She became my light in those dark months. I’d arrived in Bamberg hollowed out by loss—my family burned with their farm, my home reduced to a Swedish trophy. I had nearly succumbed to my own darkness then, praying nightly on why such cruelty and injustice existed in our world. Bamberg’s blood-soaked stones and constant smoke had threatened to drown what little faith remained in me.
But Katharina…she approached each lesson with such fierce joy, such determination to understand not just the words but their meaning, their purpose. When she struggled, her brow would furrow in concentration that, while absolutely beautiful, had me wishing to smooth it with a gentle brush of my thumb. When she succeeded, her smile could have lit every candle in the cathedral.
Her mind. God forgive me, it was her mind I fell in love with first. In the way she treated knowledge with the reverence it deserved while never accepting it without question. How she was constantly pushing back against what so many refused to question.
Dangerous.
The word often rang in my mind. In a world that begged all to conform—especially beautiful women like her—she was pushing past what was safe. But that only drew me to her. I found myself craving it: the gentle struggle, the debate, and beneath that, watching the way her eyes lit as I met each of her arguments with one of my own.
In teaching her, I found my own faith renewed—not in the institution that burned innocents, but in the divine spark that could create a mind like hers, a spirit that remained compassionate despite having every reason to turn bitter.
Because she was compassionate and brave in a way that made my chest ache. In a city where fear had become the only currency,she moved through the shadows with steady hands, healing where I could only pray.
She risked her life every time she opened her door to a desperate woman, and she did it without hesitation, without the comfort of believing God would protect her.
Because God hadn’t protected her mother.
I’d lied to her today. I had read the trial records of Anna Müller, but I’d read them a dozen times, searching for understanding. The woman had been tortured for three days before confessing to impossible things. That she had flown through the night, coupled with demons, and cursed livestock. But between the forced confessions were fragments of truth: she’d known more of herbs and their uses than a woman was allowed to know. She had been guilty of knowledge, of refusing to let women die when she could save them.
Just like her daughter.
“Is this a test?” I asked the silent Christ. “Did you place her in my path to try my faith?”
But I knew better. Katharina wasn’t a temptation sent from Hell. She was grace itself, moving through a graceless world. When she tended the sick, I saw Christ’s compassion in her hands. When she risked everything to help others, I saw the kind of love scripture spoke of—the kind that laid down its life for those who could not save themselves. I loved her for it.
I loved her with a fervor that should have been reserved for God alone.
My fingers found my rosary, but instead of prayers, I imagined how it would feel to wind those beads around her wrists, to watch her surrender to something other than fear. The thought was blasphemous, combining the sacred and profane in ways that should have horrified me.
Instead, it set my blood on fire.
“I am weak,” I confessed to the altar. “I am failing you. I cannot protect these people from the Bishop’s madness. I cannot stop the trials. And I cannot stop wanting her.”
The chapel door creaked, and for one wild moment, I thought it might be her. But it was only Brother Thomas, come to light the evening candles.
“You missed Vespers,” he said, his tone accusatory.
“I was at the cathedral,” I replied, rising from the bench. My knee screamed in protest.
“Oh, I thought perhaps you were with thatwomanagain.” He didn’t bother to hide his disdain. “You spend much time teaching her Latin. One wonders what use such education serves.”
I turned to face him fully, letting him see something of the darkness that had been growing in me since I’d arrived in this cursed city. “One might also wonder why you concern yourself so deeply with my activities, Brother Thomas. Perhaps you should examine your own soul before casting stones at others.”
He paled and scurried away, leaving me alone with my guilt…and desire.
Tomorrow, she would come again for her lesson. I would find excuses to touch her hand, to lean near enough to smell the herbs that clung to her hair. We would dance around the truth that burned between us, both of us pretending that what we felt was proper—anything other than what it was.
I was a priest who had sworn himself to God.
She was a woman who refused to kneel in a city that craved to watch her burn.
We were impossible.
It wasn’t my life I worried for, but hers. It wasn’t her sin that she was temptation made flesh, that I dreamed of her soft laugh and the smiles only I could draw from her. But that is not how the Bishop would see it. Not how anyone in Bamberg would see it—not as the pure expression of God’s love that it was, but as the greatest sin of all.
So I would stay away. No matter what it took, I wouldn’t act on these desires that held my heart like the Devil’s own hand.
And yet, like Thomas doubting Christ’s wounds until he could touch them, I found myself needing to press my fingers tothis impossible thing, to prove to myself it was real. That in all this darkness, something this luminous could exist.
