All Hallows’ Eve dawned, somewhat incongruously, with a bright, incandescent orange sun, bringing warmth to the now empty fields. Yet of all days, the Headless Horseman would be most likely to appear on this one, when the veil between the worlds of the living and the dead was at its thinnest; but with such brilliant sunshine I did not see how a creature of death and darkness could appear.
Thankfully, my mother and Cook kept me busy much of the day, helping to bake pies and decorate the house for the party that evening. Had I been sitting around, I would have driven myself quite mad with anxiety thinking about that night, when mine and Ichabod’s future would be decided. So engrossed in the tasks they set me was I that I scarcely noticed the sky cloud over, scarcely noticed the gray October afternoon that settled over Sleepy Hollow.
At four o’clock, my mother pronounced our work done, and sent me upstairs to get ready. First I took Nox out to the barn, where he would be confined with his brother during the festivities. Nancy was waiting, having already heated the metal rods to curl my hair. She spent nearly half an hour taming my long, pale hair into neat, fetching curls, and pinning the top strands away from my face, letting the rest hang freely down my back. Then she helped me into a brand-new midnight-blue gown, complete with lace trim at the sleeves and bodice. As she laced me into the gown, I could not help but let my hands rest on my stomach. My monthly course had still not arrived, and I was in a frenzy of doubt as to whether to tell Ichabod before he spoke to my father. If all went well, it would not matter. I could insist upon a quick wedding, before winter’s snows came. Early babies were not uncommon, after all. Time enough to tell Ichabod once we were safely betrothed.
And yet, what if—God forbid—things did not go according to plan? What if my father refused his suit? Ichabod would need to know, so we could plan what to do next. I did not know how much time I had before my condition became obvious to all, but I knew it could be no more than a few months.
Of course, there was always the possibility that I was wrong, that my course was only inordinately delayed. Yet, whether it was the Sight or a mother’s intuition or simply the knowledge a woman has of her own body, somehow I knew I was with child, and that the child had been conceived that night at Charlotte’s house—in a proper bed, at least, if not the marriage bed—because I had forgotten to take my tea of herbs. I had been in the Jansen cottage, surrounded by all manner of herbs, and I had forgotten in my night of blissful, delirious happiness.
When Nancy finally pronounced me ready, I pinned on my most convincing smile and went downstairs to begin to greet the guests, playing my roles of charming hostess and fetching daughter and magnanimous heiress. Most of Sleepy Hollow would be in attendance, as my father believed in sharing his bounty with as many as possible.
When Charlotte came in with her mother, relief washed through me, and for the first time that evening my smile was genuine. While we could not speak just then, she squeezed my hand tightly and gave me a smile of reassurance.
Not long after came Brom, with his widower father. “Meneer Van Brunt, always a pleasure,” my father greeted the older man. “And young Brom. A delight to offer you our hospitality, as always.”
“The pleasure is mine entirely,” Brom said smoothly. He turned to me, that same anger still simmering beneath his features, and my stomach contracted with unease. “Miss Van Tassel,” he said, kissing my hand. “You look as radiant as ever.”
“Thank you,” I said stiffly. Even with my parents looking on, I could not bring myself to say more. Fear seized me. Somehow in all my planning for this night I had forgotten Ichabod and Brom would both be here. I tried to push these fears away. For what could either do or say in the rooms of a crowded party, before almost the entire village?
I did not want to find out. Excusing myself from my spot by the door, I darted into the parlor to find Charlotte. “Brom is here,” I hissed in her ear, clutching her arm. “When Ichabod arrives, you must take care that they do not come into too close contact.”
Charlotte nodded, casually raising her glass of mulled apple cider to her lips, as though we were talking of nothing more than village gossip. “You may rely upon me,” she said. “I shall be taking pains to avoid Brom as well, so Ichabod and I can avoid him together.”
Worry assuaged, I returned to the front entryway in time to see Ichabod step inside and hand his coat and hat to Henry. “Ahh, Mr. Crane,” my father said, shaking his hand vigorously. “I’m so happy we have the chance to extend our hospitality to you once again.”
“You are too kind, as ever, Master Van Tassel,” Ichabod said. He kissed my mother’s hand. “Mistress Van Tassel, both yourself and your home are exceedingly lovely this evening.”
“Away with you, dear boy,” my mother laughed. “And pray, eat and drink your fill, and enjoy the revels on this dark night of the year.”
Ichabod scarcely seemed to hear her as his gaze fixed on me. “And Miss Van Tassel,” he said, taking my hand and kissing it as well, his lips lingering a beat too long. Even here, even before my parents, and with everything I wanted at stake, the touch of his lips on my bare skin sent waves of heat through me. “You are a vision. I do not think I have ever laid eyes on a more beautiful woman.”
A blush rose to my face. “You do me too much honor, sir,” I said.
“I speak only the truth.”
My father cleared his throat rather pointedly, and my blush deepened. “I pray you enjoy the party, dear sir,” I said. “I trust we shall have time later this evening to converse at more length.”
“Nothing would delight me more,” he said, sweeping me a bow. With another nod to my parents, he stepped through the entryway and into the receiving room. Charlotte approached him almost immediately—bless her, she must have been watching for his entrance—and led him over to the table where bottles of wine and beer and jugs of hot cider were set out.
A few more guests came after Ichabod, but the stream of arrivals had slowed to a trickle. “You are an admirable hostess, as always, my dear,” my father said fondly. “Now go. Enjoy the party. I am sure you and Charlotte will have much to gossip of.”
If only you knew, Father, I thought wryly. I beamed at him and went back into the parlor. Charlotte and Ichabod stood toward the back of the room, far from everyone else which, as I well knew by now, had everything to do with Charlotte. Brom was the full length of the room away, speaking to one of his friends. He was, I noticed uneasily, casting angry looks in Ichabod’s direction every now and then. My stomach curdled uncomfortably.
I took a deep, calming breath, allowing myself a moment to take in the harvest-themed splendor of the room. Candles blazed from the chandelier, from wall sconces, and from candelabras, almost as though we were defying October’s attempts to darken our home and our spirits. Fabric garlands of gold and crimson and orange leaves hung along the walls, and hollowed out pumpkins with faces carved into them, more candles illuminating them from within, graced every table and corner. Their faces were by turns comical or menacing, and their eyes seemed to follow me no matter where I turned.
I poured myself some warm cider, mulled with rum and spices, and went to join Charlotte and Ichabod. “Charlotte, I trust you and Mr. Crane are enjoying yourselves?” I asked in English. As more and more newcomers arrived in the village each year, it had become the language of choice at our larger gatherings.
“Indeed we are, Katrina,” Charlotte said. “Though I do not presume to speak for the gentleman.”
Ichabod smiled with genuine appreciation as he took in the room around him. “I am enjoying myself very much,” he said. “What a lovely picture this room makes, Miss Van Tassel. My compliments.”
“I shall accept them,” I said, my tone more lighthearted than I felt, “for I toiled much of the day creating this very picture!”
Ichabod laughed and bowed slightly. “Then know your efforts are very much appreciated.” He cast his gaze around again. “A fitting celebration of the harvest, and yet there is a touch of the eerie, too, which is only appropriate for All Hallows’ Eve.”
“Indeed,” Brom’s voice broke in. I looked up, startled, to see he had approached us unnoticed. “And do you think, Mr. Crane, that any of us might receive a visit from the legendary Headless Horseman tonight?” His eyes narrowed unpleasantly. “I wonder, how would you react were you to be faced with such a fearsome apparition?”
“Oh, indeed,” Mevrouw Jansen said, coming over to interrupt—whether by accident or design I could not be sure, but I was grateful all the same. “For this is the night on which one is most likely to see him.” I shivered at her words, so close an echo of my own thoughts earlier that day. “Mr. Crane, I trust someone has told you the tale of our local specter?”
“Indeed, Mistress Jansen,” Ichabod said. “Katr—Miss Van Tassel was kind enough to so enlighten me early on in my stay in Sleepy Hollow.”
“I did,” I affirmed. “I thought it best to warn him, should he happen to encounter the ghost one night!”
“Very wise of you, my dear,” Mevrouw Jansen said, smiling.
“Well I, for one, do not fancy Mr. Crane’s chances were he to cross paths with the Horseman,” Brom said.
My heart increased its pace. There was a threat in his voice.
“Whatever do you mean, young Mr. Van Brunt?” Mevrouw Jansen asked him coolly, leveling an icy stare on him.
He faltered slightly under her gaze; for all his fear of Charlotte, he feared her mother much more, and even he did not dare besmirch her reputation—indeed, Dame Jansen’s standing in the community, particularly amongst its women, had been the only thing to protect her daughter from Brom’s rumor-mongering.
“I only mean,” Brom said, rallying, “Mr. Crane here is a rather bookish sort of fellow. I do not know that he has the—er—physical prowess to tangle with a supernatural soldier.”
Ichabod tensed beside me, but he did not respond.
“I do not know that physical prowess would matter much against a ghost of any sort,” Mevrouw Jansen said.
“Indeed,” Charlotte said, speaking for the first time since Brom had joined our circle. “And do you truly fancy your own chances against one such as the Headless Horseman, Brom?”
There was a very weighty pause indeed, for Charlotte, Brom, and myself were all no doubt thinking of Charlotte’s prediction for Brom the fateful day that shattered our friendship, the day when Brom had sought to master his fear and prove himself a man once and for all.
I see blood in your future, Brom Van Brunt. Blood and death. The Headless Horseman is your fate. The Headless Horseman is your end.
The rage Brom had been nurturing all night threatened to break through, and I shudder to think what may have happened were we not in a large company such as this. Thankfully others had come to join the conversation by then.
“Oh, Mr. Van Brunt, you could best even a ghost in a fight, I am sure of it!” cried Elizabeth van der Berg.
“Indeed!” exclaimed her friend, a girl whose name I thought was Sara. “Even the Headless Horseman!”
Brom glared at Charlotte a heartbeat longer before turning to his admirers with his usual smug grin.
“Wouldn’t it be something to see him, though?” Mevrouw Van Buren said almost breathlessly, drawing into our circle—though not without a wary glance at Charlotte. “I don’t know a soul who can claim to have truly seen him. Wouldn’t it be something, only to say that you had?”
I shivered again, thinking of my dreams, my vision. “I think it would be rather terrifying.”
“And most likely he is only a legend, in any case,” Mevrouw Jansen interjected.
“Quite right,” Ichabod said, though he did not look so certain. “I am, of course, only a newcomer to this part of the country, but I know Mistress Jansen to be a woman of the utmost wisdom, so I am inclined to agree with her on this point.”
Mevrouw Jansen laughed. “Oh, but you’ve a silver tongue, haven’t you,” she said to Ichabod. “It’s what comes of reading all those books, I expect.”
“Ah, Mr. Crane,” said one of the elderly village women, Mevrouw Douw. She joined our circle, grasping Ichabod’s sleeve in her gnarled hand. “As we are trading stories, I have one for you: have you heard the tale of Major John Andre, and his haunted tree?” she asked in her heavily accented English.
“Major Andre?” Ichabod asked. “The British officer who sought to assist Benedict Arnold in his treachery?”
“The very same,” Mevrouw Douw said. “He was captured with the plans for the fort at West Point secreted in his boot just up the road from here.” She pointed in the general direction of the spot, perhaps halfway between my house and the village proper.
“I did know that particular episode occurred near here,” he said. “I have not heard the tale of his tree as yet, though I have heard many wonderful tales since coming to Sleepy Hollow.” He flashed me a quick smile.
“It is a marvelous story,” Mevrouw Douw said, settling in to tell the tale. “You, boy,” she barked at Brom. She handed him her goblet. “Fetch me more cider while I tell it.”
Charlotte and I exchanged amused glances as Brom, looking like a chastened child, meekly went to do her bidding.
“Now, Major Andre’s tree,” she began. “You’ll recall, of course, that he was captured by a few brave American militiamen, and turned over to General Washington and the Continental Army. He was found guilty of espionage and sentenced to hang, as is the custom for captured spies.”
“He, of course, asked General Washington to have him executed by firing squad, as befits an officer,” I interjected. “But since he was found on American territory in civilian clothes and not his officer’s uniform, he was deemed a spy.”
Mevrouw Douw nodded approvingly. “Quite right. So instead, he was hanged, one October day in, oh, what year was it?” She appealed to the gathered company.
“1781, was it not?” said Meneer Van Brunt.
“It was 1780, I am sure of it,” Mevrouw Jansen said. “I remember it well.”
“Yes, quite right,” Meneer Van Brunt concurred.
“1780, yes,” Mevrouw Douw continued. “He was hanged, and buried nearby, with only some stones as a burial marker.
“Now, as I mentioned, he was captured quite close to here, beneath a tree beside a brook, a short walk from this very house. And ever since his death, those passing by the tree claim to hear him wailing and lamenting, begging passersby to listen.”
“They say he rails against his fate, against the poor luck that caused him to hang for Arnold’s folly,” Charlotte added.
“And some say he waits for Arnold’s spirit to join him in the afterlife, so that he might finally have his revenge,” I said, dramatically raising my eyebrows.
“Indeed,” Mevrouw Douw said. “And mind you keep your eyes and ears out for him, Mr. Crane. You’ll need to ride right past Major Andre’s tree on your way home, and it would be a dreadful thing if he were to mistake you for someone else.” She cackled.
Ichabod’s face paled slightly at these words, though his smile stayed in place.
Just then, my father interrupted. “Please, my friends,” he called. “My wife and I would like to invite you all to feast to your heart’s content. Cook, if you would!”
Cook threw the door to the dining room open and motioned the guests to move inside.
The party filed in, and gasps of surprise and delight arose at the sight within. The room was decorated in similar fashion to the receiving room, though, if possible, with even more candles, garlands, and carved pumpkins. It was a lovely display, but not quite so lovely as the feast laid out on the long dining room table, which was surely groaning under the weight of its bounty.
Cook, Nancy, Mama, and I had been cooking and baking for days, and it showed. The table was laden with dish after dish to celebrate the harvest: fresh corn bread, roasted chicken and duck, mashed squash and potatoes, carrots glazed in molasses, roasted vegetables, fresh cheeses, beef stew. And the pies: savory meat pies and pumpkin pies and apple pies and cherry pies and peach pies. And, of course, Dutch olie-koecken and doughnuts with their hole in the middle, baked with fresh cider from the apple crop. I glanced behind me at Ichabod and saw his eyes were wide with surprise at the feast, at my family’s generosity.
“Eat, drink, and be merry!” my father cried, and the guests all laughed and applauded and began helping themselves.
As it was each year, there were so many guests—and so much food—that it was not feasible for everyone to sit at one table. So, instead, the food was all set out, along with plates and cutlery, and smaller tables were arranged in rooms all over the first floor of the house. In some years, the weather had been so fine as to allow for tables out on the portico, but this year’s weather made that impossible.
I hung back, allowing the rest of the guests to serve themselves first, as did my parents. In the crush, Ichabod came up alongside me. “When should I speak to him?” he murmured.
I tensed. “After dinner and dessert, and only after the brandy has been served,” I whispered. “Some folks will start leaving around then.”
He nodded once, then moved toward the table.
Once the guests had filled their plates, I got one for myself, though it did not contain very much food—my stomach was far too unsettled to eat much. Still, I forced myself to take a slice of roast goose—for I knew I’d need to keep my strength up—as well as some mashed potatoes (one of my favorite dishes), a slice of apple pie (another favorite, especially the way Cook made it—with extra cinnamon), and a doughnut.
I joined Charlotte and Mevrouw Jansen at a small table in the back sitting room. I did not know where Ichabod had found a seat, but I knew I could not go look for him. It was just for a short time longer that we would need to keep up such appearances, I reminded myself.
I ate as much as I could, and kept my glass filled with mulled cider. Soon enough the rum began to relax me slightly, loosening the knots in my stomach. I laughed as Mevrouw Jansen recounted a letter she’d received from her frivolous younger sister in New York, and Charlotte told me of their visit to her mother’s friend a few weeks ago—and I, of course, pretended to be surprised to learn that they had visited West Point.
Soon the servants began clearing away the dirty plates and cutlery and glasses. We rose and meandered back into the receiving room, where my father now had the brandy set out.
“Ah, there she is!” he all but bellowed as I entered the room. “My Katrina! Isn’t she a beauty?” he crowed to his friends.
Farmers of my father’s age all, they nodded appreciatively, seeming to take my father’s words as an invitation to ogle me. I smiled tightly and crossed the room to him. “You are too kind, Papa, as always,” I murmured, kissing his cheek.
“She may even be the most beautiful woman in the state!” declared Meneer Stanwyck. “In all my trips to New York, I don’t know as I’ve seen her like anywhere!”
“You may be right,” my father said, eyes bright with amusement. “Why, once we were in a New York bookshop—you remember, Katrina, don’t you?—and we met no less a person than Alexander Hamilton, the Secretary of the Treasury!” I rolled my eyes, but if Father saw me he was not deterred. “He was most taken with Katrina, you know. Most taken. He’s a handsome young man, and obviously rather brilliant, too—they say he is President Washington’s right-hand man, and I say, better him than that puffed-up Vice President Adams, or that popinjay Jefferson, so enamored of France!” Here my father heaved a sigh. “Alas, he is married, of course, is Mr. Hamilton—but what a splendid match that would have been!”
“Oh, come now, Father,” I sighed.
“That he is, and I don’t think that even you, Baltus, can afford to dower your daughter as richly as old Philip Schuyler,” interjected Meneer Van Brunt, naming Secretary Hamilton’s father-in-law, one of the wealthiest landowners in the Hudson Valley and likely the state.
“Perhaps not,” my father huffed, “but I still plan on making a splendid match for my Katrina all the same!”
Fretfully I searched the room for Ichabod, hoping that he still lingered over his meal or was in conversation with an acquaintance, and had not heard my father’s pronouncements. But of course he was there, and of course he had heard. He could not hide the stricken look on his face as our eyes met, and I could read his thoughts as plainly as though he had written them down for me to read: How can I ask for the hand of a woman whose father dreamed of marrying her to the Secretary of the Treasury?
I bit my lip and looked away. We would go forward, no matter what, and pray my father’s desire for my happiness would override his pride.