ‘The French are in utter disarray. They say soldiers are deserting by the thousands,’ the fishmonger said, wrapping a spotted river trout in old newspaper.

  ‘Balderdash! It’s a trick,’ the chandler said, tying up a dozen squat tallow candles in twine. ‘You know the Emperor, he always likes to pretend he’s weaker than he really is so as to take his enemies by surprise. Mark my words, he’ll come down on the Austrians like a lightning bolt.’

  ‘I heard he’s galloping from Paris to take command. Three horses have died underneath him already,’ the ribbon-seller whispered, receiving a small coin for a length of dark-blue satin.

  That evening, all the talk was of the war. Only Lisette was quiet and distracted. She did not try to intervene when an argument broke out between Hanne and Rudolf, nor did she try to repress Gretchen, who was upset that the resumption of hostilities meant a ball at the palace had been cancelled.

  The next morning, Herr von Eschwege called upon Herr Wild. They were closeted in the parlour for a good twenty minutes, then Herr Wild sent Dortchen running to find Lisette.

  Lisette and Gretchen had both been sitting in the drawing room, too tense to sew. At the news Lisette was wanted, Gretchen turned first white, then red.

  ‘Lisette?’ she demanded. ‘Surely not?’

  Lisette blushed and got up, smoothing down her plain grey work dress. ‘I wish I had something prettier to wear,’ she said.

  ‘Here.’ Dortchen darted forward and seized the old silk shawl from where Gretchen had tossed it on the couch. She arranged it becomingly about Lisette’s shoulders, then her eldest sister went hurrying down to the parlour, pinching her cheeks to bring colour into them.

  ‘He was my beau,’ Gretchen said angrily.

  ‘Evidently not,’ Dortchen answered.

  Herr von Eschwege stayed for supper – the first time in the sisters’ memory that anyone outside their immediate family had eaten under their roof. A tall, straight-backed young man with a monocle and a fine pair of blonde moustaches, he was most punctilious. He spoke only of the weather and hunting, and was assiduous in passing along the platters of food. Dortchen had almost decided she did not like him when she saw a spark of amusement in his eyes at how stiff and proper Mia was, sitting very straight in her chair and cutting her food into tiny pieces so she did not have to chew too obviously.

  The house was thrown into a flurry of sewing, for Lisette had to take with her tablecloths and sheets and pillowcases, and the geese all had to be plucked to make a feather mattress for the couple. Lisette was radiantly happy, singing as she sewed and dancing as she carried a basket of wet washing to the line.

  A week later, Herr Schmerfeld came – hat in hand, his cravat very starched – to ask Herr Wild for Gretchen’s hand in marriage. It was to be a double wedding.

  Gretchen was very pleased and spoke a great deal of Herr Schmerfeld’s powerful connections in the cabinet and the fine house they were to inhabit in the elegant French quarter of the town. Lisette said very little, though the colour rose in her face every time Herr von Eschwege came to visit.

  The night before the wedding, a rowdy party of young men gathered outside the apothecary’s shop, banging pots and pans with metal ladles. Herr Wild stood at the window in his nightgown and nightcap, scowling, but he did not yell at them and shake his fist. ‘I’ll be glad when it’s all over,’ he said.

  ‘How can you be glad when we’re losing our dear, sweet daughters?’ Frau Wild wept.

  ‘Less mouths to feed,’ Herr Wild said jokingly. ‘If only we could marry Mia off, I’d be much plumper in the pocket.’

  The next morning Dortchen was up early to cut dill from the garden for her mother to put in th
e daughters’ right shoes, along with a pinch of salt.

  It was a long, busy day, cooking and preparing for the wedding feast, and then walking with her family down to the town hall for the ceremony. Gretchen was most indignant that church weddings had been outlawed; Lisette said she didn’t mind where she married her dear Herr von Eschwege.

  ‘Hadn’t you best start calling him Friedrich?’ Hanne teased, and Lisette blushed and said it sounded so forward.

  Afterwards, the house seemed quiet and empty. The depleted family sat down to supper with two chairs empty. Frau Wild kept her crumpled handkerchief by her plate, occasionally dabbing at her nose and eyes.

  ‘Do stop weeping, Katharina,’ Herr Wild said. ‘They haven’t died.’

  ‘I’m just going to miss them so,’ Frau Wild wept. ‘What shall I do without my prop?’

  ‘I shall be your prop, Mother,’ Röse said most earnestly, taking off her spectacles to polish them with her skirt. ‘You know I wish nothing more than to immolate myself upon the altar of daughterly duty.’

  Frau Wild sighed. ‘Thank you, dear,’ she said, in a voice that was scarcely audible.

  In the morning, the sisters had to renegotiate the chores. Hanne took on the work in the shop, Mia was deputised to dust and tidy the drawing room every day, Röse very unwillingly agreed to take on the ironing, while Dortchen was to take Lisette’s place in the stillroom.

  There was one unexpected benefit of having fewer sisters in the house. Ever since the French invasion of Cassel, Herr Wild had not permitted any of his daughters to walk out to the garden plot outside the town walls on her own. Now that the shop was so busy, there was not always someone free to go with Dortchen when her father needed something from the garden, and so one warm afternoon towards the end of April he begrudgingly gave her permission to go and gather daisy leaves, wood betony, lemon balm and hellebore, so he could make an infusion for a courtier with a bad case of gout.

  ‘I am almost sixteen, Father,’ she reminded him.

  ‘All the more reason to keep you safe at home,’ he grumbled, then waved an impatient hand. ‘Go, go, I haven’t all day.’

  Dortchen walked through the busy streets, her basket on her arm, glad to be outside. Many of the tall, narrow houses had pots filled with flowers and herbs propped on their windowsills, and one had a basket on the front doorstep. The sky overhead was a brilliant blue, and sunshine dappled the cobblestones. It was impossible to believe that people were being blown to pieces only two days’ march to the south. For days, the French and the Austrians had been hurling themselves at each other, their cannons and guns sending such clouds of smoke into the air that Dortchen had been able to see them from the window of her room.

  Dortchen came to the garden and let herself in through the gate. Spring flowers danced within their hedges of box and hung in blossoming showers from the boughs of the fruit trees. She was glad to be alone and took her time walking down the paths and smelling the blooms, lifting first one, then another, to her nose. The garden was quiet of all but the faint humming of bees in the angelica flowers, and the distant twitter of birds. She pulled on her gloves and knelt down to weed the garden beds.

  Bells rang out, sounding an alarm. Dortchen sat back on her heels, wiping away a strand of hair with her arm. Then came a rumbling noise that slowly but steadily grew louder. The pound of feet. Shouts and cries and screams of alarm. Dortchen’s breath caught. She stood and ran to the gate.

  A crowd was marching down the road towards the King’s palace, most of them peasants in rough homespuns, waving scythes, forks, flails and axes in the air. Crudely made red-and-white flags fluttered above the crowd, tied as pennants to the bayonets of the soldiers riding down the road towards her.

  Dortchen dropped to her knees behind the gatepost, her hands pressed over her mouth. A cannon boomed nearby and acrid smoke filled the air. People screamed. The rebels’ horses broke into a gallop, men shouting, ‘To the palace! Down with the usurper!’ The cannon fired again and a house nearby imploded, dust and debris blasting out. A brick smashed down next to Dortchen and fragments rained on her head. Gunfire rang out.

  For the next half-hour, all was chaos. Dortchen could only cover her eyes and ears with her arms as the palace soldiers slowly drove the rebels back. One poor man was blown right over the wall, falling to the ground next to where Dortchen was crouched. His rough work clothes were soaked with blood, and his unblinking eyes stared upwards into the sky.

  At last, by the time the sun had slipped down behind the mountains, all had grown quiet and still. Dortchen gathered up her basket and tiptoed past the dead man. The street beyond was a ruin. Houses were smashed in, walls blown down, the blossoming branches broken and mangled. Corpses of people and horses lay everywhere. Dortchen’s limbs trembled. She had never seen anyone die before and was acutely aware of her own vulnerability. The air stank of smoke. Hearing the galloping hooves of soldiers, she hid behind a wall until they had ridden past, then hurried on for home.

  She was met in the square by her father and brother, both carrying lanterns and heavy cudgels.

  ‘Where have you been?’ Herr Wild demanded. ‘You stupid fool! Did you not realise the town’s in uproar?’ He seized her arm in a bruising grip and shook her.

  ‘I couldn’t come any earlier – they marched right past me.’ Dortchen stared up at him with imploring eyes. Surely he could not blame her for what had happened? ‘I saw … Father, I saw people being shot! I hid behind the wall … but there’s a dead man in our garden.’ Tears ran down her cheeks.

  Her father let her go with a noise of impatience. ‘You should have come home at once!’

  ‘I couldn’t, Father, really, I couldn’t. They were fighting right outside our garden. I’d have been killed.’

  ‘We thought you were dead for sure,’ Rudolf said. He put his arm around her and she leant against him, unable to stop herself from shaking.

  ‘You’re hurt … there’s blood.’ Rudolf dabbed at her face.

  ‘No, I’m fine, I was just hit by debris … They blew up all the houses! Why? Why, Father? Who were they, all those people marching …’

  ‘Damn fools,’ her father said.

  ‘Some kind of uprising,’ Rudolf said. ‘I heard they planned to storm the palace and take the King prisoner. They had a coach and six horses ready to race to the coast. They were going to hand him over to the English.’

  ‘It was a mad plan,’ Herr Wild said. ‘It never would’ve worked.’

  ‘I heard Baron von Dörnberg was at the back of it. He and some kind of secret society that had vowed to bring the French down.’ Rudolf shook his head in disbelief. ‘I saw him only yesterday, riding on the parade ground, overseeing the troops to march into Saxony. I never would have thought him a traitor.’

  ‘A patriot, you mean,’ Herr Wild growled.

  Rudolf bit back a caustic comment.

  ‘The rats will be leaving the ship now,’ Herr Wild said.

  Rudolf refused to argue with his father. ‘Come, let’s get Dortchen home,’ he said. ‘She’s as white as a sheet.’

  Slowly, they went home, Dortchen limping, finding all kinds of cuts and bruises she had not known were there. The streets were filled with angry French soldiers, knocking on doors, waylaying townsfolk, pushing bruised-faced prisoners towards the gaol. A cart trundled past, piled high with corpses. All the shops were shuttered and bolted, and houses had their curtains pulled tight.

  Dortchen and her father and brother were stopped more than once by soldiers with suspicious faces; their papers were read, and questions hurled at them. At last they made it to the safety of the apothecary’s shop, and Herr Wild locked and bolted the door behind them.

  ‘Go and get cleaned up,’ he ordered Dortchen. ‘It’s after suppertime. Eat if you can and then let me look at your cuts.’

  Dortchen was sitting by the fire in the drawing room, her wounds washed with ivy water and bandaged with dock leaves, her weeping mother and sisters bringing her tea
and healing possets and handkerchiefs soaked in lavender water, when the door knocker sounded long and hard. Frau Wild screeched and Hanne seized the poker. Dortchen started to her feet. ‘Maybe it’s the soldiers – maybe I was seen near the palace and they think I was involved.’

  Her mother moaned and groped for her smelling salts.

  ‘They’d not arrest a sixteen-year-old girl,’ Mia asserted, though her face was pale. ‘Would they?’

  ‘I believe that age or gender would be of no account to authorities determined to thwart an act of rebellion,’ Röse said, then she surprised Dortchen by taking her hand and squeezing it.

  Together, the four sisters crept to the top of the main stairs, where they crouched, listening to the voices in the hallway.

  To their surprise, they could hear Gretchen’s voice, high-pitched and hysterical. ‘I tell you, we have to flee. Ferdy’s cousin, George, is suspected of being one of the conspirators. He has fled to Prague, and we must go too. What if Ferdy were implicated? What will become of me?’

  A low rumble from her father, a quick question from Rudolf, then Gretchen continued. ‘Yes, we go tonight, to Marburg. Ferdy has a house there. Hopefully that is far enough. I mean, we’re guilty of nothing – we knew nothing about the uprising. I came only to tell you and to say goodbye.’

  Herr Wild said something about ‘your mother’, then Gretchen’s high-heeled slippers clattered up the stairs. She half-fell into her sisters’ arms, sobbing, tears streaking through her rouge. She was very elegantly dressed, with a hat with two great curling feathers and a travelling coat of pale-blue cloth that made her eyes seem huge and luminous.

  ‘Don’t crush my hat,’ she said, as a weeping Frau Wild reached two thin arms for her. ‘There, there, it’s all right. I’m only going to Marburg, not to the ends of the earth. Though I must say, I think it’s quite disgusting. The house at Marburg is old. And has an outside privy. I hate to leave my water closet!’