The Wild Girl (24 page)

There was one unexpected benefit of having fewer sisters in the house. Ever since the French invasion of Cassel, Herr Wild had not permitted any of his daughters to walk out to the garden plot outside the town walls on her own. Now that the shop was so busy, there was not always someone free to go with Dortchen when her father needed something from the garden, and so one warm afternoon towards the end of April he begrudgingly gave her permission to go and gather daisy leaves, wood betony, lemon balm and hellebore, so he could make an infusion for a courtier with a bad case of gout.

‘I am almost sixteen, Father,’ she reminded him.

‘All the more reason to keep you safe at home,’ he grumbled, then waved an impatient hand. ‘Go, go, I haven’t all day.’

Dortchen walked through the busy streets, her basket on her arm, glad to be outside. Many of the tall, narrow houses had pots filled with flowers and herbs propped on their windowsills, and one had a basket on the front doorstep. The sky overhead was a brilliant blue, and sunshine dappled the
cobblestones. It was impossible to believe that people were being blown to pieces only two days’ march to the south. For days, the French and the Austrians had been hurling themselves at each other, their cannons and guns sending such clouds of smoke into the air that Dortchen had been able to see them from the window of her room.

Dortchen came to the garden and let herself in through the gate. Spring flowers danced within their hedges of box and hung in blossoming showers from the boughs of the fruit trees. She was glad to be alone and took her time walking down the paths and smelling the blooms, lifting first one, then another, to her nose. The garden was quiet of all but the faint humming of bees in the angelica flowers, and the distant twitter of birds. She pulled on her gloves and knelt down to weed the garden beds.

Bells rang out, sounding an alarm. Dortchen sat back on her heels, wiping away a strand of hair with her arm. Then came a rumbling noise that slowly but steadily grew louder. The pound of feet. Shouts and cries and screams of alarm. Dortchen’s breath caught. She stood and ran to the gate.

A crowd was marching down the road towards the King’s palace, most of them peasants in rough homespuns, waving scythes, forks, flails and axes in the air. Crudely made red-and-white flags fluttered above the crowd, tied as pennants to the bayonets of the soldiers riding down the road towards her.

Dortchen dropped to her knees behind the gatepost, her hands pressed over her mouth. A cannon boomed nearby and acrid smoke filled the air. People screamed. The rebels’ horses broke into a gallop, men shouting, ‘To the palace! Down with the usurper!’ The cannon fired again and a house nearby imploded, dust and debris blasting out. A brick smashed down next to Dortchen and fragments rained on her head. Gunfire rang out.

For the next half-hour, all was chaos. Dortchen could only cover her eyes and ears with her arms as the palace soldiers slowly drove the rebels back. One poor man was blown right over the wall, falling to the ground next to where Dortchen was crouched. His rough work clothes were soaked with blood, and his unblinking eyes stared upwards into the sky.

At last, by the time the sun had slipped down behind the mountains, all had grown quiet and still. Dortchen gathered up her basket and tiptoed past the dead man. The street beyond was a ruin. Houses were smashed in, walls blown down, the blossoming branches broken and mangled. Corpses of people and horses lay everywhere. Dortchen’s limbs trembled. She had never seen anyone die before and was acutely aware of her own vulnerability. The air stank of smoke. Hearing the galloping hooves of soldiers, she hid behind a wall until they had ridden past, then hurried on for home.

She was met in the square by her father and brother, both carrying lanterns and heavy cudgels.

‘Where have you been?’ Herr Wild demanded. ‘You stupid fool! Did you not realise the town’s in uproar?’ He seized her arm in a bruising grip and shook her.

‘I couldn’t come any earlier – they marched right past me.’ Dortchen stared up at him with imploring eyes. Surely he could not blame her for what had happened? ‘I saw … Father, I saw people being shot! I hid behind the wall … but there’s a dead man in our garden.’ Tears ran down her cheeks.

Her father let her go with a noise of impatience. ‘You should have come home at once!’

‘I couldn’t, Father, really, I couldn’t. They were fighting right outside our garden. I’d have been killed.’

‘We thought you were dead for sure,’ Rudolf said. He put his arm around her and she leant against him, unable to stop herself from shaking.

‘You’re hurt … there’s blood.’ Rudolf dabbed at her face.

‘No, I’m fine, I was just hit by debris … They blew up all the houses! Why? Why, Father? Who were they, all those people marching …’

‘Damn fools,’ her father said.

‘Some kind of uprising,’ Rudolf said. ‘I heard they planned to storm the palace and take the King prisoner. They had a coach and six horses ready to race to the coast. They were going to hand him over to the English.’

‘It was a mad plan,’ Herr Wild said. ‘It never would’ve worked.’

‘I heard Baron von Dörnberg was at the back of it. He and some kind of secret society that had vowed to bring the French down.’ Rudolf shook his head in disbelief. ‘I saw him only yesterday, riding on the parade ground, overseeing the troops to march into Saxony. I never would have thought him a traitor.’

‘A patriot, you mean,’ Herr Wild growled.

Rudolf bit back a caustic comment.

‘The rats will be leaving the ship now,’ Herr Wild said.

Rudolf refused to argue with his father. ‘Come, let’s get Dortchen home,’ he said. ‘She’s as white as a sheet.’

Slowly, they went home, Dortchen limping, finding all kinds of cuts and bruises she had not known were there. The streets were filled with angry French soldiers, knocking on doors, waylaying townsfolk, pushing bruised-faced prisoners towards the gaol. A cart trundled past, piled high with corpses. All the shops were shuttered and bolted, and houses had their curtains pulled tight.

Dortchen and her father and brother were stopped more than once by soldiers with suspicious faces; their papers were read, and questions hurled at them. At last they made it to the safety of the apothecary’s shop, and Herr Wild locked and bolted the door behind them.

‘Go and get cleaned up,’ he ordered Dortchen. ‘It’s after suppertime. Eat if you can and then let me look at your cuts.’

Dortchen was sitting by the fire in the drawing room, her wounds washed with ivy water and bandaged with dock leaves, her weeping mother and sisters bringing her tea and healing possets and handkerchiefs soaked in lavender water, when the door knocker sounded long and hard. Frau Wild screeched and Hanne seized the poker. Dortchen started to her feet. ‘Maybe it’s the soldiers – maybe I was seen near the palace and they think I was involved.’

Her mother moaned and groped for her smelling salts.

‘They’d not arrest a sixteen-year-old girl,’ Mia asserted, though her face was pale. ‘Would they?’

‘I believe that age or gender would be of no account to authorities
determined to thwart an act of rebellion,’ Röse said, then she surprised Dortchen by taking her hand and squeezing it.

Together, the four sisters crept to the top of the main stairs, where they crouched, listening to the voices in the hallway.

To their surprise, they could hear Gretchen’s voice, high-pitched and hysterical. ‘I tell you, we have to flee. Ferdy’s cousin, George, is suspected of being one of the conspirators. He has fled to Prague, and we must go too. What if Ferdy were implicated? What will become of me?’

A low rumble from her father, a quick question from Rudolf, then Gretchen continued. ‘Yes, we go tonight, to Marburg. Ferdy has a house there. Hopefully that is far enough. I mean, we’re guilty of nothing – we knew nothing about the uprising. I came only to tell you and to say goodbye.’

Herr Wild said something about ‘your mother’, then Gretchen’s high-heeled slippers clattered up the stairs. She half-fell into her sisters’ arms, sobbing, tears streaking through her rouge. She was very elegantly dressed, with a hat with two great curling feathers and a travelling coat of pale-blue cloth that made her eyes seem huge and luminous.

‘Don’t crush my hat,’ she said, as a weeping Frau Wild reached two thin arms for her. ‘There, there, it’s all right. I’m only going to Marburg, not to the ends of the earth. Though I must say, I think it’s quite disgusting. The house at Marburg is old. And has an outside privy. I hate to leave my water closet!’

Within five minutes she was gone, her husband having waited outside at the horses’ heads.

The next morning Dortchen woke to the sound of drumming and rifle fire. The conspirators who had been caught had all been executed in the meadow outside the palace.

Dortchen felt she could never gather daisy chains there again.

FIREWORKS

August 1809

The pastor’s voice droned on.

Dortchen fixed her eyes on her prayer book and allowed herself to drift away into a daydream.

Wilhelm had returned from his long stay in Halle looking strong and well. His eyes lit up at the sight of her. ‘Dortchen,’ he cried. ‘Look at you! You’re all grown-up.’

‘I am,’ she replied, smiling mysteriously behind her fan. ‘I’m a woman now.’

‘And a beautiful one,’ he replied. ‘I long to hold you against my heart. Will you dance?’

‘Of course,’ she replied, and held out her hand. He swept her into his arms
…

The scraping of the wooden pews jerked her back to reality. Blushing, Dortchen scrambled to her feet. Her father and Röse frowned at her, and her mother looked anxious. But Ferdinand Grimm in the next row smiled at her in sympathy. She could not help smiling back, just a little.

Afterwards, when the congregation was standing on the church steps and chatting, Ferdinand came over to her. ‘Infernally long sermon, wasn’t it?’

Dortchen nodded. ‘I’m afraid I’m prone to daydreaming in church. I’m always getting into trouble for it.’

‘So am I,’ he responded, then his expression darkened. ‘At least, I used to be.’

She understood his meaning. ‘You must miss your mother very much.’

‘It’s been fifteen months and yet the pain hasn’t gone away,’ he said. ‘They say time heals all wounds. Well, how much time? When will I start to feel better?’

‘I don’t know. I’m sorry.’ Dortchen felt ashamed at how inadequate her words sounded, but Ferdinand gave her a crooked smile.

‘Have you heard from Lotte?’ he asked.

Dortchen shook her head. To tell the truth, she was hurt by Lotte’s silence. Lotte had gone to Marburg to stay with Gretchen, as everyone agreed she needed a change of scene to pull her from the doldrums. The visit had been extended, then extended again, and Dortchen had to fight her jealous fear that her dearest friend had transferred her affections to her elder sister.

‘Me either,’ Ferdinand said. ‘I’ve written to her several times but she hasn’t responded.’

‘I’m sure she’s having a lovely time.’

‘I miss her,’ Ferdinand said, sounding more like a lonely little boy than a man of twenty-one.

‘Me too,’ Dortchen said.

‘Have you heard the King is throwing a grand fête tomorrow night to celebrate the latest French victory in Spain?’

‘No,’ Dortchen said. ‘Though he hardly needs an excuse, does he?’

‘If he throws a party to celebrate every new victory or conquest by his brother, it’s no wonder he’s hosting balls every night,’ Ferdinand said.

‘To our cost,’ Dortchen replied.

‘Yes, it seems as if there’s a new tax every week.’

Dortchen nodded. Seeing her mother gather up her trailing shawl, she said, ‘I’m sorry, I must go.’

‘Wait,’ Ferdinand cried.

She waited, looking up at him in surprise.

‘Would you like to go tomorrow night, to watch the fireworks?’ he asked.

‘To the palace?’ she asked, surprised.

‘I thought we could watch from the hills,’ Ferdinand said. ‘There’d be a great view from Habichtswald.’

‘I … Well, I’d love to see the fireworks, but …’ She did not know how to explain to him that it simply was not permissible for a young woman to go into the forest at night with a young man, no matter how good friends they were. Ferdinand should have known.

He turned red. ‘It’s not just me,’ he blurted. ‘There’s a whole party of people going. The Engelhards will be there. I think the Ramus sisters are going too.’

Dortchen bit her lip. ‘If Julia and Charlotte should ask me, perhaps I may be permitted to go.’

‘I’ll ask them to ask you,’ he said.

‘They should ask their father to ask my father.’

Ferdinand nodded his head in understanding and hurried away to engage Julia Ramus in conversation. Soon her father, the pastor, came over to shake Herr Wild’s hand, smiling. Dortchen kept her gaze down but she felt her father turn and rake her with his frown. Moments later, Charlotte Ramus approached her. She took Dortchen’s hand and said, ‘You’re to come and watch the fireworks with us tomorrow night. Father’s arranged it all.’