The Wild Girl

by Kate Forsyth

  ‘Typhus …?’ Herr Wild said to himself. ‘Oh, merciful God, let it not be so.’

  Cold spread through Dortchen. Typhus was one of the most dreaded of all diseases, capable of wiping out the entire population of Cassel. No one knew what caused it, but it was especially prevalent among slum-dwellers, seafarers and prisoners – anyone who lived in close proximity to others, in dirty, unhygienic conditions. She took a step back, her hand to her mouth.

  ‘We must get him clean, and this place too,’ Herr Wild said. ‘Dortchen, be quick, help me get the rest of his clothes off.’

  Trembling in every limb and sick to the pit of her stomach, Dortchen slowly unwound the filthy rags from her brother’s feet. They were in terrible shape, bruised and swollen and filthy. Three toes on his right foot were black and dead, as were two toes on his left.

  ‘He’ll never walk straight again,’ Herr Wild said. His voice was hoarse.

  Looking up, Dortchen was horrified to see tears sliding down her father’s face. She had never seen him weep before. He dashed them away with his forearm and blew his nose on his handkerchief.

  ‘No use weeping,’ he said to her fiercely, as if it were she who had shown such weakness.

  Dortchen said nothing and began cutting her brother’s trousers away. They were stiff with ordure. She used the tongs to drop them into the bucket.

  ‘Dysentery,’ Herr Wild said. ‘Get a chamber pot handy, Dortchen – we’re going to need it.’

  She got one from the scullery, then gingerly took hold of her brother’s ankles and helped her father lift him into the bath. He cried out in pain as he was immersed in the warm water and began to struggle weakly.

  Herr Wild held him down. ‘It’s all right, my boy, you’re home now, you’re safe. We’ll take care of you.’ Rudolf gasped and relaxed a little.

  Dortchen got some soap and began cautiously to wash his hair. ‘Cut it all off and burn it,’ Herr Wild instructed her, so she took the scissors and cut off the long, matted elflocks, flinging them into the bucket. Herr Wild was carefully washing Rudolf’s feet. Despite his tender touch, three of the black toes fell away. Dortchen gasped and struggled with her tears.

  ‘He’s alive – that’s what matters,’ her father told her. ‘And, my God, he’ll stay alive too.’

  Together, Dortchen and her father worked on Rudolf for hours, shaving his head and jaw, washing his skeletal body, and anointing the thousands of tiny red spots with goldenseal salve. They fed him healing teas and thin broth, bound his wounds with fresh bandages, and made up a pallet for him in the kitchen. He was too weak to sit on the chamber pot, so Dortchen wrapped his lower body in old linen towels. They had to be changed again and again as his bowels released a thin, bloody, foul-smelling liquid.

  Unable to leave him for a moment, Dortchen called up to Mia and Louise to come and help her by lighting a bonfire in the garden to burn his rags. Red-eyed and pale-faced, they came downstairs, clutching each other’s hands.

  ‘How is he?’ Louise asked. ‘Will he … will he die?’

  ‘Not if I can help it,’ Herr Wild responded over his shoulder, as he went through to the stillroom.

  Louise moved closer and bent to look at her husband’s face. ‘He smells,’ she said, stepping back. ‘Urgh!’

  ‘Don’t get too close – he has typhus,’ Dortchen said, and rapidly Louise moved farther away, pressing both hands over her mouth. ‘The bucket of rags is there,’ Dortchen continued. ‘Make sure it is all burnt. And that fur coat too.’

  ‘My mink coat!’ Louise cried. ‘Urgh, look how filthy it is.’

  ‘It has to be burnt,’ Dortchen said, pressing a cool cloth against her brother’s hot forehead.

  ‘I’ve waited all my life for a fur coat,’ Louise said with spirit. ‘I’m not burning it. A good sponge down with vinegar and an airing, and it’ll be good as new.’

  She gathered it up into her arms and went into the scullery. Dortchen sighed. She was too exhausted to do battle with Louise. She looked up at Mia. ‘Make the bonfire good and hot.’

  ‘But it’s snowing.’

  ‘Use Father’s brandy to help you get it going,’ Dortchen answered, and she groaned as another gush of foul-smelling liquid poured out of her brother’s body. Mia caught up the buckets and rushed outside. Soon a red glare struck through the frosty windows.

  Darkness closed in on the shop, and Dortchen realised that the dull ache in her midsection was hunger. It had been a long time since she had last eaten. She was so weary that she could scarcely find the energy to rise, let alone start cooking. A knock came on the front door. Dortchen dragged herself to her feet and walked down the dark hallway.

  Standing on the doorstep were Jakob, Wilhelm and Lotte, all well wrapped up against the snow. Wilhelm held a heavy cast-iron pot in one hand.

  ‘We heard about Rudolf,’ Jakob said, without any preamble. ‘How is he?’

  ‘Very sick,’ Dortchen replied. A tremor ran over her and she put a hand on the door frame to support herself.

  ‘We’re so sorry,’ Lotte said. Her thin face was tense with sympathy. ‘Here. I made bread soup for you. I had no cream, so it’s rather thin.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Dortchen reached out her hand for the pot, and Wilhelm caught it in his.

  ‘I’m so sorry. Please, let us know if there’s anything we can do.’

  Dortchen nodded. ‘I will. Thank you.’ Gently, she withdrew her hand from his and took the soup from him. ‘I have to go.’

  As she made to shut the door, Jakob said, ‘Will he live, Dortchen?’

  Tears overcame her. Dumbly, she shrugged, shook her head and shut the door.

  It was a long and horrible night.

  Towards dawn, Rudolf’s fever spiked and he grew restless and violent, punching Dortchen as she bent over him, and trying to scramble away from her. Nothing she could say would calm him.

  ‘The Cossacks,’ he screeched. ‘To arms!’

  Herr Wild tried to hold him down but Rudolf’s strength was preternatural. He hurtled half-naked all around the kitchen, knocking over copper buckets with a great clatter, smashing bowls as he shouldered the dresser. He seized the broom and whacked at an invisible enemy, sending the roasting jack crashing to the floor. At last, exhaustion overwhelmed him and he sank trembling to the floor. ‘So cold,’ he moaned. ‘So cold.’

  Together, Dortchen and her father were able to help him back to his pallet and cover him with blankets, but he shivered and moaned and threw them off, starting up in terror. ‘They come! The Cossacks are coming. Flee!’

  He quietened again, and Dortchen cleaned up the mess and scrubbed the kitchen floor with rue water, throwing all his soiled linens into the fire that was smouldering under the boiler. At this rate, there would not be a sheet left in the entire house.

  She sat in the rocking chair, meaning to rest for just a moment, but was so exhausted that she fell asleep. She woke a scant hour later, to find Rudolf leaning up on one hand, looking about with wondering eyes. ‘Is it true? Am I home?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. Quickly, she got up and brought him a cup of cool feverfew tea to sip.

  ‘It seems impossible.’

  Dortchen knelt beside him and gently rubbed some more salve into the spots on one arm, tenderly folding back the flowing sleeve of his nightgown. ‘We’re so glad to have you safe home,’ she said.

  ‘They’re all dead.’

  ‘We don’t know that. Maybe some more will make it home.’

  He shook his head. ‘They’re all dead.’

  She did not want him to dwell on his ordeal, or on the death of his comrades, so she began to talk brightly. ‘Soon you’ll be well enough to see your little Marianne. She’s crawling about now and getting into all sorts of trouble.’

  He stared blankly at her, as if he did not know who she was speaking about, then said, in a strange dead voice, ‘I thought Burl would make it. Our little drummer boy. All those months, all those miles, we marched together. But it was so cold. Eve
ry breath was torture. We could not lie down on the ground to sleep, knowing we’d not get up again. So we stood together under a tree, leaning on it, trying to rest. I swear I slept only a few minutes. Yet when I put my hand on his shoulder to wake him, he was dead. I tried to lay him out, but his feet were frozen fast to the snow.’ Rudolf began to tremble uncontrollably. ‘His feet … His legs just broke off at the ankles, Dortchen. They snapped like sticks. His feet … his feet are still there … stuck to the snow … Dortchen, his feet … He was only a boy …’

  Dortchen hurried to soothe him, though she was so shaken that it was hard to move her own cold limbs. Terror overcame Rudolf again and she had to call for her father, as once again he was struggling around the room, flailing his arms and shrieking for help. Herr Wild held him down while Dortchen tried to get some more laudanum down his throat. Eventually, he calmed and slept again.

  Dortchen’s jaw throbbed where he had struck her the night before, and every muscle in her body ached. ‘Get that worthless wife of his down here,’ Herr Wild told her. ‘You go and rest a few hours. Tell Katharina she must rouse herself and come too. She is his mother.’

  Dortchen nodded gratefully. As she turned to go, her father reached out and gently cupped her face. ‘You did well, Dortchen. I’m proud of you.’

  The next Sunday, Louise came down the stairs dressed in her best day gown, with the black mink coat draped insolently over her shoulders.

  ‘I thought I ordered that thing burnt,’ Herr Wild said.

  ‘I’ve given it a good clean,’ she answered. ‘I’ll be the centre of attention at church today. Everyone will want to know about Rudolf. You wouldn’t want me not to look my best, would you?’

  ‘It’ll be infested with lice,’ he warned her.

  ‘I wiped it down with rue water – nasty, stinking stuff,’ she said. ‘I had to use up a whole bottle of rose perfume to get rid of the smell.’

  ‘On your own head be it,’ Herr Wild said, and she smiled and twirled a few steps, the skirts of the mink coat flaring out behind her.

  ‘Isn’t it fine?’ she asked. ‘I’ll be as warm as toast in that horrible draughty old church.’

  Louise was indeed the centre of attention after the service. Everyone was eager to know how Rudolf was, and what had befallen him on the march home from Russia.

  ‘He’s too ill to have spoken of it,’ Louise said, Marianne in her arms.

  Dortchen, standing behind her with her hands shoved into the sleeves of her shabby coat, said nothing. She had heard many things in the last few nights. Rudolf’s fever was always worse then, and so too was his ranting and raving. The burden of his words weighed heavily on her soul, however, and she could not have told anyone what he had revealed to her.

  Rudolf had seen men murdered for an old potato, little girls raped in revenge for a burnt field, children captured and sold by the Cossacks as their rightful war booty, and injured men flung off carts and driven over in the desperate need to escape. He had even pushed a woman off a sinking bridge so that he might not drown with her. Her despairing face as she sank beneath the icy waters disturbed his dreams nearly every night, as did the young drummer boy who had frozen to death beside him. Rudolf had seen men burning to death in a cottage, and half-frozen soldiers rushing close to warm their hands at the blaze, uncaring of the screams of agony from within. All his dead comrades, all the atrocities he had witnessed, surfaced in his dreams. Dortchen was covered with bruises from Rudolf’s attempts to fight the nightmare images away.

  ‘What a lovely coat,’ one woman said, fingering the thick pelt of Louise’s sleeve.

  ‘Isn’t it?’ Louise answered, lifting Marianne up against her shoulder so that she could show the woman the pink silk lining. ‘My husband brought it home from Moscow for me.’

  ‘What was Moscow like?’ someone else asked.

  ‘Like something out of A Thousand and One Nights,’ Louise answered, smiling.

  Dortchen turned away. She felt sick, her legs shaking so much that she was afraid they would fail to support her. Wilhelm saw her face and stepped closer, putting out a hand to support her elbow. ‘Dortchen, are you well? You look so pale.’

  She raised her eyes to his but did not speak.

  ‘Come, sit for a moment,’ he said, guiding her to a low stone bench nearby. ‘I don’t want you fainting.’

  She sat.

  ‘Are you still angry with me?’ he said in a rush. ‘I did not mean to offend you.’

  Dortchen shook her head. She had forgotten about her rage and her jealousy, in the horror of Rudolf’s return.

  ‘It is just the way things are done,’ he went on. ‘So many of the stories are put together from different fragments, which came to us in different ways. We could not have named each source for each part of a story without making the book much too long. Already we are being criticised for the notes we did include.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Dortchen said wearily.

  ‘Dortchen …’ He stepped closer, bending his head to scan her face. ‘What is wrong, my little love? You seem so sad … so quiet … Is it just Rudolf?’

  ‘Isn’t that enough?’ she answered. ‘He’s a cripple now, did you know? Half his toes are gone.’

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ he answered helplessly.

  ‘I need to get back to him,’ she said. ‘Mia is sitting with him now, but she’s only a girl.’

  ‘You’re not much more than a girl yourself,’ he said, frowning.

  Did he really think so? She felt immeasurably old.

  Louise wore her mink coat all afternoon, saying it was the first time she had been truly warm since coming to this benighted country. Dortchen imagined she would even wear it to bed.

  The next morning, Louise did not come down to breakfast. Dortchen went to check on her and found her lying in bed, pale and listless, the mink coat spread over her bed like a counterpane. ‘I have such a headache,’ she said. ‘Can you take Marianne? She won’t stop crying.’

  When Dortchen lifted the little girl up, her skin was scorching hot. She cried out at Dortchen’s touch.

  ‘My head,’ Louise whimpered. ‘Make her stop!’

  Dortchen laid the little girl down in her cradle, backed out of the room, shut the door and slid down till she was sitting on the floor, her knees hunched under her chin. It was a while before she found the strength to get up and go to tell her father the news.

  For three days, Louise and her baby lay shivering and burning in their beds, without the strength even to lift their heads to drink the healing teas Dortchen made them. Louise would not let go of the fur coat, clutching it to her with desperate fingers, so Dortchen let her be. Marianne died before dawn on the fourth night, and her mother a day later. They were buried the next day in ground as cold and hard as iron.

  Dortchen took all Louise’s and Marianne’s sheets and blankets, their clothes, their pillows – everything that had touched them – and threw them on a bonfire in the back garden. She used a shovel so she did not have to touch anything with her own skin. Last of all, she flung on the mink coat. It took a long time to burn and filled the air with a terrible stench. The acrid smoke brought tears to Dortchen’s eyes but she would not allow herself to weep. She stood, leaning on the shovel, while the thick orange smoke spread a pall over the frosty garden.

  When at last she went inside, she found Mia hunched over at the table, peeling turnips. Her face was white and she had dark shadows beneath her eyes.

  ‘Go and rest, little love,’ Dortchen said. ‘I don’t want you getting sick too.’

  Mia looked up at her gratefully and pulled herself to her feet.

  Dortchen went to make soup. Two fewer mouths to feed, she thought, then she was shocked at herself. She felt numb, as if she had lost the ability to feel.

  After a while, she realised that Rudolf was awake and watching her. Although he was still pale and thin, his eyes did not have the strange wild light of fever, and his red spots had faded.

  ‘Louise?
’ he asked. ‘Marianne?’

  Dortchen shook her head.

  RED BLOOD, WHITE FEATHERS

  January 1813

  After Rudolf’s return from the war, Dortchen’s father only came to her at night in her dreams.

  It was as if those few terrible months had never happened. Sometimes, in the daylight hours, Dortchen could almost convince herself it had all been a nightmare. Best of all, her father was so busy caring for his sick son that he no longer watched her so closely. Dortchen was able to go to market by herself, leaving Mia to empty the chamber pots and starch her father’s cravats with the water in which the potatoes had been boiled.

  One day she was crossing the Marktgasse when she heard Wilhelm’s voice. ‘Dortchen, wait.’

  She turned in surprise, and saw Wilhelm waving at her from the apartment window. He lifted a finger to her, indicating he’d be just a moment, and she took shelter from the cold wind in a doorway, well out of sight of her father’s shop. Soon Wilhelm was striding towards her.

  ‘How is Rudolf?’ he asked, taking off his hat as he came near her. The icy wind ruffled his curls.

  ‘Better,’ she answered. ‘If only I could buy some good beef to make broth. But the cupboard is bare.’

  ‘Ours too,’ Wilhelm said. ‘We’re ready to start gnawing our shoes, like they say the soldiers on the Russian march did.’

  ‘Father says King Jérôme is virtually bankrupt.’ Dortchen began to walk again, not wanting anyone to see them in such close conversation, and Wilhelm took her basket and fell into step beside her.

  ‘There’s no “virtually” about it. Jakob says he spent sixty million francs last year, building the new wing at the palace, and buying jewels and dresses for his mistresses. He has even spent the army treasury on refurbishing the opera house. So while Hessian blood was being spilt at Borodino and Moscow, the King was spending the soldiers’ pay on red velvet curtains and chandeliers. It’s unforgivable.’