Chapter 5: Five Years Later
The light streaming into the window of the Queen's bedchamber was a light gray, muffled by the overcast clouds and lightly falling snow outside. Just then, a little head with black curls peeked over the down comforter of Queen Elsa's bed, before clambering onto the mattress.
"Mama!" The little girl sat astride her mother's sleeping form and began to lightly shake her. "Wake up, wake up, wake up!"
"Josey..." Elsa mumbled sleepily. "Go back to sleep..."
"I can't!" Josephine moaned dramatically, flopping across Elsa. "The sky's awake! So I'm awake! So we have to play!" Elsa still marveled at how much Josephine had inherited her aunt's personality. "Besides, it's Christmas and we have to build a snowman on Christmas!"
"We can build one when the sun is up," Elsa promised, grabbing for her daughter and tickling her. "Come, lie here with me. Auntie Anna, Uncle Kristoff and the baby will be awake in an hour or two, and then we can head downstairs for presents."
Mother and daughter held each other in the graying, fading darkness. "I love Christmastime," Josephine sighed happily. "We get presents, and build snowmen, and Olaf sings Christmas carols..."
"Off-key," Elsa threw in under her breath.
"And we celebrate Jesus's birthday!" Josephine finished. She fell silent for a moment, before asking, "Mama?"
"Yes, my little snowflake?"
"Is Daddy up there with Jesus?"
Elsa swallowed back the lump in her throat. It may have been half a decade - the anniversary of his death would be approaching after the first of the year - but she still missed Joseph, the father of her child, each and every day. "He is," Elsa promised their daughter. At least, that was what she wished.
Josephine smiled. "He was a soldier," she recited, prompting her mother to tell her the story she had heard since she was a baby.
Elsa nodded. "He was a soldier," she repeated. "In my honor guard. He then served on the front lines in the Wesleton-Arendelle war... which we won."
"But Daddy went up to heaven to be with Jesus," Josephine finished.
Elsa nodded again, more solemnly. Glancing to the window, she could see the sun beginning to poke its rays over the mountains just beyond. "Auntie and Uncle are probably up. You wanna open some presents?"
Josephine grinned toothily. "Yeah!" And she leaped off the bed, scampering for the door. Rising languidly from her bed, Elsa donned a bathrobe over her simple nightgown and followed.
Descending the staircase, Elsa found Josephine already at the foot of the Christmas tree in the Great Hall, chatting animatedly with her Uncle Kristoff. Sven was using his snout to boost Olaf up to the top of the tree, where the magical snowman placed the star. Anna now glided into the hall, her hair a rumbled mess and holding a toddler in her arms.
"Josey!"
"Joan!" Josephine beamed at her little cousin. Joan was almost three, and certainly not a baby anymore, but nevertheless, the habit of referring to her as the baby of the family stuck. Elsa had been overjoyed to learn that Anna had fallen pregnant when Josephine was about two.
"Presents!" Josephine squealed, diving for the piled stash under the tree. Elsa held her back.
"Josephine Swanson," she scolded lightly. "You know we have to wait for everyone to select a present before we open."
Josephine nodded sheepishly. "Yes, Mama."
The presents were glorious and thoughtful, and many hugs and kisses and thanks were given. Before long, Josephine and Joan (and Olaf) had all begged Elsa to go outside and play in the snow and build snowmen.
That is where Elsa now found herself on this Christmas morning, watching the royal little ones play in the snow of the castle courtyard. The Captain of the Guard appeared by her side on the front stoop.
"Your Majesty!" he clicked his heels together and stood at attention. "All quiet during the night; nothing to report."
Elsa smiled gently. "Thank you, Captain." He had been a loyal officer to her these many years, all set to retire at the summer season. The Captain now joined the Queen in watching the children and Olaf play, his gaze fixated particularly on Josephine. All at once, Elsa heard the Captain gasp.
"She's... Joseph Swanson's. Isn't she?" Elsa gaped at him, too stunned to deny it. She nodded slowly, amazed that he had figured it out.
"How...?"
The Captain smiled sadly. "I never forget a soldier. I remember each and every one of my men, Your Majesty. And the skills that boy had..." he shook his head. "I don't get such qualified recruits too often." He turned his head to look directly at Elsa. "Your secret is safe with me, my Queen."
Elsa tamped down the lump in her throat. "Thank you," she murmured.
"Mama, Mama!" Josephine suddenly came running up. "Can you make a present with your magic? To take over to Grandpa at Fisherman's Wharf?"
Elsa smiled. "Of course, precious." Harold Swanson, the former Commander of Anna's Honor Guard and Joseph's father, had been stunned to learn that his son had fathered the heir to the Arendelle throne.
"I loved your son," Elsa had told the old man on her first visit, an infant Josephine in her arms who looked the spitting image of her father. "And this is his child. Will you have us?"
She need not have asked. Harold had warmly accepted Elsa as a daughter, and was thrilled to have a grandchild in Josephine. He seemed to view it as an honor, to have ties of blood to the royal family whom he had served at the peak of his career. From time to time, the Queen and her daughter would travel around the fjord to visit him in the shantytown village along Fisherman's Wharf where he still lived and where Joseph had grown up. The old man had vowed to take the secret of the little, future Queen's origins to his grave.
The Captain of the Guard had now joined Harold, Kristoff, Anna and Elsa in that elite group who knew of Josephine's heritage. It wasn't for others' lack of trying to find out the answer. As Elsa had predicted, when her pregnancy was revealed, the Council had demanded to know who the father was, and if he was of royal blood. Really, the answer to the latter question had been all they cared about, and Elsa had refused to give up her Joseph. All she would say on the matter was that she had been swept into a romantic, passionate affair that had come to a close. And that was the end of it; no matter how much her Council or subjects pressed, Elsa refused to budge. Eventually, the little heir's birth had caused so much euphoria that people stopped asking. Or if they still wondered, they didn't care. Arendelle had an heir and the health of the monarchy was assured for decades; besides, the little monarch had royal blood by virtue of her mother. Even if the father was not of royal blood (and there were those who had theorized this), what was done was done and by now, most everyone presumed that the father was either long gone or long dead. No one had seen Elsa with a man, or any man with the little monarch, her child.
Elsa still missed Joseph deeply, and had vowed long ago that she would never marry, or even ever love again. She had secretly taken Joseph's last name - Swanson - but only in private; not even her royal signature on any official palace documents bore the surname. Only Kristoff and Anna knew of this last act of faithfulness, this small monument of fidelity, and had made it clear that they understood Elsa's reasoning. For Elsa, it was a pang in her heart, a painful reminder of what she had lost.
Yet at the same time, Joseph had blessed her with a great gift - a child whom she could mother. Someone who she could love and be there for her whole life, in a way she hadn't been for Anna. And as Elsa looked up at the winter sky, she sent up a silent prayer of thanks.
Well done, my good and faithful soldier, she thought. Rest now, Joseph, my love. I will be with you. Someday.