Love Finds You in Nazareth, Pennsylvania

by Melanie Dobson

  She wanted him to focus on their Savior, of course, but a part of her longed for his gaze to wander toward her as well. Even for a moment, to let her know that he was thinking about her too.

  No matter how distant Christian seemed, he had chosen her to be his wife. If she weren’t careful, her fears would destroy the thread of trust they needed to develop between them. Once they were alone, once they were able to talk, surely their love for one another would grow.

  Where was Christian now? And where were Catharine and Elias and the others?

  She heard footsteps outside and her heart leaped in her chest, thinking her husband had come—but instead of her husband, a man and woman walked into her chamber. She searched their faces and found familiarity in them, but not from Marienborn. She didn’t know where she had seen them before.

  “I’m Sister Marie,” the woman introduced herself, her hands folded to her chest. “I’m the laboress for the Married Women’s Choir in Bethlehem.”

  She recognized the woman’s voice. “You’ve been praying for me, haven’t you?”

  Marie nodded and then introduced the man with her as her husband, David.

  “I’ve seen you before,” Susanna said as she turned back to the woman. “Were you at Hernnhut?”

  “We lived on the Count’s estate for a short season.” Marie straightened the quilt on the bed. “David and I were married at the Great Wedding in 1745.”

  Susanna studied the couple again and wondered for a moment if they had known each other before their wedding. If not, were they still strangers after so many years?

  David stepped forward. “I knew your husband before Marie and I married.”

  At his words, Susanna remembered hearing another voice in her dreams. A man. “Where is my husband?”

  Instead of answering her question, David glanced at his wife. In their silence, panic filled her chest. “Did something happen to him?”

  Marie shook her head. “Christian has gone ahead to Nazareth.”

  “He—he left me?”

  “Oh no,” she insisted. “Brother Abraham asked him to go with the others since there was nothing he could do to help you here.”

  Susanna closed her eyes, wishing for a moment that the darkness would welcome her again. Instead of becoming a helpmate to her husband, she had become a burden. She had to get out of this bed, had to get to Nazareth so she would be ready for their mission.

  When she opened her eyes again, David and Marie were both watching her. “How long ago did they leave?” she asked.

  “Three days.”

  She pushed herself up on her elbows this time, trying to force her legs over the side of the bed. “I need to go to Nazareth.”

  “Not quite yet.” David’s calm laugh quelled some of her frustration. “We have to get you well first.”

  She shook her head as she forced her legs to the edge of the bed. “I can recover in Nazareth.”

  “You can’t travel yet, not with so much sickness still in you.” He held up a bin in one hand. And then he held up a knife in the other. “I’m the town blacksmith, but sometimes they ask me to use my tools to help people get well.”

  Susanna cringed at the thought of him bleeding her and struggled again to get out of the bed, but her body refused to cooperate with her. She fell back against the pillows, hesitating for another moment before she reluctantly surrendered her arm to the blacksmith. She flinched as he began to drain the sickness out of her.

  Chapter Four

  Catharine Schmidt dabbed at the sweat masking her face as she scanned the partially built stone structure at the crest of the plaza, looking for her husband. But she didn’t see Elias among the thirty brothers and a hundred laborers they’d hired to finish the work before winter. He was in the midst of the work, she was certain of it, but there were too many men plastering and setting stones into place for her to find the one her heart longed to see.

  As she rocked in the chair on the porch, her mind wandered to the glorious hours on the ship when she and Elias had stolen away from the others and hidden in the depths of a storeroom to share the pleasures of their marriage. It wasn’t how she had envisioned marriage, sharing their love among the steamer trunks and crates, but there was beauty in the darkness of that ship, two souls coming together as one.

  The rocking of the ship hadn’t bothered her like it had Susanna and so many others. Catharine wished she could be back on that ship, in that storeroom, if only she and Elias could be alone again.

  Now that they were in Nazareth, Elias lived in the choir house for the married brothers and spent his days finishing the construction for the Disciple’s House—a grand manor home for Count Zinzendorf and his family. Elias has been sent from Germany to oversee the building, but when they’d arrived, Catharine was surprised—and a bit dumbfounded—to discover the house almost built. In the months it took for word of the plan to build this summer home to reach Europe and then to commission Elias and travel to the Colonies, one of the elders from Bethlehem had been asked to oversee the massive project. The letter saying they no longer had need of Elias’s services never arrived, or at least not before they’d left Europe.

  So Elias had been assigned to help the others in the completion of the manor, and instead of spinning wool and stitching as she’d done in Marienborn, Catharine was assigned to clean the women’s quarters. Her back ached from scrubbing floors and windows alike. Her schoolteachers had taught her how to read and entertain and sew, but they’d never taught her how to clean a home, nor had her parents groomed her for such menial tasks. At one time her parents were preparing to marry her to a nobleman, but those plans had changed three years ago when they chose to join Count Zinzendorf and his band of Moravians.

  Catharine rocked back and forth on her chair, fanning her face with her hands. She was supposed to be inside working with the thirty or so other married sisters right now, but she couldn’t scrub another inch of floor in that dreadfully hot house this morning.

  Her gaze swept across the Disciple’s House again, and then she looked across the plaza to the Brothers House, the small Gemeinhaus, and the orchards and trees beyond. Before arriving in Nazareth, she’d expected to find a village like Bethlehem, with its many houses and grand Gemeinhaus, with mills and a tannery and schools. The stone structures here were imposing, but there were so few of them that they reminded her more of mausoleums in a graveyard instead of a growing town. Everything around their settlement was wilderness, vast and dark.

  She pushed her heels against the floor again, rocking back and forth. She missed the grand cathedrals and castles of Europe, the cobblestone streets and universities and busyness of the carts and animals as they scurried through the narrow streets. Even though she was working harder than she’d ever worked in her life, the world around her moved unbearably slow.

  In Marienborn, they had women who worked as laundresses and women assigned to scrub chamber pots and floors and other menial tasks. They were the women who had once lived as servants and slaves, and they did this work quite well. Catharine had no talent for laundry and no stomach for chamber pots, yet here in Nazareth they expected all the married sisters to help accomplish these tasks. They had Negro and Indian women living among them in the house in Nazareth, but even they were assigned more pleasant tasks than she.

  Before they traveled to the Colonies, Catharine had been respected as Lord Robert Weicht’s daughter, but no one knew her father here. When she tried to tell the women about the aristocracy of her family, they didn’t seem to care. Even the sisters who had come to Nazareth from Marienborn seemed to have forgotten Catharine’s heritage.

  Back in Europe, she had been ready to leave her parents and embark on this journey with her husband. She’d wanted to be known as Elias’s wife instead of Lord Weicht’s only child, but she wasn’t prepared for the indifference of the women around her—it was irrelevant to them that her husband was a renowned builder and that Count Zinzendorf had personally sent him to build his house.


  If the Irene hadn’t already left for Europe, she would have tried to convince her husband to return to Marienborn…but she doubted Elias would return anyway. And she certainly wouldn’t go without him. If only Susanna were here in Nazareth instead of back in Bethlehem; Susanna could help her cope.

  She glanced down at the stains on her hands and felt the calluses hardening her fingertips. Her mother would be appalled if she felt her daughter’s fingers, likely demanding a better position for her only child. Maybe Elias would fight for her as well.

  They might not be able to go back to Marienborn, but they could easily go back to Bethlehem. When Elias finished the manor house, she would plead with him to return to the much larger and more industrialized town. Surely they could use him in some capacity there.

  She glanced toward the house to her right again. She could see Christian Boehler working among the men, but she still couldn’t see Elias. Annabel, the laboress, had told her that there was a chamber in the Sisters House for married couples and each couple was assigned an hour a week to be alone with their spouse. But they had been here for four days now, and she and Elias had yet to receive their assignment.

  The laboress was a married woman—surely she must know that newly married couples needed their time alone. Here in Nazareth, though, building the manor and cleaning the houses seemed to be more important than a wife being with her husband.

  Everything was scheduled and quite punctual here. The blast of trumpets and a trombone awakened them every morning. Mealtimes were the same every day. So was worship. And work. Quarterly hour teachings and intercession. When the men and women came together for worship, her husband always winked at her from afar, but she was never able to speak with him. It had been two whole weeks, back on the ship, since they’d even spoken more than a greeting.

  One of the men separated from the rest of the group, and she watched the man’s long strides as he crossed the courtyard. Then she caught her breath when she recognized him.

  Elias was coming to her.

  She smoothed her hair under her cap and glanced behind her, hoping that Annabel wouldn’t see him.

  Elias grinned as he jogged up the steps. If he wasn’t a member of the Brethren, he could have been a member of Parliament like her father had been. His dark curly hair was tied at the base of his neck, and his white work shirt barely concealed the strength of his arms. He was steady and smart and handsome enough to make the worldliest of girls swoon.

  He sat on a chair beside her. It was a stolen moment with her husband, a moment to cherish.

  She teased him with her smile before she spoke. “Hello, Brother Schmidt.”

  He glanced at her face, then at her dress. Admiration flooded his eyes. “You are beautiful.”

  Hiding her callused hands in the folds of her petticoat, she wondered how beautiful he would think her if he saw her on her knees scrubbing floors or stripping sheets from beds.

  She tilted her head toward him. “You are foolish.”

  “Call me whatever you want, as long as I can be with you.”

  He scooted closer to her and she thought he might kiss her, but he glanced toward the window instead.

  Her gaze dropped to the floor. “We’ll be together again soon, won’t we?”

  “Very soon, I think.” He reached for her hand, hidden in her dress. As he rubbed his fingers over her skin, he didn’t seem to notice, or at least he didn’t mention, the hardened shells forming over her fingertips. “How is your new choir?”

  “I miss Marienborn,” she told him honestly, though she didn’t mention that she missed London even more.

  He nodded toward the Disciple’s House, his grin dimming for a moment. “They have no real need of my skills here in Nazareth.”

  Her heart seemed to leap within her. “Could we go back to Bethlehem?”

  “Not now.” He hesitated. “Elder Graff spoke with me this morning. He said they are praying about sending us on a mission to the Indians.”

  “The Indians?” She swallowed hard, wondering if he’d lost his mind.

  “The people who live in the wilderness around us.” He was teasing her, but this time she didn’t return his smile.

  “I know who the Indians are,” she huffed before forcing the lightness back into her voice. She didn’t want to go on a mission, but it wouldn’t pay to make him angry in the short time they had together. “But I was hoping we might be able to go back to Bethlehem if they have no need of you here.”

  “They have no need of my skills in Bethlehem either.” He shrugged, seemingly oblivious to her dismay. “But they need help building a gristmill in Gnadenhutten, and I could assist them with that.”

  “I’m not supposed to go on a mission,” she insisted. Not like Christian and the others who’d been called to go.

  “It would just be for a few months.” He continued like he hadn’t heard her. “There are almost five hundred Christian Indians who live in and around Gnadenhutten, but they have no mill to grind their grain into flour. We could really help them, Catharine.”

  She rocked back in her chair again. When she’d accepted the assignment to come to Pennsylvania, to be with Elias, the laboress in Marienborn, along with the elders, had assured her she would stay in a town. She knew that assignments sometimes changed, depending on the needs of each community, but the elders had sent Elias specifically to use his building and planning skills in Nazareth. He would even do well building this mill for the Indians, but anyone who knew her—well, they would know she just didn’t fit in an Indian village. She wanted the Indians to know their Savior, but she wouldn’t do well living among them, even if it was temporary while Elias worked with them.

  “God often works in ways we don’t understand.” He watched her face carefully as he spoke. “You will come with me, won’t you?”

  She looked into his pale blue eyes and saw a glimmer of excitement there. Her husband wanted to go to the wilderness. To the Indians. And he wanted to go with her.

  “We’ll have our own tent for the summer,” he whispered. “No one in Gnadenhutten can separate us during the night.”

  She rocked again slowly as she considered his words, imagining herself wrapped up in Elias’s arms for an entire night. Instead of one hour together each week, they’d be together hours upon hours, in the solitude of a tent.

  He looked into her eyes, squeezing her hands. “I won’t go without you.”

  Gnadenhutten couldn’t be any worse than Nazareth. And perhaps there would be no floors to scrub or mounds of dishes to wash. She could care only for herself and her husband, and they would be alone for weeks, maybe even months.

  “The elders have to take it before the lot first. If the lot concurs, we will go.”

  The door flew open beside them, but he didn’t seem to notice the interruption as he embraced her with his smile. The porch groaned under the laboress’s stomps.

  Elias’s eyes lingered on Catharine’s face for a moment longer before he turned.

  “What are you doing here?” the woman demanded, like he’d committed a crime.

  “It is a delight to see you, Sister Annabel.”

  Catharine choked on her laughter, bowing her head to hide her grin.

  “You are supposed to be working.”

  Elias stood up, but his hand remained entwined in Catharine’s. “I took a break to visit my lovely wife.”

  “There are specific times for that, Brother Schmidt.” She turned to Catharine. “Just as there are specific times for you to work and specific times for you to rest. Right now you both must work.”

  Elias winked at Catharine before releasing her hand. With a quick tilt of his hat toward Sister Annabel, he hummed as he walked down the steps.

  Catharine backed toward the opening of the door, her eyes on Elias as he strolled away. She wasn’t sure if she could bear a mission into the wilderness, but if he were going, she certainly wouldn’t stay here without him.

  Chapter Five

  September 1754

>   Brown puddles muddied the pathway toward Nazareth, but there were no clouds above them. Instead, the late summer sky was a piercing blue color so bright that Susanna had to shade her eyes with one of the blankets Marie Kunz had bundled her in for the journey. Her chills were gone, but Marie was worried that the morning air, no matter how warm, would sicken her again.

  Beside her David Kunz drove the wagon, and an Indian man named Samuel rode in the back for propriety—and probably protection—though no one mentioned the latter to her. Samuel held a musket in his hands, and every time she turned around, he was scanning the trees.

  The trees called to her as well. They implored her to explore the forest and the hills, to roam in the fresh air and the wilderness, but it would be a long time before she could explore again. It had taken all her strength this morning just to walk down the hallway of the Sisters House in Bethlehem to attend breakfast, to show all of them that she was strong enough to go to Nazareth.

  The moment her feet touched the floor, she refused to get back into the sickbed, no matter how tired she felt. Christian and the others were preparing to go on a mission to the Indian villages, and she didn’t want to be left behind.

  “How much longer?”

  David chuckled. “Are you excited, Sister Susanna?”

  “Of course,” she replied, though she was more nervous than excited.

  “It won’t be long now. Less than an hour.”

  She shifted under the covering of blankets, trying to prepare herself for the disappointment that Christian had already left on the mission.

  Leaves hung from branches overhead, making a sort of canopy over their path until the ceiling grew so low that she ducked under them. Even so, the branches tugged off her hood and scraped her forehead. Her shoulders hunched over her lap, she rubbed her skin and then pulled the hood over her cap once again.

  When they emerged into the sunshine, David asked, “Did Christian tell you that he and I used to travel together?”