The Wild Girl

by Kate Forsyth

  ‘Bad weather ahead. Better batten down the hatches.’ Hanne pretended to swoon into her own chair, her hand held to her temple in mockery of their mother.

  ‘You couldn’t possibly understand, Hannechen,’ her mother said in a faint voice. ‘Who will your father blame?’

  ‘Never mind, Mother,’ Lisette soothed her. ‘Perhaps Father hasn’t noticed the time.’

  ‘He always notices the time,’ Frau Wild replied, one hand pressed against her chest.

  The door opened so abruptly that it thumped into the wall. Hanne at once scrambled up and took her place by her chair, head bowed and hands folded. Frau Wild rose to her feet, murmuring, ‘Oh, dear, oh, dear.’

  Herr Wild came into the room and stood looking around with frowning eyes. He was a heavyset man, dressed soberly in brown, with grey hair drawn back from his forehead and tied in a queue. In one hand he held a pocket watch.

  ‘Twenty minutes past the hour,’ he said. ‘Not acceptable.’

  Nobody spoke.

  ‘Katharina, you must keep better order. That servant of yours has no business serving supper at such a late hour.’

  Frau Wild hurried into speech. ‘No, sir, of course not. Normally she’s very good. I don’t know what held her up today. Perhaps the roasting jack broke again—’

  ‘I have no wish to hear excuses,’ Herr Wild said. ‘Where is Rudolf?’

  No one answered.

  ‘Rudolf!’ he shouted.

  Frau Wild covered her ears. ‘My nerves,’ she moaned.

  A few minutes later a young man sauntered into the room. His golden locks were brushed forward in careful disarray onto his forehead, and he had a magnificent pair of gingery sideburns. His tall, athletic figure was squeezed into tight pantaloons and a cutaway coat with two rows of enormous brass buttons. Dortchen wondered where he had got the funds for such fine new clothes. Certainly not from his father.

  ‘No need to bellow, Father,’ he said. ‘I’m not deaf.’

  ‘Neither am I, you insolent dog, if that is what you mean to imply. Nor am I too old to tan your hide. How dare you keep us waiting!’

  ‘I’m not in for supper tonight, Father, I told you.’

  Herr Wild pointed to the vacant seat. ‘While you live in my house, you will do as I say. Take your place, or I’ll kick you there myself.’

  Rudolf strolled to his spot. ‘I suppose I may as well save my thalers and eat here.’

  Herr Wild folded his hands and intoned, ‘Come, Lord Jesus, be our guest, and let thy gifts to us be blessed. Amen.’

  ‘Amen,’ the girls echoed.

  Rudolf sighed and repeated, in a voice of long suffering, ‘Amen.’

  ‘Sit,’ Herr Wild said and everyone sat.

  Herr Wild took a large slab of beef, piled cabbage and dumplings on top, then passed the platter to Rudolf, who served himself, then held the platter for his mother. Frau Wild dithered for a while, trying to choose the slice of meat with the least amount of fat. At last she took one, then added a tiny spoonful of cabbage. ‘My poor stomach can scarcely tolerate it, you know. Such a day I’ve had! I’ve barely the strength to eat a mouthful.’

  ‘Never mind, Mother,’ Lisette said. ‘Perhaps some orgeat will help.’ She poured her mother a glass of the sweet almond cordial. Frau Wild sipped it with a sigh.

  By the time the platter reached Dortchen and Mia at the far end of the table, there was very little beef left. Mia sighed ostentatiously, and Lisette smiled and passed her some of hers. They ate in silence. Rudolf slipped his hand into his pocket and drew out his watch. Surreptitiously, he flipped open the case and glanced at its face.

  ‘It’s no use thinking you can sneak out once my back is turned.’ Herr Wild spoke without looking up from his meal. ‘I meant what I said, Rudolf. I will not have you gadding about town with those wild friends of yours, drinking and gambling and fraternising with loose women. Going out indeed! You will stay here and study your pharmacology books.’

  ‘But Father—’

  ‘Do not argue with me. By all accounts, war is coming and there’ll be money to be made. I need you to finish your apprenticeship and be ready to work by my side. You haven’t time for fooling around, Rudolf. Your Latin is execrable and your knowledge of the pharmacopoeia is weak. Even Dortchen knows more about plant properties than you do.’

  ‘That’s because she’s always grubbing around in the garden,’ Rudolf said.

  ‘Which is what you should be doing, not wasting your days going to cockfights and the races,’ his father responded.

  ‘Well, that’s certainly not where your proper little miss was this afternoon. I saw her sneaking in at ten past the hour. It’s her fault supper was late, so you can jaw at her for a change.’

  Dortchen fixed her eyes on her plate.

  Herr Wild laid down his knife and fork. ‘Dortchen Wild, were you late coming in this evening?’

  Dortchen nodded her head. ‘Yes, Father.’

  ‘Why? Where were you?’

  Dortchen did not reply for a moment, wondering whether it was a greater sin to lie than it was to disobey one’s father.

  ‘Hobnobbing with that Grimm girl, I bet,’ Rudolf said.

  ‘I … I did visit with Lotte and Frau Grimm, Father. But I was only a little late, it wasn’t ten past the hour.’ She shot a look at her brother. ‘I was held up. Lotte’s elder brothers had arrived. From university, you know. The biggest one, he said Strasbourg is full of French soldiers. The Grand Army’s on the march again.’

  ‘Against Austria?’ Rudolf exclaimed. ‘Father’s right, there will be war!’

  ‘What are we to do?’ Frau Wild lamented. ‘Will the Ogre march on Cassel?’

  ‘No need to fear,’ Herr Wild replied. ‘The Austrians will soon have the French running with their tail between their legs. Still, there’s no doubt the Kurfürst will be calling up new conscripts. Lucky for you, Rudolf, I can arrange an exemption—’

  ‘I don’t want an exemption,’ Rudolf burst out. ‘I don’t want to spend the whole war puking and purging and bloodletting and blistering. I want to fight! The best fun to ever happen around here and you want me to stay home swotting up on Latin!’

  ‘You’re a fool.’ Herr Wild pushed away his plate and stood up. ‘Your first day tending the wounded on a battlefield and you’ll be on your knees thanking the Good Lord that your father is wiser than you are.’

  Rudolf stood up too, pushing back his chair so violently it fell over. He left the room, banging the door behind him.

  Frau Wild fell back in her chair, one hand groping outwards. ‘My drops … where are my drops? All this noise, my nerves are shattered.’

  Hanne hurried to find her mother’s drops while Lisette knelt beside her chair, wetting a napkin to press against her brow.

  Herr Wild strode to the door and opened it. Pausing there, he turned back to address Dortchen. ‘As for you, Fraülein, you’ll spend your free afternoons this week doing God’s labour in the garden, and Sunday on your knees reciting your catechism.’

  ‘But Father,’ Dortchen cried before she could stop herself. As he turned to face her, she faltered. ‘This Sunday is the harvest festival.’ Even as she spoke, she knew it was no use.

  ‘You may look instead to the sanctity of your soul,’ Herr Wild said, and shut the door behind him.

  That Sunday afternoon, when all Dortchen’s sisters went off to enjoy the harvest festival, Dortchen stayed home alone with her father. She knelt before him in the chilly parlour while he tested her on her catechism. It went on for hours.

  ‘What is repentance?’ Herr Wild asked.

  ‘Dissatisfaction with and a hatred of sin … and a love of righteousness … proceeding from the fear of God … which lead to self-denial and mortification of the flesh, so that we give ourselves up to the guidance of the Spirit of God …’ Dortchen stopped, unable to go on.

  ‘And frame …’ her father prompted.

  ‘And frame all the actions of our life to the obedience of
the Divine Will.’

  ‘You should have it by heart,’ her father said. ‘Study it and I’ll return in an hour to test you again.’ He rose and went out, and Dortchen went to sit in the window seat, drawing flowers and faces on the frosty glass and looking down to the street below. Dusk was dropping over Cassel, the sun just a red smear behind the turrets and chimney pots, even though it was not yet seven o’clock. Men and women in their Sunday best were strolling along, many with ears of wheat tucked into the brims of their hats or their buttonholes. A little girl in a frothy white dress and a hat with yellow ribbons was skipping beside her father, her small hand in his large one.

  At last, Dortchen saw her sisters returning with the Grimm family, flowers tucked into their bodices. Lotte was dancing ahead with Mia, their baskets swinging, while Lisette and Hanne followed arm in arm. Frau Grimm and Frau Wild walked together, one stout, one skinny, their bonneted heads close together. Jakob strode beside them, lighting their way with a lantern. The three younger Grimm brothers, Karl, Ferdinand and Ludwig, jostled behind, while Röse walked sedately some distance away, peering at her book of sermons.

  Wilhelm and Gretchen followed along last of all. Ethereal in white muslin, she walked close beside him, his dark head in its tall black hat bent close over hers. Gretchen’s bonnet swung from her hand. On her fair head was the harvest crown, woven of asters and autumn leaves, always given to the prettiest girl.

  Dortchen felt a sharp pang. All week she had been daydreaming about Lotte’s handsome elder brother. As she watched, Wilhelm said something that made Gretchen look up at him and smile. Dortchen turned away.

  A RAIN OF DEATH

  October 1805

  ‘Napoléon has won a great battle against the Austrians!’ Aunt Zimmer cried, before the door had even shut behind her. She whirled in on a blast of wintry air, her silk skirts blowing up around her white-stockinged ankles.

  ‘What?’ Wilhelm came to his feet, almost knocking over his inkpot. Dortchen looked around from the fireplace, where she was trying to teach Lotte how to make bread soup.

  ‘But that’s impossible,’ Frau Grimm said, dropping her sewing in her lap. She sat in a rocking chair as close to the fire as she could, her feet propped against the fender. It had been a nasty day, veering between snow and sleet, and the Grimms’ lodgings were draughty. As a result, all the brothers were crammed in the kitchen, their books and papers spread out over the table, the only light coming from mismatched candles stuck in chipped saucers.

  ‘It’s all too true,’ Aunt Zimmer said. ‘A courier arrived at the palace not an hour ago. The Austrian general has laid down his arms.’

  The boys stared blankly at one another.

  ‘But he couldn’t have!’ Lotte said. ‘It can’t be all over so soon.’

  ‘Ten thousand dead, thirty thousand taken prisoner.’ Aunt Zimmer subsided onto a chair with a billow of her silken skirts. ‘Napoléon lost not even half of that.’

  ‘But Ulm is only a few days’ ride from here,’ Frau Grimm said. ‘Whatever are we to do?’

  ‘Hope that the Emperor marches elsewhere,’ Wilhelm said. ‘What of the Russians? Were they not marching to Austria’s aid?’

  ‘No one expected Napoléon to move so fast. It’s like black magic, the way he appears days before it’s humanly possible to arrive.’

  ‘But didn’t the Austrians have scouts?’ Jakob asked. ‘How could General Mack not know the Grand Army was marching up behind him?’

  ‘Napoléon moved so fast,’ Aunt Zimmer said again.

  ‘But what of the Austrian army?’ Ludwig asked. ‘I thought it was meant to be the best in the world.’ He was drawing soldiers fighting on the page before him, quick vigorous sketches that sprang to life under his quill.

  ‘The dispatch courier said the cannon smoke was so thick the Austrians could not see to shoot,’ Aunt Zimmer said. ‘It was like a rain of death.’

  ‘What happens now?’ Karl asked.

  Aunt Zimmer lifted her hands and let them drop in her lap.

  ‘The Emperor will probably have the Austrian general shot,’ Ferdinand said. ‘He’d have been better dying with honour on the battlefield than giving up so easily.’

  ‘I don’t think it could have been easy for him,’ Dortchen said.

  Ferdinand glanced at her in sudden interest. ‘No, I suppose not.’

  ‘What does the Kurfürst say?’ Wilhelm asked.

  ‘He’s not happy. With Prussia at our back, Bavaria at our front, and Austria and France glowering at each other from either side, we’re like a sausage in a bread roll,’ Aunt Zimmer said.

  ‘Don’t mention sausages,’ Lotte said, pulling a face. ‘I never want to see one again.’

  Her comment relieved the atmosphere of gloom and anxiety. Wilhelm grinned at her and rumpled her hair, and Ludwig drew a picture of a girl with tangled dark curls chasing a giant sausage with a fork.

  ‘Ah, Lottechen, if I’d not had the pig killed before we came to Cassel, we’d not have anything to eat at all,’ Frau Grimm said, shaking a fat finger at her daughter.

  ‘That’s why Dortchen’s here. She’s come to show me how to make bread soup, so we can have something besides sausages for supper,’ Lotte told her aunt. ‘She had to bring all the other ingredients with her, as our pantry is bare.’

  ‘You’re a good girl,’ Aunt Zimmer told Dortchen, and blew her a kiss.

  ‘She is indeed,’ Wilhelm said, smiling at her. ‘The soup smells delicious.’

  Embarrassed, Dortchen tried to deflect attention away from herself. ‘Oh, bread soup is easy enough. At least I don’t have to throw myself into the pot like the sausage in the story.’

  ‘Don’t say that word!’ Lotte put both her hands over her ears.

  ‘What story is that?’ Wilhelm asked.

  ‘You don’t know it? The story about the little mouse, the little bird and the sausage?’

  Wilhelm shook his head. ‘Won’t you tell it to us?’

  Heat rushed up into her face as she realised that the whole family was now staring at her. She shook her head and stirred the soup.

  ‘Dortchen knows ever so many stories,’ Lotte said. ‘Go on, tell us!’

  But Dortchen shook her head again and, taking the pan off the trivet, said she had better be getting home. ‘Just sprinkle the chives and the fried bread on top of the soup when you serve it,’ she told Lotte. ‘See you tomorrow.’

  As she put on her cloak and gathered up her jug and bowls, Wilhelm said to her, ‘I’d like to hear one of your stories some time. I’m interested in old stories and songs and such things. Friends of mine are collecting folk songs at the moment, for a book they are writing. Do you and your sisters know any songs?’

  Shyly, Dortchen nodded. ‘Hanne and Gretchen know ever so many.’

  ‘Perhaps one day they could come to tea and sing them to me and Jakob,’ he suggested, then he glanced around the tiny room. With five tall boys pushing back their chairs so they could stretch out their legs, and stout Frau Grimm in her rocking chair, there was barely room for Dortchen and Lotte to turn around. He frowned, then shrugged a little. ‘Well, never mind. Goodnight, Dortchen, and thank you for cooking us supper.’

  ‘It was nothing. Lotte cooked as much as me.’

  He smiled briefly and turned away, asking Aunt Zimmer, ‘Any news about a job at the palace?’

  Aunt Zimmer shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, Willi. You know the Kurfürst was impressed with the letter Jakob wrote for the ambassador from Paris. But all the jobs have been taken already.’

  ‘By sons of barons,’ Wilhelm said.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said again.

  ‘Oh, sister, I just do not know how we’re to manage,’ Frau Grimm cried. ‘If it wasn’t for Dortchen coming by tonight with some eggs and cream, we’d not have had a bite to eat.’

  ‘And bread soup is not much for hungry boys,’ Aunt Zimmer said. She took out some coins from her reticule and laid them on the dresser. ‘Buy some beef and a cabbag
e at market tomorrow. But you’d best make it last. With all this war about, it’s going to be a lean winter.’

  As Dortchen slipped out the door, she saw Wilhelm press his lips together in humiliation.

  That evening, as they cleared the supper table together, Dortchen told her sisters about how poor the Grimms were since their father had died.

  ‘What can we do?’ Lisette asked. ‘It’s not as if we have much coin to spare. And Father would never permit us to give food out of our own pantry.’

  Dortchen thought of the food she had smuggled over the road that very afternoon. ‘They’re hungry,’ she said, sweeping crumbs from the table into her hand. ‘We should invite them for supper.’

  ‘Father would never permit it,’ Hanne said. ‘You know how he hates company.’

  ‘What about for coffee and cakes?’ Dortchen suggested. ‘We could do it one Friday when Father has gone to his church meeting.’ As her sisters hesitated, she added, ‘Wilhelm, the second eldest, he said he’d like to hear you sing.’

  ‘We can have some music, and maybe a reading. Father could not possibly object if Mother sits with us,’ Gretchen said.

  ‘They’re interested in old stories too – perhaps I could tell them one,’ Dortchen said.

  Gretchen laughed. ‘Dortchen, you’re only twelve. Much too young to be entertaining gentlemen.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘You and Röse and Mia couldn’t possibly come,’ Lisette agreed. ‘For one thing, we simply haven’t room in the parlour. By the time we have us three, and the three eldest Grimm boys and Mother, well, we couldn’t fit a mouse in there.’

  Dortchen threw down the cloth and went out of the room. No one noticed she had gone.

  The hall seemed very full of black-clad young men the following Friday. Dortchen sat with Mia and Röse on the steps, peering through the banisters, as the eldest three Grimm brothers unwound their scarves and gave their tall hats to Frau Wild, who dropped first a scarf, then a hat, then another scarf. Wilhelm politely gathered them all up and hung them for her on the hatstand.