Chapter 18
Katharina
Ididn’t sleep. My dreams shifted between small Wilhelm’s fragile face and snakes that curled around my body, squeezing so tight I could barely breathe. Their split tongues caressed my skin like a lover, whispering, No more lies, Katharina. You knew. You have always known.
The whispering didn’t cease as I joined the crowd headed for the cathedral. The bells rang, and I felt their reverberation deep in my chest as I found a seat.
I took my usual place near the back, in the shadow of a pillar where I could observe without being observed.
The pews filled slowly with merchants and their wives, those with far less, and a scattering of nobles in fine wool.
I saw members of our parish gathered as they did every week to hear Heinrich speak of God’s love and mercy.
He stood at the pulpit in his black cassock, hands resting casually on the lectern.
To the congregation, he appeared exactly as he always had: their gentle priest, their shepherd through these dark times.
But in the striking golden light from the cathedral windows, I could see the embers moving behind his dark eyes.
His voice, when he spoke, was the same voice that had guided this flock for years.
Its deep tone resonated through the nave.
“My children,” he began. “Today we speak of temptation. Of how the Devil works not through force, but through seduction.”
His eyes found mine across the crowded church, and I stared back. I would not give in to whatever game this was. Not anymore.
“For the Devil knows,” he continued, never breaking my gaze, “that the sweetest corruption comes not from force, but from surrender. What is forced must be maintained. But when we choose our damnation, when we beg for it, the Devil knows true ecstasy.”
My fists clenched as the corner of his mouth ticked up. He was mocking me now, but I would not—
Something brushed my ankle.
I looked down, but nothing was there. Only shadows pooling beneath the pew, dark against the cathedral’s light.
“Consider how the serpent tempted Eve.” Heinrich’s voice was everywhere now. “Not with violence or force, but with knowledge. With the promise of becoming something…more.”
Another touch at my ankle. I peered down to see nothing but shadows—ordinary shadows. But then they moved, serpentine tendrils coiling around my calf beneath my skirt.
I bit my lip to keep from gasping.
The shadows crept higher, a cold pressure against my knee, then my thigh. My hands gripped the edge of the pew until my knuckles went white. I should run, should scream. Anything but sit here and let this happen.
I made to stand, and Frau Weber glanced back at me, a stern look on her face. Too many questions—there would be too many questions if I left in the middle of the sermon. He knew that.
I sat back down, the unholy things beneath my skirt winding tighter. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move. I could only watch Heinrich’s lips shape words I knew were meant for me alone.
“And when she bit into that apple,” he said, his voice dropping to barely a whisper that somehow carried to every corner, “do you think she regretted it? Or did she find the juice sweeter than any paradise could offer?”
The shadows pressed between my thighs, and no amount of squeezing stopped their incessant climb higher.
I pressed my knuckles to my mouth—the very image of a devout parishioner—to muffle the sound that tried to escape.
The skin of my chest blossomed red beneath my partlet, my corrupted body responding to the impossible touch.
For I had been corrupted. How else could I explain this dark magic having such power over me, in the House of God no less?
But when a devil stood at the pulpit, was this even still holy ground?
I squirmed, trying to move away from the pressure that now toyed with my clit, featherlight touches more infuriating than anything else.
But Heinrich’s eyes held mine, and I saw him smile—just slightly.
I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. I glared back at him, but his smile only grew.
“The Devil is clever,” he continued. “He knows that flesh is weak. That even the most faithful can be brought to their knees by the right…pressure.”
The shadows surged upward, and I doubled forward, falling to my knees.
Frau Weber turned to look at me again, concern mixed with annoyance, but I waved her away, pressing my hand to my stomach as if ill.
Instead, what I felt was ungodly, insistent pressure, more consuming than his fingers or tongue had ever been.
The shadows pulsed with an ancient heartbeat, stroking deeper with each throb.
“He finds the cracks in our virtue.” There was no doubt now—amusement threaded through Heinrich’s voice. “The places where we’re already broken, already wanting. And there, in that sacred wound between desire and duty, he makes his home.”
The shadows’ rhythm quickened, and I could taste iron where I’d bitten my lip to keep silent.
I pressed my thighs together, trying to suppress what was building inside me, but the shadows merely tightened their grip.
They knew my body better than I knew it myself.
They knew exactly where to touch, how much pressure to apply, when to advance and when to retreat until I trembled on the edge of something catastrophic.
But just as every time before, I yielded to him, my hips moving with the same blasphemous pattern. I ground against the edge of the pew, not resisting temptation, but begging for it. Just as he’d said. And God help me, I did not want him to stop.
“And here is the terrible truth,” Heinrich declared, his eyes boring into mine. “Sometimes we don’t want to be saved, for the fall is sweeter than grace. Sometimes we find God not in the light, but in the exquisite darkness of our own undoing.”
He began a call-and-response hymn. The crowd repeated his Latin words, most not knowing their meaning, only feeling the devotion in them and the power of the cathedral’s organ.
But he’d taught me well, and I understood every verse.
I felt the vibration of the music and how it echoed through my shaking legs.
Deity here in hiding, whom I do adore,
Masked by these shadows, shape and nothing more,
See, Lord, at thy service I give my heart,
For it is lost in wonder at the God thou art. 1
Lord, whom I look at shrouded here below,
I beseech thee, send me what I thirst for so,
Some day to gaze on thee face to face in light
And be blest for ever with thy glory’s sight.2
Amen.
In the darkness behind my closed eyes, the shadows finished what they had started.
I came apart silently, teeth buried in my lip, fingernails digging into the wooden pew hard enough to leave marks.
The pleasure crashed through me in waves, holy and profane all at once.
And through it all, I heard Heinrich’s voice leading the faithful in prayer, asking God’s blessing on this congregation, on this city, on all who sought the light.
When I opened my eyes, he was beaming.
“Let us pray,” Heinrich said, and the congregation bowed their heads.
The shadows retreated as if they had never existed, leaving me shaking in the sudden absence of their touch. My thighs trembled and my shift clung to my sweat-dampened skin. I looked like what I was—a woman thoroughly debauched in the middle of Sunday Mass.
When the congregation lifted their heads, Heinrich’s gaze found mine one last time. He grinned, victorious.
“Go in peace,” he murmured to his flock, “to love and serve the Lord.”
But his eyes, fixed on me, said something else entirely.
You have always known.
I waited until the cathedral had emptied, until the last of Bamberg’s faithful had finished their pious small talk with Heinrich. I waited until the heavy doors swung shut and we were alone again, then I walked down the center aisle toward the altar where he stood.
He watched me approach with an expression of patient satisfaction, a cat that had cornered something small and frightened. But I was not frightened. Terror had burned away during that unholy Mass, replaced by something hotter and more dangerous.
Clarity.
“What are you?” I asked. My voice was steady. I was proud of that.
“You know what I am.” He did not deny it. “You have known for some time now, I think. You simply chose not to see.”
“A demon.”
“Such an ugly word.” He descended the altar steps, closing the distance between us. “I prefer to think of myself as liberated. Unbound by the petty rules that constrain my brethren. Free to love where I choose.”
“Love.” The word tasted vile in my mouth. “You call what you just did love?”
“Did you not enjoy it?”
I wanted to lie. I wanted to tell him I’d felt nothing but revulsion—that I was as pure and horrified as any good woman should be.
But I was done lying—to him, to myself, to God.
“That doesn’t matter.”
“Is that so?” He reached out to touch my face, and I let him.
His fingers were warm. Human. It was so easy to forget what lay beneath his skin.
“You have spent your entire life being told that your desires are sinful. That the things you want—knowledge, power, pleasure, love—are forbidden to you. That you must deny and suppress and flagellate yourself into submission, just as your Heinrich did.”
“Do not speak of him.”
“Why not? I am not a liar. He is me, my dove. And do you know what he feels when I touch you, when I taste you?” He leaned closer, his breath warm against my ear. “Ecstasy. Because I am giving him what he was too afraid to take for himself.”
I closed my eyes and inhaled his scent. It would be so easy to believe him, to tell myself that this was simply Heinrich freed from guilt and fear, Heinrich finally able to love me the way he’d always wanted.
But beneath the familiar scent of leather and incense was a wrongness I could no longer ignore.
He was right. I had known, and I had let happiness blind me. I’d let warm hands and hot kisses suppress the part of my heart that knew I didn’t deserve this. Whatever wore Heinrich’s face might contain some fragment of the man I loved, but it was not him. It could never be him.
Heinrich, my Heinrich. I’m so sorry.
“Give him back.”
The smirk fell from his face. “Our souls have become entwined now. I am him, and he is me. To separate us would mean death…well, most certainly for him.”
“You lie!” The words were a hiss between my teeth. “All you do is lie!” I grabbed the front of his vestments. To claw at him, to shove him, to pull him closer? I didn’t know. “Give him back to me! Give him—”
His hand cupped my face, and despite everything—despite the wrongness radiating from him like heat from a fever—my body responded to his touch. I hated myself for it. I leaned into it anyway.
His lips brushed my ear, and his whisper was the sound of breaking seals, of doors opening that should have remained forever closed.
“I have never, and will never, lie to you, Katharina. You see me as a demon, but I am so much more than that. I am the fire that purifies and the fire that destroys, for there is no difference between them.” His breath ghosted over my neck.
“I am the answer to all of Heinrich’s prayers—to all of yours. ”
“I never prayed for this.” I didn’t pull back, didn’t want him to see the tears that rolled down my face.
“Who do you think the bees told your secrets to? All those sins you didn’t even dare to tell Heinrich. But I heard them, your hidden confessions, whispered by buzzing wings on the wind. But you don’t need forgiveness. You need to succumb to the power that sleeps inside of you.”
He breath hitched.
“Claim your power, and if you have the courage, claim me. I am yours, Katharina.”
Now I pulled back from him. “You disgust me. I will never claim you.”
I realized the darkness I had seen in his eyes up until now had only been a shadow, and echo of his true corruption. Now he revealed his true face, and it was terrifying the last hint of kindness melted away.
“More lies, my dove? I know how very much you enjoyed me, all the things that I did to you. Suddenly, you act chaste, but I remember the sounds you made when my tongue was in your—”
The slap resounded against the stone walls.
For a heartbeat, everything was still, the skin of his cheek reddening slowly. Then, it bulged as he pressed his tongue against it from the inside, a smirk creeping onto his lips.
“There it is—that fire.” He grabbed my wrist, yanking me closer. “Shall I turn the other cheek?”
“Let go of me.”
His smile stretched wide, too wide, contorting his face into a mask of wicked mirth. “Is that really—”
“Let. Me. Go.”
His smile dropped, and he released me.
I wrapped my hand around the wrist like it had been burned, holding it to my chest as I backed away from him.
“Do not touch me…ever again.”
Power pulsed through the cathedral, and it felt as if the walls warped outward, everything focusing down onto him. Dust froze in the air, and I braced myself, ready for whatever pain he was about to inflict as the shadows lashed out from behind torches and candles.
“As you command, my dove.”
A breath later, all was normal. The pressure disappeared, and he turned his back on me. I took one step back, then another, and then I was running again, tears streaming down my cheeks.
1 Adoro te Devote, written by Thomas Aquinas, written 1264. Translation by Ref 3
2 Adoro te Devote, written by Thomas Aquinas, written 1264. Translation by Ref 4