The Wild Girl (21 page)
Authors: Kate Forsyth
‘Yet you work for him,’ Ferdinand pointed out.
Jakob scowled. ‘I work for him so you all don’t starve, Ferdinand. Believe me, I’d much rather lounge around all day like you do.’
Ferdinand started up angrily, but Wilhelm dropped a hand on his shoulder and squeezed it. ‘He hasn’t lounged around
all
day, and neither have I, old man. I’ve been copying stories and Ferdinand has been transcribing songs for Herr von Arnim. Look what an elegant job he has made of it.’ He passed a sheaf of papers to Jakob, whose face lightened.
‘Well, that is good. Herr von Arnim will be pleased, I know.’
‘What of the war, Jakob?’ Ludwig asked.
Jakob laid down the papers and sighed. ‘Only bad news. Or good, if you’re a supporter of Napoléon. The eldest Bonaparte brother has given up his throne in Naples and gone to be king in Spain, but the Spanish rose up against him. Napoléon’s generals have defeated them, though they had only fourteen thousand men and the Spanish forty thousand.’
‘It is like he has conjured demons from hell to fight on his side,’ Lotte said in a low voice. ‘Soon he will rule the whole world.’
‘He and his brothers,’ Ludwig said.
‘His brothers are just puppets,’ Jakob said. ‘Why, look at Jérôme. He gave up his wife and his little son to marry at his brother’s bidding.’
‘I think that’s terrible,’ Wilhelm said with vigour. ‘A man shouldn’t desert his family like that. That poor boy will grow up never knowing his father.’
Dortchen’s lips twisted wryly but she said nothing, giving the soup one last stir and then putting on her bonnet and gloves. ‘I must go,’ she said. ‘Old Marie will be serving up our supper now.’
Lotte got to her feet. ‘I wish you’d stay a little longer. Have supper with us?’
Dortchen shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, I cannot. I’ll see you tomorrow maybe.’
Lotte hugged her and gave her a kiss. ‘For five minutes, if I’m lucky.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Dortchen said again, and she let herself out. She went down the stairs and hurried across the alley, easing open the gate into the garden. All was quiet and she couldn’t see anyone standing at the windows, so she slipped through the garden and into the kitchen, taking off her bonnet and hanging it on her hook.
‘Is all well?’ she asked Old Marie, who nodded, her round face creased with anxiety.
Dortchen let out her breath in a long sigh of relief. A feeling of compression about her ribs eased. ‘Thank heavens,’ she said. ‘Shall I serve the soup?’
Mozart flew to her shoulder, running his beak lovingly through her
hair, which was tightly plaited about her head. ‘Pretty girl, naughty girl,’ he crooned.
‘You are naughty,’ Old Marie said. ‘What if your father realises you’ve gone?’
Dortchen squared her shoulders. ‘Lotte needs help. She’s the only girl in a household of men and they expect her to do all the work we do here – and we have six girls, and Mother, and you. She’s not been raised to it, and she’s still crushed by grief. I can’t not help her, I just can’t.’
‘You’ve a kind and loving heart, sweetling, but you’re risking bringing trouble down on your own head.’
Dortchen nodded, beginning to ladle out the soup. She thought of the girl with six brothers turned into swans. She’d had to weave six shirts from nettles, without speaking or laughing, if she was to save her brothers. She had still been weaving the last one as she was sentenced to be burnt to death for witchcraft. One sleeve had been unfinished, and so when she flung the shirts to her swan-brothers, one was left with a wing in place of his arm.
Risking a beating was nothing compared to risking being burnt to death.
Sometimes you had to face danger if you were to help others.
A week later, all anyone could talk about was the Maid of Zaragoza.
A young Spanish woman, she had carried a basket of apples to feed the soldiers defending her home town of Zaragoza but saw them overcome by the relentless fire of the French. The French stormed the gateway, shooting down the fleeing soldiers, stabbing them with their bayonets. The Maid of Zaragoza had run forward, loaded one of the ancient cannons and lit the fuse with a match, crying, ‘Zaragoza still has one defender!’
The cannonball tore the attacking French battalion to pieces. Undaunted, the Maid of Zaragoza had stayed at her post, loading and firing the cannon till the French had retreated. Although the small town later fell to the French, and most of its inhabitants were slaughtered, the story of the Maid of Zaragoza spread like wildfire.
Within weeks, one disaster after another had befallen the French army in
Spain. A squadron of French battleships in the harbour of Cadiz were fired upon till they surrendered. Another French battalion was defeated at Baylen in Andalusia; the new King of Spain, Joseph Bonaparte, had to flee Madrid, which was then occupied by the insurgents. It seemed as if the heroic action of one young woman had broken Napoléon’s charm of invincibility.
‘She was just a girl, an ordinary girl,’ Lisette said in the drawing room, adding an extra frill of muslin to Mia’s dress to accommodate her growing length.
‘But to load a cannon, to shoot people down – how ever did she dare?’ Gretchen cried.
‘She was so brave,’ Dortchen said. She felt ashamed. No one in Hessen-Cassel had tried to stop the French taking over. Once the Kurfürst had fled, everyone had just cowered behind their closed shutters while the French marched through the streets, singing ‘La Marseillaise’. She had crept out to watch them, it was true, but it had never occurred to her to take up arms against them.
‘The Emperor has gone to Erfurt to meet with the Tsar again,’ Hanne cried. ‘That’s only a day’s march from here, if he should travel at his usual lightning speed. Oh, do you think he will come here to Cassel? Wouldn’t he like to see his brother? Imagine if the Emperor came here – we’d see him!’
‘I don’t want to see him,’ Gretchen said with a theatrical shudder. ‘I think I’d swoon with fright.’
‘Only if there was a handsome soldier standing nearby to catch you,’ Hanne responded.
The Emperor had no time to visit his feckless younger brother. He was too busy raising an army to march into Spain. Battalions of soldiers marched through Cassel on their way south, demanding food, ammunition and medical supplies. Dortchen and her sisters worked from dawn till midnight in the garden and the stillroom, harvesting plants and grinding them to powder, distilling essences, making up cordials, and cutting and rolling bandages. Dortchen had no time even to think of slipping across the road to the Grimms, nor was she ever left alone.
Wilhelm knocked on the door once or twice, hoping Dortchen could
spare the time to tell him some more stories, but she did not dare. The third time he came, Frau Wild took pity on him and told him a tale about a straw, a coal and a broad bean that explained how beans got the black seam down their middle.
Dortchen came into the parlour to collect the newspapers and tear them into strips, which she then twisted tightly, ready to be used to light the fire, or candles, or her father’s pipe, just so she could listen to the scratch of Wilhelm’s quill on the paper, and his occasional soft phrases: ‘Could you repeat that, please … Just a moment …’ He smiled at the sight of her but did not pause in his hurried scribbling, and soon she had no excuse to linger and had to go away again.
At the end of July, Wilhelm went to stay with his Aunt Zimmer in Gotha. The knowledge of his absence was a cold hollow inside Dortchen. She was wretched, and unable to confess her misery to anyone.
It did not help when he came back excited by the discovery of some old manuscripts in the library there. His dark eyes glowed and his thin cheeks were hectic with colour; all his talk was of the poetic beauty and darkness and grandeur of the works he had found. Although he smiled at Dortchen and asked her how she had been, his concern seemed to be motivated more by politeness than any real interest.
Nor did he seek her out after church but stayed talking with Jakob, their dark heads bent close together, their speech filled with strange words that had no meaning to Dortchen. Indeed, it was as if they were speaking another language entirely.
That night, in bed, Dortchen wept, her chest shuddering with the need to keep her despair secret.
In late October, on a cold, blustery day, Lotte came rushing into the garden, calling Dortchen’s name. ‘Dortchen, it’s so terrible …’ she sobbed.
‘What? What is it?’ Dortchen straightened from the bed of herbs, her back aching and her gloves thick with dirt.
‘It’s Jakob …’
‘What’s happened? Is he ill, hurt?’ Dortchen scanned her friend’s face
anxiously. Lotte was thin and pale, and her dark hair was in a mess, straggling away from its hasty braid.
Lotte shook her head and tried to catch her breath, tears spilling down her cheeks. ‘He’s been called up for the conscription lottery. Oh, Dortchen, it’s so unfair. What shall we do if he gets a low number? He’ll be sent to Spain, he’ll have to fight, he might die. He’s the gentlest soul – how can they even think of making him a soldier? And what shall we do if he goes away? How shall we survive?’
Dortchen bit her lip. The conscription lottery was the very worst of Napoléon’s harsh rules, she thought. Young men had no choice in the matter at all. If they were aged between eighteen and twenty-five, and over five-foot-one in height, their names would be put into a barrel and pulled out, one by one, till the army’s quota was reached. Hundreds and thousands of men had been sent to fight in Napoléon’s never-ending war. Hundreds and thousands had died. And still Napoléon’s hunger for conquest had not been satisfied.
‘Is there nothing we can do?’ Lotte sobbed.
Dortchen hesitated. Only a medical certificate from a doctor allowed conscripts to escape their fate. Those rich enough paid doctors for the exemption. Those influential enough called upon favours, as Herr Wild had done for Rudolf. The Grimms were neither rich nor influential.
She took hold of both of Lotte’s hands. ‘All you can do is hope for the best,’ she said. ‘But Lotte …’
Her friend raised a tear-streaked face. ‘Yes?’
‘I’m sure all will be well. I feel it in my heart. But if he draws a low number, come to me. I’ll give you some holly berries for him to eat, which will purge his bowels. They won’t take him into the army if they think he has dysentery.’
Lotte squeezed both Dortchen’s hands. ‘Thank you,’ she wept. ‘Oh, thank you. What would I do without you?’
‘It’ll be fine,’ Dortchen said.
And it was. When Napoléon and his Grand Army marched for Spain in late October, Jakob did not march with them.
His luck had held.
CASSEL
The Kingdom of Westphalia, 1808–1810
Then the sorcerer also wanted the third daughter. He captured her in his pack basket, carried her home, and then, before he left, gave her the egg and the key. However, the third sister was crafty and cunning. She hid the egg first, and then she went into the forbidden chamber. When she saw her sisters all cut up in the basin of blood, she found all of their parts and put them back in their right place: head, body, arms, and legs. The parts started to move, and then they joined together, and the two sisters were alive again.
From ‘Fitcher’s Bird’, a tale told to Wilhelm Grimm by Dortchen Wild before 1812
