The Wild Girl

by Kate Forsyth

  May 1810

  On 1st May, there were bonfires lit in the park and the prettiest girls of the town danced about the maypole. The Wild girls were not permitted to do so, of course, but Herr Wild and Frau Wild did stroll down to Karlsaue Park to watch the spectacle with their daughters, leaving Rudolf in charge of the shop for a few hours.

  Karlsaue was a beautiful tree-filled park built on the small island that lay between the Fulda River and a narrow stream that ran at the base of the hill on which the old town of Cassel was built. The Kurfürst had built an orangery at one end along classical lines, topped with a great many marble statues recollecting Roman mythology. These looked down over a long avenue of formal trees to a dainty, gold-topped temple on an artificial island in the centre of an artificial lake. Dortchen had often come here with her mother as a child, to roll her hoop along the path or play hopscotch on the smooth paving stones, which were so different from the small, uneven cobblestones in the Marktgasse.

  With the weather so much warmer, Dortchen wore her new dress with the fashionable puffed sleeves and the bonnet that Lisette had sent her for Christmas. The bonnet was rose-pink with a matching satin ribbon that tied up under her ear, and it made Dortchen feel prettier than she ever had.

  Strolling in the sunshine, listening to the music and breathing in the sweet scent of the spring flowers, it was impossible to feel depressed. Dortchen took a deep breath and squared her shoulders. You must forget Wilhelm, she told herself. It’s foolish to eat your heart out for a man who hardly notices you’re alive.

  As if her thought had conjured him from air, she saw Wilhelm walking ahead of her, arm in arm with Lotte. Dortchen’s face flamed and she fell back, overcome with confusion. But Wilhelm turned, and his face lit up at the sight of her. He bent and spoke a word to Lotte, and she turned to smile and wave. Dortchen could do nothing but try to compose her face and step forward to meet them.

  Wilhelm took off his hat, smiling at her in genuine pleasure. ‘Dortchen, how are you? It’s so good to see you. We’ve seen nothing of you in months.’

  ‘Helping my father in the shop takes up a great deal of my time,’ Dortchen answered.

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ he said. ‘I was hoping to entice you to come to supper.’

  ‘It’s my birthday in a week or so,’ Lotte said. ‘But you know that – it’s yours only two weeks later. We’ve had such a hard winter … Jakob has saved up some money and will buy me a new dress. Oh, I cannot wait to get rid of my blacks. I swear I’ll burn them in the marketplace!’

  ‘It’s been almost two years since Mother died, and Lotte simply cannot let that dress out any more,’ Wilhelm said. ‘Besides, she’ll be turning seventeen, so she should have a dress that befits her grand old age.’

  ‘I know it’ll be very expensive,’ Lotte said, sounding anxious. ‘Oh, Dortchen, we’ve been living on lentils and dried beans for months. No money even for salt.’

  ‘I must admit, it’s easier now the weather has started to warm,’ Wilhelm said. ‘We can buy fresh vegetables at the market, though meat is still a luxury.’

  ‘Jakob says he’ll buy us some for my birthday supper,’ Lotte said.

  ‘We’re going to write to friends in Steinau to send us some butter – it’s so much cheaper there – and to find some eggs and sugar, so Lotte can bake a cake.’

  ‘Oh, please, say you’ll come,’ Lotte said. ‘We all want you, even Jakob.’

  Dortchen hesitated and looked at her parents. They were standing, very stiff and apart, on the shores of the lake, watching the ducks. When she was small, her father had brought his daughters down to the lake to feed the ducks stale bread. Now, any leftover bread was made into soup.

  ‘We’ll ask your mother and sisters too, if you like,’ Wilhelm said. His understanding of her situation warmed her through.

  ‘I’ll ask my father if I may,’ she said. ‘If we tell him it is a joint birthday celebration, he cannot possibly refuse.’

  That means we’ll be able to bring some food too, she thought. The poor Grimms should not have to feed us all.

  ‘I’ll only come if you let me bake the cake, though,’ she continued. ‘I know what Lotte’s cooking is like!’

  ‘I’m getting much better,’ Lotte boasted. ‘It’s hard to burn lentil soup.’

  ‘You seemed to do it often enough,’ Wilhelm teased.

  ‘I’m so glad we’ll celebrate our seventeenth birthdays together, Dortchen,’ Lotte said. ‘I could do with some fun. Such a dreary winter we’ve had. We ran out of firewood and couldn’t afford any more, so we spent half the day huddled in our eiderdowns. Our hands were so cold we couldn’t hold a pen or a needle or anything.’

  Wilhelm went red. ‘Taxes,’ he said to Dortchen.

  She nodded sympathetically. ‘Oh, I know. Father fears the King will bankrupt us all.’

  ‘Yet he still holds lavish parties every night, and he’s always positively dripping with diamonds,’ Lotte said.

  ‘Jakob says the Emperor writes him furious letters and threatens to take his throne away from him,’ Wilhelm said.

  ‘Soon there’ll be no pretence at independent kingdoms, and France shall stretch from the Mediterranean to the Baltic Sea,’ Dortchen said.

  ‘Cassel even looks French now,’ Wilhelm said, nodding his head at all the women in their light high-waisted gowns, hair tied up in Psyche knots, their feet in flimsy satin slippers. ‘Even you, Dortchen. I used to love to see you Wild girls in your gowns cut in the old way, with waists and a proper skirt.’

  She gazed at him in surprise.

  ‘You didn’t have to wear them, though,’ Lotte said. ‘It was like dragging around a tonne of heavy material every day. So many layers, and so hot in summer. Dortchen looks so pretty and fresh in her light cotton.’

  ‘She does indeed,’ Wilhelm said. ‘But Dortchen would look pretty in anything.’

  There was no mistaking the look of admiration in his eyes. Dortchen felt heat rise in her cheeks and lowered her head so her bonnet hid her face. They walked in silence for a moment, then Wilhelm said, ‘You see, that’s why it’s so important we preserve the old stories, before all of our ways are smothered by the customs of the French. Those who remember the old tales are getting fewer all the time. If we don’t save them, they’ll be lost forever, and that seems so sad to me.’

  Dortchen nodded. ‘Yes, it’s important. There’s so much wisdom and beauty in the old tales. It would be tragic to lose them.’

  ‘Yes, exactly,’ Wilhelm cried. ‘That’s why … Well, I know you’re kept busy helping your father, but …’

  ‘What?’ she asked.

  ‘I want to start up the reading circle again, though I want to make it more of a storytelling circle. You and your sisters know so many stories, and so do the Hassenpflug girls. And Julia and Charlotte Ramus know some too, and their father is the pastor and so is always visiting old people. Perhaps he will find some new tales for us too. We could meet every now and again and share the tales we’ve all found. Do you think you could come sometimes, you and your sisters? If your father could spare you?’

  ‘We’d really love you to,’ Lotte said. ‘We’ve missed you so much.’

  Dortchen felt a warm glow in her stomach. ‘Really?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ Lotte said, giving her old wide smile.

  ‘We plan to meet on Friday afternoons, when we can,’ Wilhelm said. ‘We cannot meet at our house, of course – it wouldn’t be seemly – but Frau Ramus has offered to host the gathering at her house.’

  He knows Father has his church meeting on Fridays, Dortchen thought, her pulse leaping with a sudden rush of joy. He does want me!

  ‘Our collection is coming along well,’ Wilhelm said, ‘but sometimes there are so many different versions of a tale that it’s hard to know which to keep and which to discard, or whether to blend them together to make a more complete whole. The stories are never fixed. They change from region to region, or from teller to teller.’


  ‘I know I never manage to tell the same story the same way twice,’ Dortchen said. ‘If I’m telling a bedtime story to Mia, I might make it a little less scary. But if I’m telling the story sitting in darkness about the fire on All Hallow’s Eve, well, then I make it as spooky as possible.’

  ‘I was hoping you’d tell me some more stories,’ Wilhelm said. ‘Clemens has asked us to give him our collection to read, so we want to make it as good as we possibly can.’

  ‘Jakob is afraid Clemens will lose it, or take the tales and retell them himself,’ Lotte added, ‘so he’s made Wilhelm and Ferdinand copy out the whole collection in their very best script. It’s taken forever, hasn’t it, Willi?’

  ‘It certainly has. By the end of every day my hand is cramped like a claw,’ he said. ‘But Jakob’s right. It would be a tragedy to lose the collection, when it’s taken us so long to find them all.’

  ‘Dortchen,’ Frau Wild called. ‘Time to go.’

  She nodded.

  ‘So we’ll see you on Friday?’ Lotte asked.

  Dortchen hesitated, glancing towards the dark bulk of her father, then quickly nodded again.

  Wilhelm’s face lit up. ‘Oh, good. I’m so glad you’ll come.’

  It’s just the stories he wants, Dortchen told herself. But still she went away down the path with the lightest heart she’d had in months.

  SPINDLE

  July 1810

  ‘Mother, we’re going to the pastor’s house now,’ Dortchen said, standing in the hot, gloomy bedroom, her hands clenched together. ‘We won’t be long.’

  Her mother stared at her from beneath the heavy mound of eiderdown, a faint sheen of sweat on her skin, her eyes glazed and unfocused. ‘But what if I need something …’

  ‘Röse will stay,’ Dortchen said. ‘She’ll be here if you need her.’

  ‘I shall enjoy some hours of silent contemplation,’ Röse said, settling herself in a chair by the window with a book in her hands.

  ‘We’ll be home in time to help with supper, as usual,’ Dortchen said.

  ‘Well, then, I suppose so.’ Frau Wild turned her face away.

  Dortchen, Hanne and Mia went downstairs.

  ‘Do you think Mother is really ill?’ Mia asked.

  ‘Of course not,’ Hanne said. ‘It’s just those drops of hers. She’d be much better if she gave them up.’

  ‘She looks so pale and thin,’ Dortchen said. ‘She didn’t touch the soup I took her at midday.’

  ‘She should get up to eat,’ Hanne said. ‘No one feels hungry if they spend all day lying in bed.’

  After putting on their bonnets and gloves, they went out the garden gate and down the Marktgasse towards the pastor’s house. It was hot, and the streets smelt of horse dung, rotting cabbages and refuse. Many shops had closed, ruined by King Jérôme’s profligacy, and there were beggars on every corner. The girls kept their heads down, their bonnets shading their faces. They had no coins to spare.

  ‘I’ll leave you here,’ Hanne said, after a while.

  ‘Be careful,’ Dortchen said. She dreaded what would happen if their father ever found out that Hanne went wandering the streets alone, going who knew where, to do who knew what.

  ‘I will,’ Hanne responded, laughing. ‘Give my respects to Frau Ramus.’

  She waved and turned to hurry down a little alleyway.

  ‘Where does she go?’ Mia asked. ‘Does she have a lover?’

  Dortchen nodded. Hanne’s recklessness both frightened and electrified her. Was she kissing in a dark alleyway somewhere, her lover’s hand rucking up her skirts? Or did the young man with the red scarf have a bed somewhere where they lay together in a tangle of hot, damp flesh? The thought made Dortchen feel rather hot and damp herself. She shook out the little fan she had made from folded paper and fanned herself, hoping Mia would not comment on her flushed face.

  As always, the sick, fizzling feeling in Dortchen’s stomach increased as she approached the pastor’s house, knowing that her father was at the church for his weekly meeting of the elders. What if he saw her and Mia in the street? Perhaps the pastor would mention that his wife was expecting them for tea. Would her father be angry? They had been meeting now for several months, without Herr Wild being aware of it, and Dortchen was sure their luck must run out soon.

  The door was opened by the pastor’s housekeeper, a portly woman in an apron and cap. Dortchen and Mia gave her their bonnets and gloves and were shown into the parlour, a room with a great many little tables, lace mats, fringes and dried ferns. Frau Ramus greeted them warmly and led them towards the fireplace, where an arrangement of dried flowers filled the hearth. Her two daughters sat before it, talking eagerly with Lotte and the Hassenpflug sisters. Louis Hassenpflug stood with Jakob on the hearthrug, their backs to the fireplace. Wilhelm sat at the table, a sheaf of paper, an inkpot and quills before him. Dortchen and Mia came to sit beside him, smiling shyly.

  Greetings were exchanged and coffee was poured. All the talk was of the Kingdom of Holland. Napoléon had thrown his younger brother Louis off the throne and annexed the country.

  ‘It was only ever meant to be a puppet kingdom,’ Jakob said. ‘But I suppose Louis Bonaparte did not do his brother’s bidding.’

  ‘I’ve heard that Holland is practically bankrupt,’ Dortchen said. ‘Is that true, Jakob?’

  ‘I believe so. The economy was ruined by the blockade, of course, as much as by Louis Bonaparte’s ineptness. It’s a country that relies on its trade.’

  ‘Will we be annexed too?’ Mia asked.

  ‘Oh, I hope not,’ Malchen cried. The youngest of the Hassenpflug sisters was perched on a low, cushioned stool, squinting around at everyone’s faces.

  Jakob shrugged his thin shoulders. ‘King Jérôme is far more inept than even Louis was, so it’s a possibility. You should see the letters Napoléon sends him. They’re practically smoking with rage.’

  ‘Father says Napoléon took Holland away from his brother because King Louis refused to introduce conscription,’ Jeannette said. ‘I wish King Jérôme had refused to do so here. I dread the day our Louis is called up and sent to fight.’

  ‘I’m still too young,’ her brother replied. ‘And you mustn’t call me Louis any more. I don’t want to sound French. Call me Ludwig.’

  ‘All our names are too French,’ Jeannette said. ‘I shall change my name to Johanna.’

  ‘And I shall be Maria,’ her older sister said, ‘and not Marie.’

  ‘Is your ancestry not French?’ Frau Ramus asked. ‘I had thought—’

  ‘Not for a very long time,’ Jeannette answered earnestly. ‘Mother’s ancestors fled France after the Sun King made martyrs of the Protestants. It must be a hundred and fifty years ago, or more.’

  ‘We don’t want to be French,’ Malchen asserted robustly.

  ‘Nor do I want to die fighting for them,’ Louis said.

  ‘We’ve been lucky,’ Wilhelm said. ‘All five of us Grimm brothers have escaped being called up so far. What are the odds? I dread Ludwig or Ferdinand having to fight. Or any of us, for that matter. I don’t think I could kill a man.’

  ‘Where is Ferdinand?’ Dortchen asked. ‘I thought he was to join us.’

  A shadow crossed Wilhelm’s face. ‘He’s not well.’ He hesitated, then said in a low voice, ‘I’m worried about him, Dortchen. He’s not come out of his room in two days. He just sits there, with the shutters drawn, staring at nothing.’

  ‘Has he a fever? Spots?’

  ‘I can see nothing wrong with him,’ Wilhelm said. ‘I called the doctor and he said it was a preponderance of black bile. He bled him but that only made him worse.’

  ‘The tea I made him has not helped?’

  Wilhelm shook his head. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t think he drank it.’

  Lotte drew a letter from her reticule. ‘I must read you the latest letter from Bettina,’ she said. ‘She is so funny. She has no shame at all.’

  ‘What has she done now?’ Jakob
asked in a tone of resignation.

  ‘She went to call on Herr van Beethoven, without an introduction or anything. Simply because she thinks they should be friends.’ Lotte unfolded the letter, written on fine pressed paper in violet ink. ‘She says: “Herr van Beethoven and I are kindred spirits. Do you know how I know? I went to visit him, to sing to him. He did not hear me come in. He’s almost deaf, you know. So I crept up behind him and put both my hands on his shoulders. He turned to me in rage, but I smiled at him and told him who I was. He knew my name, of course. He showed me the song he was composing. It was none other than Herr von Goethe’s song for Mignon. Who else could he be writing that for but me? Even though he did not know me yet. It was Fate.”’

  ‘Only Bettina would do such a thing,’ Dortchen said. ‘If I crept up behind Herr van Beethoven and put my hands on his shoulders, he’d have me thrown into the street as an impertinent minx.’

  ‘I wonder she dared,’ Marie said, wide-eyed.

  ‘Bettina Brentano would dare anything,’ Wilhelm said, a note of admiration in his voice.

  ‘She sounds like a most forward young lady,’ Frau Ramus said in a disapproving tone.

  ‘Perhaps we should hear some stories,’ Jakob said. ‘That is, I believe, the reason for this gathering, not to gossip about Bettina Brentano.’

  ‘Can I tell the first story?’ Malchen cried. She was sitting bolt-upright on her stool, her cheeks flushed with excitement. ‘I know such a spooky tale, about a blood sausage.’

  ‘It’s a good story,’ Jeannette said. ‘If Malchen tells it wrong, Marie and I can correct her.’

  ‘I won’t tell it wrong,’ Malchen protested. ‘You two just shush and let me tell it.’

  ‘Let’s close the shutters so it’s dark,’ Louis said. ‘It’s much better when everything is all shadowy and scary.’

  ‘I need the light to write by,’ Wilhelm apologised.

  ‘That’s all right,’ Malchen said. ‘We’ll pretend it’s dark.’

  Wilhelm dipped his quill in the ink, writing swiftly as Malchen told her story.