Chapter 6
Katharina
Long shadows stretched over the cobblestone roads of Bamberg as I made my way back to the convent. Mother Agnes had sent me on an errand across the city, to pick up some wine from the vintner. He’d smiled too wide when I entered, given me too good a price. He always did when I was the one who came.
My soft shoes made little sound as I approached the convent, molded to my feet by years of use. They were barely better than walking barefoot, and often in the garden I preferred it. But you never knew what foulness you might find on the streets of Bamberg.
Today, it seemed the foulness had found me.
A lean figure rounded the corner ahead of me, and I would have known that ascetic face even in the pitch black. Vicar Forner. I tried to duck into an alley, but it was already too late.
“Ah, just the lost little lamb I was thinking of.”
I clutched the wine closer to my chest and kept my eyes down. “Good evening, Vicar Forner. I am on an errand for Mother Agnes.”
“At this hour? How dutiful.” He stepped closer, blocking the narrow street. His frame was thin, but he might as well have been a brick wall. “I have been meaning to speak with you, Katharina.”
My stomach churned, but I kept my face still. “What about, Vicar?”
“I’ve heard that you’ve become quite talented in Latin. Such a…gifted tongue you must have.”
His eyes pierced me as they always did, the eyes of a hunter just waiting for his prey to slip up, to make its fatal mistake. As such, I said nothing.
“I wonder, what use would a poor girl such as yourself have for such training?”
The wine bottle trembled in my hands. I tightened my grip until it stopped. There were so many things I wanted to say, that to anyone else I might have said. But not to him.
“Perhaps no use at all.”
“No use at all,” he repeated, tasting the words. “Your mother said something very similar, as I recall.”
Gnarled fingers held my face as she screamed. His fingers. This is what you prayed for; this is what you deserve.
“I was a child when my mother died, Vicar. I would not know what she said.”
“No, you would not.” He smiled then, thin lips flattening into nothing. “But children grow up, don’t they? And the apple, as they say...” He let the silence finish for him. His hand flexed, and I prepared to run.
But then he stepped aside, gesturing for me to pass with a sweep of his hand, as if granting me some great kindness. I walked past him without a word, keeping my pace steady.
“Give my regards to Mother Agnes,” he called after me. “And do be careful, Katharina. The streets are not safe for young women, not yet anyway.”
I did not turn around. I walked, my feet keeping the same steady pace the entire way, until I reached the convent door and slipped inside.
Only then did I let myself lean against the wall, pressing the cool glass of the wine bottle against my forehead, my entire body shaking.
The bottle nearly fell from my grip as memories of fingers and flames clawed behind my eyes.
Keep to the shadows.
I’d grown too bold, been careless flirting with the vintner, thinking of my lessons with Heinrich. That life was not for me; I had to remember that.
I forced my hands to stop shaking, grounding myself in the darkness of the convent’s halls.
I had work to do. When my heart finally settled, I dropped the wine in the kitchen, then made my way out to the field behind the building.
The sun was nearly set, and Leibchen would certainly give me a nasty look for being late.
But as I stepped back into the evening air, where I expected to hear her impatient lowing, I heard nothing. Not even the bees.
Then, like a crack across the sky, the caw of a single raven swooped over the dairy house.
“No…no, no, no.” I gripped the front of my dress, hoisting it as I sprinted across the yard. I slammed into the wooden gate, my fingers fumbling with the latch that suddenly seemed foreign, uncooperative.
The field stretched empty before me. Where Leibchen should have stood by the fence, waiting for evening milking, there was only trampled grass. Dark stains marked the earth near the gate—fresh soil overturned.
Numb legs carried me forward, my mind refusing to process what my eyes saw. There—the rope they’d used to lead her, discarded in the mud. Here—deep hoofprints where she’d resisted, tried to plant her feet. She’d fought them. My gentle, patient Leibchen had fought.
A glint of metal caught my eye. The bell from her collar, half-buried in the churned earth.
I fell to my knees and dug it out with shaking fingers, the brass still warm from the day’s sun.
Or perhaps from her neck. How long ago had they taken her?
While I was smiling back at the vintner?
While I was walking home, thinking myself so clever for saving the convent a few coins? While I cowered from an old man?
“She was old.” Mother Agnes’ voice came from behind me, carefully neutral. “Past her usefulness. The butcher paid well, enough to buy grain for a month.”
I didn’t turn. Couldn’t. If I looked at her practical face, her folded hands, I might scream. Or worse, I might strike her—and then I’d burn not for witchcraft but for assaulting a bride of Christ.
“When?” My voice came out raw.
“This afternoon. It was quick.”
Quick. As if that mattered. As if ten years of faithful service could be erased with the single swing of a blade.
“That’s why you sent me away.”
“I wanted to spare your feelings. I knew you were…attached to her.”
I laughed—hollow. When had the Reverend Mother ever considered my feelings?
I knew the truth. She’d been afraid. Afraid of what I might have done had I been present when she broke the fragile peace I’d maintained for ten years at the convent.
Not a nun, but a shadow. And what happens to shadows when they’re held to the light? They burn.
I rubbed my stinging eyes with the heels of my hands.
As I stood slowly, I heard her sharp intake of breath, accompanied by the wheeze she carried each spring as the plants bloomed.
Anger, red and hot, burned in my chest. My nails bit into my palms as it surged through me.
I rounded on her and watched her eyes go wide, the whites stark with fear.
Keep to the shadows. Help those who cannot help themselves. Survive.
Tears pricked my eyes, but my mother’s words echoed in my ears. Push it down. Stay in control. Stay hidden.
With nowhere else to put it, the anger drove me forward. I was moving. I was running, with no destination in mind. I let the fury bleed out as my lungs heaved, a sharp pain like a dagger between my ribs.
I ran until I couldn’t, doubling over to keep from collapsing. Beneath me were the stone steps leading to our chapel. I had no destination in mind, but my feet always seemed to lead me to one place—and that was to him.
The chapel was empty and dark, save for a single candle burning at the altar. I knelt on the cold stone, my knees already aching, but the physical pain was better than the hollow ache in my chest.
Ten years. Ten years of morning milkings, of whispered secrets, of her patient brown eyes watching me grow from a frightened child into…whatever I was now. She’d been my only true confessor. I’d told her every worry, every sin.
And they had swallowed her, just as one day they would swallow me.
I heard footsteps behind me but didn’t turn. “I wish to pray alone.”
“Katharina.” Heinrich’s voice was gentle. “I heard…about the cow.”
Another bitter laugh escaped me. From his lips, I heard the ridiculousness of it. “The cow. Yes. Just a cow.”
He moved closer, his wool robe rustling as he sat on the step beside me. Not looming over me, not assuming authority. Just…present.
“Tell me about her.”
“Why?” The word came out sharp. “So you can remind me that animals don’t have souls? That grieving for a beast is foolish?”
“No.” His voice remained steady. “So you can remember her properly.”
The kindness in his tone broke something in me. “She was old. Useless. Her milk had dried to almost nothing. It was practical to—” My voice cracked. “She trusted me. Every morning for ten years, she trusted me, and I couldn’t even be there when they—”
Because that was the truth of it. Mother Agnes feared what I would have done had I been there when the butcher came.
Feared I would transform into some twisted hag or cursed the very earth beneath me.
But in truth, I would have just held her.
I would have let her know she wasn’t alone in those last moments.
Tears came then, hot and filled with shame. I was crying over livestock when women burned weekly in the square. But Leibchen had been constant, safe in a way nothing else could be.
Heinrich was quiet for a long moment. “When I was twelve, we had a dog. Bartholomew—a terrible name for a terrible dog. He bit everyone except me, stole food, barked at nothing. But he slept by my bed every night. One day he disappeared. My father was less than upset, but I went looking.” He paused.
“I found him torn to bits by wolves. He’d been protecting our small herd of sheep. ”
I looked at him then, his eyes bright with memory.
“I buried him in the orchard and told no one. My father would have said I was weak, crying over an animal. But grief doesn’t follow rules of proportion, does it?”
“No,” I whispered. “It doesn’t.”
We sat in silence for a moment. Then Heinrich shifted, moving toward the confessional. “Come.”
“Heinrich—”
“Not as your priest. Just…sometimes it helps to speak in the dark.”
I rose and entered the opposite side of the confessional. The familiar scent of wood and old incense enveloped me. Through the screen, I could barely make out his profile.
“Speak freely,” he murmured. “Whatever weighs on you.”