The Wild Girl (61 page)

‘No, of course not.’

‘The new edition of the book brought in four hundred thalers, and it looks as if it might be selling well enough that another edition will be needed soon.’

‘That’s wonderful!’

He grinned at her. ‘I cannot deny that it makes me happy. It’s been eight years since we first published it, and at last we seem to be reaping some rewards for all that hard work.’

‘I’m glad,’ she said, pressing his arm.

‘I wonder … I mean, what I want to know …’ He turned to face her, taking both her gloved hands.

She felt a sudden squeezing of her chest.

‘Dortchen, things have changed these past few years. I’m earning an income now, and I’m not dependent on Jakob to support me as well as the
rest of the family. The war is over. Your father can no longer forbid us from marrying. Dortchen, I—’

She began speaking rapidly. ‘Wilhelm, Berthe is still just a little baby. I promised Gretchen on her deathbed that I would look after her. I cannot leave her, not yet. It wouldn’t be right. And it’s not just Berthe, it’s the other children too. It’s a terrible thing to lose your mother, you know that. What would you have done without your Aunt Zimmer? The children need me. I can’t let them be brought up by housemaids and governesses—’

‘I understand, Dortchen, really, I do. It’s your loving heart and your wish to always do good that I love most about you. And I understand … I know you’ve been hurt. I know you find it hard to trust now.’

Dortchen pulled her hands away and turned, hunching her shoulder. She could not believe he would speak of it.

He grasped her shoulders and pulled her back to face him. ‘Dortchen, I need to know if there’s any hope for me. Please.’

She gazed up into his thin face, his dark eyes intent on hers, the wind playing havoc with his curls. Her heart gave a treacherous lurch. She reached up and cupped his cheek.

‘Wilhelm, so much has changed. I … I’m afraid … I’m afraid of so many things. That I’ll hurt you. That you’ll hurt me.’ He started to speak but she laid a finger on his lips. ‘I need to try to make amends somehow. I need …’ Her voice changed, growing stronger. ‘I need to atone for my sins.’

‘What sins?’ he burst out. ‘Whatever happened, it was not your fault.’

She stepped away from him, hugging her arms about her. She was shaking. ‘I have to try to do what’s right. They’re only little children. They’ve lost their mother … they’ll never know a mother’s love … Can’t you see? Don’t you understand?’

He turned away from her, not speaking.

‘I just need time,’ she said desperately. ‘Please.’

In one quick movement, Wilhelm was beside her, spinning her to face him. His mouth came down on hers. He bent her over his arm, his lips hard and demanding, his hand gripping the back of her neck. Dortchen clung to him, her senses reeling, her traitorous body flaring with heat.

At last, he drew his mouth away. ‘How much time?’

She could not answer. She could not breathe.

‘Dortchen, how much time?’

When she did not answer, he kissed her again, roughly. When at last he let her go, she swayed and he had to steady her with both hands. She laid her head on his chest, listening to the rapid beat of his heart. He raised her face and kissed her again, so gently that it brought tears to her eyes.

‘Dortchen, when?’

‘I don’t know,’ she whispered. ‘I want … Oh, Wilhelm, I do want you.’

‘Please don’t make me wait too long,’ he said.

She bit her lip. They walked back towards Herr Schmerfeld’s house in silence. As they turned into the street, lined with old plane trees, she took his hand and pressed it to her lips. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she whispered.

His eyes softened. He squeezed her hand. Slowly, she drew her hand out of his and walked up the steps and into the house.

A HIGH REGARD

February 1821

As time passed, the nightmares and flashes of panic that had plagued Dortchen began to come more rarely. She took joy in small things. A robin singing in the bare thorn tree. Berthe’s first babble of words. Jakob writing her name in the family Bible as if she truly were one of the Grimms.

In February 1821, Wilhelm turned thirty-five. Dortchen made a damson plum cake and took it to the Grimms’ small apartment, which was crowded and merry with family and friends.

‘I made it for you with my own hands,’ she told him.

‘It smells delicious,’ Wilhelm said, taking the cake from her. ‘What’s in it that smells so good?’

‘Cinnamon and nutmeg and damson plum jam,’ Dortchen told him. ‘Isn’t it wonderful to be able to get ingredients again?’

‘I haven’t eaten cinnamon in an age. Thank you, Dortchen.’ He drew her close to kiss her on the cheek.

The cake was a great success, and after supper everyone sang songs and told silly riddles. Then Wilhelm opened up a great pile of presents. ‘Look, Dortchen, Karl has brought me a whole pile of new cravats,’ Wilhelm cried, showing her the package. ‘And Lotte embroidered me some handkerchiefs.’

‘A true sign of love,’ Dortchen said. ‘I know how much she hates embroidering.’

‘And
W
s are hard,’ Lotte complained. ‘Why couldn’t his name begin with a nice easy
I
, or an
L
?’

The Hassenpflugs had brought him a book of poems, and the Ramus sisters a beautiful set of quills, enough to last him several months. Wilhelm thanked them, then drew a small package towards him. It was covered in stamps and addressed in a bold, flamboyant hand.

‘Something else from Fraülein von Schwertzell?’ Lotte asked, perched on the arm of Wilhelm’s chair.

He nodded as he opened the package. Inside was a small grey stone, scribbled all over with strange markings. Wilhelm examined it closely, then glanced at the letter. ‘It’s another of the runic stones her family found on their estate. She tells me I must come again and examine them more closely. She cannot hold off other scholars any longer. Jakob, did I tell you that Professor Rommel has already been? He is convinced they are magical symbols, inscribed by a pagan priest, but I am not so sure.’

Jakob came to examine the stone, and soon he and Wilhelm were deep in an arcane and incomprehensible conversation. Dortchen pulled Lotte to sit beside her on the couch.

‘Who’s this Fraülein von Schwertzell?’ she asked, trying to sound casual.

‘She’s the sister of an old university friend of Wilhelm’s,’ Lotte said in an undertone. ‘They’re a grand noble family that live in a big old castle on their estate at Willingshausen, two days’ ride from here. She writes to Wilhelm all the time, sending him stories or legends, or these strange stones. Ludwig and I think she has a
tendré
for him.’

‘What is the stone?’ Dortchen asked. ‘Is it really magic?’

‘The family found these ancient mounds on their land, with burial urns and such things, and these stones with strange inscriptions on them. She sent one to Wilhelm and asked him to come and visit, to help them dig for buried treasure. He stayed there some weeks and was very intrigued by it all. It inspired him to write a book on the history of runes, partly to set that Professor Rommel straight. Wilhelm thinks they are just random markings on the stones, and not an alphabet at all.’

‘Is she … is she pretty?’ Dortchen whispered.

Lotte gave her a hug. ‘Nowhere near as pretty as you.’

The Hassenpflugs would not let Jakob and Wilhelm talk about runic alphabets all afternoon. Jeannette sat down at the fortepiano and tinkled a tune, and Marie grabbed Wilhelm’s hands and made him dance with her. Lotte danced with Louis, and the Ramus sisters danced with Jakob and Ludwig. The room was so small that everyone kept bumping into each other, but there was much laughter and teasing.

Dortchen sat on the couch, her feet tucked up underneath her to give everyone else more room. There were not enough men for all the girls to dance. As soon as another song started, however, Wilhelm came and took her hand. He lifted Dortchen to her feet, and she let him put his hand on her waist and turn her about the room, his shoulder strong and square under her fingers.

Afterwards, she could scarcely breathe and would not dance again. ‘I’m tired,’ she told Jakob. ‘I’ve been up half the night with Friedrich, who’s been sick.’ She lay on the couch and drew her coat over her, watching the twirling couples till her vision was obscured by tears. She shut her eyes and pretended to sleep.

Sometime later, when everyone was out in the hall saying their goodbyes, she felt a warm, strong hand slip up the sleeve of her coat and find her hand, which was crossed upon her breast. She smiled without opening her eyes, and murmured Wilhelm’s name.

‘How did you know it was me?’ he whispered.

‘I would know your hand even when there were ten thousand hands,’ she whispered back. He bent and kissed her.

The next morning, Lotte came to tell Dortchen that the Kurfürst had died in the night. Dortchen had to dig out her blacks again, and put black armbands on the sleeves of all the boys. The funeral procession was a sombre affair, with twelve horses in hooded black caparisons with black plumes on their heads pulling along the funeral hearse with the Kurfürst’s coat of arms on the door.

His son, Wilhelm II, promptly moved into the palace with his mistress
and her brood of illegitimate children. His wife, Princess Augusta, set up a rival court at Schöenfeld Castle, encouraging artists, musicians and writers to visit her there. Jakob, Wilhelm, Ludwig and Lotte were all frequent guests, as were Louis Hassenpflug and his sisters. Dortchen even went once or twice, with Herr Schmerfeld, and was amazed and impressed by the ease and grace with which Wilhelm moved in such grand circles.

Napoléon died in May. Dortchen could not help feeling a pang of grief. He had been like a comet, beautiful in his dreadfulness. He had changed the world – for the better, many would argue. Certainly people everywhere were jostling for the rights he had once granted them with such a high hand.

A few weeks later it was Dortchen’s twenty-eighth birthday. Wilhelm gave her a belt buckle of amethysts that must have cost him a month’s wages. Dortchen wore it everywhere.

Spring turned into summer. Wilhelm spent a lot of time visiting his friend Fritz von Schwertzell at Willingshausen, working on the book of runes, which he hoped would be published later that year. Dortchen went to help Hanne after the birth of her fifth child, and stayed for three weeks. In October Rudolf married his childhood sweetheart, Sandrine Landré, in the garden. Dortchen made herself a new red striped dress. It was wonderful to be out of mourning again.

Then, in November, Herr Schmerfeld asked Dortchen to marry him.

‘You know I have a very high regard for you,’ he said, standing before the fire in the library. Dortchen was sitting in a chair, a novel in her hands. ‘The children all love you. I cannot think of anyone who I would rather have presiding over my family and my home.’

When she did not answer, he said, with a faint colour in his carefully shaved cheeks, ‘It would be most suitable.’

Dortchen could only shake her head. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

‘It’s been a surprise. You need time to think it over.’

She got to her feet, dropping the novel, and went out of the room in a rush. In the sanctuary of her bedroom, she sat on her bed and pressed her hands over her eyes. He was a kind man. She loved his children. She
had found peace in his beautiful house. If she married him, she would have everything a young woman could want. Money. Status. Comfort. Affection. It would indeed be most suitable.

Dortchen opened her copy of the fairy tales and took out the faded linden leaf. She twirled it in her fingers. She got up and paced the room. Again and again she picked up the linden leaf and put it down again. At last, at dusk, she put on her bonnet and coat and gloves and walked around to the Grimms’ apartment. It was cold and windy, reminding her of the night she and Wilhelm had walked to the lookout, when he had asked her not to make him wait too long. It had already been a year.

The thought of marrying Wilhelm filled Dortchen with dread. He would want to touch her. He would want to probe her mouth with his tongue. He would want to thrust his … his thing between her legs. Horror shook her.

Yet she loved him. She wanted him to love her. She daydreamed of a little house with a garden. She would cook for him, and darn his stockings, and he would read his stories to her. She sometimes imagined having a baby of her own. It always had Wilhelm’s curls and grave, dark eyes. Now and again, at night, she imagined Wilhelm kissing her, his hand stroking the curve of her waist, cupping her breast, sliding down between her legs. A little bud of warmth would open inside her. At those times she would think,
Yes, I’ll marry him.

Then she would wake from a nightmare, a dark shape lurching over her, holding her down. No matter how she struggled, she could not save herself. She woke in such a sweat of terror and revulsion that she comforted herself by saying, ‘You’re safe. No one will ever touch you again.’

Dortchen reached the Grimms’ apartment and knocked. Her hand felt so weak that she could scarcely make a sound. Jakob opened the door for her. He was surprised to see her. ‘Is something wrong?’