Chapter 11 Katharina
Katharina
The chapel was cool after the close heat of the sick house.
I slipped through the side door and found Heinrich already in the rectory, arranging his books on the small table where we took our lessons.
Sunlight slanted through the stained glass, painting him in fragments of color—gold across his back, red along his jaw.
He looked normal, entirely himself. The same slight furrow between his brows when he concentrated, the same careful way he handled the pages of his precious books.
I waited for something to feel wrong.
Nothing did, and somehow that was worse.
“Katharina.” He glanced up and smiled. “Good. I thought we might work on something new today. Perhaps Isaiah, about those who have walked in darkness?”
“Of course,” I said, moving to take my seat across from him. “‘Those who dwelt in the land of the shadow of death, upon them a light has dawned.’1”
“Just so.” He opened the book and found the passage. His hands were steady. No smoke billowed from beneath his nails, no shadows twitched within his veins. I watched his fingers trace the text and remembered—tried not to remember—how they’d felt against my face.
It was a dream. Nothing but a dream.
“Populus qui ambulabat in tenebris,” he began, then paused. “Something is upsetting you.”
I jerked my gaze up from his hands, where I’d been watching the veins beneath his skin. “I’m sorry, Father. I’m listening.”
“You’re looking at me as though I’ve grown horns.” His tone was light, teasing, but his eyes searched mine with concern. “Is something wrong?”
Yes. No. I don’t know.
“No, everything is fine,” I mumbled, which wasn’t entirely a lie. He was fine. It was I who was haunted.
If something had taken him, wouldn’t I know? Wouldn’t I feel it?
Heinrich gently closed the book, setting it aside.
“If something is weighing on you, you know you can tell me. In confession, if you’d prefer the formality.
Whatever you need.” He gestured back toward the chapel.
“I’m here to help carry your burdens, Katharina.
That’s what I’m for. Do not fear to use me. ”
His last words sent heat rising along my neck, which only made the guilt squeeze tighter around my heart.
This was Heinrich, my priest, my shepherd. There was nothing but kindness in his voice, and yet my mind still wandered toward desire. Thoughts that—should I voice them—would damn me surely as my actions in the well house.
“Yes,” I heard myself say. “I’d like to confess.”
We rose together. He held the small door of the booth aside so I could enter first—always the small courtesies with him, the gestures that made me feel cared for.
I knelt in the dim space and heard him settle on the other side of the screen.
Close enough that I could hear his breathing.
Far enough that I couldn’t see his face.
Maybe that made it easier.
“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.” The words came automatically after years of practice. “It has been one week since my last confession.”
“Go on, child.”
Child. He always called me that during confession, and I hated it. Hated being reduced to something small and blameless when I felt anything but.
“I have been…struggling with desire,” I began carefully.
The wood was hard beneath my knees. I focused on that small discomfort and used it to anchor myself.
“Not only sinful desire, though there is that too. But I desire…” What did I desire?
To live in a world that wasn’t waiting for one misstep to tear me down?
To help those in need without everything working against me?
“I desire…” I faltered, then pushed forward.
“I desire things I have no right to want.”
Silence from the other side. Then, after a deep breath, “What makes you think you have no right?”
The question caught me off guard. “Because I—because it’s not my place. Because wanting is how women fall.”
“Wanting is human. That is the nature God gave us,” Heinrich said, and there was something soft in his voice. “That’s not the same as falling.”
My hands twisted together in my lap. Then why does it feel like I’ve been falling ever since they took her away?
Another pause. I could hear him shift on the other side of the screen, imagined him leaning closer.
“Tell me what you want, Katharina.”
The command in his voice made something low in my belly tighten. That wasn’t how he normally spoke in confession, but it freed a small part of me that had been waiting for permission to release everything simmering inside me.
I thought of the couples dancing around the bonfires. I thought of my dream, before it had turned to nightmare. Of his hands in my hair, his tongue meeting mine.
“I want…” God help me. “I want—” The words caught in my throat. “I want to be touched without shame. To be wanted. To want and not feel monstrous for it.”
“And you think these desires make you sinful?”
“Don’t they?”
“I think,” Heinrich said slowly, “that God gave you a mind and a heart and a body, and he does not give gifts he means to be refused.” A pause. “But perhaps I’m not the right priest to ask about the virtue of denial.”
A shiver ran up my spine. This was dangerous ground. We both knew it.
“I don’t know how to stop wanting,” I confessed. “And I don’t know if I want to stop. It burns inside me, and I cannot rid myself of it.”
At that, he chuckled. It wasn’t warm or amused, but dark and edged with a bitterness I had never heard.
“And that is the greatest sin of them all, isn’t it?”
My stomach sank, the dark shadows that followed me everywhere threatening to swallow me whole. I was wicked. I was damned. I had reached too far, wanted too much. I should have listened to my mother, to the Church. I should have stayed small, demure—invisible.
I pressed my forehead against the screen, close enough that I could almost see him. “Then give me penance, Father. Tell me how to be good.”
“What sort of penance would you have?”
“However you think I should be…corrected. Prayer hasn’t been enough. I need this want driven out of me.”
The silence stretched. I could hear my own heartbeat, too loud in the enclosed space. His breathing changed, quickening.
“Katharina.” My name, barely above a whisper. Not child. Not anymore.
I waited, trembling, my whole body strung tight with anticipation, for him to tell me what punishment my wanting had earned.
Then I heard him move. The door of the confessional opened, the deep red glow of the late afternoon sun caught in the stained glass outlining him.
He placed a hand on the wood behind my head, leaning down.
The backs of his fingers traced along my cheek as he said, “Is that what you desire, my dove. To be punished for your sins? To transmute those lustful thoughts and desires through pain?” His voice was different than I’d ever heard it. Lower…and richer.
My heart raced, my pulse thumping beneath his fingers as they trailed lower. “Yes, please…”
Those long fingers continued, sliding to the nape of my neck, tugging my bonnet free and lacing through my hair.
His gaze never left mine—those dark, downturned eyes that were sharper than I remembered, seeming to glow with the crimson light of the fading day.
His grip tightened, and my head snapped back, a small gasp escaping me.
He pressed his lips to my ear, his voice rough with restraint.
“The saints suffered exquisitely for their faith. They burned with devotion. Tell me, when you pray, does it feel like fire in your belly? Does it consume you? Because surrender should hurt before it grants you grace.”
“Yes, Father.” The same flames burned in me now, licking over my skin as every hair rose, desperate for his admonishment.
He released my hair, a shiver traveling down my spine, his fingers following it until he gripped my hands.
My rosary hung heavy between my trembling fingers, each bead worn smooth by years of prayer.
Heinrich observed, his much larger hand encompassing mine. “Are you afraid, Katharina?”
“No.” It came out a whimper.
“Lies in the confessional.” He clicked his tongue. “Another sin to add to your collection.”
His fingers encircled my wrists, his touch searing even through the late spring chill that permeated the stone church.
“Do you know what the blessed martyrs understood that we’ve forgotten?” He began winding the rosary around my wrists, the wooden beads pressing into my skin. “They knew that flesh must be abused to free the spirit. That pain and pleasure are both prayers in different languages to the same God.”
The beads bit deeper with each loop, the silver crucifix dangling between my bound hands like a pendulum.
This was not the Heinrich I knew, whose hands were soft and hesitant.
This Heinrich moved with a viciousness I didn’t recognize, each twist of the rosary calculated to press against the delicate bones of my wrists.
His breath was hot against my throat, and I could smell something different on him. Beneath the familiar scent of incense and old books was a dark omen—brimstone.
“You dream of fire because you are fire, Katharina,” he murmured, his lips grazing my ear. “I’ve watched you pretend to be the quiet ash they crave for years. Watched you hide your nature behind prayers and penance. But I know what you really are.”
The rosary tightened another degree, and I bit my lip to keep from crying out. The church was empty at this hour—the last penitent had shuffled home—but still, the walls had ears in Bamberg.
“What am I?” I asked, though I feared the answer.
He pulled back enough to look at me, and in the dying light, his face was transformed. The gentle scholarly features I’d memorized were sharpened somehow, made hungry. His pupils were blown wide despite the light, turning his gaze into something…unholy.