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 linkedour 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.
