The Wild Girl

by Kate Forsyth

  Dortchen nodded.

  ‘Her family would never agree to any match, though.’ Lotte’s voice was filled with resentment. ‘They are noble and wealthy, while we’re scratching to keep ourselves alive. Wilhelm says she’s sent him some beautiful tales. There’s one about twelve princesses who wear their dancing shoes to shreds every night. Wilhelm says it’s among the finest stories he’s ever heard.’

  ‘No wonder he’s in love with her.’ Dortchen spoke lightly, easily, yet Lotte winced and looked at her askance.

  ‘Oh, Dortchen, you’re unkind,’ she murmured.

  ‘Am I?’ Dortchen could not bear to stand in the queue any longer. Abandoning all hope of a meal that night, she walked away, ignoring Lotte’s cries.

  RETURN OF THE PRINCE

  November 1813

  On Sunday, 21st November, Dortchen went into her mother’s bedroom and sat down on the bed beside her.

  ‘Mother, I have wonderful news,’ she said in a low voice.

  Frau Wild rolled towards her, pressing a hand to her left breast. She was very pale. ‘What is it, Dortchen?’

  ‘The Kurfürst is to return to Cassel. He will ride into town this afternoon.’

  ‘The prince? The dear prince is to return?’

  ‘Yes, Mother. I wondered … Surely you would like to get up and come with Mia and me to see the royal family ride in? You have not got out of bed for days.’

  ‘I feel so weak. But I would like to see him. Will you help me?’

  Dortchen helped her mother sit up and brought her some clothes. They hung on her bony frame. Frau Wild was cold, so Dortchen brought her a few extra shawls to wrap about her shoulders. Frau Wild’s hand kept returning to press against her chest.

  They went downstairs slowly, calling to Mia to join them. Rudolf came too, limping along with the help of a wooden walking stick. Herr Wild closed the shop and walked with his family to the Königsplatz, his wife leaning heavily on his arm, her scarves and shawls fluttering behind her.

  The Königsplatz was crowded with people from all walks of life; many were clutching bunches of late-blooming wildflowers, blue speedwell, ragwort, honeysuckle and bindweed. Soldiers in Hessian green kept the road clear. It seemed so strange to see the once familiar uniform again, after so many years of the French blue, white and red. A cheer rose from far down the road. Everyone caught their breath and craned their necks to see.

  At last, the triumphant procession reached the Königsplatz. Banners and scarves waved wildly, and the people of Cassel cheered and shouted. For once, the Kurfürst was not wearing shabby old hunting clothes but was regally attired in red velvet and ermine, medals draped on his shoulder. His hair was powdered and caught back in a queue, a style that made him seem both hopelessly antiquated and yet somehow regal. His wife, Princess Wilhelmine, sat beside him in the open carriage, ramrod-straight, waving a white-gloved hand. Sitting opposite them were Crown Prince Wilhelm and his wife, Princess Augusta of Austria. All were grandly dressed, sparkling with diamonds. All looked stern and unforgiving.

  Another carriage carried the royal grandchildren, one boy and two girls, who were much more animated, bouncing up and down and squealing with delight as they were showered with wildflowers. A governess did her best to keep them from falling out.

  As the carriages rolled through the Königsplatz, the jubilation of the crowd overflowed. Everyone surged forward, breaking through the line of soldiers. The mob surrounded the Kurfürst’s carriage, cheering, shouting, weeping. When he leant out, touching as many hands as possible, he was lifted up and carried on the shoulders of his subjects. The soldiers grew agitated and would have fired on the crowd, but the Kurfürst only smiled, rather stiffly, and bade them put him back in his carriage. The crowd obeyed and the soldiers lowered their muskets.

  Next came the carriages of the court, filled with ladies-of-honour and dignitaries. Dortchen spied Aunt Zimmer, who looked much thinner and much older, waving her lace handkerchief enthusiastically. The next minute she saw Jakob, Wilhelm and Lotte, who were racing alongside the carriage, waving and calling endearments and blowing kisses. Dortchen had forgotten that their beloved aunt would be returning with the Kurfürst’s court. She was surprised to find herself in tears.

  Wiping her eyes, she looked up to see Wilhelm standing still, gazing at her. As their eyes met, he flushed, hunched one shoulder and turned away. Dortchen’s tears overflowed.

  Cassel’s joy at the return of the Kurfürst was soon dimmed. Wilhelm I insisted that everything must return to the way it had been before the French occupation. All the liberties they had enjoyed under the Code Napoléon were taken away again. Dortchen worried most about the poor serfs. They had been freed from servitude but now were slaves once more.

  The Kurfürst was furious at the state of the treasury, laid waste by the Merry King’s extravagance. Taxes were raised at once, and the shopkeepers, merchants and artisans howled in protest, Herr Wild as loudly as any of them. The big-spending Russians had all marched on Paris, leaving Cassel feeling strangely quiet and empty.

  It would be another long, hard, lean winter.

  Dortchen saw Jakob and Wilhelm only at church, when they raised their hats to the Wild family in the chilliest way imaginable. She saw Lotte more often, for it was the job of the girls of the family to haunt the markets, begging, borrowing and bartering for food to keep their families from starving. For some reason, Lotte seemed to have forgiven Dortchen for whatever had come between her and Wilhelm. Perhaps she sensed Dortchen’s heartfelt misery and despair.

  Life was harder than ever for the Grimms. Jakob had lost his job as royal librarian with the fleeing of the Westphalian court, and at first it seemed as if the Kurfürst would not be very forgiving of those who had been employed by the French. Karl Grimm had lost his job at the bank, along with all of his savings, and was back living in the small third-floor apartment with his brothers.

  In December, Jakob was offered a job as secretary to Count Keller, the diplomat sent to negotiate the peace terms for Hessen-Cassel. Count Keller and his entourage would follow in the tail of the Allied army as it pushed the French back towards Paris. It would mean being away from Cassel for months.

  Both Karl and Ludwig decided they wished to join the Hessian army and help defeat the French, but the cost of uniforms and weapons was prohibitive. Wilhelm, in particular, chafed against the confines of the Grimms’ poverty. He started a literary journal called Old German Miscellany, which had met with a scathing attack from a leading critic.

  ‘It’s made him very downhearted,’ Lotte said. ‘I’ve never known him to be so miserable. Karl and Ludwig are miserable too, because they want to go and fight against Napoléon, and Jakob’s miserable because he hates having to leave home. I thought everything would be fine once the French were thrown out of Cassel, but in fact things are worse.’

  Dortchen gave Lotte some calendula and lemon balm tea, hoping that might help her brothers. Her own brother was just as morose. The coming of the cold winter months made Rudolf’s frost-scarred feet and hands ache, and brought back nightmares of the retreat from Russia.

  Just before Christmas, Gretchen and her husband came back to Cassel with their four small children. They hosted a grand Christmas party at their townhouse. Gretchen tried to persuade Dortchen to borrow a party dress, but she did not want her arms and bosom to be bare, or to feel silk against her skin. She wore an old woollen dress of her mother’s, with long sleeves and a high neck, and shook her head whenever anyone asked her to dance.

  ‘What a pious old bore you’ve grown into,’ Gretchen said in disgust.

  ‘Leave her be,’ Herr Schmerfeld said. ‘It’s refreshing to see such a modest young woman.’

  Gretchen pouted her red lips, fluttered her feathered fan across the bare expanse of her bosom and rustled away.

  Herr Schmerfeld looked down at Dortchen. ‘Is all well with you?’ he asked.

  ‘Of course,’ she answered, then looked away.

  Good news s
oon came for the Grimms. With the help of his Aunt Zimmer, Wilhelm at last was granted a position as secretary to the royal library. The job only paid a hundred thalers a year, most of which went immediately on outfitting Karl and Ludwig in their soldiers’ kit, but it did at least settle two of the brothers’ immediate futures – and it gave Wilhelm a new sense of purpose.

  Each morning, Dortchen would kneel on her bed and watch as Wilhelm went out the side door and down the alley, dressed like an old grandee in a frockcoat and knee-breeches, his dark curls tied back in a neat pigtail, a tricorn hat on his head. Once he turned and looked up at her window, and she ducked down, red-hot with embarrassment and shame. It had been a year since they had last spoken.

  In early February, Napoléon won a series of brilliantly executed victories against the Allied armies. Over the course of six days, he fought four major battles, his army of only thirty thousand men outmanoeuvring a force of one hundred and twenty thousand.

  ‘He’s a genius,’ Rudolf said, shaking his head over the newspaper. ‘Will he never give up?’

  ‘Surely he cannot win against such odds?’ Dortchen said, reading the paper over his shoulder.

  ‘A normal man, no, but this is Napoléon,’ Rudolf said. ‘I’ve seen him on the battlefield. He could rouse even the most exhausted and war-weary trooper. His men would gladly give up their lives for him and the glory he brings.’

  It was not enough, however. Despite his victories and the steep losses suffered by the Allied troops, Napoléon’s army was simply too small and too exhausted. Step by step, they fell back, and at the end of March the Allied forces tramped into Paris.

  On 6th April, the Emperor abdicated.

  The news was greeted with joy in Cassel. The Marktgasse was full of people cheering and singing and dancing arm in arm. Everyone wore white cockades pinned to their hats, or white ribbons in their hair, to celebrate the restoration of the monarchy in France.

  Dortchen did not dance; she disliked anyone putting their hands upon her. She stood on the steps of her father’s shop, watching. She could not help feeling sorrow mixed in with the joy. It had been twenty-five years since the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen in France – twenty-five years of constant war and struggle and strife. The world had been remade. It would not be easy to turn back to the way things were before.

  But we’re at peace now, she told herself. That’s all that matters.

  On the far side of the square, she saw Wilhelm and Lotte dancing arm in arm. As if sensing her eyes upon him, Wilhelm looked up. At once he flushed and looked away, and Dortchen felt all the old hurt and shame. She bent her head to hide her face.

  It seemed there was to be no peace between her and Wilhelm.

  IN THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW

  April 1814

  A few weeks later, Lotte came to tell Dortchen that the Grimms were moving away from the Marktgasse.

  ‘We can’t afford the rent,’ she said, sitting down in the rocking chair by the fire.

  ‘Oh, Lotte,’ Dortchen said, the kettle in her hand. Tears pricked her eyes.

  ‘I know. I simply can’t imagine not living next door to you. Not that I see you much any more.’

  Dortchen gestured helplessly with the kettle.

  Lotte shrugged. ‘I know, I know. Work, work, work – that’s all we ever do. At least my life is a little easier now that I only have Wilhelm to look after, and he’s out half the day anyway. We don’t need so many rooms now, with the boys all gone off to fight and Jakob away in Paris.’

  ‘Have you heard from him?’ Dortchen asked, hanging the kettle above the fire and bringing over her basket of darning. Lotte reached for a needle and thread too. She was no more able to sit idle than Dortchen.

  ‘Indeed, yes. You know Jakob – he never puts his pen down. He makes me so cross, though. All he writes about are the old books and manuscripts he’s found, when I want to hear about the new French king. I heard he’s a miserable old fellow in a wheelchair, too sick even to go to Paris. I wonder whether they’ll have a grand coronation for him.’

  ‘I wonder whether he’ll call himself Louis the Seventeenth or Louis the Eighteenth,’ Dortchen said. ‘I mean, his nephew, the poor little Dauphin who died in prison, never ruled.’

  ‘In the eyes of the Bourbons, he was king regardless of whether he sat on a throne or lived in a prison. Poor boy. I heard they made him spit on portraits of his mother and call her nasty names.’

  The kettle boiled and Dortchen made them peppermint tea with honey.

  ‘Where will you move to?’ she asked, clasping her hot cup between her hands.

  ‘Wilhelm has found us an apartment in the New Town, near Wilhelmshöhe Gate,’ Lotte said. ‘It’ll be much quieter, he says, and we’ll be able to walk in the royal park.’

  ‘That’s so far away,’ Dortchen said in dismay.

  ‘I’ll be able to visit you in your garden,’ Lotte said comfortingly.

  Are you moving because of me? Dortchen wanted to ask, but she did not dare. Any answer would hurt. If Lotte said yes, it meant that Wilhelm still had feelings for her, even if they were ones of anger, resentment and hurt. If Lotte said no, it would mean he did not care. Dortchen closed her eyes, bending her head to breathe in the fragrant steam. Why could she not stop caring for him? She had tried and tried, but the stump of her love refused to wither and die.

  On the day the cart came for all the Grimms’ belongings, Dortchen crouched on her bed, watching from above. The washing line that ran between her bedroom and Lotte’s was heavy with flapping eiderdowns, so she could see only glimpses of Lotte and Wilhelm as they piled boxes onto the cart. They both looked worn and anxious.

  Dortchen wished that she could help them somehow. If only the fairy tale book had sold better. If only her father had let them be married. If only …

  In a way, it was easier not having Wilhelm living next door. Dortchen could walk down the alleyway between the two houses without listening for his distinctive cough, and she could go to the market without being afraid of bumping into him. Church was no longer an ordeal, with his thin, upright form sitting only a few pews away, never turning to smile at her like he used to do.

  Yet Dortchen still found the months after he had moved away more grey and empty than ever before. Spring turned to summer, and she worked from sunrise to midnight in the house, the garden and the stillroom. There was never a moment’s rest in which to think of him, yet he was always present in her thoughts, like a bruise that refused to heal.

  Late in June, Dortchen heard that Jakob had returned from Paris, bringing with him some of the treasures that had been stolen by the French. He was home only a few weeks; in August he once more set forth, this time to Vienna, where the great powers were meeting to decide the future of Europe. The social standing of the Grimms was much improved by Jakob’s work at the Vienna Congress. After church on Sundays, many people would hail Dortchen and ask for news of him, expecting her to be well informed. She could only smile and shake her head, and offer whatever stale titbits she had gleaned from others.

  Then something happened that drove all thoughts of Wilhelm or the peace negotiations out of Dortchen’s mind. She took her mother a bowl of chicken broth and found her sitting up in bed, her nightgown unbuttoned to her belly button, her husband’s shaving mirror in one hand. Dortchen had come in so swiftly that Frau Wild had time to do no more than cry out and try to hide her uncovered breast. It was red, swollen and misshapen, with a great sunburst of yellow pus near the twisted, deformed nipple.

  Dortchen stared at it in horror. ‘Mother,’ she whispered.

  Frau Wild laid down the mirror and buttoned her nightgown with shaking fingers. ‘Dortchen, you should knock,’ she reproved.

  ‘Mother, what … what’s wrong with you?’

  ‘It’s nothing,’ her mother replied. ‘A lump that has burst. It’ll get better now.’

  ‘Let me look.’ Dortchen moved quickly to her mother’s side. ‘How long has it been there?
’

  Frau Wild laid her hand protectively over her breast. ‘There’s no need to gawk at me. I’ve felt it growing for a while, but now that it’s burst all will be well.’

  ‘It doesn’t look well, not at all.’ Catching her mother’s hands, Dortchen drew them away and folded back the collar of the nightgown. She gazed down at the red-lipped, yellow-hearted tumour growing from the side of her mother’s slack breast. ‘How long?’ When her mother hunched her shoulders, she asked, ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘You do so much … You work so hard.’

  ‘But, Mother—’ Dortchen felt the familiar choke of impotence in her throat. She buttoned her mother up again. ‘I’ll make you a poultice of trefoil and adder’s tongue, but I think we must call the doctor.’

  ‘Fiddlesticks,’ her mother said sharply. ‘Doctors will see you into an early grave. Some nice tea is all I need.’

  Normally, Dortchen was inclined to agree, but she had never seen anything like that terrible seeping tumour. She hurried to tell her father, who, after examining his wife, agreed that the doctor must be called.

  The beautiful summer morning was sucked into a dark funnel of fear and grief and horror. The doctor was dour and very sure. ‘A few months, no more. I can operate if you like. I doubt it’ll do any good.’

  ‘What, cut off my breast?’ Frau Wild cried. ‘Absolutely not.’

  ‘It’s the only chance,’ he responded, ‘though I think it’s far too late. If I’d been called a year ago …’

  Dortchen could not sleep for the guilt that tore at her. She had always thought her mother was malingering, pretending to be ill so she could lie in bed and have her supper brought to her on a tray. At times, Dortchen’s anger and resentment had been so sharp that she had deliberately given her mother the thinnest part of the soup, or not sweetened her healing tea with honey. What agony my poor mother has endured, she now thought, and all without uttering a sound. What a dreadful, unloving daughter I am.