The Wild Girl

by Kate Forsyth

  Mothers dragged their weeping children along by their hands. One young girl screamed in terror as her dropped basket of watercress was trampled by the fleeing crowds. A carriage driver locked wheels with the young men in the cart, who began to beat him with their walking sticks, trying to wrench the two vehicles apart.

  Dortchen closed the heavy shutters across the windows and padlocked them. Someone jostled past her. ‘Out of my way,’ he shouted, pushing her so violently that she fell to her knees. It was a butcher’s boy in a bloodstained apron, carrying a long stick strung with rabbit carcasses over his shoulder. Dortchen scrambled to her feet, shaken and bruised. The butcher’s boy shoved past the little watercress seller, who caught hold of his arm. ‘Help me, help me, please,’ she sobbed.

  He knocked her down, then, unable to make his way forward, threw down his stick of rabbit carcasses and bullied his way on board a cart filled with cages of chickens. A mangy dog darted forward and seized the leg of one of the rabbits, trying to drag it away. Dortchen grabbed the end of the stick and wrested it away from the starving dog, who ran off with one limp carcass hanging from its mouth. Dortchen helped the watercress seller to her feet, then pressed one of the rabbits into her arms and said, ‘Go home, as fast as you can. Lock your door and don’t answer for anyone.’

  The little girl nodded and ran off, the limp rabbit clutched close to her chest like a strange doll. Dortchen dragged the stick of rabbits inside the shop and slammed the door. She locked and barred it, then stood against it, her heart pounding erratically. Three rabbits dangled from the stick in her hand – more fresh meat than the Wild family had seen in months.

  She was busy skinning the rabbits when Rudolf limped into the kitchen. ‘Dortchen, what’s going on? Mia’s crying something about Cossacks. Surely it can’t be true?’

  ‘The Russians are only a few kilometres away,’ she said. ‘Napoléon’s army is fleeing. They’ll be here soon.’

  The colour drained from his face.

  ‘The King has fled,’ she told him. ‘Perhaps they will pursue him and leave us alone.’

  ‘The coward. Why won’t he stand and fight?’

  ‘Lotte says there are no soldiers left.’

  Rudolf sat down abruptly. ‘What are we to do?’

  ‘Help me hide the valuables,’ Dortchen said. ‘Then we’ll pack up some bags, in case we have to flee too. I managed to seize us some dead rabbits; I’ll smoke them by the fire now, and I’ll make some hard biscuits, so that we’ll at least have some food.’

  Rudolf made a face. ‘Disgusting stuff, but I swear it saved my life – along with the muffler.’

  Dortchen smiled faintly.

  Frau Wild came fluttering downstairs in a panic, holding a few paltry trinkets. Mia was close behind her, with armfuls of petticoats. ‘Are you sure?’ Frau Wild asked. ‘Better than burying them? What if they search us?’

  ‘If we bury them, we have to leave them behind if we flee,’ Dortchen said. ‘Better carrying them on us, I think.’

  She settled her mother in the rocking chair with her sewing basket, while she boiled up the rabbit bones for stock. Mia kneaded some simple biscuit dough. Herr Wild came in, bent under the weight of his large padlocked chest. ‘Rudolf, help me bury this in the compost heap. I will not have my best drugs stolen by marauding foreigners.’

  Rudolf obeyed, and then father and son set themselves to guard the shop with their old musket and flintlock pistol. ‘It’s one of the first places they’ll break into,’ Herr Wild said grimly. ‘Soldiers are always in need of medicines.’

  Mid-afternoon, they heard the sound of musket fire to the east, then the roar of cannon. Everyone stopped what they were doing and listened tensely.

  ‘It sounds close,’ Mia said, pressing close to Dortchen’s side. Dortchen put an arm around her.

  The fusillade continued for quite some time, then they heard more gunfire from the south. As darkness fell, the gunfire ceased, though every now and again a burst of cheering and shouting startled them. The family ate a simple dinner of rabbit and turnip stew at the kitchen table, then made up beds on the floor. No one wanted to be far from their escape route out the back.

  Dortchen scarcely slept at all.

  THE RUSSIAN INVASION

  September 1813

  The next day passed in much the same fashion, with intermittent gunfire and the occasional roar of cannon. Rudolf thought it was coming from the local troops defending the bridge over the Fulda, which entered Cassel only a few blocks from the Marktgasse. By sunset, Dortchen was feeling much easier. The gunfire was coming rarely now, and she hoped that any Cossacks had simply gone around Cassel to chase after King Jérôme and his treasure-laden baggage train.

  All those hopes were dashed the following morning, when the dawn was shattered by the booming of cannon fire. It went on for hours without ceasing. Crouching by the shop window, Dortchen and Rudolf peered through the slits in the shutters. They saw a handful of French soldiers run past, tearing off their distinctive red and blue uniforms and throwing away their weapons. Then a long column of Russian soldiers marched past, wearing white breeches and green jackets with high red collars. They looked grim and determined. An officer rode at their head, heavy gold epaulettes on his shoulders.

  ‘They don’t look very wild,’ Dortchen whispered to her brother, remembering his descriptions of long-haired Cossacks with matted beards and heavy bearskin coats galloping about on small, shaggy ponies, shooting down anyone that moved with their bows and arrows.

  ‘They’re not Cossacks,’ Rudolf murmured back. ‘That’s the Russian infantry. Let us pray they’re keeping the Cossacks outside the town gates, else the whole town will be sacked and burnt.’

  Some time later a group of prisoners limped past, naked and shivering. Only their tall blue hats showed that they were French soldiers. ‘The poor things,’ Dortchen whispered. ‘They must be freezing.’

  Rudolf snorted. ‘It’s September. You should’ve tried being a Russian prisoner of war during the retreat. They made you march barefoot and naked through snowdrifts for hundreds of miles. If you fell, they’d shoot you. If you managed to stay upright, you’d lose your feet and your hands to frostbite. They were merciless.’

  Dortchen shuddered, praying that the Russian officers would keep their troops in hand.

  All day the long columns of green-clad soldiers marched through the town. They made no move to plunder any of the shops, though as twilight closed in, a few young men dressed in rough provincial clothes came swaggering through the Marktgasse, flaming torches in their hands. They shook the door of the apothecary’s shop and Rudolf shoved the muzzle of his gun up against the glass. They laughed and went on their way. Later that night Dortchen smelt smoke and saw an orange glare over the rooftops, but the fire did not spread. Eventually they all slept, waiting to see what dawn would bring them.

  The next morning, Russian soldiers marched through the town, issuing proclamations that were read in every square in perfect French and German. The town began to stir. Townspeople put their heads out of windows to listen, and a few brave souls opened up their shops to the Russians. One Russian officer came and knocked at Herr Wild’s door.

  ‘We mean you no harm,’ he said, taking off his shako cap and bowing in a very smart military manner. ‘We have wounded men and wish to buy supplies from you. We will pay, of course.’ He hefted a small purse in his hand.

  Rudolf hesitated, but his father called him a fool and unlocked the door. Rudolf could not bear to serve the Russians and went limping through to the kitchen, so Herr Wild called Dortchen to help, warning her with a grim look to be quiet and meek.

  She came in with her eyes lowered and her hands folded tightly before her, hardly daring even to glance at the soldiers. One smiled at her and helped her lift down a heavy jar. Dortchen stepped away from him as fast as she could, taking refuge behind the safety of the counter.

  ‘I hope you didn’t have any trouble overnight,’ the officer said to Herr W
ild. He was tall, with strong eagle-like features and ice-blue eyes. ‘We had guards posted but a mob of anarchists burnt a wool factory that was making uniforms for the French and broke off the nose and an arm from Napoléon’s statue in front of the palace.’

  ‘We had no trouble here,’ Herr Wild replied.

  ‘We envision no more upsets. Count Czernitcheff, our colonel, has taken charge of the treasury, such as it is, and established a provisional government. You are free of the tyranny of the French. The Kingdom of Westphalia is no more.’

  Herr Wild grunted. ‘Then what are we now? Part of Russia?’

  ‘Not at all, sir,’ the officer said. ‘A settlement will be made with your former rulers – of that you can be sure.’

  He paid and the soldiers went out, carrying their parcels. At the door, the officer turned and gave Dortchen a wintry smile, bowing from the waist. ‘Thank you, Fraülein.’

  Herr Wild turned to Dortchen. ‘The Kurfürst may return?’ His voice broke. He cleared his throat and turned away, but not before Dortchen saw that there were tears in her father’s eyes.

  A few days later, just when the people of Cassel were daring to go about their normal business again, a wild rumour swept the town: the French were coming back! King Jérôme had gathered an army!

  Dortchen thought it was just another wild surmise, until the Russians quickly packed up and disappeared into the hills. Everyone was stunned. For good measure, the Wilds bolted and shuttered their shop again, and Frau Wild hastily sewed her jewellery back into the hem of her petticoat.

  On 7th October, Dortchen and Mia watched in bewilderment as the French army rode back into Cassel, without a single shot being fired. They arrested a few people who had helped the Russian provisional government, and they hanged the young men who had defaced Napoléon’s statue, but otherwise the Russian invasion might never have happened. Ten days later, King Jérôme rode into town on his white prancing charger, dressed in full regimentals, waving at the quiet, subdued crowds that had been rounded up and ordered to cheer for him.

  That night, every shop and house was ordered to hang lanterns above their front steps and to set lamps in every window so that the whole town was illuminated in celebration of the King’s return. Once, Dortchen and Mia would have begged to be allowed out to witness such a pretty sight. That warm October night, however, Dortchen and Mia lit all the lanterns, as instructed, and then locked and shuttered the house and retreated to the safety of the kitchen, where they sat, quietly sewing, with their mother and brother.

  Dortchen felt a kind of bewildered exhaustion, as if she had been battered in a storm. She no longer hoped for the war to end; it would never end, she now believed. Peace was nothing but an empty dream.

  Only a few days later, rumours once again began to circulate. Napoléon himself was only a few hundred kilometres away, and was determined to crush the Allied army once and for all. A great battle was being fought, the largest ever seen. After church that Sunday, everyone huddled in the porch. Charlotte Ramus told Dortchen that a peddler had told their housekeeper that he had seen the sky to the east glowing a lurid orange, and lit with constant white flashes, like lightning.

  ‘If the rumours are true, there’ll be many casualties,’ Herr Wild said to Rudolf. ‘We might have a chance to make back some of our losses. We must be prepared.’

  He called his wife and daughters to him, and obediently they hurried home and began cutting old linen into strips to roll for bandages. Herr Wild and Rudolf looked over their stocks and prepared a list of the herbs and flowers they would need. Herr Wild came to the kitchen with the list in his hand.

  ‘Dortchen, you must go to the forest and gather me some wood betony. Then come home by the meadows and get me yarrow, adder’s tongue and toad flax.’

  Dortchen nodded; these herbs were used to restrain violent bleeding.

  ‘Mia, you will go to the garden. I need thyme, feverfew, lemon balm and woundwort.’

  ‘Yes, Father,’ the girls chorused, though Mia’s eyes flew to Dortchen’s in distress. It had never been her job to work in the gardens, and she was not at all sure that she could identify all these plants. Dortchen reassured her with her eyes.

  The two girls took their baskets and scissors and walked to the garden outside the town walls. Dortchen showed Mia the plants she was to gather, then walked on towards the palace. It was a long time since she had been to the forest, and she lifted her face to the sun, breathing deeply.

  Dortchen was making her way through the royal park when she saw a lone French soldier galloping up the hill towards the palace. His horse was flecked with foam and breathing heavily, and the soldier himself was begrimed with smoke and blood. Dortchen crept as close as she dared to the road, wondering what news he bore.

  The beleaguered horse shied at the rustle she made in the leaves and reared, then collapsed to its knees. The rider fell heavily. Dortchen ran out and knelt beside him. He was dazed, blood trickling from a cut near his hairline. He grabbed at Dortchen with his grimy hands.

  ‘Disaster,’ he gasped. ‘I must tell the King. The Emperor is defeated.’

  ‘What has happened?’

  ‘We fought all day, for hours and hours, but there were too many of them.’ He gave a sharp crack of laughter. ‘Three times as many men as we had. We fought valiantly for our emperor and might still have won the day if some fool corporal had not …’ His voice broke. ‘He blew up the bridge too early – with all our men still on it. And the rearguard is still in Leipzig. All is lost. I must … I must tell the King.’

  He struggled to get up, and Dortchen helped him to stand. Together, they tried to coax the horse to its feet, but the exhausted animal collapsed onto its side. The soldier began to stumble towards the palace but swayed and almost fell. Dortchen ran to support him.

  ‘The King must flee,’ he told her. ‘The Emperor is on the run, and so is all that’s left of his army. There’s no hope. We can’t hold them off. The Cossacks are rampaging through the countryside, killing anyone in French uniform.’

  A shout rang out from the guard’s sentry box, and the guard ran forward.

  ‘He’s hurt,’ Dortchen said. ‘His horse has fallen down the road. He has news for the King.’

  After delivering the injured soldier into the guard’s hands, Dortchen walked rapidly away, her heart skittering with panic.

  ‘Wait,’ the soldier cried, and she turned, desperately afraid.

  ‘You must flee too,’ he said to her. ‘Westphalia is no more. The Empire is no more! All hell has broken loose.’

  Dortchen nodded, then ran back to collect her basket.

  Flee? she thought. Where can we flee to? There is nowhere to go.

  UNKIND

  November 1813

  ‘I can’t believe how much they eat,’ Dortchen said to Lotte, as they stood in the queue at the butcher’s. ‘Our winter stores are gone already.’

  ‘I can’t believe how noisy they are,’ Lotte answered. ‘They sing and dance half the night, and keep calling for more vodka.’

  ‘I guess we shouldn’t complain,’ Dortchen said. ‘At least we’re still alive.’

  ‘Just hungry,’ Lotte said sadly.

  The girls were silent for a moment. It had been almost a month since the catastrophic defeat of the French at Leipzig, and the Russians had once again occupied Cassel. They spent their days and nights drinking and carousing and flirting with the town’s prettiest girls, but they did not loot and rape and murder, as everyone had feared. The dreaded Cossacks had gone chasing after the retreating French army, hoping to catch the Emperor. Life in Cassel was eerily normal, the only difference being the colour of the soldiers’ uniforms and the language in which they cursed.

  The Austrians had tried to stop Napoléon’s withdrawal from Germany by engaging him at Hanau, but the Emperor had won the battle and secured his army’s line of retreat. Now all the talk was of whether the Austrians, the Prussians and the Russians would pursue Napoléon all the way to Pari
s.

  ‘Surely not,’ Rudolf said. ‘The French would die rather than surrender their emperor. Surely they will just draw up another treaty?’

  Dortchen was not so sure. The Russian tsar and the Austrian emperor and the Prussian king had been humiliated most publicly. They would seek revenge, she felt. They would want to crush Napoléon and regain their honour.

  Both the Wilds and the Grimms had a houseful of Russians. Seven were crammed into the Grimms’ small third-floor apartment with Jakob, Wilhelm and Lotte, while fourteen had taken up residence in Herr Wild’s house. Dortchen and Mia had given up their bedrooms and slept together on pallets on the kitchen floor. Rudolf slept in the hallway outside to make sure that no lusty Russian soldier decided to visit them during the night.

  ‘The poor boys hate it,’ Lotte said. ‘It’s so hard for them to work with all the noise. It sounds like elephants dancing, the way the Russians crash about.’

  ‘Is Wilhelm still working on the fairy tale book?’ Dortchen asked, after a long moment. It was hard for her to say his name without pain.

  Lotte nodded, looking at her sideways. ‘Yes. He’s hoping to put out another volume.’

  There was an awful, awkward silence, then Lotte said in a rush, ‘Dortchen, you need to know, Wilhelm’s in love … Well, I’m not sure he’s in love, because he doesn’t seem anything like as sick and miserable as when he was in love with you, but … Oh, I think she’s in love with him. She writes all the time, and Wilhelm won’t read her letters out loud, the way he usually does.’

  ‘That’s good. I’m glad. Who … who is she?’

  ‘Jenny von Droste-Hülshoff.’

  ‘Noble?’

  ‘And Catholic. There’s no hope, really. She’s the niece of Werner von Haxthausen – you know, Wilhelm’s friend who lives on that grand estate near Paderborn. Wilhelm spent the summer there.’