The Wild Girl (19 page)

Lotte had refused to come. She was moping at home with Old Marie, helping her make midsummer cake from ground hazelnuts, fresh raspberries and crystallised rose petals. She had not left the Wilds’ house since her mother had been buried. It was as if her black-dyed clothes had stained her spirit as well as her skin.

The last few weeks had not been easy for her brothers, either. Frau Grimm’s pension, as the widow of a magistrate, had ceased with her death, and the endless worry and grief had brought on Wilhelm’s cough again. He looked so pale and weary that Dortchen’s heart ached.

Gradually, he began to fall behind the merry party of flower-pickers; Jakob strode impatiently on, not wanting to miss any pagan rituals that might persist. Dortchen fell back to walk with Wilhelm along the winding avenue that led away from the palace. The leaf litter below their feet hushed their footsteps. Sweet woodruff spread a carpet of starry white flowers under the shade of the trees.

‘I haven’t walked this far before,’ he said. ‘It’s beautiful.’

‘You haven’t seen the Lion’s Castle?’ Dortchen asked in surprise. ‘Oh, you’ll love it. It looks like one of those remnants from the past you and Jakob love so much. Except that it was only finished five or six years ago.’

‘Really? Then how—’

‘It’s a folly,’ Dortchen told him. ‘Apparently, it’s the grandest folly in the world. The architect travelled to England to look at all their ruins and then came home and put everything he’d seen into this one glorious fake. Towers and drawbridges and arrow-slits – it has it all.’

‘But it’s all a fake?’ Wilhelm asked.

Dortchen nodded. ‘The Kurfürst built it for his favourite mistress, as a sort of private love nest. That’s why the way there is hidden by the trees. He didn’t want his wife seeing him going out there to meet her.’

Wilhelm laughed, but his breath caught in a wheeze. The wheeze turned into a cough and he had to stop, bending over at the waist, one hand resting on a tree for support.

Dortchen patted him on the back, wishing she knew what to do to help. ‘It seems worse,’ she said. ‘Have you been drinking my linden blossom tea?’

‘Yes, thank you,’ he answered, his voice rasping. ‘It seems to help a little.’

Dortchen looked up the road. It was empty of all but a few stragglers, a fat woman panting along with the help of a stick and a young boy, and a young couple wandering hand in hand. ‘Do you want to go home?’ she asked. ‘I could beg for a lift for you in someone’s buggy.’

‘No. I’m fine. I want to see this Lion’s Castle of yours. Let us just walk slowly for a while till I catch my breath.’

‘All right,’ Dortchen said, although she felt anxious about what her father would say if anyone mentioned she had fallen so far behind with a young man. They walked on through the jewel-bright leaves, through shafts of sunlight and cool shade.

Wilhelm looked about him with eager eyes. ‘It’s so beautiful,’ he said. ‘We’ve been so busy and anxious with Mother that I have not walked in the forest for a long time.’

‘I’m very sorry about your mother,’ Dortchen said awkwardly.

‘I think all the endless worry about the wars, and our financial situation, was just too much for her,’ Wilhelm said in a leaden tone. He began to cough again and had to stop once more, one hand on his heart, his breath wheezing.

‘Your cough had seemed so much better,’ Dortchen said. ‘I thought the teas had been helping.’

‘Mother’s death brought it all on again. I find it hard to walk far, or to climb stairs. There’s a constant piercing pain in my chest. And lately it’s been getting much worse. I get these … attacks. My heart …’ He looked away, embarrassed.

‘Tell me about it – perhaps I know something that could help.’

‘The doctor’s given me some remedies. I take a large dose of mustard seeds in the morning, and then in the evening I have to breathe in the fumes of burning mercury.’

‘Mercury?’

‘Yes. It’s that silver stuff they use in thermometers – have you ever seen it?’

‘You mean quicksilver?’

He nodded.

‘You breathe it in?’

‘I burn it and breathe in the smoke. It makes me cough and cough, but afterwards my chest does seem clearer.’

Dortchen frowned. She had seen quicksilver once, when the thermometer at school had been broken by one of the boys. It had seemed wild, volatile, magical. ‘But … your heart,’ she ventured.

‘My heart beats so fast that I can feel it pounding in my chest. Sometimes it lasts for hours. I cannot sleep, or hardly breathe … Oh, Dortchen, I’m afraid I’m going to die too. I feel as if my heart will simply burst. What am I to do?’

Her anxiety for him was acute but she tried to calm herself, thinking of what she could do to help him. ‘Yarrow is said to be good at slowing down the heart. It’s easy enough to find – you could gather some every day on your morning walk and then make a tea with it. Otherwise, there’s monkshood … Father makes heart medicine with it but I’d be afraid to try. It’s poisonous.’

‘We might stick with yarrow then,’ Wilhelm said.

‘Motherwort and hawthorn are good for the heart too. I could try adding a few leaves to the linden blossom tea I make for you.’ Dortchen hesitated. ‘Are you sure it’s a good idea to breathe in the quicksilver fumes?’

‘Well, it’s what the doctor told me to do, that time he came to bleed Mother just before she died. We used the last of our money to buy it from him.’

It occurred to Dortchen that putting leeches on Frau Grimm’s breast had not helped her in any way, so it was possible that breathing mercury fumes was not of much use either. Many of the things the doctors and apothecaries did seemed strange and unhealthy to her. Dortchen thought that walking out in the fresh air and the sunshine, and eating and drinking the good things grown in the garden, was far more likely to heal illness than making people vomit, or cupping them, or giving them drops that made them sleep all day, like her mother did. She was only a girl, though, and not very well educated. The doctors had studied and had degrees, so
surely they knew what they were doing. Uneasiness filled her, nevertheless, and she examined Wilhelm’s face closely, noting the dark shadows under his eyes, the deepening hollows under his cheekbones.

‘I don’t have much mercury left and no money for any more,’ Wilhelm said. His shoulders were slumped under his shabby black coat. ‘So I guess I won’t be able to carry on for much longer anyway.’

‘Well, yarrow grows wild in the roadside ditches, so it will cost you nothing at all,’ Dortchen comforted him. ‘And I can give you a bag of lavender to put under your pillow. It might help you sleep.’

‘I’m willing to try anything,’ Wilhelm replied. His breath was short, and Dortchen could clearly hear his chest wheezing. She stopped, pretending to turn and gaze away into the forest, so that he might have a chance to catch his breath. Far away, on the horizon, she could see the twin spires of Martinskirche rising above the trees, and pointed them out to Wilhelm.

‘Look how far we’ve come! With the spires to guide us home, we’d never need to leave a trail of breadcrumbs behind us.’

‘Breadcrumbs?’

‘Do you not know that story? It’s about a little brother and sister who get lost in the forest, and find a witch’s cottage made all of gingerbread. I’ll tell it to you, if you like.’

She told him as much as she could remember of the story as they climbed the road through the trees, each bend bringing them higher up the hill. Wilhelm was able to save his breath for climbing, and Dortchen walked slowly, pretending to be absorbed in the tale. Wilhelm did not much like the parents, who so readily abandoned their children once times grew hard, but he very much liked the way the brother and sister outwitted the witch. ‘If only I had some paper and my quill,’ he lamented. ‘I shall try to remember it all when I get home.’

‘I can always tell it to you again,’ she said.

The road levelled out into a wide, sunny clearing, with a view up to Herkules at the peak of the hill. Before them stood a tiny stone castle, lifting innumerable mismatched spires and turrets into the sky.

‘There it is,’ Dortchen said.

‘It’s like something out of a story,’ Wilhelm said. ‘I can imagine magical things happening there.’

He was looking flushed and his breath came too fast for Dortchen’s liking. ‘Come and sit down in the shade,’ she said. ‘Would you like some water?’

He nodded, and she led him to sit down on the grass in the shade of a sprawling elder bush. Dortchen drew a corked jug of water out of her basket, and gave it to him to drink. ‘It’s too late to gather any elderflowers and too early for elderberries,’ Dortchen said, looking up into the tangle of grey branches overhead. Unripe berries were clustered on every twig. ‘I’ll come back in August and gather a basketful to make elderberry cordial for you. It’ll help your cough.’

‘You know so much about trees and flowers and herbs,’ Wilhelm said in wonder. ‘How ever did you learn?’

Dortchen shrugged her shoulders uncomfortably. ‘It’s about all I know. We learnt practically nothing at school, except how to recite our catechism and how to knit. I wish I had your book learning.’

‘It’s not much use to me, is it? I spend all day poring over old manuscripts and trying to ignore the ache in my fingers, while you make bread out of acorns and tea out of linden blossoms. What you do is at least helpful to people.’

‘Stories are important too,’ Dortchen said. ‘Stories help make sense of things. They make you believe you can do things.’ Once again she felt a sense of frustration at not knowing the right words to express what she meant. ‘They help you imagine that things may be different, that if you just have enough courage … or enough faith … or
goodness
… you can change things for the better.’

Wilhelm turned and reached out his hand to her, clasping hers warmly. ‘You’re a good little soul, Dortchen. You always talk sense to me.’

She sat there motionless, her hand in his, unable to move or speak, unwilling to even breathe, in case it should break the spell of this moment. The Lion’s Castle basked in the early-morning sunshine, a fine, smoky haze hung above the green woods, and a bird was singing in the tree above
them. Then, with a rueful smile, Wilhelm let her hand go and turned back to the view.

Below them, small parties of people sat about on the hillside, sharing picnics, listening to the musicians or weaving daisy chains. Gretchen sat on an old tumbled stone, her white skirts arranged like a flower about her, her bonnet discarded so the sun shone on her golden head. Two young men sat beside her, and another lay on the grass at her feet. Hanne and Lisette sat nearby, but everyone’s eyes were on Gretchen, for she was laughing and teasing the young men by trying to choose which one deserved the nosegay she had tucked in her bodice.

Nearby, Frau Wild was fussing over the picnic basket. Röse sat in the buggy, squinting over a book, and Mia was gathering wildflowers, though a wreath was already on her head and her basket was overflowing. Frau Wild kept stopping and looking around anxiously. Dortchen rose to her feet and stepped out of the shade, waving to her mother. Frau Wild’s face brightened. She waved in response and turned back to her basket.

‘My storytelling collection seems to have ground to a halt,’ Wilhelm said, his eyes on the little group on the grass. ‘Gretchen has given me a few stories, about cats and mice and dogs and sparrows. I really love one she gave me, about a golden bird and the youngest brother who must do all sorts of impossible tasks before he can win the hand of the princess.’ He sighed.

‘I know another story you might like,’ Dortchen said. ‘It’s about three little men in a wood and the magical gifts they give a girl … a girl who is good and gentle and loving and kind.’

‘Like you?’ he teased, and she flushed bright red.

‘I … I didn’t mean—’ she stammered.

‘I know, I was only joking. What does this good, kind, gentle girl do?’

Dortchen could not look at him as she told the story, though it was one she had often told by the fire as she and her sisters sat sewing on wintry evenings. It was about a girl whose stepmother hated her and sent her out into the snow to find strawberries, dressed only in a paper frock. She came upon a cottage where three little men lived, and she was kind to them and
shared her piece of old, hard bread with them. They then told her to sweep the back steps, and she obeyed.

‘Under the snow were red, ripe strawberries,’ Dortchen said, ‘and what’s more, the three little men decided to reward her for her kindness. One said she would grow more beautiful every day, the other that gold pieces would fall from her mouth every time she spoke, and the third that she would marry a king.’

When the girl went home, Dortchen continued, her stepmother was furious that it was her stepdaughter who had received all these gifts, and not her own daughter. She wrapped her daughter in furs and gave her cake and soft bread with butter, then sent her out to find the three little men. However, the stepsister was so rude and haughty that the three little men decided to punish her. The first wished that she would grow uglier every day, the second that a toad would leap out of her mouth at every word she said, and the third that she should die a miserable death.

‘And so it was,’ Dortchen finished. ‘The stepsister grew uglier and meaner every day, and the house filled with hopping toads so that you squelched one underfoot at every step. At last the stepmother turned her out and she perished for cold in the forest. The kind girl married a king, and all her words were turned to gold coins so that everyone in the kingdom was well fed and prosperous, and everyone lived happily ever after.’

‘It’d be a handy skill,’ Wilhelm said. ‘Spitting gold coins every time you spoke.’

‘I should think it would be most uncomfortable,’ Dortchen replied, thinking to herself,
Does he not understand?
His eyes turned to Gretchen again. Quickly she said, ‘Though not as uncomfortable as coughing up toads.’

OAK MOSS