Fundvogel

Oh yes, Castle Woyland! Once it was a gloomy stronghold with a moat around it deep in the dark wild forests. There was a drawbridge and a mighty gate that had once held many family crests upon it. They were the old families and when they died out another family member, another next of kin took possession.

The lost bloodlines included the Schonenveldt’s, the Eulenburg’s, the Zulnhart’s, the Wickede’s, the Bronkhardt’s, the Croy’s and the Spaen’s. Then there were no more male heirs to the land.

In the seventeenth century the red falcon of Brandenburg fluttered over the tower when a son-in-law, Frederick I , the great Elector of Brandenburg of the Holy Roman Empire, acquired Cleves, as it was then called. He helped drive the Spanish out of the land that his grandfather had inherited. The duchy of Cleves was united with the duchy of Mark and of Ravensburg.

Then he brought Louise Henrietta, the Princess of Orange, and the red falcon of Brandenburg back home with him. His grandson, Frederick II became the first King of Prussia and Voltaire was there when the black Prussian eagle flew over the tower for the first time.

Frederick the Great preferred to pass his days in his summer palace at Sanssouci where the sunbeams glittered and played rather than the dark gloomy citadel. He wanted a private place where he could get away from the busy court so he sold the old moat protected citadel.

Now the Woylands lived there. They renovated the castle and grounds in the baroque style as if it were an English property, a white palace like Windsor. They created a magnificent carefully groomed English park but the moat remained. You went over the drawbridge to get into the castle. Large bronze stags lay on both sides of the drawbridge.

The wooded hills of Woyland forest extended behind the castle. The largest hill was an extinct volcano, the Katzenbuckel. Then there was the city of Sternbusch down below, a part of Cleves. The mighty and ancient King’s forest extended to the west. To the east were rocks, meadows and low pastureland surrounded by water that extended back south and southeast up to the city of Kalkar. Fat farmers lived there. To the southwest were more undulating woodlands.

It was there deep in the woods where the falcons flew, where grandmother, Roberta von Woyland, Duchess of Kranenburg, ruled in her house by the Rhein.

Andrea didn’t know exactly when she came to live with her grandmother. Her father died before she came into the world, she lived with her mother for only four or five years before her mother died as well. She had no memory of the time she lived with her mother.

So she lived at Woyland with the old Lady. The old Lady was not really that old, forty five or forty six perhaps and there were all the servants. The little girl Andrea was always running around somewhere. No one looked after her, much less her grandmother. She grew like a weed.

The people called her “Fundvogel” like the child that had been snatched from heaven and sent wrapped in linen to bedevil old Mad Meg in the fairy tale and because she could never be found when you went looking for her. You would find her by the brook, hiding in the alders, or sleeping in the manger in the barn with the cows. Soon no one searched for her anymore but the name “Fundvogel” stayed.

Once she went to her grandmother and asked, “What can I do?”

The Duchess had no time for the little one. She was dressed in her riding clothes with a high hat from which an ostrich feather waved. Pittze, the squire, laced his hands together, she stepped into them and swung up on her horse. She was riding to Reiherbeiz with her falcon.

She cried laughingly down from the saddle, “What should you do? Go, take care of the geese!”

The little one ran straight to the stables.

“What do you want Fundvogel?” The Swiss stable boy asked.

“I want the geese,” she declared. “and you must give them to me!”

He didn’t want to but the little girl was so adamant about it that he talked to the others. It didn’t matter. He had to give her the animals, the Duchess, herself, had said it. So the Swiss lad cut her a long willow switch from a branch that was hanging overhead. He trimmed the leaves and gave it to her.

She drove the geese, thirty six large birds and eleven goslings, over the castle grounds up to the moat by the drawbridge or down through the park into the meadow. She cared for the geese every day. She carried her butter bread in a pouch that hung around her neck. Every day when the sun was high in the sky she would eat it. In the evening when she came home the first thing she would do was run to the stables for some fresh milk. She was only five years old and ran around barefoot.

Grandmother laughed.