Emden
Christmas Day, 1567
Aletta padded across the single room she and her family called home and stopped at the frost-etched window. Stretching up onto her tiptoes, she blew gently on the windowpane until a tiny ragged-edged hole appeared in the icy pattern. She peered through and sucked in the cool, moist air excitedly.
“Emden has donned her finest pure white fairyland dress,” she exclaimed.
“God Almighty is smiling upon our celebration!” Moeder Gretta’s words startled her from behind.
“Even on Christmas day?” Aletta asked.
“’Tis your betrothal day. That is enough reason.”
Aletta felt her moeder’s gentle hand resting warm and reassuring on her shoulder. With her nose pressed against the window, Aletta mused, “Our pious friends that gather in Hans’ hidden church may reject Christmas as an unholy pagan tradition, but they seem eager enough to come together to witness the betrothal of the bookseller’s daughter to the printer’s new cartoonist, Christmas day or not.”
She turned slightly from the window to address her moeder. “Think you not, Moeder, that God must chuckle with delight because we celebrate this day?”
A soft gasp escaped from the older woman. “Hush, child,” she whispered, then clamped her hand over her mouth. In the dim gray of early dawn, Aletta watched a playful grin break out around her moeder’s fingers and a mischievous light dance in the narrow eyes. She squeezed her hand, then turned for one more hurried peek out into the enchanted world.
Instantly she spotted Pieter-Lucas through her peephole in the ice. All thoughts of Moeder and Christmas controversies fled. Entranced, she watched him move across a blanket of new-fallen snow toward their house nestled in the far corner of the printshop courtyard. He walked with great, ravenous strides. His breath trailed him in long vapory streamers, and she imagined she could see the broad dimpled smile and sparkling blue eyes. She felt her own face turn to smiles, her palms moisten, and her heart pound a wild and rapid rhythm. Breathless, she stared at the young man as he drew nearer. He rapped on the door with his characteristic three short, brisk knocks.
Vader sauntered across the room, drew the bolt, and opened to him. “A good morning to you, jongen,” he said in surprise. “I didn’t expect to see you so soon—nor here. I thought we were to meet at Hans’ house after the summoning of the church bells.” Vader did not invite him in but left him standing on the doorstoop while the frigid air seeped in through the gaping doorway.
“I know, I know.”
Aletta detected an eager flutter in the familiar voice and longed to rush to his side. But not today. She must wait for her vader to say ja.
“I came early to beg your leave to borrow your daughter.” Pieter-Lucas sounded breathless with eagerness.
“Borrow my daughter?”
“Just for a short spell. I’ll have her back in plenty of time.”
“A most irregular request on your betrothal day. Very shortly now, the bells of the Catholic Church will call their worshipers to holiday mass, and our friends will also hasten on their way to our celebration. What, my son, could be so urgent that it cannot wait?”
How hardly Aletta resisted the urge to peek around the corner of the doorway. She knew Pieter-Lucas must be rubbing his hands together in the cold and shifting from foot to foot. What could possibly have brought him here at this hour on this day?
“I’ve discovered something special I must show to her. It’s just behind the printshop. You can even watch us from your window as we go.”
“Before the betrothal?”
Why must he be so hard to convince? “We’ll not be long!”
Aletta heard the pleading in his tone and ached to go to him. A tingle of excitement tugged her slowly along the wall toward the door. Gradually she crept on until she laid a hand on her vader’s arm. When he looked down at her, she found she could not speak. Only with her eyes she begged, “Please, Vader!” He glanced up at Moeder and back. Aletta held her breath and watched as his expression shifted from uncertain perplexity to vaderly affection. Then he leaned in her direction and kissed her on the forehead. Turning to Pieter-Lucas, he said simply, “You may take her and go.”
“Oh, Vader,” she cried. Then grabbing her cape and slipping her feet into the street shoes resting by the door, she scurried over the threshold and warmed to the nearness of the man with whom she was soon to exchange public vows of her intention to marry.
“Only be sure you return,” Vader called after them, “at the first pealing of the bells, do you hear?”
“At the first pealing of the bells,” Pieter-Lucas repeated, “we shall return.”
As if in an enchanted dream, Aletta snuggled close to him and together they crunched their way across the courtyard. Midway, Aletta stopped abruptly and spread one cloaked arm in a wide arc to take in all the scene around them.
“Oh, Pieter-Lucas, look,” she exclaimed. “The whole city sparkles as if it has chosen to rejoice with us!”
She drew the heavy hood of her cape tightly around her head to keep the dampness from her white starched cap and her rows of ringlet curls. The frosty air bit her cheeks and nipped at her nose. What a glorious morning to be at last a woman in company with the young man for whom she had vowed so long ago to wait.
“None can rejoice half so much as you and I!” he said, giving her arm a squeeze.
The voice she’d known since she could toddle around her vader’s bookshop back in Breda had deepened. The hands that had led her through the streets to many a festival and carved her a hundred little animals from wood had grown broad and manly. The profusion of straw-colored curls still framed his fair face beneath the old brown felt cap, but his chin now grew the whiskers of manhood. His blue eyes still sparkled at her and laughed and sometimes scolded as they had done for all the years.
“Come, Little One,” he urged.
She hoped he would always call her by that name. She yielded her elbow to his protective care and let him lead her to a secluded spot behind the slumbering printshop. They stopped before a rounded mound, where he stooped and brushed the snow away from a perfect clump of white-petaled, purple-veined flowers.
He plucked off a blossom and laid it in her hand. Then, with a finger beneath her chin, he held her gaze as if savoring all the rich sweetness of the adoration she offered. “To my Christmas Rose,” he whispered through beckoning lips.
She shielded the blossom against her breast and leaned into his open arms, pressing hard against him. With his nose he pushed back the hood of her cape and caressed her head with his lips. No spot on earth could be more safe, more warm, more ecstatic. Must she ever leave it again?
With steaming breath that wafted like incense on the frosty air, he spoke at last.
“‘This flower, whose fragrance tender,
With sweetness fills the air,
Dispels with glorious splendor
The darkness everywhere.’
“No more skillful words could I find to describe you if I searched the whole world over a hundred times,” he concluded.
An air of wonder made his voice seem to float and stirred something in her heart so deep and powerful and altogether pleasant that she thought she could hold no more. She lifted her head and feasted her gaze on his fine masculine features. Something deep within her melted under the look of pure and penetrating love that lit up his entire countenance.
“Oh, my strong and wonderful love,” she said in a rapturous half whisper, “such beautiful words! Only they can never apply to me.”
He smiled and pulled her head to him again. With nimble fingers he tousled the curls that framed her cap. “Nay, but they could not apply better. The Christmas rose is for healing, you know. And ’twas you who healed the gaping wounds of my lonely heart.”
Still protecting the flower, she pushed against his chest with one hand and said as gently as she knew how, “There is more to the poem, you know.”
“Oh?” he started. “Maybe a couple of lines but nothing of any importance.”
She cleared her throat, looked shyly up into his puzzled face, and answered, “I fear the three little lines you have omitted hold the key that will forever disqualify me for the honor you seem so eager to bestow.”
“Impossible!” he protested.
She watched a strange combination of curiosity and perplexity move across the face she loved more dearly than life itself. Must she go on, break the spell that held them in its glorious captivity? Perhaps she should say no more, simply accept his glowing words. After all, this was their betrothal day.
“What do the other lines say?” he demanded.
“Another time,” she suggested.
“Nay, we go no further till I hear it all. I must know what could possibly steal from you the honor of your title.”
Hesitating, she offered him a reassuring smile on upturned lips and recited the words carefully.
“‘True man, yet very God,
From sin and death He saves us
And lightens every load.’”
A wondering look lit up Pieter-Lucas’ rosy-cheeked face. “Which means?” he asked.
“Tante Lysbet always said it meant that the Christ child was the Christmas rose, sent to heal us from the madness of our many sins.”
“Tante Lysbet! What did she have to do with it?”
“Do you not remember, Pieter-Lucas?”
“Remember what?”
“Tante Lysbet sang the words of this song to Robbin and me every Christmas morning.” She let the warm memory shape her lips into a delicious smile and lifted her frosty cheeks. “It was a hymn composed by a distant cousin of her moeder’s. Surely I told you that when I taught the song to you.”
“You never taught it to me.”
“Then where did you learn the words?”
“I inscribed the first stanza of this same verse on the drawing I left with Hans.”
“I recognized them well, Pieter-Lucas. But if I did not teach them to you, then how did you come by them?”
The young man shook his head. “You won’t believe me. In fact, the story is so strange, I’m not sure I believe it myself.”
“Tell me,” she begged.
“Well, if you must know, they were handed to me by a dark, shrouded personage on the doorstoop of my house in Breda. Pretty mysterious!”
He stopped short and his face broke into a grin, as if he’d just made some momentous discovery. “Wait a minute. You said Tante Lysbet sang it?”
“Ja!” What was so strange about that?
He lifted his head to the sky and laughed. “So that’s who the Wilderness Angel was. Why did I never think of it?”
“Wilderness Angel? What are you talking about?”
“Oh, put it from your pretty mind,” he said. “’Tis a long story—for another day, my love.”
Charmed by his hearty laughter, she twirled the creamy blossom in her fingers and looked up into the wonderful blue eyes hovering over her. “Did you ever doubt we’d come to this day?” she asked.
“Never—and always!” He pushed back her curls and framed her face with his hands. His smile reached to her soul and held her immobile.
“I only wish this could be our wedding day,” she said.
“No more than I,” he countered.
Disappointment pushed against her heart, creating a desperate urge to apologize. “I had no idea Vader’s ‘arrangements’ would include all these months of preparing for baptism with Hans.”
“Nor did I,” he admitted. “If I had, I might have carried you off on my steed and settled it all in a hidden chapel somewhere the very night your vader gave me his word.”
She brightened. “Why didn’t you when you found out?”
He enfolded her with his arms, held her tenderly, and spoke in deep, somber tones, “When he first told me, I was sorely tempted. But then I looked into his eyes and saw something that brought me to a sudden halt.”
“What did you see?” she asked.
“I saw the warm, protective love of a devout Child of God vader who could never marry off his beloved daughter till he knew both she and the man she was marrying were fully instructed converts. In that moment, I knew I loved you too much to do it.”
“You loved me too much?”
“I loved you too much to take you away and make you disobey your vader.”
For a long cozy moment, she reveled in the warmth of his arms and mulled over his words. He broke the silence without letting go the embrace.
“I think you have no idea,” he said just above a whisper, “how great a treasure is a vader’s love.”
“Oh, Pieter-Lucas, you are so wise. God alone knows how much I need you.”
He unwrapped his arms from about her and held her shoulders in his big hands. “God also knows it won’t be much longer until our wedding day. The New Year is almost here.” She heard the sparkle return, and saw it in his face. “Besides, I think we had to wait until Hendrick van den Garde left Emden.”
“I suppose,” she sighed. “A pity he never recognized you.”
“I’m glad enough he didn’t. He could have caused a lot of trouble for us both, you know.”
“I do know. It’s just that our healing work failed.”
“Why do you say that?”
“It didn’t bring back his mind, Pieter-Lucas.”
“You saved his life, Healer Lady. That was all you were called to do. More important, in the process, you saved my life and gave me back my anointing. Without you there in the attic of The Black Swan Inn, I would have killed that old man, then died of a mortal wound from my own guilt.”
“Oh, Pieter-Lucas, how dreadful that would have been!”
With a twinkle in his eye he said, “That’s why God gave you to me.”
“Why?”
He lay a restraining finger across her lips before he answered. “To be my flesh-and-blood Christmas rose, that’s why.”
Aletta smiled with pursed lips, then tucked the blossom under her cape and into the bosom of her dress. She raised her face expectantly, and he met it with a cold nose and warm honeyed lips.
From the distant street, the church bells called their insistent invitation. Slowly, reluctantly, Aletta pulled herself free and chuckled softly. “The bells are calling,” she said.
“I know,” he sighed. “We promised your vader!”
“Besides,” she announced, “the celebration cannot begin without the bookseller’s daughter and the printer’s cartoonist.”