Arms of Love (28 page)

Make mine Affections thy Swift Flyers neate,
And make my Soule thy holy Spoole to bee.
y Conversation make to be thy Reele,
And reele the yarn thereon spun of thy Wheele.

“Make me thy Loome then, knit therein this Twine:
nd make thy Holy Spirit, Lord, winde quills:

Then weave the Web thyselfe. The yarn is fine.
hine Ordinances make my Fulling Mills.
Then dy the same in Heavenly Colours Choice,
All pinkt with Varnish’t Flowers of Paradise.

“Then cloath therewith mine Understanding, Will,
Affections, Judgment, Conscience, Memory;

My Words and Actions, that their shine may fill
My wayes with glory and thee glorify.
Then mine apparell shall display before yee
That I am Cloathd in Holy robes for glory.”

He stopped and there was a disjointed amount of applause, and he frowned. “Adam, what think ye of the merits of the poem?”

Adam looked straight across the table at Lena. “I suppose that it is inviting God to be the designer of one’s life, one’s garments of repose or action. I suppose it to mean much more than I can fathom—like the rich heart of a woman can be.”

Joseph chewed his lip. The boy was practically wooing the girl across the dinner table, and right beneath Isaac’s drowsing nose. He was about to speak when a loud crash of thunder suddenly boomed from outside. Lena startled, and an idea crossed his mind. He ate with renewed vigor, then put his fork down as the storm continued to increase in intensity.

Joseph rose from the table. “Isaac cannot possibly see Lena home safely in such a storm as this. She must stay.” He gestured to his wife. “Ellen, if you might go with Lena and Isaac and prepare the bed with the bundling board . . .”

Joseph felt the weight of the guests’ various expressions as he uttered the words and suppressed a smile.

Lena looked as though she might bolt into the stormy night, and Isaac for once appeared very awake, if not alarmed. Ellen’s pretty mouth was slightly open in surprise, and Adam stared in fixation at the butter crock on the table as though it had sprouted thorns.

Joseph clapped his hands. “
Ach
, bed courtship is a
gut
thing, I say.

A chance for couples to talk but not touch in private. Every young person who plans to marry should spend some time thus together.”

No one responded until Adam’s spoon clattered with a jarring noise against his plate. Joseph smiled at the sound.

Lena had forgotten the controversial custom of bundling that persisted among some of the Amish and many of the other colonists. Sometimes the man of the engaged couple was sewn into a linen sack, and a bolster was placed between the couple to prevent physical contact. In truth, she knew that her own father might not approve of bundling despite the engagement. It was really a controversial issue; the efficacy of a bundling board to prevent touch really rested on the couple’s honor.

She hoped that Isaac was as honorable as he purported to be. But there was no telling what he would do after her behavior that afternoon in his bedroom.

There was no denying that the thought of Isaac lying abed with Lena was the most torturous experience that Adam could ever remember.

He stripped off his vest and shirt and went to open the window casement to stare out at the storm, careless of the rain that dampened the waistband of his breeches. He could not change custom, the very thing that helped shape the world he lived in—but,
ach
, such a custom. He stared at the dark, moving clouds and wondered if she would take her hair down. He could see its rich fall brushing over the edge of the bundling board, free for Isaac’s touch. He wondered wildly what they would speak of and realized that this was the reality of his future if Lena really went through with the marriage. And it appeared that she would, for she made no demure to the bundling.

There had certainly been no bundling for him and Lena, Adam considered with bitter thought . . . They had barely progressed past a second kiss. He rocked his head against the window frame, pressing until it hurt. Mary Yoder’s promise held him with fingers beyond the grave, with the eyes of heaven. Yet he could not lose Lena . . . would not . . . He turned to stare at his room with vacant eyes, and then he remembered something. He threw a grim smile over his shoulder at the display of the storm, then reached for his shirt.

Lena tried to ignore the rather desperate glance that Ellen Wyse gave Isaac and her as she left the bedroom, allowing a single candle to burn.

The bundling board was nothing more than an eight-inch-high slab of wood down the middle of the bed, bolstered by rolled quilts. Fully dressed, something she’d insisted on, refusing Ellen’s tentative offer of a night shift, Lena accidentally bumped the board with her elbow as she reached to worry with the usual curl of escaped hair from her prayer covering.

“Are you knocking?” Isaac’s voice came sleepily from the other side of the board, and Lena hugged her arms against herself as the thunder crashed outside the window.

“Nee,” she answered in quick denial, not wanting him to know that she was terrified, both of the storm and of the thought of it being him and not Adam who would have the right to share a bed with her in the near future, with no bundling board in place.

“I look forward to the time when you are my wife, Lena. I realize that you were simply . . . overwrought . . . by the idea when you . . . this afternoon . . . up here . . .” He broke off, sounding shaken.

She found her voice with difficulty. Should she tell him that she was looking forward to it as well? But that would be a lie, no matter her intent to go through with the marriage.

“I am sure that you will be a
gut
husband, Isaac,” she managed finally.

“Do you know the bundling poem?” he asked after a moment.

Lena swallowed, knowing that some bundling poetry could be quite heady, and she wondered where he was leading with such talk.

“Noooo,” she told him.

He began to recite in a singsong tone:

“Nature’s request is grant me rest,
Our bodies seek repose;
Night is the time, and ’tis no crime
To bundle in your clothes.

“Since in a bed a man and maid
May bundle and be chaste,
It does no good to burn out wood,
It is a needless waste.

“The sacred Book says wives they took,
It doesn’t say how they courted,
Whether that they in bed did lay,
Or by the fire sported.

“Since bundling is not the thing
That judgments will procure,
Go on, young men, and bundle then,
But keep your bodies pure.”

Isaac laughed. “What do you think?”

“’Tis fun,” she admitted, wondering if she could relax with his jokes about purity and judgment.

“I think so too.” He yawned again, then was silent.

Lena sought desperately for something to talk about when her ears were met with the distinctive sound of an echoing nasal snore.

She blinked her eyes in surprise, leaning upward cautiously to peer over the board. Sure enough, Isaac was sound asleep, his mouth slightly open, his snores shaking sounds that competed with the thunder.

She waited a long while, until she was sure that everyone must surely be asleep, then slid from the bed and caught up the guttering candle as the storm increased in fury. She slipped from the room without looking back.

Lena pressed against the dark, jar-filled shelves of the
tzellar
of the large house and cringed as another crash of thunder seemed to shake the shadowy timbers of the foundation. Then the sound of footsteps coming nearer drew her ear, and she shook for fear of being discovered in such a silly position. But she’d always feared a bad storm, and going to the cool of the cellar had seemed a blessing of hiding to her in days past.

She thought of dousing the lantern she’d found, but she knew its glow had probably already been seen, so she straightened her spine and waited. Adam walked into the circle of light, and she exhaled with relief.

“
Ach
, it’s you,” she said.

“And it is you, my dear soon-to-be sister-in-law.” His voice was moody. “I thought I might find you here. I remember how you hate storms. I assume my brother, your beloved, snores peacefully asleep.”

She ignored his pricking comments and swallowed at his close proximity, trying not to let her eyes trace the breadth of his shoulders in his loose linen shirt.

“How was bed courting with my
bruder
?”

“You make it sound so awful,” she cried before she thought.

He glared at her. “Then I assume it either went very well or very quickly downhill.”