The Wild Girl (5 page)

That Sunday afternoon, when all Dortchen’s sisters went off to enjoy the harvest festival, Dortchen stayed home alone with her father. She knelt before him in the chilly parlour while he tested her on her catechism. It went on for hours.

‘What is repentance?’ Herr Wild asked.

‘Dissatisfaction with and a hatred of sin … and a love of righteousness … proceeding from the fear of God … which lead to self-denial and mortification of the flesh, so that we give ourselves up to the guidance of the Spirit of God …’ Dortchen stopped, unable to go on.

‘And frame …’ her father prompted.

‘And frame all the actions of our life to the obedience of the Divine Will.’

‘You should have it by heart,’ her father said. ‘Study it and I’ll return in an hour to test you again.’ He rose and went out, and Dortchen went to sit in the window seat, drawing flowers and faces on the frosty glass and looking down to the street below. Dusk was dropping over Cassel, the sun just a red smear behind the turrets and chimney pots, even though it was
not yet seven o’clock. Men and women in their Sunday best were strolling along, many with ears of wheat tucked into the brims of their hats or their buttonholes. A little girl in a frothy white dress and a hat with yellow ribbons was skipping beside her father, her small hand in his large one.

At last, Dortchen saw her sisters returning with the Grimm family, flowers tucked into their bodices. Lotte was dancing ahead with Mia, their baskets swinging, while Lisette and Hanne followed arm in arm. Frau Grimm and Frau Wild walked together, one stout, one skinny, their bonneted heads close together. Jakob strode beside them, lighting their way with a lantern. The three younger Grimm brothers, Karl, Ferdinand and Ludwig, jostled behind, while Röse walked sedately some distance away, peering at her book of sermons.

Wilhelm and Gretchen followed along last of all. Ethereal in white muslin, she walked close beside him, his dark head in its tall black hat bent close over hers. Gretchen’s bonnet swung from her hand. On her fair head was the harvest crown, woven of asters and autumn leaves, always given to the prettiest girl.

Dortchen felt a sharp pang. All week she had been daydreaming about Lotte’s handsome elder brother. As she watched, Wilhelm said something that made Gretchen look up at him and smile. Dortchen turned away.

A RAIN OF DEATH

October 1805

‘Napoléon has won a great battle against the Austrians!’ Aunt Zimmer cried, before the door had even shut behind her. She whirled in on a blast of wintry air, her silk skirts blowing up around her white-stockinged ankles.

‘What?’ Wilhelm came to his feet, almost knocking over his inkpot. Dortchen looked around from the fireplace, where she was trying to teach Lotte how to make bread soup.

‘But that’s impossible,’ Frau Grimm said, dropping her sewing in her lap. She sat in a rocking chair as close to the fire as she could, her feet propped against the fender. It had been a nasty day, veering between snow and sleet, and the Grimms’ lodgings were draughty. As a result, all the brothers were crammed in the kitchen, their books and papers spread out over the table, the only light coming from mismatched candles stuck in chipped saucers.

‘It’s all too true,’ Aunt Zimmer said. ‘A courier arrived at the palace not an hour ago. The Austrian general has laid down his arms.’

The boys stared blankly at one another.

‘But he couldn’t have!’ Lotte said. ‘It can’t be all over so soon.’

‘Ten thousand dead, thirty thousand taken prisoner.’ Aunt Zimmer subsided onto a chair with a billow of her silken skirts. ‘Napoléon lost not even half of that.’

‘But Ulm is only a few days’ ride from here,’ Frau Grimm said. ‘Whatever are we to do?’

‘Hope that the Emperor marches elsewhere,’ Wilhelm said. ‘What of the Russians? Were they not marching to Austria’s aid?’

‘No one expected Napoléon to move so fast. It’s like black magic, the way he appears days before it’s humanly possible to arrive.’

‘But didn’t the Austrians have scouts?’ Jakob asked. ‘How could General Mack not know the Grand Army was marching up behind him?’

‘Napoléon moved so fast,’ Aunt Zimmer said again.

‘But what of the Austrian army?’ Ludwig asked. ‘I thought it was meant to be the best in the world.’ He was drawing soldiers fighting on the page before him, quick vigorous sketches that sprang to life under his quill.

‘The dispatch courier said the cannon smoke was so thick the Austrians could not see to shoot,’ Aunt Zimmer said. ‘It was like a rain of death.’

‘What happens now?’ Karl asked.

Aunt Zimmer lifted her hands and let them drop in her lap.

‘The Emperor will probably have the Austrian general shot,’ Ferdinand said. ‘He’d have been better dying with honour on the battlefield than giving up so easily.’

‘I don’t think it could have been easy for him,’ Dortchen said.

Ferdinand glanced at her in sudden interest. ‘No, I suppose not.’

‘What does the Kurfürst say?’ Wilhelm asked.

‘He’s not happy. With Prussia at our back, Bavaria at our front, and Austria and France glowering at each other from either side, we’re like a sausage in a bread roll,’ Aunt Zimmer said.

‘Don’t mention sausages,’ Lotte said, pulling a face. ‘I never want to see one again.’

Her comment relieved the atmosphere of gloom and anxiety. Wilhelm grinned at her and rumpled her hair, and Ludwig drew a picture of a girl with tangled dark curls chasing a giant sausage with a fork.

‘Ah, Lottechen, if I’d not had the pig killed before we came to Cassel, we’d not have anything to eat at all,’ Frau Grimm said, shaking a fat finger at her daughter.

‘That’s why Dortchen’s here. She’s come to show me how to make bread soup, so we can have something besides sausages for supper,’ Lotte told her aunt. ‘She had to bring all the other ingredients with her, as our pantry is bare.’

‘You’re a good girl,’ Aunt Zimmer told Dortchen, and blew her a kiss.

‘She is indeed,’ Wilhelm said, smiling at her. ‘The soup smells delicious.’

Embarrassed, Dortchen tried to deflect attention away from herself. ‘Oh, bread soup is easy enough. At least I don’t have to throw myself into the pot like the sausage in the story.’

‘Don’t say that word!’ Lotte put both her hands over her ears.

‘What story is that?’ Wilhelm asked.

‘You don’t know it? The story about the little mouse, the little bird and the sausage?’

Wilhelm shook his head. ‘Won’t you tell it to us?’

Heat rushed up into her face as she realised that the whole family was now staring at her. She shook her head and stirred the soup.

‘Dortchen knows ever so many stories,’ Lotte said. ‘Go on, tell us!’

But Dortchen shook her head again and, taking the pan off the trivet, said she had better be getting home. ‘Just sprinkle the chives and the fried bread on top of the soup when you serve it,’ she told Lotte. ‘See you tomorrow.’

As she put on her cloak and gathered up her jug and bowls, Wilhelm said to her, ‘I’d like to hear one of your stories some time. I’m interested in old stories and songs and such things. Friends of mine are collecting folk songs at the moment, for a book they are writing. Do you and your sisters know any songs?’

Shyly, Dortchen nodded. ‘Hanne and Gretchen know ever so many.’

‘Perhaps one day they could come to tea and sing them to me and Jakob,’ he suggested, then he glanced around the tiny room. With five tall boys pushing back their chairs so they could stretch out their legs, and stout Frau Grimm in her rocking chair, there was barely room for Dortchen and Lotte to turn around. He frowned, then shrugged a little. ‘Well, never mind. Goodnight, Dortchen, and thank you for cooking us supper.’

‘It was nothing. Lotte cooked as much as me.’

He smiled briefly and turned away, asking Aunt Zimmer, ‘Any news about a job at the palace?’

Aunt Zimmer shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, Willi. You know the Kurfürst was impressed with the letter Jakob wrote for the ambassador from Paris. But all the jobs have been taken already.’

‘By sons of barons,’ Wilhelm said.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said again.

‘Oh, sister, I just do not know how we’re to manage,’ Frau Grimm cried. ‘If it wasn’t for Dortchen coming by tonight with some eggs and cream, we’d not have had a bite to eat.’

‘And bread soup is not much for hungry boys,’ Aunt Zimmer said. She took out some coins from her reticule and laid them on the dresser. ‘Buy some beef and a cabbage at market tomorrow. But you’d best make it last. With all this war about, it’s going to be a lean winter.’

As Dortchen slipped out the door, she saw Wilhelm press his lips together in humiliation.

That evening, as they cleared the supper table together, Dortchen told her sisters about how poor the Grimms were since their father had died.

‘What can we do?’ Lisette asked. ‘It’s not as if we have much coin to spare. And Father would never permit us to give food out of our own pantry.’

Dortchen thought of the food she had smuggled over the road that very afternoon. ‘They’re hungry,’ she said, sweeping crumbs from the table into her hand. ‘We should invite them for supper.’

‘Father would never permit it,’ Hanne said. ‘You know how he hates company.’

‘What about for coffee and cakes?’ Dortchen suggested. ‘We could do it one Friday when Father has gone to his church meeting.’ As her sisters hesitated, she added, ‘Wilhelm, the second eldest, he said he’d like to hear you sing.’

‘We can have some music, and maybe a reading. Father could not possibly object if Mother sits with us,’ Gretchen said.

‘They’re interested in old stories too – perhaps I could tell them one,’ Dortchen said.

Gretchen laughed. ‘Dortchen, you’re only twelve. Much too young to be entertaining gentlemen.’

‘But—’

‘You and Röse and Mia couldn’t possibly come,’ Lisette agreed. ‘For one thing, we simply haven’t room in the parlour. By the time we have us three, and the three eldest Grimm boys and Mother, well, we couldn’t fit a mouse in there.’

Dortchen threw down the cloth and went out of the room. No one noticed she had gone.

The hall seemed very full of black-clad young men the following Friday. Dortchen sat with Mia and Röse on the steps, peering through the banisters, as the eldest three Grimm brothers unwound their scarves and gave their tall hats to Frau Wild, who dropped first a scarf, then a hat, then another scarf. Wilhelm politely gathered them all up and hung them for her on the hatstand.

‘Thank you so much for having us,’ Jakob said. ‘You’re very kind.’ He looked tired; his dark hair was rumpled and his fingers were stained with ink.

‘Yes, thank you.’ Karl looked with admiration at the three young women in their best pale muslins.

‘We thought, if you liked, we could do it every few weeks,’ Gretchen said. ‘We can invite a few of the other young people we know in town, so you can make some new friends.’

‘We’ve brought a book to show you,’ Wilhelm said, holding up a slim leather-bound volume. ‘It’s a collection of folk songs by some friends of ours that has only just this month been published. We even contributed a few poems.’

‘Though I wouldn’t have let my name be associated with it if I had known what an unscholarly production it was,’ Jakob said.

‘Clemens said that it wasn’t about preserving a historical artefact,’ Wilhelm answered him. ‘What he and Achim wanted to do was renew
and revitalise the old songs so that they regained meaning for us all today.’

‘Yet didn’t he also say they wanted to prove an enduring sense of folk spirit among the German people?’ Jakob asked. ‘Wouldn’t that aim have been better met by actually collecting the songs and tales in their original form? As far as I can tell, they’ve rewritten many of the songs and even made up some of their own.’

‘Well, they are poets in their own right,’ Wilhelm argued.

‘Then they should publish a book of their own poems, not one which claims to preserve old folk songs,’ Jakob said.

‘I guess you’re right,’ Wilhelm replied, though in a rather uncertain tone.

Lisette cast Hanne and Gretchen a look. ‘Won’t you come through to the sitting room? It’s cold out here in the hall. Perhaps, Herr Grimm, you could read us one of your poems?’

‘They’re not mine,’ Jakob said. ‘
I
didn’t see fit to write my own composition for a book that was meant to be a collection of folk songs. All I did was send Herr Brentano and Herr von Arnim a few old counting rhymes I remembered from my childhood.’

‘Oh,’ Lisette answered. ‘Well, perhaps you could share some other poems with us?’

‘Perhaps we could sing some of the songs?’ Hanne suggested, as Lisette led the way into the sitting room. As the Grimm brothers followed the girls in, Dortchen saw Jakob turn to Wilhelm and make a very similar grimace to Lisette’s.

Karl, who went in last, did not shut the door behind him. A narrow wedge of lamplight was cast out into the hall, falling through the balustrades and onto Dortchen’s face. She pressed her face against the wooden struts, unable to hear what was being said within.

‘A book of folk songs,’ Röse said in a voice of deep disgust. ‘I thought you said that the elder Grimm brothers were of a sober cast of mind, Dorothea. Indeed, I am glad now that I am not to be part of this so-called reading circle. No doubt they will soon be reading
novels
.’ She stood up. ‘I am going to go and study Schwager’s sermons.’