The Wild Girl

by Kate Forsyth

  The doctor and Dortchen’s father decided to operate. Frau Wild was not to be told, to spare her the fear that would overcome her. A day the following week was decided upon, and Dortchen was told to cut up old sheets for swabs. Herr Wild gave his wife a double dose of laudanum, so she was drowsy when the doctor came, rubbing his red hands together, his assistant bearing a bag filled with knives and saws. Dortchen was ordered to help hold her mother down.

  The scream she gave when the doctor first cut around the tumour was heart-wrenching. Choking back sobs, Dortchen held her mother’s thrashing shoulder as the doctor hacked away at her breast. Blood and pus poured down. Dortchen shoved piles of linen beneath her. They turned a sodden red in an instant. The doctor chopped away the last lump of flesh, leaving a raw hole where her mother’s breast had been.

  He poured brandy onto the wound, deftly bound a wad of old cloth to it with bandages wound about her thin torso, and then set leeches to feed all around. ‘They’ll soon suck the poison out,’ he said with satisfaction. Within half an hour he was gone, having shared half a bottle of quince brandy with Herr Wild first.

  Dortchen sat by her mother’s bed, holding her limp hand and staring at the leeches with revulsion. Her mother lay with her blue eyelids shut, as silent and still now as she had been convulsed with agony previously.

  The excision of Frau Wild’s breast did not help. She lingered for another few weeks, dying quietly in her bed while Dortchen slept on a pallet beside her.

  Nothing could comfort Dortchen, not even the arrival of all her sisters and their families for the funeral. Even Röse came, plump and pregnant, with two little girls clinging shyly to her hands and her elderly husband beaming with pride. The old house was once again filled with children’s laughter and the running of small feet, but Dortchen’s grief was in no way eased. She felt as if she were walking in the valley of the shadow of death, and no longer knew the way back to the land of the living.

  HEAD OF THE HOUSEHOLD

  September 1814

  After his wife’s death, Herr Wild once again began to drink alone in his study. The brandy inflamed his temper. Once again, he struck out at his daughters and quarrelled with his son.

  It was harvest time, and Dortchen was kept busy in the big garden, picking the fruit before it fell and rotted on the ground. Mia stayed at home, doing the housework on her own. Many evenings Dortchen came home, hot and sunburnt, her arms and hands scratched and stained with juice, to find Mia silently weeping as she peeled the vegetables for their supper, a new bruise on her arm or face.

  One evening Dortchen came home to find the kitchen empty. The soup was bubbling wildly. She put her baskets of fruit down on the table, took the soup off the fire and walked through the house, dread tightening about her heart. Then she heard a sobbing gasp from her father’s study, at the end of the hall. ‘Please, no, Father,’ Mia’s voice said.

  Dortchen crept down the hall and put one eye to the crack of the door. Mia knelt at her father’s feet, her face in her hands as he prayed over her head. The look on her father’s face turned Dortchen to stone. She could not take a step, nor scarcely breathe. She swayed, then put up a hand to save herself. The door creaked a little wider.

  Her father looked up and saw her. With his eyes on hers, he bent and put his hand on Mia’s head, pushing her face down so it was pressed against his thigh. ‘Pray,’ he commanded. Mia obeyed, her voice trembling.

  Dortchen stepped away. She felt so faint that she had to lean against the wall, her face bent into the crook of her arm. She was gagging. At last, she heard her father’s voice, saying, ‘Go on, get out of here. Haven’t you work to do, you lazy slut?’ Then her sister’s slow footsteps approached her.

  Dortchen managed to straighten. She turned and put out her hand to Mia as her sister came out of the study. Slowly, they made their way together down the hall.

  That evening, Rudolf and Herr Wild had a terrible argument. Rudolf was angry that his father was drinking away the shop’s profits and leaving all the work to him.

  The following morning, Mia flinched when her father came near her, knocking over a bottle of quince brandy on the dresser. It shattered on the floor. She dropped to her knees, trying to clean up the shards of broken glass. Herr Wild slapped her across the head. ‘Fool girl!’

  Mia cried out. She had cut her hand on the broken bottle. Blood welled up and flooded down her wrist. Dortchen ran to her aid, but Herr Wild shoved her away so violently that she hit the wall and fell. Mia wept, rocking back and forth, holding up her bleeding hand.

  ‘Stupid fool,’ Herr Wild said. ‘Get up, and clean up that mess.’ When Mia shrank away from him, he slapped her again. It sounded like a gunshot.

  Rudolf came limping in as fast as he could. ‘What are you doing? Leave her be. Can’t you see she’s hurt?’

  ‘Don’t tell me what to do,’ the old man roared. ‘I’m the head of this household, and I’ll do what I think best.’

  ‘Beating up a young girl is not the best choice, in any circumstance.’ Rudolf helped Mia to her feet and gave her his handkerchief to wrap around her hand.

  ‘Beat the child at the first sign of wilfulness and you will be the master of the child forever,’ Herr Wild said.

  ‘Like you did with Dortchen? She was the sweetest, merriest little girl in the world, and now look at her.’ Rudolf glanced at Dortchen, who was still cowering against the wall. ‘I can’t remember the last time she smiled or made a joke. How can you think that is the best thing for your daughter?’

  ‘Dortchen is quiet and obedient, like a daughter should be,’ Herr Wild replied.

  The argument continued but Dortchen did not stay to listen. She ran out the back door and through the garden to the stable, where she sank down on a bale of hay and wept. So Rudolf had thought her a sweet, merry child? And now she was nothing but a sour, miserable old maid.

  When at last she had calmed enough to creep back into the house, she found Rudolf up in his bedroom, throwing clothes into a travelling bag. ‘I will not stay here a minute longer,’ he said. ‘Father is intolerable. I will go back to Berlin and get work as an apothecary there.’

  Mia was sitting on the bed, sobbing. ‘Don’t go, Rudolf, please don’t go.’

  ‘Will you take Mia with you?’ Dortchen asked.

  Rudolf stopped and looked at her.

  ‘Please,’ Dortchen said.

  Mia looked up hopefully. ‘Can I?’

  Rudolf shook his head. ‘I wish that I could. I’d take you both with me. But I have no right, nor, I’m sorry to say, enough money. I’ll barely be able to afford to feed myself.’

  ‘It’s too late for me,’ Dortchen said. For a moment she could not speak, but then she found the courage to go on, her voice uneven. ‘But I’m afraid for Mia. Father’s anger, his …’ She could not frame the words that sprang to mind. Needs. Hunger. Lust. ‘She would be better away from here.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Rudolf said.

  ‘She could keep house for you while you work. There’s nothing strange about a sister looking after her brother. And she will save money for you, by bargaining in the markets and washing your clothes.’

  ‘I would!’ Mia cried.

  ‘I suppose I could do with some help,’ he said. ‘But, Dortchen, what about you?’

  ‘He’ll pursue us if we all go. It’ll be harder to slip away. I can cover for you – make sure he doesn’t realise till you are well away.’

  ‘But, Dortchen—’ Mia protested.

  ‘You’ll need to leave straight away,’ Dortchen said. ‘Before Father finds out. Mia, I’ll help you pack.’

  Hurriedly, the two sisters threw a few necessities into a bag. Mia had very little to take. Some spare underclothes, her Sunday best, her pincushion and thimble, her prayer book. Then, tiptoeing, Rudolf and his sisters went down the back stairs. As they crept through the kitchen, they could hear Herr Wild clinking bottles in the study. At the gate into the alleyway, they hugged and kissed each other goodbye
.

  ‘I’ll write to let you know where we are,’ Rudolf said.

  ‘But Father will—’

  ‘I’ll write to Lotte,’ he said. ‘She can slip you the letter.’

  Mia was weeping. ‘Dortchen, come with us. Please.’

  Dortchen wanted to go so badly that it felt as if every muscle in her body was straining to escape. But she was sure her father would pursue them; he would find her and drag her back, and Mia too. She shook her head. ‘Go, little love,’ she said. ‘I’ll be fine.’

  Her composure almost broke as the gate swung shut behind them. She turned and looked back at the house. It towered against the grey September sky, all its windows staring and blank. Most of its rooms were empty now. There was only Dortchen and her father left.

  GO TO HELL

  October 1814

  Dortchen would not tell her father where Rudolf and Mia had gone, even though he beat her and threw words as hard as stones. Later that night, when he came drunk and stumbling to her bedroom door, she showed him the carving knife she had brought from the kitchen.

  ‘I will kill you if you touch me again,’ she said, sitting up fully dressed in a chair. ‘And then you will go to hell.’

  Her father reeled back, aghast. He blundered out, almost falling down the stairs. Dortchen set her chair under the door handle, put the knife under her pillow and lay down. It was a long time before she was able to sleep.

  The next day she made up a potent tisane of skullcap, chamomile, valerian and hops. She stirred it round and round with her long spoon, chanting under her breath, ‘Make him sleep, make him sleep, make him sleep.’ She liked the sound and rhythm of the words, so she repeated them twelve times before pouring the mixture into his quince brandy. As she had hoped, it made him sleep heavily.

  Herr Wild slept late into the next day, and Dortchen opened the shop herself, serving anyone who came as well as she knew how. To any query, she answered, ‘I’m sorry, my father is unwell. I’ll go and ask him, if you like.’ Then she would go through to the stillroom, wait a few minutes, then come back, saying, ‘Father says a tisane of marigold flowers and chase-devil will do you the world of good.’

  Eventually, he woke and came lurching into the shop, shouting at her to bring him some ale. She brought him willowbark tincture and wood betony tea. When he dashed it from her hand, smashing it to the ground, she went silently to get the broom.

  When she returned, he seized it from her and beat her over the shoulder with it, but she fought him and, to the surprise of them both, managed to wrest it from him. She had grown strong with all the hard work of the house and garden, and he was soft and flabby now. ‘If you strike me, I shall strike you back,’ she warned him.

  Herr Wild did not know what to do with her. So he drank and slept and snored, then drank some more, and Dortchen ran the house and the shop alone.

  HER MASTER

  October 1814

  One evening in late October, Dortchen was struggling to carry two large and heavy baskets of apples home along Wilhelmshöhe Alley when someone tried to take one of the baskets from her hand.

  She looked up, instinctively tightening her grip on the handle. It was Wilhelm.

  Dortchen relinquished the basket, her heart beating so fast that it hurt the bones of her chest. She was very conscious of her dirty apron, and her shabby black gown and bonnet.

  ‘You should not be carrying such heavy baskets.’ His voice was disapproving.

  ‘How else am I to get the apples home from the garden?’

  ‘Couldn’t you load them into your buggy?’

  ‘The Russians took our horse,’ she replied.

  ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘I didn’t know.’

  ‘They ate all our chickens too,’ she said. ‘I’m hoping to barter some of our apples for a hen.’

  ‘It’s been a hard year,’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’

  The church bells tolled eight times. Dortchen’s step quickened. It was long past suppertime. Her father would be angry.

  ‘You should not be out so late alone,’ he said, as if reading her thoughts.

  ‘I did not realise the time. I was busy trying to collect as many apples as possible. Twilight crept up on me, and then it’s such a long way home.’

  ‘You shouldn’t have to walk so far, carrying such heavy baskets.’

  She gestured with her free hand. ‘There’s no one else to do it.’

  They walked on together, both stiff and self-conscious. It was the first time they had spoken in almost two years. Dortchen remembered how she had fallen on her knees before him, how she had sought to swallow him whole. Shame scalded her. She gripped the handle of her basket tightly and looked away, hiding her face behind the brim of her bonnet.

  ‘I was sorry to hear about your mother,’ Wilhelm said after a while. ‘She was always very kind.’

  Dortchen nodded, her eyes stinging with tears. Another long silence stretched between them. She hurried into speech. ‘Is there any news from Jakob? How do the peace talks go?’

  ‘A lot of talking and not much else, by all accounts,’ he replied. ‘Matters are not helped by the British being distracted by the war in America. Did you hear they have burnt down Washington?’

  ‘No, really? So they’ve won?’

  ‘I don’t think it’s that simple. I think it’s much like the war in the Peninsula – a battle won, a battle lost, and another ending in stalemate.’

  She nodded. It was dark in the narrow streets between the houses. Lanterns were being kindled in a few windows, shining out in golden squares across the cobblestones.

  A carriage clopped past them, a linkboy hurrying before it, his lantern bobbing up and down. Overhead, stars swarmed in the gap between the gabled roofs. Wilhelm was silent, staring away from her.

  ‘You … you must miss Jakob very much,’ she ventured, unable to bear the tension between them.

  ‘Yes.’

  Again the silence stretched long, then Wilhelm burst out, ‘He’s not just my brother, Dortchen. He’s my dearest friend, my partner in everything. I know you think that I’m under his thumb, that I’m in thrall to him.’ The intensity with which Wilhelm repeated her long-ago words showed her how much he had brooded upon them. ‘But you don’t understand. Family is everything to us. It’s all that we have. We’ve been apart so rarely, and we have so little else …’

  ‘I do understand,’ she said. Her breath came short. ‘He’s more like your twin than your older brother.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m sorry I spoke so to you. I’m sorry. I can’t explain. My father …’ She was unable to say more, but he waited courteously for her to go on. Somehow, in the darkness, she found the words. ‘He made me think … wrongly about things. He’s not a good man. He has to shape everyone to his will. Even if it means breaking them. I couldn’t … I can’t …’

  She could speak no more, and tears ran down her cheeks.

  Wilhelm heard the catch of her breath and turned towards her, his hand on her arm. When he saw her face, he put down his basket so he could wipe away her tears. ‘Please don’t cry, Dortchen.’

  The tears came faster. Wilhelm bent his head to kiss her. Dortchen dropped her basket, and apples tumbled into the gutter. She rose up on her toes, wound her arms about his neck and kissed him with all her heart. It was a single magical moment, in the starlit darkness, the smell of bruised apples about them.

  ‘I’ve tried so hard to cut you out of my heart,’ Wilhelm said, when at last they fell apart. His voice was low and angry. ‘Yet every time I see you, I feel it all again.’

  She tried to master her voice. ‘You think it’s any easier for me?’

  ‘I suppose not.’

  They picked up the apples and walked on in silence. They turned a corner and came down the road into the wide square of the Marktgasse. Dortchen looked fearfully at her father’s shop but it was dark and quiet. Together, they turned into the dark alley leading to the garden.

  ‘What ar
e we to do?’ he asked. ‘We can’t marry without your father’s permission, even if I were to find some way of earning enough to support a wife. We can’t see each other without …’ He cleared his throat.

  ‘Without falling into temptation,’ Dortchen finished for him, using her father’s words.

  ‘Yes. It hurts too much to see you, Dortchen. I’m afraid … I’m afraid I’ll fall into sin.’

  Dortchen did not want to talk about sin. She took a deep, ragged breath. ‘Can’t we just be friends?’

  ‘I wish we could. But, believe me, none of my friends … rouse me like you do.’

  They stood close together in the darkness, the baskets of apples at their feet.

  Dortchen’s cheeks were hot. ‘I … I’m sorry,’ she said at last. ‘I never meant to hurt you.’

  ‘I know.’ His finger traced a soft path down her throat and into the cleft of her breasts. ‘I’ve missed you,’ he murmured. ‘You torment my dreams.’

  She shut her eyes and lifted her face. His kiss was gentle. Very slowly, his hand slid down and cupped her breast. Her breath caught, and he shifted her closer, so that she rested in the crook of his arm.

  She drew her mouth away. ‘If the war would only end …’ she whispered.

  ‘Maybe, if I work on the fairy tales, make them better …’

  They kissed.

  ‘Maybe Father will relent …?’

  ‘We don’t need much money, surely? Just enough to eat …’

  ‘And buy quills and ink and paper.’

  He smiled, and kissed her again.

  ‘We wouldn’t have to move away,’ she continued. ‘We could live with Jakob still. I don’t take up much more room than a mouse; surely he wouldn’t mind a little mouse in his house?’

  He answered her with a kiss of growing passion and urgency.