At first I thought to go about on my own as I’d done the day before, but then I realized Katrina had a good idea (she was suddenly full of them) and went to find Sander. My head was whirling with everything I’d learned and I wanted somebody to talk to. I couldn’t tell him everything, of course—I’d take the secret of Brom and the Headless Horseman prank to my grave—but I could tell him some things, about Justus Smit and the sheep and about the creature I’d seen in the woods.
The road to the village was busy. Many people who had farms near ours were taking their harvest to market, or bringing it to one of the many wholesalers who would buy the crop and resell it in New York City. Several carts trundled past me, pulled by slow-moving horses, and many people shouted my name and asked after Brom and Katrina. I was glad for the constant stream of company, for it kept me from thinking too hard about the woods I walked past—and the things that were hidden there.
I was halfway to the village when one of the carts slowed beside me.
“Can I give you a ride, Miss Bente?”
It was Henrik Janssen. Why was Henrik Janssen suddenly everywhere? Before the last few days I saw him perhaps a few times a year, despite the fact that his farm was next to ours. He was around thirty years old—close to the age that my father would have been had Bendix lived—and had very light blue eyes in a weather-beaten face. His shirtsleeves were rolled up and I could see the muscles in his forearms.
He gave me a strangely intent look that made my stomach squirm. I did not want to climb onto the seat next to this man.
“No, thank you,” I said, and gave him my best Katrina smile, the one that was polite and full of teeth but never reached her eyes. “It’s such a beautiful day and I’m enjoying the walk.”
“You’re certain?” he asked. “What with Cristoffel and Justus, I’d think it would be safer if you were with me.”
I don’t, I thought, and I only just managed to avoid saying it aloud.
“I think it’s perfectly safe for me to walk to the village in the daylight,” I said. “Thank you, Mynheer Janssen.”
My tone was very final. He couldn’t make me ride with him, short of climbing down and throwing me in the cart, and if I saw him move I was going to run.
He gave me a long look and I stared right back at him. A Van Brunt never shows fear, but I wondered what he was thinking. His eyes gave away nothing.
His eyes are like Schuler de Jaager’s eyes, I thought. Exactly the same. Full of things he doesn’t want me to know.
Finally he nodded and clicked his tongue at the horse, and the cart moved on. I watched it go, lingering on the side of the road for a few moments so that the cart would get ahead of me.
He wants something from me, I thought as I walked along. I had no evidence of this, only the strange feeling that had come over me as he stared me down. But what could he want?
Henrik Janssen gave me the same sort of skin-crawling feeling that Schuler de Jaager did, and I did a kind of full-body shake hoping to get rid of it. It didn’t really work. I still felt as though light-footed insects crawled up and down my spine for several minutes after.
I passed the edge of the village and saw the scrubby little cottage where Schuler de Jaager lived. The old man was at his window and our eyes met as I passed. I raised my eyebrow at him and gave him a good hard glare before going on. He smirked at me in response, and I had a lot of trouble restraining myself from doing something childish and stupid, like breaking his window with a rock. No boy in the Hollow could throw a rock as hard or as accurately as me. If I wanted to I could probably put a rock dead center between Schuler de Jaager’s eyes.
He’s your grandfather, some little part of me whispered. You can’t do that.
He’s no grandfather of mine, the stronger, more sensible part of me insisted. I have a grandfather already, and his name is Abraham Van Brunt.
I’d half considered confronting Schuler, demanding he tell me what he knew about the monster in the woods, but then decided it wouldn’t be any good just yet. If Schuler de Jaager had kept the secret of Brom’s ride as the Horseman for thirty years, he wouldn’t give up any other secret just because I asked him. Confronting him meant having a plan, and I didn’t have a plan just yet.
Sander sat on the boarded walk in front of the notary’s office, his feet and legs sticking out into the street. He idly tossed a stick into the air and watched as it fell to the ground.
“What are you doing?” I asked as I came up.
He rubbed his nose with his sleeve. “Nothing special. Mama said I was getting underfoot and told me to go help Papa, because I’m supposed to be learning from him how to be a notary, too.”
Sander was at the age when most boys began learning a trade or profession, and being the son of the notary, it was most natural for him to take on his father’s business.
“But now Papa is talking to some men and I haven’t anything to do,” Sander said. “They’ve been in there for some time, arguing.”
“Who’s he talking to?” I asked, peering into the front window.
There was quite a collection of individuals in the notary’s office, including Brom and Diederick Smit. They seemed to be having a heated discussion, if the expressions on their faces were any indication.
“Sander!” I said, shaking his shoulder. “Is there any place where we can listen to what’s happening inside your father’s office without being seen?”
His mouth twisted and his eyebrows knit together. “Not now that everyone is already inside. If we had gone in before they arrived we could have hidden in the big cabinet. Sometimes I go in there when Mama’s in a bad mood.”
Sander stood up. “Anyway, what do you want to go in there for? It’s just boring business talk. Let’s go play Sleepy Hollow Boys in the woods.”
I had to remind myself that Sander didn’t know about anything that had happened to me since we saw Cristoffel’s body. It seemed like I’d lived two lifetimes since that morning, but it had only been two days.
“The woods aren’t safe anymore,” I said. “Not even during the day, or in the part we like to play.”
I sat close to him on the walk and talked low so none of the nosy passersby could hear, and I told him all about finding the sheep, and seeing Justus and the creature in the woods the day before.
“You saw it?” Sander’s eyes were about the biggest they’d ever been.
“Not only did I see it, it tried to take me, too,” I said, and then I told him about last night’s journey and how the creature had appeared at the clearing.
“But how did you get away from it?”
“The Horseman saved me,” I said, and felt my face redden. I felt strangely shy about the Horseman.
“The Headless Horseman?” Sander said, practically shouting, and I shushed him.
“He’s not headless,” I said. “And I didn’t see him, anyway. I only heard him, and the creature in the woods heard him, too.”
“How do you know he’s not headless if you didn’t see him?”
“I just know, all right?” I said, and punched him in the shoulder.
“But . . . why did he save you and not the others?” Sander asked.
“What, do you wish he’d let me have my head and hands taken?” I said, stung.
“Of course not. But it’s strange, isn’t it? That he would save you specially.”
It’s because he only watches out for me, I thought, and shivered, and wondered how I knew that.
“So what should we do then if we can’t go into the woods?”
I was always the one who came up with games for us to play and things for us to do. I didn’t want to play just then, though. What I wanted was to know what was going on inside the building behind us.
An empty cart went by in front of us, and I felt the same skin-prickling feeling I’d had earlier. I looked up and saw Henrik Janssen watching me as he drove his cart past.
Just then the door to the notary’s banged open. Diederick Smit stalked out. When he saw Sander and me sitting on the walk he scowled at us, or rather at me.
“There’s the little witch,” he said.
He’d grabbed me by my arm and yanked me to my feet before I knew what was happening.
“I know you’re the reason Justus is dead. What did you do in the woods? A spell? A dance? Did you call up that demon to take vengeance on my son because you couldn’t?”
His eyes were wild. Spit was flying from his mouth. I recognized that grief had driven him mad. I also knew, with a deep uneasiness, that any accusations of witchcraft might be taken seriously by the people of the village. Sleepy Hollow believed in spirits and demons, because they lived side by side with those beings. The people of the town believed in magic. And why wouldn’t they? Magic was woven into the fabric of the Hollow. It drifted in the air. It rode through the night on a fast horse.
I had to stop Smit’s mouth before it started. Brom and Katrina’s standing would protect me to a certain degree, but if Smit started going around telling people I was the reason Justus was dead, I’d be in terrible trouble. Most folks didn’t care, but a fair number of people already thought I was strange for dressing in boys’ clothes. If those people decided that the way I dressed indicated something more sinister then . . .
For the first time I realized some part of what Katrina feared for me, and why she tried so hard to make me fit in. In little villages like ours, those who don’t fit in were cast out.
I didn’t think about what to do next. I needed Smit to stop talking, to stop talking immediately.
I punched Smit in the face. My punches were nothing like Brom’s, who could lay a man out before you blinked, but I knew how to hit hard and fast. Smit’s nose crunched under my knuckles and he let go of my arm, staggering backward. He held his hands over his face.
“You damned little bitch!” he snarled.
“Don’t touch me again,” I said.
I was surprised that my voice was so calm. It almost felt like I wasn’t part of my body, like I was watching from outside myself. I was vaguely aware of Brom appearing in the notary’s doorway to my left. It would be better for Smit, much better, if I was the one to drive him off. If Brom knew Smit had grabbed me again then Brom would probably kill him right there in the street.
“I told you before, I didn’t have anything to do with your boy dying,” I said. “I’m sorry that you’re so sad about it, but it won’t do you any good to make wild accusations.”
Sander had stood up when Smit grabbed me, and I heard him breathing hard near my right shoulder. Sander did not like confrontations, and he especially did not like confrontations with adults.
“Ben, you shouldn’t—” he whispered.
“Go home, Mr. Smit,” I said. “I think you should do your grieving quietly in your house.”
“You’re just like your father, and just like him,” Smit said, pointing at Brom. “Always thinking you have the right to tell people what to do and what to say and how to think. Well, let me tell you this, Ben Van Brunt—
I know what you’ve done and you’re going to pay for it. You’re going to pay.”
Smit leaned his face close to me as he talked. I could smell the tobacco on his breath, see the wild rolling of his eyes. Smit’s wife had died in childbirth with Justus, and his son was all the man had. I felt sorry for him, but not enough to take his abuse.
“I haven’t done a thing,” I said. “And don’t you dare accuse me of something I haven’t done again, or you’ll be the one who pays.”
I didn’t know what had gotten into me. I was a skinny fourteen-year-old and Smit was a grown man. There was no way I could make him suffer. Brom certainly could, but not me. And I wasn’t threatening him with Brom. I realized a moment too late that what I said could be interpreted as a threat of witchcraft, if a person was already inclined to believe such things.
All the blood drained out of Smit’s face. “Witch.”
“Call my grandchild a witch again and you won’t like what happens next,” said Brom.
“It’s all right, Opa,” I said. “Mynheer Smit was leaving.”
I sounded like Katrina when she was in full lady-of-the-house mode. Smit looked from Brom to me and backed away, stumbling into the street.
“You’ll pay,” he said. “Everyone will know what you are, and you’ll pay.”
Several people who’d been about their morning business had stopped to stare at us. Brom stepped out onto the sidewalk and glared around until all of them suddenly remembered why they were out and about and hurried away. All of them, that is, except Henrik Janssen, who stood a few feet along the walk, leaning against a building. When I caught his eye he straightened and came closer, unaffected by Brom’s fierce look.
“That’s some girl you have there,” Janssen said to Brom. “Almost as brave as a boy.”
Brom’s face relaxed, and he came close and put his arm around my shoulder. “Braver than most boys, I’d say. She’s just like her grandmother.”
I started. It was true that Katrina wasn’t afraid of anyone. I’d seen her stare down men twice her size when she wanted to make a point. It pleased me more than it ever had, I think, to have someone compare me to Katrina. But I didn’t want to talk to Henrik Janssen. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up as he looked at me.
“Some man will be lucky to have you as a wife one day,” he said.
“I’m never getting married,” I said, but his words had made me very uneasy. Was that why he kept looking at me that way? Did he have designs on the Van Brunt farm? Just because our lands bordered one another didn’t mean that they should be joined. Anyway, if Brom wanted Janssen’s land then my grandfather would just buy the other man out. That’s what Brom always did.
And he’s so old. At least thirty. Why doesn’t he have a wife his own age already?
Brom seemed to be thinking along the same lines, because he squeezed my shoulder and said, “She’s far too young for me to think about giving her up.”
“Not so young for all that,” Janssen said. “Plenty of girls around here marry at fourteen.”
“But more of them marry at sixteen, or eighteen,” Brom said, and then added, pointedly, “and they usually marry boys their own age.”
Janssen only smiled at that, and it was the sort of smile that made my stomach turn. Still, whatever Janssen wanted, at least I knew Brom would never trade me for land or some such thing. I knew that this happened to some girls.
Poor Veerla die Wees—her parents were almost as poor as the Van den Bergs, but she’d been so beautiful that she caught the eye of a merchant who happened to be passing through the Hollow while she was hanging laundry outside their cottage. Veerla had only been fourteen, but she had five younger siblings and there wasn’t enough food to go around. The merchant (who was fifty if he was a day) offered to marry Veerla in exchange for what was rumored to be an extremely generous bride price.
She tried to run away before the wedding, but her father found her before she’d gotten very far. The whole village turned up to see the slender, weeping form of Veerla be given in unwilling marriage to the merchant, who’d eyed her throughout the ceremony as though she were a prize cow. That had been about a year before, and I remembered feeling sick throughout the service. Katrina had her lips pressed together the entire time, like she was swallowing a furious diatribe.
“I’ve got to get Ben home now,” Brom said, shouldering Janssen aside. “Katrina will skin us both if we’re late for the midday meal.”
“Yes, you should take her home,” Janssen said after us. “Before anyone else comes along making accusations.”
“Opa, I was going to play with Sander,” I said, peering over my shoulder at my friend, who waved forlornly after me.
“Not now, Ben,” he said under his breath, steering me toward the barn where he kept Donar when he was in town. “I don’t think I want you in the village for the next couple of days.”
“Because of what Mynheer Smit said?”
“Yes,” Brom said, quickly saddling Donar and mounting. He pulled me up behind him. “I don’t think most people would take him seriously, but there was nothing left of Justus except his bones when we returned to get the boy’s body. Smit is flailing about, looking for someone to blame, and he’s decided it’s you. Nothing any of us said could convince him otherwise.”
I felt a chill that had nothing to do with the weather. “But he can’t do anything to me. A whole lot of people heard him threaten me right in the street.”
“And they heard you threaten him, too.”
“And you, too,” I retorted.
“I’ve punched most of the men in this village at one time or another, whether in sport or in anger,” Brom said, shrugging. “They expect it of me. But not of you.”
“That’s not fair,” I burst out. “Why do boys get to do anything they want? Mynheer Smit wouldn’t even be able to say I was a witch if I was a boy.”
I couldn’t see Brom’s face, but I felt him take a long, deep breath and let it out again.
“Maybe I didn’t do you such a favor, raising you the way I did. Maybe I should have let Katrina have her way. But I—”
Brom didn’t finish his thought, but I didn’t need to hear it. He missed Bendix so much, and wanted his son back, so he made me his son instead. I wasn’t angry about it. I liked being this way. It was the way I felt I really was inside, not just because of what Brom wanted. I was the one who’d turned away from Katrina when I was young, had started following Brom like a puppy. I only wished that no one knew that I was a girl at all, that they didn’t think I was a girl pretending to be a boy.
Donar came to a halt, and I realized then what had made Brom stop talking. Schuler de Jaager stood on his porch, watching us as we passed.
I felt hatred burst through me, more intense than I’d ever known. Schuler was the reason Bendix was dead, and even before that he’d spent years trying to make Brom miserable. Anyone who tried to hurt Brom was unforgiveable, in my mind. I stared at Schuler, who only smirked back at me.
“I’m going to kill him,” Brom said under his breath. “I should have done it years ago, and damn the consequences. He seeds nothing but misery in his wake.”
For a moment I thought Brom would leap from Donar’s back and strangle Schuler de Jaager right there in the street. I couldn’t think of anyone who deserved it more, but I didn’t want my grandfather jailed—by stupid Sem Bakker, even—for killing my other grandfather.
Donar waited patiently while Brom and I did our best to smite Schuler de Jaager with our eyes. The old man was completely unaffected—if anything, the waves of hatred rolling off us seemed to amuse him. After a while Brom clicked his tongue at Donar and we continued on our way, though I felt Schuler watching us until we were out of sight.
I leaned my cheek against Brom’s back. I wasn’t entirely sure it was a good thing for me to stay out of the village. Diederick Smit was probably running from door to door, telling tales. Someone ought to be there to make sure people heard a version of the story that wasn’t his, and I said this to Brom.
“Don’t worry about that,” he said. “I’m going to take your grandmother into the village later to do her shopping. Katrina will put any wrong thinkers aright.”
I considered Katrina’s imperious glare, her magnificent temper and the generally mild personalities of the vast majority of people in the Hollow. Yes, Katrina could sway them.
“And while we’re out,” Brom said, “you’re to stay on the farm, do you understand? No weaseling out of your promise like yesterday. I don’t want you in the woods, or near the woods, or even thinking about the woods.”
“Yes, Opa,” I said. He didn’t have to worry. I had no intention of going anywhere near the woods again after the night before.
But how will you see the Horseman, then? a little voice whispered. I pretended I hadn’t heard.
Brom and I ate our meal with Katrina and told her about Diederick Smit. Her eyes sparked when she heard about Smit’s accusations.
“Useless man,” Katrina said. “He always has been. He’s the same age as Bendix was, you know. Smit tried to court Fenna but she wouldn’t have him. He resented Bendix for that, thought it was because Bendix was rich and he wasn’t, but Fenna told me it was because Smit was cruel and stupid.”
“Justus was the same way,” I said.
“You can’t teach your children if you have nothing valuable to teach,” Katrina said. “They learn what they see.”
I frowned. “So it was all right that Justus was like that, because he couldn’t help it?”
“Of course not,” Katrina said. “But it would take a smarter child than Justus was to learn how to change.”
I picked at my stew, mulling this over. Was everyone condemned to act the same way as their parents, to repeat the same patterns and cycles over and over again? Everyone told me I was just like Brom, and I’d always been proud of that. But I also knew that Brom had many troublesome qualities—not that I would ever say this aloud to anyone.
Brom tended to run people over if they didn’t give him his way. Sometimes he did it with charm and sometimes with force, but he always got what he wanted and damn anyone else. Did I want to be like that? Did I want to put my wants above everyone else’s, squash them or push them out of the way just because they resisted?
I loved Brom so much, but I didn’t want to be exactly like him.
Katrina and Brom went off to the village in the trap, for Katrina refused to ride behind Brom on Donar.
“I’m a lady, and ladies don’t ride astride, and there really isn’t enough room for me to ride sidesaddle,” she always said.
Once I overheard Brom offering to let her ride in his lap, and this was accompanied by a look that I didn’t understand but made Katrina swat him and say, “Shush.”
After Brom and Katrina left I went out by the sheep paddock. The sheep acted as they normally did, no strange silent huddle. I suppose they must have forgotten what happened to their fellow the other day.
Sheep get to do that. They forget. It must make them happy, not to trail bad memories around behind them like people do.
I walked slowly along the fence until I came to one of the wheat fields. The crop had already been harvested here, and nothing remained except the rough half-stalks left behind. The sun was warm and I wandered into the field, letting my mind turn over everything that had happened.
I still didn’t have any answers about why Cristoffel and Justus had died. Everything Brom and Katrina told me seemed to muddy the waters. Above all, I could not determine why Schuler had kept Brom’s secret about the Horseman, or why he’d sent Bendix into the woods to die, or why he’d told me that the creature in the forest was a Kludde. Had he thought to inspire my curiosity, to send me to my death like my father?
I paused. Schuler had sent Bendix to his death. He’d deliberately manipulated my father, knowing what was out there and what would happen. But why? What vendetta did he have against Bendix? Or did he just hate all the Van Brunts?
No matter how I tried to find an answer, I couldn’t. I wished Brom hadn’t taken me away from Sander so quickly. Sander wasn’t brave and he wasn’t fast and he wasn’t a very good tree-climber, but he was one of the smartest boys our age. If I told him about all this (not about Brom the Headless Horseman, and not about the real Horseman either, no no no, that’s for me alone) he might be able to help me work through the problem. Later I’d ask Brom if he could bring Sander to the farm tomorrow. No one could object to our playing if we stayed on Van Brunt land and away from the forest.
I wondered if any more boys had gone missing, and would be found in the forest. I’d spent more time walking the road to the village that day than I had actually in the village. People might be talking—talking about Cristoffel and Justus, about what to do, about any other boy that might have gone missing. It seemed impossible to me that the creature in the woods would have stopped taking victims.
But if any boy taken melts away like Justus did, people might not even know that boy is dead if they don’t find him in time.
I found a place in the field where the stalks had been flattened and lay down on my back. The stalks were scratchy but the ground was soft and the sun was bright. My head was spinning and I just wanted to rest a little while. No one could see me from the house out here, so no one would come and tell me I had to get up and do this or that. I closed my eyes and inhaled the smell of the earth, and the grassy scent of the wheat stalks, and the indefinable gold of the sun. Sander had told me once that the sun didn’t have a smell.
“It does,” I’d insisted. “It’s that warm soft smell that you get on a really sunny day, and it’s in the air and it sort of fills you up.”
“That’s just because the sun is making the grass and everything hot. That’s what you’re smelling—the grass and the trees,” Sander said.
“No. It’s the smell of the sun.”
He wouldn’t let me convince him that day, but I knew I was right. I breathed in the sun, let it fill up my nose and my lungs and my heart, and I felt easy for the first time since I’d seen Cristoffel’s remains in the woods.
Ben.
Someone’s hand was on my face, someone trailing their fingers over my cheek.
Ben, wake up.
I felt like I was struggling out of a deep pit, like my hands scrabbled for purchase, looking for an edge that wasn’t there.
Ben!
My eyes flew open. He was calling me.
But it wasn’t the Horseman leaning over me in the twilight. It was Henrik Janssen.