by Kate Forsyth
As she spoke, Dortchen loosened her collar, her skin flushed with heat. Wilhelm’s gaze dwelt on the small triangle of skin she had exposed.
Dortchen cast down her eyes and continued. ‘The huntsmen, however, not letting themselves be dissuaded, climbed the tree, lifted the girl down and took her to the king. The king asked, “Who are you? What were you doing in that tree?”
‘But she did not answer. He asked her in every language that he knew, but she remained as speechless as a fish. Because she was so beautiful, the king’s heart was touched, and he fell deeply in love with her. He put his cloak around her, lifted her onto his own horse and took her to his castle. There, he had her dressed in rich garments, and she glistened in her beauty like bright daylight, but no one could get a word from her. At the table he seated her by his side. Her modesty pleased him so much that he said, “My desire is to marry her, and no one else in the world.”’
Dortchen’s throat closed over and she could not speak a word. Flushing, she moved away from Wilhelm. There was a long, strained silence.
‘What happened?’ he asked.
‘She had a cruel mother-in-law,’ Dortchen said. ‘The king’s mother stole away all the queen’s babies while she was sleeping, and smeared the queen’s mouth with blood and proclaimed that she must have eaten them. At last the king could no longer protect his beloved. She was condemned to be burnt at the stake.’
‘But couldn’t he help her?’ Wilhelm asked, incredulous. ‘Surely he’d not let his beloved die so horribly?’
‘He believed the lies against her,’ Dortchen said. ‘When the day came for the sentence to be carried out, it was also the last day of the six years during which she had not been permitted to speak or to laugh; she had thus delivered her dear brothers from the magic curse. The six shirts were all but finished – only the left sleeve of the last one was missing. When she was led to the stake, she laid the shirts on her arm.
‘When the fire was about to be lit, she looked around and saw six swans flying through the air. Knowing that their redemption was near, her heart leapt with joy. The swans rushed towards her, swooping down so that she could throw the shirts over them. As soon as the shirts touched them, their swan-skins fell off and her brothers stood before her, vigorous and handsome. However, the youngest was missing his left arm. In its place he had a swan’s wing.’
‘What a beautiful, strange tale,’ Wilhelm said. ‘What about the queen? Was she saved?’
‘Yes,’ Dortchen said. ‘The king realised that she had kept mute to break the curse on her brothers, and he forgave her and freed her and they lived happily ever after.’
Something in her heart cried out, Can you not see that I too am kept mute? But she could not speak.
Wilhelm wiped the end of his quill on a rag. ‘That story was extraordinary,’ he said. ‘Dortchen …’
He leant forward and kissed her. She wound her arms about his neck and drew him down to her. Long moments passed. Each grew bolder, daring to touch, to creep their fingers across the other’s bared skin, to undo a button here and a ribbon there. Dortchen’s breath came faster and she moaned deep in her throat, shifting her hips. Wilhelm stilled, holding himself away from her.
‘I must stop,’ he said. ‘We should not be doing this. What would your father say?’
She froze and sat up, buttoning up her bodice with trembling fingers, unable to look at him. He groaned and caught her hands. ‘Dortchen, Dortchen,’ he whispered, then bent to kiss her palms. ‘Don’t go. I’m sorry. This is wrong, I know, yet … Dortchen …’ He tried to kiss her lips but she turned away.
‘Don’t go,’ he said. ‘If you go, the spell will be broken. We shall have to return to everyday life. Stay here, just for a while.’
‘I could tell you another story,’ she said, turning back to him, lifting one hand to stroke back the lock of hair falling over his forehead, as she had longed to do so many times. ‘As long as I am telling stories, we are outside time.’
He sighed and bent to kiss her. Their lips met, their breath mingled, and they felt again the irresistible force that drew them to each other like magnetised iron.
‘Dortchen, I … I wish …’
‘Shh,’ she said. ‘Listen to my story.’
Wilhelm sighed, looking at her with a kind of wild longing in his eyes, but the duty and habit of work was too strong in him. He drew another ragged quill towards him, and a fresh piece of paper, and began to write as she spoke.
Dortchen told him the tale of Sweetheart Roland, who helped his beloved escape from a house of hatred and murder, but then forgot her and left her standing at a red boundary stone in a field.
By now the light was fading from the translucent sky outside. Darkness was closing in. Sweetheart Roland prepared to marry another, but the girl came heartsore to his wedding and sang. Hearing her voice, he remembered her and cast off the false bride, swearing his love to her again.
As Dortchen finished the tale, Wilhelm threw down his quill, caught her in his arms and kissed her. Despite herself, Dortchen fell back beneath him. Her mouth opened, her hands tangled in his hair and she welcomed his weight upon her. They kissed as if the world were about to end and this was all the chance of life left to them. They kissed as if they were starving and the other was all sustenance. Dortchen lost all sense of herself. There were only their mouths and their shy hands, and the brush of flesh against flesh.
It was Wilhelm who came back to himself. ‘I must stop,’ he whispered. ‘Oh, Dortchen, I’m sorry, I’m all in a daze. I hardly know what I’m doing. We must stop.’
‘No,’ she groaned, pressing her mouth against his throat.
‘No, no, we must. I … any moment now … Dortchen, I cannot.’
He lifted himself away from her, and she realised that her bodice was unbuttoned. She sat up, flushing, her hands flying to close her bodice. She looked up at him and at once he bent his mouth to hers, and the strange, sweet delirium swept over her again. She moaned. His hand swept up her skirts and found bare flesh. He groaned and pressed closer to her.
A knocking on the door drove them apart. Mia’s voice called plaintively, ‘Are you never coming in for dinner?’
Dortchen and Wilhelm could hardly breathe. Their eyes fell away from each other. He turned and pressed his forehead against the cold, foggy glass, trying to compose himself. Dortchen again did up her bodice, blushing and confused.
‘Are you there?’ Mia called.
‘Coming, sweetling,’ Dortchen replied. ‘Just a moment.’
Mia opened the door and barged in, curious and bright-eyed. ‘Dinner’s been ready for ever so long,’ she said. ‘Whatever have you been doing?’
‘Telling stories,’ Dortchen replied, then rushed her sister out into the snowy night. Overhead were ten thousand stars, filling the arch of the night sky. She saw the faint trail of fire from the comet along the horizon and heard Wilhelm come out behind her, rustling his sheaf of pages. She risked a glance at him and he smiled at her; she could not help but smile back.
‘Hanne says you must stay the night,’ Mia said to him. ‘It’s late now.’
Wilhelm’s eyes flashed towards Dortchen and she felt his surge of excitement as if it were a visible spray of light. But then he drew back and shook his head, saying, ‘I should not. I’ll stay at the inn.’ And before Mia or Dortchen could protest, he had lurched away towards the gate, his arms full of white paper, his feet leaving dark holes in the snow.
MIDSUMMER SWOON
June 1812
Winter turned to spring, and spring to summer, but Dortchen and Wilhelm could only snatch occasional moments together.
They kissed behind a tree in Karlsaue Park while the citizens of Cassel picnicked only a few feet away.
They let the little fingers of their hands touch as they sat side by side, listening to a concert in the amphitheatre in the garden of Napoléonshöhe, with Frau Ramus and her daughters – the biggest gossips in Cassel – sitting right beside them.
They saw each other in church, and found it hard not to gaze at each other every second of the sermon.
One day they managed to walk the length of the central path of Karlsaue Park, exchanging hurried words. ‘Oh, Dortchen,’ Wilhelm said. ‘I think of you night and day. This is torture. If only we could marry.’
‘My father would never permit it.’
‘If I had a job? If I could support you?’
‘Surely then …’ She spoke doubtfully.
‘If our book of old tales was a success …’
‘It is to be published? You’ve heard?’
‘No. Not yet. I hope it will. Surely it will. Such wonderful stories.’
Dortchen cast a quick glance over her shoulder. Herr Wild was sitting on a park bench, staring at her, his thick brows lowered dangerously. ‘We could run away,’ she whispered.
Wilhelm looked at her in surprise. ‘Where could we go? What could we do?’
‘I can cook and clean and sew, and I can work with my hands as well as any farm labourer,’ she said. ‘Surely we could find work?’
He shrugged his thin shoulders and spread his hands. ‘Who would hire me?’ he said simply. ‘I get out of breath just climbing the stairs to our apartment every day.’
‘Then let us marry now. I can come and live with you all. You know I can cook and clean – I’d work hard.’ She gazed at him pleadingly.
Wilhelm squeezed her hand surreptitiously. ‘Oh, my little love, I wish that we could. But I cannot ask Jakob to feed another mouth.’ His face was set and hard and unhappy. ‘Surely you can understand that, Dortchen? Already he is supporting too many on his salary. We live on broth and dry bread as it is. If we can just be patient a little while longer, till I find a job … or a publisher for the fairy tale collection …’
‘It’d be no use anyway – my father will never give us permission. Never.’ Dortchen turned to face her father, who was now stumping angrily towards them. ‘Coming, Father.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Wilhelm said. ‘Dortchen …’
She did not answer, but submitted to her father’s heavy hand on her arm. She felt Wilhelm’s eyes on her back as they walked away.
Times were hard for them all. Shops everywhere were closing down, driven into bankruptcy by the inability of the King and his courtiers to pay their bills. Beggars slept in the alleys and accosted Dortchen in the market with desperate eyes and hollow cheeks. The queues for bread and meat began well before dawn and lasted till the last piece was gone.
Tea, coffee, sugar, pepper and opium were rare luxuries, their price unaffordable to anyone but the King and his courtiers. Dortchen’s own family could only drink coffee made from acorns picked up off the grass in the park and laboriously ground by hand. Their tea leaves had been used so many times that they produced only the merest suggestion of colour and flavour. Nothing was wasted any more. Even the pig had grown lean, for Old Marie used every scrap to try to keep the family fed. They lived on cabbage soup and boiled potatoes, with rough bread made from rye and beans, and the occasional scrawny chicken.
It did not help that the house was full again. Rudolf had come home from Berlin, bringing with him a nineteen-year-old French wife and a young baby. Herr Wild had been furious.
‘Get your French whore out of my house!’ he had bellowed.
‘Louise is my wife,’ Rudolf had answered. ‘Marianne is my daughter. If you throw her out, I’ll go too.’
‘How dare you marry without my permission?’
Rudolf had been unrepentant. ‘Times have changed, Father. I’m twenty-nine years old. I don’t need your permission to marry. You may not have noticed, but the Dark Ages are over.’
‘I won’t have that French whore in my house,’ Herr Wild returned.
Rudolf stood. ‘Very well, we’ll go. But I warn you, we will never come back.’
Frau Wild had fallen to her knees, sobbing, begging her husband to reconsider. At length, when his delicate, dark-haired daughter-in-law had knelt and sobbed too, Herr Wild had allowed himself to be persuaded. But his face was heavy and dark with rage, and he would not look at his granddaughter.
Marianne was not easy to love. Thin and sallow, with a face like a barrel-grinder’s monkey, she screamed all day and all night. Dortchen gave the little girl cool chamomile tea to drink, and rusks made of toasted acorn bread to chew on, and Marianne seemed to calm and grow easier. This meant that Louise thrust her into Dortchen’s arms at the first sign of a wail, and retired to her bed with a headache. Louise seemed to have a lot of headaches.
Between the housework and the garden and the baby, Dortchen never seemed to have time to go next door, or to walk in the park, or go to the palace for concerts. Her days were consumed.
In mid-June, Jakob and Wilhelm heard from Achim’s publisher in Berlin. Despite the hard times, he was willing to publish their collection of children’s and household tales. Wilhelm told Dortchen in the square outside church, keeping his hands shoved deep in his pockets to stop himself from reaching out to her.
She answered him gravely – ‘That is good news indeed, Herr Grimm’ – for she was aware how many eyes had begun to dwell on them, full of speculation. She smiled and moved away from him, but later that evening she dashed over to the Grimms’ apartment with a bottle of dandelion wine, and they shared a small glass of the cloudy golden liquid, and then a quick but earth-shaking kiss behind the door as he walked her out.
It was not enough. It was not nearly enough.
On Midsummer’s Day, when the people of Cassel went walking in the gardens and woods around Napoléonshöhe to make wreaths of wildflowers, Dortchen whispered to Wilhelm, ‘Come, slip away with me. No one will notice we’re gone. Come and meet the linden trees that I pluck to make your tea.’
His dark eyes kindled. He looked around swiftly; everyone was talking and singing and making chains from daisies and buttercups. Frau Wild was resting beneath a tree, with stout Frau Ramus to keep her company. Mia was playing hoops with Malchen. Lotte and the elder Hassenpflug sisters were feeding the swans that floated on the lake.
Dortchen ducked through a gap in the trees, following a winding path to a small grove of old linden trees, their branches hanging with heavy creamy-white flowers. A hedge of briar roses, with delicate pink-white flowers blooming among the thorns, shielded them from the eyes of anyone walking past.
The garden was alive with birdsong. A blackbird looked at her with a cheeky eye, then hopped away to search for worms. The scent of the linden blossoms was intoxicating. She sat on a low-hanging branch and waited. It was not long before Wilhelm stood before her, throwing down his hat and reaching out to slide his arm about her waist.
‘Dortchen,’ he whispered against her throat. ‘If you only knew how I have longed for you.’
They kissed, deeply and hungrily. He undid the ribbons of her bonnet and cast it away. ‘Why must you keep your hair in all these infernal braids?’ he asked. ‘Oh, I’d love to see your hair all loose and flowing, like it was on the night of the fire.’ He twisted a tendril about his finger and kissed her tenderly.
She could not speak. She shaped the line of his cheekbones, so thin and hollow. She longed to cook for him, to make him a feast and feed him till he was not hungry any more. She would feed him suckling pig, and asparagus dripping with butter, and raspberries with sugared cream, and he would lick her fingers clean.
Her stomach twisted, desire sharp in her, and her limbs turned to honey. Wilhelm drew her close, his arm hard against her back, drawing her earlobe into his mouth. She almost swooned against him, and he smiled, turning her and pressing her against the linden tree.
‘I’m weak at the knees,’ he whispered. ‘Oh, Dortchen, the power you have over me. I know I should not … but I cannot keep away.’
They kissed again, more slowly, taking the time to tease and entice each other, to taste the whole of each other’s mouth. Dortchen delighted in the feel of him in her arms, warm, tall, his bones hard under his skin. They slid down
to the ground, her head pillowed on his arm, their legs twining together.
Sun struck down through the linden blossoms. The air was sweet with their scent. Dortchen and Wilhelm lay in each other’s arms, stroking and kissing the small expanses of skin available to them, the soft skin of the wrist, the nape of the neck, the pulse at the base of the throat.
They dared not explore deeper under each other’s clothes, afraid that they might drown in the force of their passion. It was too dangerous here in the garden, with people promenading only a few feet away. All they could do was kiss, till Dortchen felt her soul had left her body.
‘I love you,’ she whispered, so afraid that she could scarcely shape the words.
Wilhelm lifted her palm to his mouth and kissed it lingeringly. ‘I love you too,’ he answered. ‘Oh, Dortchen, I don’t think I can wait much longer. I want you so much. If only we could be married now. If only the war would end! If only people buy our book and make our fortunes. Oh, Dortchen!’
He held her face in his hands, kissing her, his body pressing hers into the ground. She could feel his urgent desire, and something deep within her longed to open up to him, to have him even closer. Her body moved restlessly under his.
‘I don’t want to wait … Isn’t there some way for us to be together?’
‘Don’t say it,’ he cried. ‘Don’t tempt me. We have to wait. We just need to be patient. I know it’s hard …’ He kissed her, and she melted back into his arms.
Lying together in the sun-dappled grass, the scent of linden blossom all around them, Dortchen felt happier than she had ever felt before. All she and Wilhelm needed was love, and luck, and peace, and a little time. Surely that was not too much to ask?
The next day, Napoléon declared war on Russia.
PART FIVE
The Skin of Wild Beasts