The Wild Girl (56 page)
Authors: Kate Forsyth
She tried to master her voice. ‘You think it’s any easier for me?’
‘I suppose not.’
They picked up the apples and walked on in silence. They turned a corner and came down the road into the wide square of the Marktgasse. Dortchen looked fearfully at her father’s shop but it was dark and quiet. Together, they turned into the dark alley leading to the garden.
‘What are we to do?’ he asked. ‘We can’t marry without your father’s permission, even if I were to find some way of earning enough to support a wife. We can’t see each other without …’ He cleared his throat.
‘Without falling into temptation,’ Dortchen finished for him, using her father’s words.
‘Yes. It hurts too much to see you, Dortchen. I’m afraid … I’m afraid I’ll fall into sin.’
Dortchen did not want to talk about sin. She took a deep, ragged breath. ‘Can’t we just be friends?’
‘I wish we could. But, believe me, none of my friends … rouse me like you do.’
They stood close together in the darkness, the baskets of apples at their feet.
Dortchen’s cheeks were hot. ‘I … I’m sorry,’ she said at last. ‘I never meant to hurt you.’
‘I know.’ His finger traced a soft path down her throat and into the cleft of her breasts. ‘I’ve missed you,’ he murmured. ‘You torment my dreams.’
She shut her eyes and lifted her face. His kiss was gentle. Very slowly, his hand slid down and cupped her breast. Her breath caught, and he shifted her closer, so that she rested in the crook of his arm.
She drew her mouth away. ‘If the war would only end …’ she whispered.
‘Maybe, if I work on the fairy tales, make them better …’
They kissed.
‘Maybe Father will relent …?’
‘We don’t need much money, surely? Just enough to eat …’
‘And buy quills and ink and paper.’
He smiled, and kissed her again.
‘We wouldn’t have to move away,’ she continued. ‘We could live with Jakob still. I don’t take up much more room than a mouse; surely he wouldn’t mind a little mouse in his house?’
He answered her with a kiss of growing passion and urgency.
‘I’d so hate for him to be lonely,’ she said, when she could speak again.
‘I have a job now. Perhaps the prince will make me his librarian. It has a much better salary. And the second volume of tales will be published soon. Maybe they will sell—’
‘Once the war is over, everyone will want to read beautiful stories of courage and triumph …’
‘And love …’ He deepened the kiss.
‘Surely …’
‘Yes.’ He tasted tears on her cheeks. ‘Don’t cry, Dortchen, I can’t bear it.’
‘I can’t help it,’ she sobbed. ‘Oh, Wilhelm, you don’t know … You don’t realise … If you only knew—’
‘What?’
But she couldn’t tell him. He kissed her again but she turned her face away. ‘Wilhelm … whatever happens, I want you to know I truly love you.’
They clung together in the shadows, then Dortchen drew away. ‘I have to go. If my father knew I was here …’ She shuddered at the thought.
‘Don’t let him hurt you,’ he said. ‘I wish …’
She shook her head, picked up the baskets of apples and went through the gate.
Once upon a time, when wishing was still of use
…
Her father was waiting for her in the kitchen, his stick swinging in his hand. She had no time to run for safety, no time to find some way to protect herself. He set himself to prove that he was still her master. She could do nothing but fall before him. She thought this time he might kill her.
Afterwards, she wished that he had.
November 1814
He seemed to want to drink himself into an early grave. Perhaps it was the only way that he might forget what he had done.
He began to find it hard to climb the stairs. He made Dortchen come to him in his study. His feet and legs were so swollen that he could not pull his boots on. He began to wear his carpet slippers even in the daytime. Often he did not shave. He would wear his frockcoat over his nightgown and shuffle about the house, shouting at Dortchen to bring him more brandy.
When he was asleep, she would make more of the sleeping tincture, stirring it around and around. ‘Make him sleep, make him sleep, make him sleep, make him sleep,’ she chanted under her breath. She worried he would notice how empty the jars of skullcap, chamomile, and valerian were, but now he only went into the stillroom to search for brandy and laudanum. He noticed little else.
She did her best but there was never enough time. Each day was a long ordeal, and each night a misery. Fear and hopelessness were her chains.
His face was red. His eyes sank into puffy eyelids. Soon his hands were so swollen that his wedding ring cut deep into his flesh. Dortchen had to try to get it off with soapy water. It hurt him so much that he slapped her across the face, sending suds flying. He wheezed when he walked. When
Dortchen emptied his chamber pot, she saw that his urine was a strange, dark colour. It smelt bad. He smelt bad.
Autumn passed. At least there was less work in the garden in the winter. She kept herself busy pickling cabbage and bottling plums, sometimes working long past midnight by the light of a sputtering candle. He rarely came to the kitchen. If she went to bed, he might hear her footsteps and call to her. It was better to sleep on the floor by the kitchen fire. She lay on the old rag rugs, rubbing bits of fabric between her fingers.
Nightmares haunted her.
He got sicker. The brandy no longer seemed to work. He was angry, but weak, panting, thrashing about, unable to catch her. Dortchen polished all the jars in the stillroom, turning them so the labels were perfectly aligned. She would not clean the study. He lay there on his couch, calling for her, banging on the floor with his stick. She brought him soup and took away his chamber pot.
Once, finding him sleeping, slack-jawed, with saliva creeping down his silvered jowls, she imagined putting the cushion over his face. Her hands clenched by her side. When she stirred the tisane, muttering, ‘Make him sleep, make him sleep,’ she imagined saying, ‘Make him die, make him die.’ It would be easy enough. A handful of crushed nightshade. A few monkshood flowers. Some white baneberries. No one would suspect her. Everyone knew he was sick. But she could not do it. He was her father.
It snowed one night, and he was restless, crying out, unable to breathe. The only way he could sleep was sitting up. His face was now so swollen that she could scarcely recognise him at all.
She called the doctor. Dropsy, he said. He prescribed some medicine. Dortchen had to measure it all out herself. It came from the locked cupboard, the one where the most dangerous drugs were kept. Her father felt her taking the keys from his pocket. He struck out, making her ears ring. When she brought the medicine, he would not drink it. He thought she meant to poison him. So she sent a note to Gretchen, asking her to come and help nurse him.
Reluctantly, Gretchen came. When she tried to give him the medicine,
he struck it from her hand. It spilt all over her silk dress. ‘Well, that’s the last time I do that,’ Gretchen said.
‘Rudolf,’ her father said. ‘Get Rudolf.’
So Dortchen wrote to her brother and told him to come home, giving Gretchen the letter to post. She dared not leave him even to walk to the post office.
The week before Christmas was long and lonely. He was much worse. He could not eat. His swollen belly pained him. His lungs were wet, his breathing ragged.
Rudolf and Mia came home. It was such a relief to have them back that Dortchen could scarcely speak, her body shaking with tears. Mia flew into her arms, crying, ‘But you’re so thin and pale. Have you been sick too?’
‘I’m fine,’ she answered. ‘Everything’s fine.’
‘It won’t be long now,’ Rudolf said, after he had examined their father. ‘Why didn’t you write sooner, Dortchen? We would have come if we’d known.’
She shrugged.
‘Well, we’re home now,’ Mia said. ‘And you’re to do nothing, Dortchen. Sit and rest.’
Dortchen could not. It felt too strange. She went to the garden and cut holly branches and hung them over the mantelpiece, and brought snowy fir branches home from the forest. When Mia decorated them with gilded fir cones and angels, she almost managed a smile.
Her father died on Christmas Day. Dortchen sat beside him in her black gown, listening to his breath rasp in and out, ever more slowly. When at last it stopped altogether, it took her a while to notice.
She stood up abruptly, casting her handkerchief over his awful, congested face. She backed away from him, then turned and ran out of the room, almost knocking Rudolf over on her way. She grabbed her bonnet and coat from the hook in the kitchen, and ran through the snowy garden, tying the ribbons under her chin. Mia called after her, but, once she began running, Dortchen did not stop. She ran out the gate and down the alley and along the Marktgasse. People stopped to stare. ‘Is
everything all right, love?’ the saddler’s wife called. Dortchen shook her head and ran on.
Soon a stitch in her side slowed her. She ran and walked, ran and walked. At last she was free of the town. She went into the winter-bare, snow-frosted woods. She went to the linden grove. There at last she could dance. There at last she could laugh out loud in her relief and her gladness. There at last she could cry.
Wilhelm found her in the alley outside the shop’s garden. ‘Our time will come,’ he said, kissing her. ‘Love works magic.’
Dortchen no longer believed in magic. And she certainly no longer believed in love.
CASSEL
The German Confederation of Nations, 1819–1825
The poor girl who had wandered so far took courage and said, ‘I will continue on as far as the wind blows and as long as the cock crows, till I find him.’ She went on a long, long way, until at last she came to the castle where her sweetheart and the false princess were living together. A feast was soon to be held, to celebrate their wedding. She said, ‘God will help me still,’ and opened the little chest that the sun had given her. Inside was a dress as brilliant as the sun itself. She took it out and put it on, then went up into the castle, where everyone, even the bride herself, looked at her. The bride liked the dress so well that she asked if it was for sale.
‘Not for money or property,’ answered the girl, ‘but for flesh and blood.’
The bride asked what she meant. She said, ‘Let me sleep one night in the chamber where the prince sleeps.’
At last the bride consented, but told her page to give the prince a sleeping-potion.
That night, when the prince was asleep, the girl was led into his room. She sat down on the bed and said, ‘I have followed you for seven years. I have been to the sun and the moon and the four winds and have asked about you, and I have helped you against the dragon. Will you then forget me?’
From ‘The Singing, Springing Lark’, a tale told by Dortchen Wild to Wilhelm Grimm on 7th January 1813