Chapter 3
Katharina
The chapel was empty save for Father Heinrich, who knelt before the altar with his back to me, morning light streaming through the stained glass to paint his black cassock in shades of crimson and sapphire.
His lips moved in silent prayer, and I hesitated at the threshold, unwilling to disturb his communion with God—or perhaps simply wanting to watch him a moment longer while he didn’t know I was there.
The truth was, men had never held much interest for me.
I’d seen what their appetites wrought, and the consequences more acutely than almost anyone else in this city.
I sometimes wished I were like a few of the sisters in the convent, who found more than warmth in the beds of their compatriots, but that hadn’t interested me either.
I assumed I was simply destined for spinsterhood.
That was…until Heinrich arrived and showed me everything a man should be: kind, intelligent… dark and handsome.
Two years he had been in Bamberg now, arriving just as the witch trials reached their fever pitch—a refugee priest from somewhere farther north, driven here by the war’s endless appetite for destruction.
He’d taken over our small parish when Father Matthias had succumbed to the plague and, with it, inherited me.
He shifted, and I saw him wince—his knees troubled him, though he’d never admit it. Too many hours on cold stone, too many nights spent praying for a city intent on devouring itself.
“You’re late,” he said without turning, and despite everything, I smiled. He always knew when I was there. “The plans of the diligent lead surely to abundance, but everyone who is hasty comes only to poverty.”
“Proverbs, I know. Sister Margareta needed tending,” I replied, moving into the chapel proper. “Her joints grow worse with the spring rains.” The lie came easily.
He rose carefully, one hand on the altar for support, and faced me.
I noticed how the wool of his dark cassock stretched across his broad chest, as though it were slightly too small.
Heinrich was barely thirty, but the last two years had aged him—silver threading the dark hair at his temples, lines carved deep around down-turned eyes that had seen too much suffering.
A strong jaw paired well with the bump in his otherwise straight nose.
Still, when he looked at me, something in his expression softened what could have been a harsh face, a warmth tightening my chest with dangerous hope.
His gaze lingered on my face, tracing the curve of my cheek where the morning light caught it, before dropping to his hands.
“And how is our good Sister?” He moved toward the door to his rectory, where he’d laid out our books—my Latin lessons, the excuse we both still used for these morning meetings.
“As stoic as ever.” I took my usual seat across from him. “She insists her suffering brings her closer to Christ.”
“Suffering.” Heinrich’s mouth twisted slightly as he sat, his movements careful. “This city has developed quite an appetite for it.”
He opened the Bible to where we’d left off last week—Paul’s letters to the Corinthians—but his eyes found mine again before dropping to the text. There was something in his expression today I couldn’t quite read, a weight that pulled him toward me even as he held himself back.
“Just yesterday, Frau Weber came to me,” he murmured, adjusting the book between us. “She could barely speak through her tears. Her neighbor was taken to the Drudenhaus because someone claimed to have seen her gathering herbs by moonlight.”
My stomach dropped.
“Herbs,” he continued, his voice carefully neutral.
“As if God’s creation itself could be evidence of evil.
” His fingers traced the edge of the page, and I watched the gentle movement, the careful grace of his hands.
“I gave her what comfort I could. Told her that Christ himself knew the pain of false accusation.”
“You’re kind to them,” I said softly. “Even when they are condemned. You stay with them until the end.”
“What else can I do?” His gaze met mine and held it. There was so much pain there, something I knew he let no one else see. “I cannot stop the trials. But I can ensure no one dies uncomforted, unprayed for.”
He paused, drawing a deep breath, his gaze dropping to my lips for just a moment before returning to the book. “Your Latin improves each week. Read from here.”
I leaned forward to see where he indicated, and was wrapped in his scent. He smelled of leather, incense, bread, and a warmth that was distinctly him. His breath caught slightly at my nearness.
“‘Caritas patiens est, benigna est’,” I began, my tongue wrapping around the now familiar words. “‘Caritas non aemulatur, non agit perperam—’1”
“Slower,” he interrupted gently, and without warning, his hand covered mine on the table. “Feel the weight of each word. Paul chose them carefully.”
My pulse jumped beneath his touch. His thumb moved slightly—just barely—against the crescent-shaped scar on my hand. I began again, more measured this time, achingly aware of his hand on mine, the warmth of his palm, the slight callus on his thumb from years of holding a quill.
When I reached “non gaudet super iniquitate,” his fingers tightened almost imperceptibly.
“What does that mean to you?” he asked, his voice rougher than before. “Love rejoices not in iniquity.”
I looked up to find him studying my face with an intensity that made heat rise to my cheeks. “That love doesn’t delight in wrongdoing,” I said, my voice barely steady. “That true charity finds no joy in sin.”
“Sin,” he repeated. “Strange how many things this city calls sin that Christ never spoke against.” His thumb traced a small circle on my wrist, and I wondered if he could feel my racing pulse. “Healing and mercy. Even love has become damnation in this city.”
“Heinrich,” I whispered, a warning and a plea combined. This was too close to the truth we kept buried beneath Latin and propriety. My entire focus was on his face, on how close and very alone we were.
“Sometimes”—he leaned closer, near enough that I could see the warm shades in his dark eyes—“I wonder if the true sin is in the silence. In standing by while innocents suffer.”
The words hung between us, heavy. I’d never heard him speak so directly against the trials before. I turned my hand beneath his, to hold it, to find just a bit more of the touch that haunted my dreams as much as the flames.
“Heinrich, has something happened? Are you all right?” This wasn’t like him. He was so strong, always greeting me and the rest of our parish with a smile and warmth despite what was happening outside the stone walls of our church. If he was breaking, what hope did the rest of us have?
“Forgive me.” He pulled back, but slowly, his fingers trailing across my palm as he withdrew his hand.
The loss of contact felt immeasurably empty.
He rubbed his temples, a gesture I recognized as his way of resisting dangerous territory.
“I slept poorly. The screams from the Drudenhaus carry far at night.”
Without thinking, I reached back across the table and linked our fingers—no longer something that could be brushed off as a mistake. There was no way to deny the intention. He went very still, looking down at where my fingers rested entwined with his.
“You’re not responsible for what happens in this city,” I said, squeezing tight.
He shook his head, his voice barely above a whisper. “I hear their confessions. I give them absolution before they light the pyres. I stand witness while—” He rolled his shoulders, and I watched his face tighten in pain as he did. Was he injured?
“Your mother. I’ve read the trial records,” he said.
It snapped me out of my worry. I pulled my hand back, my heart racing. “Why?”
“Because I needed to understand. How a city could murder a healer and call it justice. How men of God could—” He stopped himself again, closing the Bible softly. “She was accused by a woman she’d helped through difficult births. Did you know that?”
“Yes.” The word came out quiet. So he didn’t know the whole truth, then. “A noblewoman who couldn’t accept the fate God bestowed upon her instead cast that guilt onto my mother.”
“Katharina—”
“It is the truth.” I flexed my now empty fingers in my lap.
“And do you hate her for it?” he asked.
My gaze lingered on my lap, my fingers still opening and closing slowly.
I had thought on it often. The Bishop’s sister still lived because of my mother.
She slept warm and fed in her large house while I slept in the damp cold of the convent.
She lived each day under the protection of the Witch Bishop while I waited day and night for the Schergen’s knock on my door.
But it was what I deserved. You prayed for this.
“‘Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone—isn’t that what you taught me?”
“That’s scripture,” Heinrich said gently. “I asked what you feel.”
I kept my eyes on my lap. “I try to forgive. Every day I try. Sometimes I think I succeed, and then I see her in the market, buying silk while children beg for bread, and the rage returns.” I pressed my palms against my eyes.
“You’re so patient, Heinrich. So kind to everyone, even those who deserve nothing but contempt. I wish I could be more like you.”
“No.” The word came out sharp enough that my gaze shot up. Heinrich had shifted closer, his brown eyes intense. “Never wish that.”
“But—”
“You should never be anyone but yourself, Katharina.” His voice held a fierceness I’d rarely heard. “God created you perfectly.”
“You’re the only one who thinks that,” I whispered, my throat tight.
“Because they do not see you as I do.” He reached out, his fingers ghosting along my jaw without quite touching. “They do not see the kindness you cannot stop, no matter the danger. Just like your mother.”
Just like your mother. Did Heinrich suspect the work I did? The thought should have terrified me—light breaking through the shadows I used to conceal myself. It should have, but something in it felt like relief. I was so tired of hiding.
“The Bishop’s sister lives because of your mother’s skill,” he continued. “And she knows it. Her accusation wasn’t about faith—it was about guilt she couldn’t bear. Your mother held up a mirror to her helplessness, and she shattered it rather than look at her own reflection.”
A tear slipped down my cheek. “Sometimes I think my anger will consume me.”
“Wanting to change this world for the better is not a sin,” he said softly. “It’s natural to desire the power to help the helpless.”
I stared at him, startled. This wasn’t the theology he usually taught.
He seemed to catch himself, straightening. “But that’s a discussion for another day. For now…” He opened the Bible again, sliding it toward me. “Continue with Corinthians. Though remember”—his eyes held mine—“patience doesn’t mean accepting injustice.”
I bent back to the text, but I could feel him watching me, his gaze like a physical touch on my face, my throat, my hands as they turned the pages.
When I stumbled over a particularly complex passage, he rose and came around the table to stand behind me, leaning over my shoulder to point at the words.
“Here,” he murmured, his breath warm against my ear. “The verb construction changes.”
I turned my head slightly and found his face impossibly close—close enough to see the shadow of stubble along his jaw, the way his lips parted as he breathed. Our eyes met and held, and for a heartbeat, neither of us moved.
The chapel door creaked open, making us jerk apart. Brother Thomas entered, his pinched face suspicious as always. Heinrich stepped back smoothly, though not before I saw the flush high on his cheekbones.
“Father Heinrich,” Brother Thomas said, his eyes lingering on me with distaste, taking in my proximity to the priest. “The Bishop requests your presence at the cathedral.”
“Of course.” Heinrich’s expression shifted to neutral politeness, though his hands trembled slightly as he closed the Bible. “We’ll continue your lesson tomorrow, Frau Katharina.”
I moved to leave, but Heinrich caught my elbow as I passed—a brief touch, yet his thumb brushed the sensitive skin of my inner arm, and I knew it was deliberate.
“Be careful today,” he murmured, too low for Brother Thomas to hear. “The city grows more dangerous by the hour.”
Then he was gone, following Brother Thomas into the morning sun.
I stood alone, my skin still burning where he’d touched me, the Latin words lingering on my tongue.
Caritas patiens est. Love is patient.
I pressed my fingers to the place on my wrist where his thumb had traced circles, thinking of the way he’d said my name.
Patient love might be holy. But this—this ache between us, this careful dance of light touches and lingering looks—felt like something else entirely. Something that had no place in Paul’s letters or in a city where desire itself could be named witchcraft.
I gathered the books with shaking hands, knowing that tomorrow I would return, that we would sit too close and touch too often and pretend it meant nothing.
Love rejoiced not in iniquity, perhaps.
But my heart had a taste for the forbidden, and I’d never been good at resisting.
1 New International Version, 1 Cor 13:4-5