The Wild Girl

by Kate Forsyth

‘It’s not the same.’

  ‘But why?’

  She could not explain to him.

  He turned her face up so he could look into her eyes, but she would not return his gaze. ‘What is wrong, sweetling? Is it just your father?’

  She laughed involuntarily, then she had to cover her face with her hands to stop herself from weeping. ‘Yes,’ she told him. ‘It’s just my father.’

  ‘I’ll talk to him, I’ll reassure him. It’ll be all right.’ He drew her close, but she shook her head and moved away.

  ‘He won’t listen, Wilhelm. There’s no point even trying.’

  He was troubled. ‘Don’t lose hope. Dortchen, if the fairy tale book is going to be a success, it has to be as good as possible. I wanted to ask you … Do you remember that tale you told me on the hill near the Lion’s Castle? About the girl who is sent out into the snow in a dress made of paper, to search for strawberries? And she finds three little men in the wood?’

  Dortchen nodded.

  ‘Will you tell it to me again? I couldn’t write it down last time, but it’s such a marvellous story, with the good girl who spits gold coins and the bad girl who coughs up toads … I just can’t remember it all.’

  Dortchen drew her hand across her eyes. She picked up her basket and headed towards the sanctuary of the dim, warm kitchen, away from the glare of daylight. ‘Come in,’ she said. ‘I’ll tell it to you again while I finish the herbs. You’ll need to be quick, though, as my life won’t be worth living if my father finds you here.’

  ‘Can I borrow some paper and a quill?’

  Dortchen nodded and drew down the little writing box in which her mother kept her accounting book and inkpot. She found some old paper and gave it to Wilhelm. As he sharpened the quill, she began to prepare small bunches of pennyroyal, hyssop, wormwood and rue to hang above the fire to dry.

  ‘Listen out for my father,’ she warned him. ‘If he comes, you must fly as fast as you can.’

  He nodded, though she could tell by his face that he hated the thought of such cowardice.

  She sat down at the table, her hands in their heavy gloves working without thought. ‘Once there was a man whose wife had died, and a woman whose husband had died,’ she began. ‘Each had a daughter. The girls knew each other, and one day they ended up together at the woman’s house. She said to the man’s daughter, “If you tell your father that I am interested in marrying him, I promise that you can bathe in milk every day and drink wine every day. My own daughter will have to drink water and wash in water.”’

  Like me, Dortchen thought. She paused, watching Wilhelm transcribe what she had said. His hands were stained with ink, his middle forefinger calloused where the quill rested. She remembered his hands on her body, and shuddered. He looked up enquiringly, and she went on, her voice thick.

  ‘So the girl went home and told her father what the woman had said, and the man replied, “What should I do? Marriage can be a joy, but it can also be a torture.”’

  Wilhelm smiled, flashing his eyes up to hers, then back down to his page. Dortchen could not be still. She stood and moved over to the window to check that there was no sign of her father. She found one task after another to keep her hands busy, while the girl in the story went out into the snow in a frock made of paper to search for strawberries.

  Wilhelm drew a new piece of paper towards him as Dortchen described how the girl was blessed by the three little men with the gift of spitting gold coins with every word.

  ‘Let us hope you have the same gift,’ Wilhelm said, sharpening a new quill with his penknife. ‘It’s such a wonderful story, it deserves to be in our collection. And maybe it will help make our fortune.’

  Dortchen tried to smile.

  She told the rest of the story, which ended with the wicked stepmother being rolled down a hill in a barrel studded with nails.

  Wilhelm scattered sand over his pages. ‘I’ll write it up neatly tonight and send it to the publisher tomorrow,’ he said. ‘It’d be a shame not to include it.’ He stood and stretched his arms over his head, shaking out his cramped hand.

  Dortchen looked through the half-open door at the garden. There was still no sound of her father returning home. She dreaded hearing the rumble of the buggy’s wheels and the sound of his heavy boots.

  ‘I know another story,’ she said. ‘One I’ve never told you before.’

  Wilhelm looked up in interest. ‘Really? Will you tell me?’

  She could not look at him. She busied herself grinding fallen acorns in the mortar, a job that never finished. ‘Once upon a time, there was a king who was married to the most beautiful woman in the world, with hair of purest gold,’ Dortchen said. ‘Before the king’s wife died, she asked that he would only marry someone who was as beautiful as herself, and who had hair as golden as her own. One day, the king looked at his daughter and saw that she was as beautiful as her mother, and her hair was as golden. He felt he must marry her, and told his daughter so.’

  Dortchen’s arms felt heavy. Her legs trembled, and her face and body were hot. Concentrating on grinding the acorns to a fine powder, she went on, though the words felt sharp in her throat. ‘The wise princess said the king must first get her three dresses: one as golden as the sun, one as silver as the moon, and one as sparkling as the stars.’

  Dortchen paused. Wilhelm’s quill scratched across the parchment, pinning down her words with its sharp point. ‘Then she asked her father for a coat made from all kinds of fur, from every kind of animal in the kingdom. A thousand animals were caught and flayed to make the coat, and the three dresses were made, golden as the sun, silver as the moon and sparkling as the stars. The king said they would be married the next day.’

  Wilhelm frowned at his page, then looked up at her as she stopped speaking. Dortchen began to gabble the story as fast as she could, determined to get it out. ‘During the night, she collected the gifts from her betrothed – a gold ring, a little gold spinning wheel and a little golden reel.’

  ‘Wait,’ Wilhelm said, his quill pausing. ‘Who was her betrothed? Do you mean her father, the king?’

  Dortchen paid him no mind, all her energies concentrated on forcing the story past her lips. ‘She put the dresses in a nutshell, darkened her face with soot, put on the fur, and walked out into a big forest, where she fell asleep in a hollow tree. The next day, the king was hunting in the forest.’

  ‘The king? Her father?’ Wilhelm asked.

  ‘Her betrothed,’ Dortchen said, giving a little irritated shrug of her shoulders. She knew she was telling the story badly. ‘His dogs found the girl in the coat of fur. She was caught and dragged home behind his cart. She was called All-Kinds-of-Fur.’

  Wilhelm frowned. ‘But did he not recognise her? If she was his betrothed …’

  ‘She was all dirty,’ Dortchen said. ‘And disguised in the fur.’

  She went on even faster, her hands grinding away at the mortar. ‘She had to sleep in a sty without light under the staircase. She had to cook and clean and scrub all day and half the night. Before the king went to bed, she had to go and take off his boots, which he then threw at her head.’

  Wilhelm looked up at her, startled. ‘Why—?’ he began, but Dortchen did not pause.

  ‘Once there was a ball. All-Kinds-of-Fur wanted to see her betrothed and asked the cook for permission to go upstairs to look at the splendour. She washed off the soot, took off the coat of fur and put on the sun-dress.

  ‘When she entered the ballroom, everybody stepped aside for this princess. The king danced with her. He thought the unknown princess looked like his betrothed and wanted to question her. But she curtsied and left. She changed her clothes and returned to the kitchen, where the cook asked her to make bread soup, and to take care to drop no hair in it. She made the bread soup and put in the gold ring that the king had given her.

  ‘When the ball was over, the king had his bread soup. He thought it had never tasted so good, and then saw his engagement ring at the bottom.
He wondered how it had got there and called the cook, who got angry with All-Kinds-of-Fur, threatening to beat her if she had dropped a hair in the soup.

  ‘The king, however, praised the soup and was told that All-Kinds-of-Fur had made it. When she was questioned about her identity and her knowledge of the ring, she answered that she was only good for having boots thrown at her and knew nothing of the ring. Then she ran off.’

  Wilhelm’s quill was flying over the page. He dipped it in the inkpot and went on, doing his best to keep up with Dortchen’s tumble of words.

  ‘At the next ball, All-Kinds-of-Fur washed and dressed in her moon-dress. This time the king was convinced she was his betrothed, as nobody else in the world had such golden hair. But she disappeared, and back in the kitchen she put the golden spinning wheel in the bread soup. The king liked the soup even more, and was surprised to find the spinning wheel he had given his betrothed. First the cook and then All-Kinds-of-Fur were called, but the king got no better answer than the previous time.

  ‘Hoping that his betrothed would turn up, the king arranged a third ball. This time All-Kinds-of-Fur put on her star-dress. During the ball, the king put the gold ring from his soup on her finger. But she disappeared and changed back into the coat of fur. In her rush, however, she forgot to blacken one finger. She made the bread soup and put the reel in it. When the king found it, he called for All-Kinds-of-Fur. The king saw her white finger, clasped it and found his ring. He then tore off the coat of fur and her golden hair fell down: she was his betrothed.’

  Dortchen saw that the acorns were as ground as they could ever be. Her arms ached. She pushed the mortar away and raised her eyes to Wilhelm’s face. He looked troubled, but there was none of the horrified comprehension that she both hoped for and dreaded.

  ‘What happened then?’ he asked.

  Dortchen stretched out her arms and laid her head down. ‘They were married.’

  ‘It is the most extraordinary story,’ Wilhelm said, cleaning the quill on a rag. ‘It feels old, very old. It has a lot of mysteries in it, lots of oddities, but then so do all the best of the old stories. We had a similar tale in the manuscript we gave to Clemens. It too had a girl who goes secretly to a ball, and who reveals herself by hiding her ring in some food. This feels much more authentic, however, much more powerful and dark. It has echoes of Vitae duorum Offarum …’

  Dortchen felt a chasm gaping between them. She could not understand a word he said, and it seemed he had not understood her either. She stood up abruptly. ‘You need to go.’

  He looked up at her, surprised by the sharpness of her tone. ‘I wish I didn’t have to, but I know your father will be home soon. And I need to get these stories off to the publisher as soon as possible, if they are to make it into the book.’

  She did not answer.

  ‘When can I see you again?’ he asked, standing up.

  ‘I don’t know. My father …’ She stood back to let him go through to the garden.

  ‘We just have to hope he will change his mind,’ Wilhelm said, pausing on the doorstep, ‘once he sees the book is published and selling well.’

  Dortchen tried to smile, but the muscles of her face seemed to have forgotten the movements. He’ll never change his mind.

  THE COLDEST WINTER

  November 1812

  A letter arrived from Rudolf. It was written on a mere scrap of paper, stained and tattered, his hand almost indecipherable. ‘We are coming home,’ it read. ‘I cannot wait to shake off the dust of this accursed land. At first we thought Moscow was like something out of A Thousand and One Nights. It was so beautiful and strange, and we had conquered it. We were delirious with joy. But the city was eerily quiet, with hardly a soul to be seen. Everyone had fled. We made camp, worn half to death by the fighting and all the marching. In the dead of the night, they set fire to their own city, and us all sleeping within. The Emperor himself scarcely escaped with his life. I have never seen such a terrifying sight. My dreams are haunted by the roar of the fire, the howls of the burning dogs, the screams of the dying. Most of my battalion didn’t escape. Those of us still alive are so weary we can scarcely walk. How we are to get home I cannot think.’

  Another fragment came two weeks later.

  ‘We have reached Borodino. The dead were never cleared away. They still lie there, their eyes staring at the sky, their skin so mottled with red and blue that it is as if they have painted their faces like cheap whores. The stink is indescribable. I went to the monastery where we had left our wounded. They have been left all this time with no kind of help. No food, no water, no medicines, not even any chamber pots. We are going to take them with us, though only the Devil knows how.’

  When Dortchen and Lotte went to the market together, they heard other snippets of news from the mothers and sisters of other Hessian soldiers.

  ‘My son says they are being harassed by Cossacks,’ the fishmonger’s wife told them, her eyes shadowed with fear. ‘He says they swoop in on their horses and kill the slow ones, taking everything they own, right down to their underwear.’

  ‘They’ve had to abandon all the guns,’ the butcher said. ‘My boy is heartbroken; he loves that gun like it was a woman. He says the horses simply haven’t the strength to pull them any more.’

  ‘It’s begun to snow,’ the miller’s daughter said, tears making tracks through the white flour dust on her cheek. ‘Oh, God, my brother wouldn’t take his warm underthings. He said they’d be home before the end of summer.’

  It grew cold in Cassel too. Dortchen’s hands were red-raw with blisters from chopping wood. She and Mia pickled all the cabbages, and Herr Wild killed the pig. The screams as it died were horrendous.

  ‘We have no food,’ Rudolf wrote. ‘We retreat the way we came. If we scrape away the snow, we find only black underneath where the Russians burnt the fields. The villages are deserted, with dead bodies still lying where they fell two months ago. I have seen soldiers carve a slice from a poor horse’s rump while it staggers along, cramming it raw and bloody into their mouths. Another will do so a few paces along, and when the horse at last falls, we are all upon it, fighting for its heart and liver. A field with a few old cabbage stalks is a feast to us. We boil the stalks up with the stump of a tallow candle and a handful of gunpowder, then we must fight to stop others from stealing it.’

  On 11th November, the newspapers reported that a disaster had befallen Napoléon’s stepson, Prince Eugene. He and his men had tried to ford a river, but his heavy guns had been overturned by the swift current. Many men were swept away and drowned, while others froze to death overnight. He lost two and a half thousand men, all his heavy guns and artillery, plus the baggage trains that carried the food and ammunition for his men. All they could do was stumble on, while the Russians pursued them, bombarding the straggling troops and seizing the fallen as prisoners.

  ‘They say Napoléon himself was almost taken,’ Lotte told Dortchen as they stood together in the queue for flour. ‘I heard that the Emperor now wears a bag with poison in it about his neck, so he can kill himself if the Russians get hold of him.’

  In late November, Napoléon succeeded in building a bridge across the Berezina River, after tricking the Russians into thinking he planned to cross elsewhere. The Russians realised their mistake and came galloping back, determined to stop the French from escaping. A handful of men held the Russians off till the bulk of the French army was safe on the far bank.

  The bridge was burnt behind them, leaving the defending soldiers to be slaughtered by the Russians. Most of the soldiers left behind were Hessian. The mood in Cassel was gloomy. Many shops were closed and shuttered, with wreaths hanging on their doors. The people in the streets were dressed mainly in black. Crowds stood outside the army barracks, begging for news of their loved ones. Women wept into black-bordered handkerchiefs. Louise went with Marianne, seeking word of Rudolf. She came home in the twilight, pale, red-eyed and silent. ‘Too many dead,’ she said listlessly to Dortchen. ‘The
y told us it was best not to hope.’

  Jakob and Wilhelm called on Herr Wild, seeking news of Rudolf. He shut the door in their faces.

  Two weeks later, another letter came from Rudolf, scrawled on a shred of paper. ‘It is so cold. I do not think I’ll ever make it home. I’m so sorry.’ It was undated and unsigned. There was no way of telling if it had been written before the fatal crossing of the Berezina.

  The days passed, and terrible rumours reached the marketplace. Napoléon’s army was nearly wiped out, dying from disease, starvation and the cold. Napoléon himself was dead. No, Napoléon was alive, but he had abandoned his army and driven home to Paris. There had been a coup, someone said. The Emperor was overthrown. No, no, someone else said, he has arrested the conspirators and still reigns.

  In mid-December, the newspapers published the Emperor’s official army bulletin. ‘His Majesty’s health has never been better,’ it said. Very little was said about the health of his army.

  Every day, Herr Wild drank in the gloom of his study. Every night, he crept through the dark house to his daughter’s room. Dortchen would sit, huddled in her eiderdown, waiting for the creak of his footsteps, the piercing of candlelight through her keyhole, the dark loom of him in her doorway. It was better to wait than to be woken from sleep with his weight upon her, his hand on her mouth to keep her quiet.

  It was the coldest winter Dortchen had ever known.

  The River Fulda froze solid, and King Jérôme organised sleigh races from Aue Island to the bridge and back. Bells rang out merrily as the horses galloped along the ice, their hooves throwing up glittering shards of frost. One night he even held a ball on the ice. Couples in thick furs waltzed about an immense bonfire, while the musicians shivered as they plied their instruments with numb fingers. Mia went with Lotte and the Hassenpflug sisters. She came home with rosy cheeks and glowing eyes, describing the scene excitedly as she helped Dortchen serve supper.

  Dortchen did not wish to go anywhere any more. She had drawn the boundaries of her life tight around her, like a small animal crouching in a hide. She especially hated going to church, where she would see Wilhelm and his worried eyes, and sense the curious glances of her old friends. She tried to make excuses not to go.