The Wild Girl (20 page)

June 1808

The next morning, Dortchen rose well before dawn and dressed in the darkness.

She kept to the shadows as she crept through the sleeping town. The air still smelt of smoke from the midsummer bonfire that had been lit in the Königsplatz. Once she had to crouch in a doorway to avoid the patrolling night watch – one of Napoléon’s innovations. The watchmen did not see her and she was able to hurry on, although her pulse was thudding so loudly in her ears that she was amazed they did not hear it.

By the time she reached the Schlosspark, light was fingering the top of the Herkules statue and painting the ruffled leaves of the trees with gold. The grass was silvered with dew. Dortchen put down her basket and brushed her fingers through the cool wetness, rubbing it all over her face. Midsummer dew made you beautiful, as everyone knew. And how Dortchen wished she was beautiful.

Refreshed, and laughing a little at herself, she hurried on, flitting from tree to tree, glad she was wearing her old green gown and brown shawl. She had to take care here. There would be soldiers patrolling the Schlosspark, guarding the sleep of their dissipated young king.

Every time she passed an oak tree, Dortchen gathered with trembling fingers the moss that grew on its rough grey bark. She plucked what acorns she could reach, and a handful of fresh green leaves, and went on.

The park had suffered under the French occupiers. Marble statues had been toppled and smashed, or used for bullet practice. The beautiful stone arches of the aqueduct were broken. Trees had been hacked down for firewood, and the meadows churned up by galloping hooves. Dortchen had always loved the beautiful park, with its sparkling cascades and fountains, and its stands of ancient trees. As a child, she had loved to run across the Devil’s Bridge, hanging high above the mossy gorge, the waterfall foaming down to fall into Hell’s Pond. She and her sisters had played hide and seek in the groves, and made daisy chains in the meadows. It hurt her to see the Schlosspark’s wild beauty so damaged.

A small grove of linden trees grew on the far side of the lake, below the palace. Dortchen made her way there carefully, not wanting to be seen so close to the King’s residence. The trees were in full blossom, bees reeling drunkenly from the pale-yellow flowers that hung down in clusters below the heart-shaped leaves. Dortchen harvested what she could reach, breathing the sweet scent deeply, then picked handfuls of the wild roses that grew in a tangled hedge along the path. She would crystallise the petals with sugar when she got home, or make rose water to sell in her father’s shop.

She plucked some dandelions she found growing wild in a clearing, and then some meadowsweet, and at last reached the ancient old oak tree she knew from her last foray into the royal park. Here she found handfuls of the sparse grey moss, and she hid it deep within her basket, beneath the flowers and herbs and leaves.

By now, it was fully light. Old Marie would be awake, stoking up the fire, putting on the kettle to boil. Soon she’d be panting up the stairs, a heavy tray of tea things in her hands, to wake the girls of the house. ‘Be quick, now, the cows are already out.’

‘Is the goatherd out too?’ Hanne would mutter, turning her cheek deeper into her pillow.

‘Come, girls, up, up,’ Old Marie would call, before taking the tea to Frau Wild, lying drowsily in her bed, while her husband was already up and calling for his shaving water. Dortchen knew the routine of her house
so well that she knew the exact moment she would be missed, and what Old Marie would say to cover her absence.

Hurrying back towards the town, Dortchen tried to think of excuses. Would the herbs and acorns be enough?

She came in the back door and met Old Marie’s worried eyes. Mozart chirped at her noisily. ‘I have acorns,’ she said.

‘Plucked on Midsummer’s morning,’ Old Marie said in a resigned tone. ‘Let me guess what else you have in there.’

‘Dandelions and linden blossoms and wild roses.’

‘All very useful. Your father wants to see you.’

‘Where?’

‘In his study.’

Dortchen went through to the pantry and unpacked her basket, hiding the oak moss in an old ceramic jar. Then, holding the bunch of leaves and flowers before her like an offering, she went through to the study. Her father was there, smoking a pipe, his teeth clamped about the stem.

He spoke not a word, but pointed his finger at the floor. Dortchen went and knelt before him, still holding the bunch of wild herbs. With a violent gesture, he dashed them from her hands. Dortchen flinched back and the flowers were scattered on the floor. He knocked out his pipe with a savage tap in the hearth and seized his switch, which had been lying ready across his knee.

In a low, shaking voice, her father began to speak. She heard only a phrase here and there, for terror was like a white sea roaring in her ears. ‘We must kill sin at the root … We must know which are the master roots and mortify them …’ All she could see was his long black boots, and the switch that he smacked continually against them, and his large hand with dark hairs springing out around white-clenched knuckles. He began to rock back and forth, swaying towards her. The switch flew out and struck her on the shoulder. She flinched, trying to bite back her cry, and he struck her again.

‘Evil appetites … The worm that never dies, the gnawing worm …’

Unable to help herself, Dortchen bowed lower, protecting her face
with her hands. He caught at the back of her neck, pushing her face-down against his thigh, striking at her back and buttocks while she was bent before him. Dortchen could not breathe. Small, sharp cries broke from her as the switch fell again and again.

Then there was the quick sound of boots on the floor, and Rudolf’s voice. ‘Enough,’ he said. ‘Father, there are customers who need you.’

Herr Wild froze, his switch raised high, and Dortchen’s face still crushed into his thigh. She managed to gulp a breath, smelling old wool and tobacco smoke – and something else she could not identify, something dank and dark.

Her father pushed her away and she fell on her hands and knees before him. Pain roared in her ears. Her breath sobbed in her throat.

‘It’s a French soldier who wants a measure of mercury to treat syphilis, but for the life of me I cannot remember what the dose should be. Will you come?’ Rudolf said in a bored tone.

‘Ignorant fool,’ Herr Wild said, adjusting his frockcoat. Once the door had banged behind him, Rudolf held down his hand for Dortchen.

‘You shouldn’t anger him,’ he said. ‘What a wild little thing you are, sneaking out in the dawn. What did you want to do, wash your face in the dew?’

Dortchen went scarlet.

‘Well, you’re a little idiot. You must have known Father would be furious. Go on, get out of here before he comes back. I have to go and spend the next few hours being lectured on correct dosages for syphilis. Just how I want to spend my day.’

Although his voice was rough, his hand was gentle in the small of her back as he guided her from the study. Dortchen kept her hand on the wall to steady herself as she sought the refuge of the kitchen. Old Marie was ready with a handkerchief soaked in lavender water and some healing salve.

Old Marie made tea for them and they drank it together in silence, Dortchen standing before the hearth as she could not sit down.

Frau Wild came down to the kitchen, her face drawn. ‘Dortchen, darling,
you must not enrage him so,’ she said. ‘He finds it hard … He does his best … And you’re growing up now …’

‘I know. I’m sorry.’

But Dortchen was not sorry. She had known what the penalty would be for creeping out of the house before dawn. It was worth it for those handfuls of spidery silver oak moss hidden in the pantry.

On the night of the next full moon, Dortchen waited till it was almost midnight before she crept from her bed. In her long white nightgown, she went barefoot across the room and lifted up the blanket on the little white cot in the corner. There, hidden beneath the lacy dress of her doll, Wilhelmine, was a small white candle, a vial of acorn oil infused with ground oak moss, and a small silver coin that had been minted in 1786.

Dortchen had ground the oak moss to powder with the same mortar and pestle that she had used to grind the gall nuts for the dye to stain Lotte’s clothes black. No amount of scrubbing had turned the stone of the mortar and pestle white again. They were dyed indelibly black. Somehow this seemed right to Dortchen. There was darkness in this thing she was doing, no matter how she looked at it.

If her father caught her making spells, he would kill her.

The silver moonlight shone through her bedroom window, showing Lotte’s dark hair spread out on the pillow. It had been more than a month since Frau Grimm had died but Lotte refused to go home. She never went walking in the park with the Wild girls, nor, most shockingly of all, would she go to church.

The spell was as much for Lotte as it was for Wilhelm.

Dortchen poured water into her washing bowl and set it on the windowsill so the moonlight gleamed upon it. She poured a small amount of the acorn oil into her palm. It smelt woody, like an ancient forest. Dortchen breathed it in deeply, thinking with a bitter sting in her eyes that it would be a long time before she would smell the forest again. She rubbed the oil on the coin, then dropped it into the water. She wiped her oily hands on her towel, then struck a spark with her flint. She put a twist of old paper to her tinder and lit the candle.

Golden candlelight glimmered on the water, mingling with the silver moonlight. Dortchen whispered the words that Old Marie had told her, the words that she had learnt from her grandmother long ago.

‘Lady of the moon,

Bring him good fortune,

Fill his hands with silver and gold,

As much as he can hold.’

She sat watching the candle burn away, hoping with all her might that the spell would work, that her sacrifice had been worth it. At last the flame guttered away. She poured the water back into the jug and climbed into bed. It smelt as if she were lying on a bed of moss, under a ceiling of dark, shifting leaves, instead of in her own small bedroom.

Comforted, she slept.

A STROKE OF LUCK

July 1808

A week after Dortchen’s moonlit spell, Jakob was offered a job as librarian at the palace.

It was not what Dortchen had been hoping for, but it did mean that Wilhelm and Lotte did not have to move away. There was now enough money for them to pay their rent and buy some food.

‘I must admit, it was a stroke of luck, getting the job just when we were so desperate,’ Jakob said. ‘I only wish it had come before Mother died.’

There was a fraught silence.

‘Are you enjoying the job, Jakob?’ Dortchen said quickly.

‘Surprisingly, yes,’ he answered. ‘All I’ve had to do so far is put a big sign on the door saying “Library of the King”. He doesn’t read and neither does the Queen, so I can do what I like, as long as I observe the etiquette of the court.’

They were sitting in the Grimms’ kitchen. Lotte had reluctantly moved home again, and Dortchen had crept out to bring her some lentils and herbs to make soup. Dortchen had not seen Wilhelm all week, for her father had forbidden her to leave the house, except to go to church. Dortchen would have loved a chance to be alone with Wilhelm, to hear for herself how his breathing was, to measure his heartbeat with her hand, to smooth back the sweat-tousled curls from his brow. But that was impossible.

Dortchen’s love for Wilhelm had long since ceased to be a source of secret joy for her. It was a leaden weight, a never-easing ache. He still thought of her as a child, perhaps even as another sister, but Dortchen knew her love was just as intense and true as that of any woman. There were times when she longed to be free of the fetters that bound her to him, just as she longed to burst free of the chains of duty to her family. Yet, as they were invisible and incorporeal, there was no hammer that could break those chains, no key that could unlock the shackles.

‘Any news?’ Ferdinand wanted to know.

‘King Jérôme has borrowed more money from the Jews, and his first wife is causing trouble,’ Jakob answered wearily. He loosened his stiff collar. ‘Oh, and his spies have discovered that the Kurfürst hid many of his art treasures at the old castle at Sababurg. He has had them all fetched and is very smug to have them hanging on the palace walls again.’

‘Spies everywhere,’ Wilhelm said. ‘You cannot have an innocent conversation in the street without someone eavesdropping on it, or throw away a bonbon wrapper without someone swooping to examine it for secret messages.’

‘Napoléon fears an insurrection,’ Jakob said. ‘He has written to his brother, warning him to take care and not trust anyone, but Jérôme just laughs. He thinks he is loved because everyone comes to his parties. Well, I refuse to go, no matter how pressing the invitation. You know he has summoned his mistress to court, some painted actress who is to perform at this new theatre he is building? It’s scandalous, the way he behaves.’