The Wild Girl

by Kate Forsyth

  Ferdinand was half-swooning in Wilhelm’s arms, his hands reaching towards the chest. ‘I’m sorry … I must have it … Don’t you understand? Give it back …’

  Jakob and Wilhelm’s eyes met. Wilhelm nodded slightly.

  ‘We thank you, then,’ Jakob said. ‘If you can replace the opium without your father realising … I will give you some coins to cover the cost of what he has already taken.’

  ‘It’s too dangerous,’ Wilhelm said. ‘What if Herr Wild catches her putting it back? He will suspect her. Give the chest to me. I will leave it on the doorstep tomorrow at first light.’

  Jakob nodded. ‘Good idea.’

  Dortchen’s breath whooshed out in a great sigh of relief.

  ‘Ferdinand can write a letter of apology and leave it with the chest,’ Jakob continued.

  ‘Unsigned,’ Dortchen said. Jakob and Wilhelm nodded in agreement.

  ‘Very well,’ she said. ‘I have to go. My father will kill me if he catches me here.’

  ‘Thank you. I’m sorry.’ Wilhelm spoke awkwardly, not meeting her eyes. ‘It’s difficult to believe my own brother would stoop so low.’

  ‘He’s dragged down by grief and melancholy,’ Dortchen said. ‘It’s not easy for him to follow in your footsteps. He feels—’ she struggled to find a word that would not be cruel to utter, ‘unworthy.’

  Ferdinand turned away, stumbling to his writing table, where he sank down on the stool, his face bent down, his fingers sunk into his hair. ‘It’s fine for you,’ he said to Jakob. ‘You and Wilhelm were given everything – the fine education, the years at university. Yet you blame me for not being able to get a job, or to settle down to study on my own. I’m sorry, all right? I’m sorry.’

  He laid his head on his arms and shut his eyes.

  ‘I’ll leave you the smelling salts. Whatever you do, don’t let him sleep.’ Dortchen looked around at her friends. They were all mortified and angry. She felt they blamed her for finding the chest. Gently, she put it in Wilhelm’s hands. ‘Don’t be caught putting it back,’ she warned him. ‘I don’t want you being sentenced to hard labour either.’

  He did not answer her.

  MAIDEN WITH NO HANDS

  March 1811

  ‘How is he?’ Dortchen asked.

  Wilhelm shook his head. ‘Not well at all. He must be getting hold of more somewhere. He goes out of the house raging, and comes home hours later dizzy and sick and smiling.’

  Dortchen was distressed, but she had to school her countenance to composure. As usual, the only chance she ever got to speak to Wilhelm was in the church porch, in full view of their families and neighbours.

  ‘I’ve been trying to keep an eye on the shop, to make sure he does not come in,’ Dortchen said. ‘But it’s impossible. I’m so busy all the time.’

  ‘Could you not ask your father?’

  ‘No.’ Realising how sharp her tone was, Dortchen said more gently, ‘I’m sorry. But I dare not. He will guess who stole the opium.’

  Wilhelm sighed. ‘Jakob has locked away the household funds … I cannot imagine where Ferdinand is getting the money from.’

  ‘It must be a great worry to you.’

  He nodded. ‘Jakob is at work all day, so he expects me to keep an eye on Ferdinand. But how can I, unless I lock him in his bedroom? I have work of my own to do.’

  ‘Have you found any more new stories?’

  ‘We have. An old soldier called Johann responded to Jakob’s pamphlet and has given us a few stories in return for our old trousers. It shows you what desperate straits he’s in if he’s prepared to wear our threadbare cast-offs. He told us a very funny story about an old dog whose owner wanted to shoot him. The dog made a deal with a wolf, who agreed to pretend to steal his owner’s child so the dog could rescue the baby and be spared.’

  Dortchen smiled, but, conscious of her father’s glare, said, ‘I’m glad you’re finding some new stories. I must go now.’

  Wilhelm detained her with a quick hand on her arm. ‘Perhaps I will see you this evening at the King’s celebration? They’re going to have fireworks and a cavalry charge and opera singers on barges. It should be a grand spectacle.’

  ‘I cannot go,’ Dortchen said. ‘Father says I gaddy about too much as it is.’

  ‘When do you ever gaddy about?’ Wilhelm said. ‘You hardly ever come to the storytelling circle any more.’

  ‘I’m not allowed,’ Dortchen said. ‘Too much work to do.’

  ‘What of your sisters? Are they allowed to go tonight?’ Wilhelm was frowning, his mouth set sternly.

  Dortchen nodded. ‘Röse said she was more than happy to stay home and look after Mother, but Father says she must go. He wishes her to be on her best behaviour as he is going to introduce her to someone. She’s to leave her spectacles at home.’

  ‘That sounds ominous,’ Wilhelm said.

  Dortchen had to smile. ‘It does, doesn’t it? Röse says she is willing to immolate herself on the altar of parental authority, if she must, but why is she obliged to do without her spectacles?’

  ‘He must be an ugly old man,’ Wilhelm said.

  ‘That’s what I think too.’ Dortchen would have liked to have told him that she suspected her father of arranging a marriage for Röse to salve his wounded pride over Hanne’s defiance, but her father was scowling at her and so she only bent her head and went to talk commonplaces with the Ramus sisters.

  Dortchen was not unhappy to be left alone with her mother and Old Marie that evening, while her father went out with Röse and Mia. She lit a fire in the drawing room, and the three of them settled down to sew more muslin bags for the shop and chat by the warmth of the flames. Darkness had fallen early outside, and Dortchen had drawn the curtains and brought up a tray of tea for them to share.

  A knock sounded on the front door.

  ‘Why, whoever could that be?’ Frau Wild said sleepily from her couch, where she lay with a rug over her legs. She had been most relieved at the mysterious reappearance of the stolen opium and had been sipping from her bottle all afternoon.

  Dortchen’s heart was singing. ‘It’ll be Wilhelm and Lotte,’ she said with utter certainty.

  Both her mother and Old Marie looked concerned, but Dortchen hurried down the stairs. Old Marie huffed behind her, bleating, ‘Dortchen, sweetling, it’s not seemly – let me answer the door.’

  To Dortchen’s surprise, Jakob was with his brother and sister on the doorstep. ‘You did not go to watch the spectacle?’ she asked him, taking his coat and hat and scarf.

  ‘Another French victory does not give me joy,’ he answered gravely. ‘I had hopes that this new English commander Wellington would prove Napoléon’s undoing in Spain, but they’ve been in deadlock for months. Now the French have won back Badajoz, I think it cannot be long before the English are driven from the Peninsula.’

  ‘But has not Wellington built massive earthworks and fortifications all along the Portuguese border?’ Wilhelm said, smiling down at Dortchen as he relinquished his hat and coat to her. ‘Surely that will stop the French.’

  Jakob sighed. ‘Let us hope so.’

  They went up the stairs in melancholy silence. The newspapers were calling the war in the Peninsula ‘the Spanish ulcer’, since it was a wound that refused to heal. Hundreds of thousands of men had already died there, defending ruined towns and potholed roads, yet Napoléon refused to give up, sending thousands more to die for his determination to break the spirit of the Spanish and force them to be yet another puppet kingdom, ruled by one of his brothers.

  Frau Wild sat up as the three visitors entered the room, looking worried and patting ineffectually at her hair, which was falling out of its pins as usual. ‘Such a surprise,’ she said. ‘We were not expecting.’

  ‘We heard you have been unwell,’ Jakob said. ‘We do hope you are felling better.’

  Frau Wild pressed one hand against her breast. ‘Well as can be expected,’ she replied.

  The two Grimm brothers sa
t down by the fire, looking about the room with interest. In the warm firelight, it seemed cosy and welcoming in a way that the formal parlour never did. A vase full of pussywillow and narcissus stood on the mantelpiece, and a large bowl of sugarplums sat on the table. Dortchen offered them around and everyone took one, even Jakob.

  They talked of the war and the new tax on tea and sugar and pepper, and the difficulty of finding good wool since the blockades were keeping British products from their shore. Then Old Marie came back up the stairs with freshly made herbal tea, and little damp cakes made from chestnuts. She made to go back down to the kitchen but Dortchen cried, ‘No, Marie, stay with us. Why don’t you tell us all a story? I know Jakob and Wilhelm would be glad to hear one.’

  Old Marie hesitated, then sat on the hardest chair in the room, smoothing down her skirts. ‘If you don’t mind, ma’am,’ she said to Dortchen’s mother, who waved her hand vaguely and murmured, ‘Not at all.’

  ‘I’ll get paper and quills,’ Dortchen said to Wilhelm, hurrying across to the writing desk against the wall. He smiled at her as she returned, her arms full.

  ‘You’re very kind,’ he said to her in a low voice. ‘How did you know I was longing to hear another of Old Marie’s wonderful stories?’

  ‘You must seize the chance when it’s offered to you,’ she replied. ‘It’s not often Father’s out.’

  ‘What story would you like, sir?’ Old Marie asked, taking up her sewing again.

  ‘One we haven’t heard before,’ Wilhelm answered.

  ‘Do you know the one about Little Brother and Little Sister?’ she asked.

  ‘Do you mean the one about the witch and the house made of gingerbread? Yes, Dortchen has told me that one.’

  ‘No, this is a different tale, about a brother who drinks enchanted water and is turned into a deer. His sister looks after him till one day she is discovered by a king, who falls in love with her and marries her.’

  ‘No, I haven’t heard that one,’ Wilhelm said, unscrewing the inkpot and dipping in his quill. Excitement was gleaming in his dark eyes.

  As Old Marie told the story, Dortchen took up a needle and thread and the basket of darning, and settled down to sew and listen. Smiling, Lotte did the same, while Jakob sat forward, his gaze intent on Old Marie’s wrinkled face, his hands clasped loosely before him. Wilhelm’s quill scratched on the paper. Frau Wild sighed, leant her head back against a cushion and closed her eyes.

  When the story had finished, with the queen and her children saved from betrayal and death, Wilhelm laid down his quill with a sigh.

  ‘We must put it in the collection,’ he said to Jakob. ‘Yet we’ll need to rename it. We can’t have two tales called “Little Brother and Little Sister” – it’d be confusing.’

  ‘You could give the children names,’ Dortchen suggested.

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Dortchen thought for a moment. ‘Names for two clever children. Names for two children who outsmart their elders.’ She was reminded of a little rhyme Old Marie always used to say: ‘What Hänschen doesn’t learn, Hans never will.’ She had often said it to Gretchen, to encourage her to learn how to bake bread and wash linen and tend the fires while she had the chance.

  ‘Something that rhymes,’ Wilhelm said. ‘It always sounds better if it rhymes.’

  ‘How about Hänschen and Gretch—’ she began, but she did not want to give the brave little girl of the story the same name as her own vain and self-centred sister. ‘What about Hänsel and Gretel?’

  ‘Sounds good,’ Wilhelm said. ‘But we’ll give those names to the other Little Brother and Little Sister tale – the one about the gingerbread house – since you were the one to tell it to us.’

  Dortchen flushed with pleasure.

  ‘Do we have time for another story?’ Wilhelm asked. ‘We never seem to be able to sit in quietness like this and share tales.’

  ‘Talking about names, I know a tale you’ll like,’ Dortchen cried. ‘If only I can remember it. It’s about a girl who the king thinks can spin straw into gold, so he marries her, hoping for wealth and power. But it was all a lie of her father’s, and if the king finds out he’ll kill her.’

  Wilhelm drew a fresh piece of paper towards him. ‘Tell it to me.’

  Dortchen told him eagerly, her eyes fixed on his face. The others in the quiet room seemed to fade away into the shadows, as if she and Wilhelm were alone in the circle of firelight, his quill recording her every word, his eyes continually rising to meet hers, to gaze at her face, her mouth, before looking away again as he hurried to catch up with the story. Dortchen found it hard to breathe – her stays felt too tight upon her ribs, her skin hot and flushed from the fire, her blood fizzing with some indescribable emotion. Joy and fear and longing, and something strange and eager and quick.

  When she had finished the tale, with its grotesque villain and his secret name, there was silence for a long moment. Dortchen and Wilhelm sat smiling at each other, oblivious to anyone else.

  ‘Thank you – it’s a marvellous story,’ Wilhelm said, his voice low and gruff. ‘You tell it so beautifully. I can never hope to capture it half as well.’

  Dortchen’s flush deepened till she felt her whole body was on fire.

  ‘I have another tale for you, if you like,’ Old Marie said, breaking the spell.

  Dortchen sat back, embarrassed, aware of everyone’s curious eyes on her face. Wilhelm turned to Old Marie politely. ‘Of course, that would be wonderful.’

  ‘It’s about a father who cuts off his daughter’s hands,’ Old Marie said. She was sitting forward in her chair, her hands tense and still upon her sewing.

  ‘I don’t think I’ve heard that one before,’ Dortchen exclaimed.

  Old Marie regarded her with sombre eyes. ‘It’s not a tale for children.’

  ‘Jakob, you may need to write this one down,’ Wilhelm said, shaking his ink-stained fingers. ‘My hand is aching.’

  Jakob came to sit at the table, taking up a fresh quill and sheaf of paper. Wilhelm sat on the hearthrug, so close to Dortchen that she could have reached out and run her fingers through his crisp, dark curls. She was very conscious of his warm body, leaning so close to her knee, and his pale, long-fingered hand, hanging down. If he had wanted to, he could have leant forward and cupped her calf through the thin material of her dress. The idea of it made her stomach twist and her loins clench.

  Old Marie’s story was about a poor miller who promised the Devil his daughter in return for wealth. When she proved too good for the Devil to take, he chopped off her hands and drove her out into the world.

  As Old Marie told the story, Dortchen felt the blood drain from her face till she was afraid she might faint. She sat back in her chair, turning her cheek against the hard wood, her knees twisting away from where Wilhelm sat. She was conscious of his troubled gaze but would not meet his eyes. She could not have explained why Old Marie’s story horrified her so much. Surely it was just a story?

  No story was just a story, though. It was a suitcase stuffed with secrets.

  Old Marie spoke on steadily. In her tale, the girl without hands sought refuge in a king’s walled garden, and he took pity on her beauty and helplessness and married her. A pair of silver hands was forged for her. The king’s mother was horrified by his choice, however, and plotted to discredit the handless maiden. She had to flee back into the forest, taking her young son with her. There she was helped by a mysterious old man, who told her to wrap her maimed arms about a tree. The girl did as she was told, and her hands magically grew back.

  Dortchen heard the front door open. She started up, filled with terror. Old Marie darted a look at the sitting-room door, then stared at Wilhelm, her voice rising and quickening as she hurried to finish her tale. Wilhelm stared back at her, looking tense.

  Frau Wild sat up too, her hand groping for her drops. ‘Perhaps … another day?’ she suggested.

  Old Marie paid her no heed. ‘The king, meanwhile,
had been searching for his poor, maimed wife all through the vast, dark forest. He found his queen and his son by the spring, but could not believe the beautiful woman with the flawless white hands could be his wife. She showed him the silver-forged hands as proof, and he embraced her joyfully, crying, “Now a heavy stone has fallen from my heart.”’

  Jakob wrote swiftly, the scratch and dip of his quill drowned out by the stamp of feet on the steps, the sound of Mia’s high voice and the low growl as her father replied.

  ‘And so she was healed, and all was forgiven and forgotten, and the king and his queen celebrated a second wedding feast, for now at last they were equals,’ Old Marie said rapidly. Jakob wrote the last few words, laying down his quill just as the door to the sitting room opened and Herr Wild stepped in.

  He looked around the shadowy, firelit room with lowering brows. Wilhelm scrambled to his feet, stepping away from Dortchen’s chair. Jakob rose more slowly, bowing his head in greeting, while Lotte jumped up, looking scared. Old Marie kept placidly sewing, her white-capped head bent over her hands.

  ‘Oh, you’re home,’ Frau Wild said, twisting her handkerchief in her hands. ‘Did you have a pleasant evening? Look, we’ve had company too. So kind. Enquiring after my health.’

  ‘Is that so?’ Herr Wild replied unpleasantly. ‘How very officious. You do all look cosy. We, however, are chilled to the bone. Marie, do you think you could bestir yourself to warm us some soup?’

  ‘Of course, sir,’ she answered, rising to her feet.

  Röse opened the door and stumbled in, windswept and woebegone. ‘Mother?’ she said. ‘Mother, are you here?’ Her eyes were red-rimmed, her nose pink at the tip.

  ‘Of course, my little love,’ Frau Wild said, sitting quite upright. ‘Whatever is the matter?’

  Röse went in a rush across to her mother’s couch, collapsing in a welter of skirts beside it. A sob broke from her.

  ‘Why, nothing at all is the matter,’ Herr Wild said heartily. ‘She is to be congratulated. Our little Röse is to be married.’