The Wild Girl

by Kate Forsyth

  As always, church was an ordeal. The sermon dragged on far too long, and afterwards the congregation stood about in the icy wind, exchanging meaningless pleasantries and wild rumours. Most of the talk was about the food shortages, and how any of them was to survive the winter.

  ‘It makes me wish I had a magic porridge pot, like the one in that story you told me,’ Mia said to Dortchen.

  ‘I don’t know that story,’ Jakob said, turning from where he was talking to Louis and Marie Hassenpflug. Wilhelm turned too, and Dortchen’s traitorous blush gave her away to all who stood near. She tried to regain her composure.

  ‘I thought everyone knew that one.’

  Wilhelm shook his head, his face grave. ‘Won’t you tell it to us?’ he said.

  ‘It’s a simple enough tale,’ Dortchen said. ‘It’s about a poor little girl who lived alone with her mother, and they no longer had anything to eat. The girl went into the forest, where she met an old woman who gave her a little pot. When she said, “Little pot, cook,” it cooked sweet porridge, and when she said, “Little pot, stop,” it stopped. The girl took the pot home to her mother, and they were freed from their poverty and hunger, eating sweet porridge as often as they chose.

  ‘One time, when the girl had gone out, her mother said, “Little pot, cook.” And it did cook, and she ate until she was full. Then she wanted the pot to stop cooking but she could not remember the right word. So it went on cooking, and the porridge rose up and poured over the side, filling the kitchen, and the hallway, and all the rooms. It kept on pouring till the street was full, and every house on it, as if it wanted to satisfy the hunger of the whole world. No one knew how to stop it.

  ‘At last, the little girl came home and said, “Little pot, stop,” and it stopped cooking, and anyone who wished to return to the town had to eat his way back.’

  They all laughed. ‘What I wouldn’t give for a pot like that,’ Lotte said. ‘Though you’d get sick of porridge after a while.’

  ‘I must write that down,’ Wilhelm said. He bent a little closer to Dortchen. ‘Could I …?’

  She shook her head, not looking at him.

  ‘When?’ he whispered. ‘I must see you.’

  The others were all laughing and talking about what kind of magic pot they would like. One that produced beef stew, Louis Hassenpflug said. No, a different meal every time, his sister said.

  Dortchen stared straight ahead. ‘Not at the house,’ she whispered.

  Wilhelm was silent for a moment, thinking. Lotte turned to him and asked him what he would want a magic pot to produce. He flashed a quick smile and said, ‘Porridge at breakfast, soup at lunch, then roast goose at dinner,’ which made everyone laugh again.

  As the little group began to break up, ready for the walk home through the snowy streets, Wilhelm turned to Dortchen, bowed and doffed his hat, then said quickly, ‘Meet me at the orangery on Friday afternoon.’

  He did not need to tell her the time. They both knew the exact moment at which Herr Wild would close up his shop and walk to his church elders’ meeting; the old man was as reliable as a clock.

  She did not nod or smile, but her eyes flashed up to meet his before she turned away. It was not just Herr Wild who was watching her and Wilhelm, she knew. Many in the congregation had a long nose for scandal and shame.

  The following Friday, Dortchen drew her coat close about her and made her way swiftly down the steep, icy steps to Aue Island. The park was deserted but for a lone man strolling by the frozen river, his dog trotting behind him.

  Wilhelm was waiting for her by the entrance to the marble bath, his hands thrust into his coat pockets. ‘You came. I wasn’t at all sure you would.’

  She nodded.

  ‘Is all well? Were you suspected?’

  She shook her head. ‘I said I was unwell. Father thought I was feverish.’

  He crooked a smile. ‘I certainly was. Dortchen, I’m sorry. I seem to have no self-control where you are concerned … I shouldn’t have kissed you.’

  ‘I don’t believe you were the only one doing the kissing,’ she answered, not looking at him.

  He grinned, and she could not help but smile too. ‘Shall we walk? It’s too cold to stand here.’ He offered her his arm and she slipped her hand in the crook of his elbow, and they walked down a snowy path between tall evergreen hedges.

  ‘I’m so glad … that we’re talking again,’ he said, finding his words with difficulty. ‘And for the stories … and, yes,’ he burst out, ‘for the kiss. It’s been a whole year, since that day in Hanne’s summer house. A whole year of longing for you. Dortchen, what are we to do?’

  But she did not want to talk about the future. It was too dark and unimaginable. She squeezed his arm. ‘Tell me about the book. Have you had any better reviews?’

  A shadow crossed his face and he shook his head. ‘Even Arnim says he thinks the book would have been better with fewer annotations and some illustrations. He said his daughter loves some of the stories, especially the ones with rhymes, but that he cannot bring himself to read others to her.’

  Dortchen thought about the maiden with no hands, and the girl disguising herself in the fur of flayed animals, and thought she understood why. ‘Couldn’t you add some more rhymes into the stories, then?’

  ‘I’m not meant to change them,’ he said. ‘We decided we would only record what was told to us, so we could keep the stories as close as possible to the original – except that, of course, it’s so hard to decide what the true original is. We heard so many different versions of the same story.’

  ‘Well, that’s to be expected,’ Dortchen said. ‘Each time I tell a story, I change it just a little. Like the little rhyme in the story about the brother and sister and the gingerbread house. That just came to me one day, so I said it, and Mia liked it so much that I kept it in.’

  ‘I wonder if that’s one of the rhymes that Arnim’s daughter likes?’

  ‘Of course it is! How many other rhymes are there?’

  ‘How did it go again?’ Wilhelm screwed up his face, trying to remember.

  ‘Nibble, nibble, little mouse, who is nibbling at my house?’ Dortchen said. ‘Mia always loved that part. It would be easy enough to add another rhyme in answer to it.’

  ‘Would it?’ he said, teasingly.

  ‘Of course.’ In a high-pitched voice, she said, ‘It’s the wind so wild, the heavenly child.’

  ‘Did you just make that up?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘You’re a natural born poet,’ he teased.

  Dortchen swatted him. ‘Still, I don’t see why you couldn’t add a few more little rhymes like that to it,’ she said. ‘And some illustrations. You could take out the nastier stories, like that one about the murderous sausage. That’s enough to give any child a nightmare.’

  He smiled absently, his mind far away. ‘Perhaps …’ he said. ‘Arnim told us that Clemens … Clemens himself said …’ Muscles clenched in his jaw.

  ‘What?’ Dortchen asked, after he did not go on.

  ‘Clemens said you can display children’s clothing without it being all dirty, with the buttons torn off and the shirt hanging out of the pants.’

  There was such hurt in Wilhelm’s voice that Dortchen reached out both her hands and pressed his arm between them. ‘He’s just jealous. He wanted to collect old tales himself but was too lazy. You sent him all your stories and he lost them, remember.’

  ‘I know, but …’

  ‘Your book is wonderful. One day you’ll be famous. Everyone will say to me, “Is it true you knew the famous Grimm brothers?” And I will fan myself and put on airs, saying, “Indeed, they lived right next door to me. I used to make them bread soup.”’

  Then Wilhelm said in a gruff voice, ‘One day people will say to me, “Is it true your wife told you all those marvellous old stories?” And I’ll say, “Yes, indeed, that’s how we fell in love.”’

  There was a long silence. Dortchen was so choked with tears that sh
e could not speak. They spilt down her cheeks, and Wilhelm put up his bare hand and wiped them away.

  They had walked down the length of one of the pathways. The park stretched away on the other side, empty and white, the view framed in bare black branches. Nearby was a stand of old yew trees, their evergreen branches casting a deep shadow on the snow. Wilhelm drew her into the shade, and his mouth found hers. Soon her hands were at the back of his head, dragging it closer.

  At last he lifted his mouth away. ‘Dortchen, you’re enough to drive a man mad. One day you will not let me kiss you, the next …’ His voice was rough. He held her gently, kissing her eyelids, the soft, urgent pulse at the base of her throat. ‘I love you,’ he whispered.

  Dortchen’s knees buckled, her senses swam. Only Wilhelm’s body kept her from swooning to the ground. She wanted him to love her, she wanted him to wipe away the past, she wanted to be lost to herself forever.

  So she fell to her knees before him and put her hands to that hard male part of him, then pressed her mouth there. He cried out and clutched her head to him. ‘Oh, God,’ he groaned, as she freed him from his breeches. ‘Oh, God.’

  Dortchen said the words with him, ‘Oh, God,’ and opened her mouth to him. He arched his back, thrusting his hips forward, allowing her to fill her mouth with him. Then the next instant he pulled away. ‘Dortchen, no,’ he panted. ‘We cannot.’

  She followed him blindly, not understanding, seizing him with her hands, nuzzling her head into his groin, trying to take him into her mouth again. He stopped her, lifting her up and pulling her against him. ‘We cannot … It’s a sin … Dortchen, we must wait.’

  Dortchen’s head spun and her ears roared. Her body was both aching with lust and shaking with revulsion. ‘A sin,’ she said. ‘Yes, a sin.’

  She put her hands down and touched him again, and he groaned. Leaning against him, she worked him with her hands, then knelt once more, tasting him with lip and tongue. She was expecting him to groan and cry out like her father did, but he stopped her hands with both of his and raised her up, holding her away from him. His expression was not what she expected. He looked shocked.

  ‘Dortchen, what are you doing? You must not … It’s a sin.’

  She gazed at him, confused.

  ‘We must wait … We must be married first.’

  Anger filled her. ‘Marry?’ she asked. ‘How can we marry? You are the vassal of your brother and I … I am the vassal of my father.’

  ‘But, Dortchen—’

  ‘I cannot marry you. Not now, not ever. My father has forbidden it … and I … I …’ She was unable to go on.

  He spoke her name again and reached for her, but she struck out at him, then turned and ran away. Her long skirts tripped her but she scrambled up and ran on. The world was all grey and white and black and cold. She found a dark corner of ivy and stone, and pressed herself there, tearing at her hair and her face, wanting to hurt herself.

  Wilhelm’s face haunted her. She had tried to love him, to forget herself in him, but all she had done was reveal to him the wild side of herself, the beast within.

  PART SIX

  The Red Boundary Stone

  CASSEL

  The Electorate of Hessen-Cassel, September 1813–December 1814

  They were both now free, so Roland said, ‘Now I will go to my father and arrange for our wedding.’

  ‘I’ll stay here and wait for you,’ said the girl. ‘I’ll transform myself into a red boundary stone so that no one will recognise me.’

  So Roland set forth and the girl, in the shape of a red boundary stone, stood there and waited for her sweetheart. But when Roland arrived home, he was snared by another woman, who caused him to forget the girl. The poor girl waited there for a long time, but finally, when he failed to return, she grew sad and transformed herself into a flower, thinking, ‘Someone will surely come this way and trample me down.’

  From ‘Sweetheart Roland’, a tale told by Dortchen Wild to Wilhelm Grimm on 19th January 1812

  THE FALL OF WESTPHALIA

  September 1813

  One warm autumn evening in late September, the gate to the Wilds’ garden banged open and Lotte came hurrying down the path, the ribbons of her bonnet flapping behind her.

  Dortchen and Mia were digging up angelica and sweet cicely roots, to hang and dry by the fire. ‘Lotte,’ Dortchen cried in surprise, straightening her aching back. ‘What’s wrong?’

  Her immediate thought, on seeing Lotte’s white, shocked face, was that something had happened to Wilhelm. She had not seen him since that awful day in the snowy park. He had spent the summer with his friends, the von Haxthausens, who lived on a grand estate near Paderborn. The last time Wilhelm had gone to visit them, his carriage had overturned twice on the potholed roads. Dortchen feared the same had happened again, and he had been injured. She could not ask, however. Even to think of Wilhelm brought a scalding rush of shame and humiliation upon her, so that she could scarcely breathe.

  Lotte seized both her hands. ‘Dortchen, have you not heard the news? The Russians are coming! They’re only a few hours’ march away. Oh, Dortchen, what are we to do?’

  ‘The Russians are coming?’ Dortchen repeated. Mia cried out and sank down onto a water barrel, her hands to her mouth.

  ‘Yes, they’ve beaten the French and the Grand Army is fleeing,’ Lotte said. ‘Napoléon has no more men. The Russian army is marching right towards us now.’

  Dortchen could not take it in. She leant against the wall, her head spinning.

  She had been so busy all summer, in the house, the garden and the stillroom, that she had been only dimly aware of events in the outside world. The Russians and the Prussians had forged a new alliance, she knew, and had been fighting against the French for most of the year. Austria had joined them only a few weeks ago, after Napoléon had refused to sign a peace treaty that would have seen him lose all his mighty conquests there. There had been a battle at Dresden, but Napoléon had won.

  What could Lotte mean when she said Napoléon had no more men? Surely Napoléon, the greatest military commander since Charlemagne himself, could not be losing the war? What did it mean for her family, for her country? How could the Russians possibly be here, at their very doorstep?

  ‘Sit down,’ Lotte said. ‘You’ve gone white as a sheet.’

  She guided Dortchen to sit on the back step, and Dortchen held her head in her hands while Lotte went into the scullery and pumped a mug of water for her. It was cool and refreshing, and helped Dortchen recover her senses. Mia was weeping, and Lotte passed her the cup and her own crumpled handkerchief.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Dortchen said. ‘I thought Napoléon was winning.’

  ‘He lost a major battle near Berlin a few weeks ago,’ Lotte said, ‘and has been retreating ever since. They say his troops fell into a wild panic at the sight of the Cossacks charging down upon them, and simply dropped their muskets and ran.’

  ‘Cossacks!’ Mia’s blue eyes were rounder than ever. ‘Dortchen, what will they do to us?’

  ‘Cossacks are coming here? To Cassel?’ Dortchen was on her feet at once, grasping the door frame to keep her balance as her vision swam. She had heard so many horror stories of the Cossacks.

  ‘King Jérôme is fleeing,’ Lotte said. ‘He has ordered Jakob to pack up all the treasures at the palace. Jakob is in despair. Luckily, the King does not think much of books and so Jakob has been able to save some of the most precious.’

  ‘The King is fleeing?’

  ‘Yes, the whole court is trying to get away. The highway is jammed with coaches and carts. We can’t get away, of course. Jakob says we must barricade ourselves in and hope for the best.’

  ‘Wilhelm,’ Dortchen whispered. ‘Is he home? Is he here?’

  Lotte nodded. Pity was on her face. ‘Yes, he’s here. He doesn’t want to see you. Oh, Dortchen, I just wanted to make sure you were safe. I couldn’t forgive myself if I didn’t warn you and you were all hurt.’ Tears
were streaming down Lotte’s face. She and Dortchen embraced, then Lotte ran out through the gate.

  Dortchen locked it behind her, and then hurried to the outhouses, where she and Mia secured the stable door and dragged hay bales across it. They chased the chickens and geese into their coop and closed it up tight, then ran back to the house. ‘Rudolf,’ Dortchen called up the stairs. ‘I need you.’

  ‘I’ll go up and tell Mother,’ Mia said.

  ‘Tell her to sew any jewels or coins she has into our petticoats,’ Dortchen said. ‘Help her.’

  Dortchen ran into the shop, where her father was seated at his counter, writing in his logbook. He looked up, stern and unapproachable. Since Rudolf’s return from Russia, her father had hardly looked at Dortchen or spoken to her. She was grateful for this, and did her best not to rouse his ire. So she slowed down, smoothed her muddy apron and said, ‘I’m sorry to disturb you, Father. It’s just … I’ve had news. The Russians are only a few hours’ march away. The Emperor – Napoléon, I mean – he’s been beaten in a great battle … King Jérôme is fleeing Cassel.’

  Her father sat motionless for a moment, then turned and looked out the shop window. Dortchen followed his gaze. All was chaos out in the Marktgasse. People were running everywhere, and shop-owners were hastily banging down their shutters and wheeling away their barrows. Herr Wild stood up. ‘The drugs! The opium! Dortchen, shut the shop. I’ll hide my cabinet.’ He tossed her his heavy ring of keys, then rushed to the stillroom.

  Dortchen hurried out through the shop door, clutching the keys close. Outside, all was in tumult. Carriages and carts jammed the street, with coachmen whipping horses forward. Anxious faces peered from the windows, shouting, ‘Hurry, get a move on!’ Two young men seized an old man and flung him down from his cart as if he were a sack of potatoes, beating his old, bony nag with their walking sticks so it lurched into an ungainly trot.