Rarely at a loss for words or wisdom, Marietta finds herself speechless now. She listens to the soft rustle of Katarina's nightgowns and her bedsheets as they hold one another, tries to hear if the subtle sounds will grant her a script from which to answer, but it's all she can do to whimper, "The same. I feel the same." It is her voice, but it isn't. It is the voice of a commoner woman named Marietta Campbell, and Marietta holds a younger noble woman named Katarina Claes in her trembling arms.
"Oh." Katarina sighs and shifts in hers arms. "They are such little touches, surely they cannot be so wrong, can they?"
"No." Their fingers flicker like dying lights in dark places on one another. They know better. Little on not, they will burn in hell for such tenderness. Katarina's lips bless the beating pulse on her neck, and Katarina's hand ghosts over the dove of her breast. She arches into the hand, grants it a grasp on her breast as she presses into the fingers between Katarina's thighs, searching friction, pressure, release. The younger noblewoman is startled by her sudden passion, but Marietta begs, "Please don't stop." She will gladly burn in hell for this.
They pant in hot, little puffs like laboring women, nearing the most delicate stage of their efforts. Although they are nearly silent, the thunder of their own breath and hearts terrifies and practically deafens. The knotted ropes burst into brightest flame as they uncoil in their cores. They cling to one another, as if the fire will reduce them to ash, but it does not. Their hearts slow and Katarina exhales a little giggle.
"It feels like I held my breath for my entire life before that moment," she says, wonderingly.
"Oh, my Darling, what have we done?" Marietta says, but she's kissing Katarina's forehead and cheeks and nose and lips as she says it.
"Are you sad?"
"No." Marietta sighs. The dark chamber of her humble abode embraces them as they embrace one another for several long moments of silence. She shrugs, "I suppose we might ask for God's forgiveness."
"Are you sorry?" Katarina's whisper vibrates with anxiety. Her nervousness visible in her gesture and posture.
"No." Marietta does not know what future will hold, she only knows this now, this here, and in this moment the sentiment with which she is filled is not regret or remorse. She strokes Katarina's hair and soothes away any lingering fears. She feels Katarina's fingers on her face, tracing her features with such little touches and she feels such enormous love.
"I'm sorry, Maria..."
Both of them said the same thing. Never aloud, only in their hearts. Their regret and guilt is big as shallow lake now, and if that sentence ever escaped their mouth, they both will drown in depth of sin, regret and guilt.