The Wild Girl (47 page)

‘It doesn’t feel like Christmas,’ Mia said. ‘We haven’t a tree or anything.’

Dortchen hugged her close. ‘It’s still Christmas.’

It did feel strange to walk into the shadowy house without the mysterious smell of the pine forest rolling across them, and without the faint tinkle of the Christ child’s bells. The parlour seemed cold and dark without any lights or decorations. A handful of small presents wrapped in brown paper and twine were set near the cold hearth.

Louise sat on the couch, bouncing Marianne on her knee. ‘You Germans are very odd,’ she said. ‘Rudolf told me you were merry at Christmas-time. Is this what you call merry? Why can we not light a fire, at least?’

‘Is it you who must pay for the firewood?’ Herr Wild responded, lowering himself into his tall-backed chair.

‘Mia, my sweet, will you hand out the presents?’ Frau Wild clutched her shawl closer about her. ‘I’m afraid the Christ child could not bring much this year …’

‘You must make your confession first,’ Herr Wild said, as Mia ran to the parcels. ‘Kneel down.’

The sight of Mia kneeling at her father’s feet made Dortchen feel cold and shaky. She had to turn her face away. Slowly and reluctantly, Mia admitted to having stolen sugar from the pantry, and to vanity and covetousness.

‘You must try harder next year,’ Herr Wild told her.

‘Yes, Father.’

He turned to Dortchen. ‘Your turn. Kneel and make your confession.’

In great confusion and anxiety, Dortchen slowly got down to her knees, keeping as far away from her father as she could. She could not speak, so Herr Wild listed her sins for her. Lust and fornication. Lying and deceit. Disobedience and dishonour. Dortchen kept her head bowed, hot waves of shame rolling through her.

At last it was over and she could get up and move to the window. She opened the curtain to look through the crack at the white square outside, the lamps hanging above the doors of the shops blurring orange through the falling snow.

Louise protested at her father-in-law’s insistence that she, too, should confess. ‘I am French, and we have left such foolish superstitions behind us,’ she said airily.

‘You are German now,’ he told her. ‘Get down on your knees.’

So Louise gave Marianne to Frau Wild and knelt down. ‘Well, then,’ she began. ‘I confess to amazement at how poor and cold Cassel is, after all Rudolf told me. And to disappointment that he would leave me here all alone and go off to fight in this stupid war, and to some anger, too. But
mon ami
will soon be back with a mink coat for me, and we’ll move back to Paris, where they know how to celebrate Christmas properly.’ With a flounce of her skirts, she got up and took back her baby, shaking back her dark curls.

Herr Wild said nothing, though his eyes glinted with anger.

Dortchen took her package mechanically, expecting it to contain a lump of coal. It was soft, however, and rustled intriguingly. Drawing her brows together, Dortchen carefully untied the twine and unfolded the paper. Inside the package was a yellow silk dress, with tiny puffed sleeves and a low-cut bodice trimmed with golden beads. With trembling fingers she lifted it up. The beads rattled.

‘Ooh, look,’ Mia cried. ‘So pretty!’

‘Well, now I must confess to jealousy,’ Louise said. ‘Surely that must come from Paris? Why have you given it to Dortchen and not to me? I am your eldest son’s wife.’ She looked with dissatisfaction at her own parcel, which contained some knitting needles and unevenly dyed grey wool.

‘Oh, I want a dress too!’ Mia cried, throwing down her present of new leather gloves, which were plain but serviceable.

‘Where would she wear such a thing?’ said Frau Wild, a strange note in her voice. ‘Is she to go to a ball at the palace?’

Herr Wild stood up. ‘I don’t understand what all the fuss is about. A
customer could not pay his bill and offered me some used clothes instead. I saw the dress was about Dortchen’s size and so accepted it. I want to hear no more about it. Are we not going to eat tonight? I’m hungry. Bring me my dinner.’

Dortchen folded the dress away in its brown paper and went to the kitchen. With a steady hand, she carved the stork and smothered it with gravy. She brought the meal to the dining room, put it down on the table and sat in her place, bowing her head as her father said grace. She did not look up as her father served the meal, nor did she respond when he said, in a disgusted voice, ‘This is the toughest goose I have ever eaten!’

Later, she took the dress and thrust it to the bottom of her clothes chest. The very feel of the silk repulsed her.

NO USE WEEPING

January 1813

Three days after New Year’s Eve, an emaciated figure staggered out of a snowstorm into the town of Cassel.

He was dressed in the ragged remains of a French soldier’s uniform, with a woman’s mink coat over the top. His feet were wrapped in bloody rags, and a red hand-knitted muffler was wound about his head. It was Rudolf.

He was the only man of the 8th Westphalian Infantry Corps to return from the Russian campaign. All the other Hessian soldiers were dead.

Two soldiers brought him to the apothecary’s shop on a litter, their faces pale and sick.

Dortchen could not recognise her handsome brother in this gaunt stranger with the straggling ginger beard. They lowered him to the floor.

‘Mia, we’ll need hot water, a lot of it,’ Herr Wild cried. ‘Stoke up the fire, get the kettle on. Louise, stop screaming. Get the boiler on. You, bring my son into the kitchen. We will need to get him clean. Mia, get the hipbath from the scullery.’

Obediently, the two soldiers carried Rudolf into the kitchen and laid him down before the fire. Dortchen hurriedly dragged the rag rugs out of the way. Her brother was so filthy that she did not want him touching
anything that could not be easily cleaned. Louise sobbed and would not go anywhere near him. Mia struggled to bring the hipbath out of the scullery, and the two soldiers went to help her. They set it on the paving stones near the fire, then Herr Wild tipped them and showed them out.

‘Hot water,’ he called from the stillroom. ‘Hurry!’

The kettle was already on the fire, flames licking around its blackened base. Dortchen filled the biggest soup cauldron and hung it beside the kettle, and then rushed into the scullery to fill the boiler. Her hands were shaking so much that she had trouble lighting the fire beneath it.

Herr Wild was noisily clanking bottles together. He came from the stillroom into the kitchen with a great armload, which he piled onto the table. ‘Dortchen, get him stripped. I need to see if he has any wounds.’

Dortchen knelt beside her brother and gently unwound the grimy red scarf and threw it in the bucket. There were dead white patches of skin on his face, and purplish bruises. Next, she unwound the rags that bound his hands. To her horror, a finger came away with the rags and fell to the floor. Dortchen gasped and leapt to her feet, backing away, her hand to her mouth.

Louise screamed and kept on screaming.

‘Frostbite,’ Herr Wild said. He opened a drawer and rummaged through until he found some tongs, then used them to pick up the severed finger. It was black at the tip, as if it had been burnt, shading to purple and orange and then a strange, waxy yellow. He dropped the finger into a bucket and pushed it away with his foot. ‘You must be careful taking off his feet wrappings.’

Dortchen felt sick. She could not move.

Herr Wild glared at her. ‘Do not just stand there. Do you want your brother to die? We must get him warm and clean, and see what other damage there is.’

She took a slow step towards her brother, and then another. Mia was crouched by the hearth, sobbing, while Louise was still screaming. Herr Wild took a quick step towards his daughter-in-law and slapped her hard across the face. She jerked and gulped and stopped screaming. ‘Get out,’
he said. ‘You are only in our way. Mia, take Louise upstairs and tell your mother the news. Tell her to prepare herself. The loss of a finger may not be his worst injury.’

Still crying, Mia took Louise’s hand and led her out of the kitchen. Herr Wild shut the door behind them. ‘Dortchen, I need you to be strong. You’re a sensible girl. I know you won’t faint. You must help me, or else we’ll be burying him tomorrow. Understand?’

‘Yes, Father,’ she answered, and she forced herself back to her brother’s side. The stink of him was almost overwhelming.

‘We must get him warm, but slowly,’ Herr Wild said, kneeling beside his son’s limp figure. ‘Fill the bath but make sure the water is only lukewarm. Put some thyme or rosemary in it.’

Dortchen hurried to obey.

‘He’s shivering – he has a fever, by the looks of him.’ Herr Wild gave Rudolf some willowbark and feverfew tincture, most of which ran out either side of his mouth. Gently, Herr Wild turned his head and lifted the matted ginger locks to examine the dead patches on his face. Most were on his forehead and cheekbones, above the edge of the muffler. There was also a nasty cut by his ear; its lips were suppurating with pus.

Dortchen’s stomach lurched. She turned away, grabbing a bunch of dried rosemary to throw into the bathwater. The sharp scent steadied her and she concentrated on filling the bath.

Herr Wild gave Rudolf some laudanum to drink, lifting his head. Rudolf was only barely conscious, his bloodshot eyes glinting through mere slits of eyelids.

‘Help me undress him,’ Herr Wild said. ‘Carefully, now.’

Rudolf was bundled in a long mink coat that was heavy with mud and filth. Carefully, Dortchen eased him out of it. Its lining was of rose-pink silk.

‘He said he had found a fur coat for Louise,’ she whispered. ‘This must be it.’

‘Probably saved his life,’ Herr Wild said, busily cutting away the rags of Rudolf’s uniform. ‘We’ll have to burn it all. Looks like he’s infested with lice.’

As the tatters of his clothes were eased away, Dortchen saw that her brother’s pale torso was covered in innumerable red spots, like angry fleabites. He shivered violently, then moved his hands weakly as if to try to warm himself.

‘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.