One fine day in early May I was at the market with Charlotte. It was my excuse to get out into the fresh air; Brom was so adamant I rest when he was home—and even Nancy was being slightly over-solicitous—such that I thought if I was forced to rest for an hour more I might scream.
“A bit of exercise is good for you, and for the babe,” Charlotte told me, and I needed no further convincing.
So I wandered about the market idly, trailing behind Charlotte as she examined fruit and vegetables, and purchased a new set of glass jars for her remedies. I was simply enjoying the sun on my face when I first heard the whispers.
“Pulled him right out of the river, they did … they say he could have been there all winter, no telling when he was dumped in…”
I froze as the words entered my brain. Immediately my thoughts flashed to the small river that fed into the millpond, where Ichabod’s hat had been found.
No, I told myself firmly. That river had been searched the day after he’d gone missing.
I glanced about for Charlotte, ready to put it out of my mind, when another woman joined the two who’d been whispering at the fruit stand.
“You’ve heard?” she said excitedly. “Not ten miles down the river, they found him. They say he was stabbed, several times.”
“That’s not what I heard,” Mevrouw Van Buren chimed in. “I heard his throat was cut.”
“I heard he was shot!” cried Mevrouw Van Ripper.
I was listening unabashedly now, could no longer pretend that I was not.
“And who is it, then?” Mevrouw Van Buren asked. “Anyone we know? Anyone from around these parts?”
The woman who’d joined the pair, whose name I thought was Mevrouw Lange, shook her head. “No one knows. Can’t tell, can they? He’s been in the water too long. Even with the winter cold, he’s rotted too much.” She pronounced these last ghastly words with relish. “All they know is he’s of no little height, slender, and a man on the younger side.”
I stopped breathing.
“Katrina, you are pale as ice! What…” Charlotte approached and clutched my arm, and I shook my head, inclining my head toward the trio. She frowned and began to listen as well.
Mevrouw Van Ripper sniffed in derision. “No doubt some young fool who got caught up in a duel or a tavern brawl or some such nonsense, and was tossed in the river so the whole affair might be hidden.”
Mevrouw Van Buren had a thoughtful look on her face. “A young man, tall and slender?” she asked. She lowered her voice. “You don’t think it could be the schoolteacher, do you?”
I nearly choked on the air coming into my lungs.
“I hadn’t thought of that,” Mevrouw Lange admitted. “I suppose it might be, mightn’t it? He disappeared in what, November?”
“All Hallows’ Eve, it was,” supplied Mevrouw Van Buren.
“Excuse me,” Charlotte broke in, stepping into their circle and pulling me with her. She smiled around at all of them; even so, they drew away ever so slightly but did not leave. “But did you say a man has been pulled from the river?”
Mevrouw Lange nodded importantly, looking wary but still glad, in the manner of all committed gossips, to have a newcomer to whom to tell the story. “About ten miles downriver, out of the Hudson,” she confirmed. “Some violence had been done to him, that’s for sure, though we’re all in disagreement over what kind it was.”
“And did you say,” I spoke up, surprising myself with my rather even voice, through every word felt about to strangle me, “you think it could be … Ichabod Crane?”
“Aye,” Mevrouw Van Buren said.
Mevrouw Van Ripper shook her head. “It would be a terrible shame, that, if it were him. He was a good lad. Well, you know, Juffrouw Van Tassel,” she said to me. “Pardon me, Mevrouw Van Brunt, that is. He stayed with you as well. He was your music teacher, was he not?”
“Yes,” I managed. “Yes, I was rather fond of him.”
“Indeed. Well, we shall hope it is not him,” Mevrouw Van Ripper said with a shudder. “I hope he was simply spooked by all the tales and rode off, and nothing more.”
“Ichabod Crane was carried off by the Headless Horseman,” a scratchy voice spoke up, and they moved aside to reveal Mevrouw Douw. She grinned, the expression all sharp edges. “You’ll not find him in the Hudson. You’ll not find him anywhere at all.”
The three women glanced warily at each other. Mevrouw Van Buren shivered. “I wouldn’t doubt it,” she said. “Not with the way he disappeared like that, and on All Hallows’ Eve, no less. I wouldn’t wonder that it was the Horseman.”
“You mark my words,” Mevrouw Douw said. “It was the Horseman.” She looked significantly around at each of us, then nodded. “Good day, ladies,” she said, and walked on.
“Charlotte,” I whispered. I clutched her arm for support. Suddenly the warmth of the day, which I had been so enjoying, felt about to smother me.
But she was not done. “And what have they done with this poor, unfortunate man?” she asked, her tone light, as if this was just idle gossip.
Mevrouw Lange shrugged. “I heard they took him to New York,” she said. “Don’t know why, unless they’re hoping someone there will recognize him. No doubt he’ll end up in a pauper’s grave, poor soul.”
“Charlotte,” I muttered again, through gritted teeth. I gripped her arm harder. I had to leave; had to get out of here or I would faint.
“A terrible story, indeed,” Charlotte said hurriedly. “I do think Katrina is feeling unwell; her condition, you know.” The women all nodded sagely. “I must get her home. Good day!”
With that, we turned, and Charlotte began steering me back toward my house.
I began to feel slightly better as we walked, but not much. I could not rid my mind of the images that now invaded it: Ichabod, frozen and decaying with his face eaten away, pulled from the waters of the Hudson. Ichabod with his throat cut, bleeding from stab wounds with his flesh in tatters, his beautiful body torn and bleeding, blood pouring from his mouth, from the lips I once kissed …
I let out a sob and brought up my hand to cover my mouth. Charlotte wrapped an arm around my waist protectively.
“Do not think about it,” she told me, almost harshly. “Do not think about it, Katrina. It will do you no good.”
She did not speak any more until we were in my house. Nox preceded us, barking urgently. “Nancy,” Charlotte called as I collapsed onto the daybed in the parlor, my swollen, ungainly body suddenly feeling much too heavy.
Nancy bustled in and stared at me in shock. “What’s happened?”
“Just a bit too much excitement, and Katrina is overtired,” Charlotte explained quickly. “Would you bring her some tea? That will no doubt restore her.”
“Of course,” Nancy said. She disappeared back into the kitchen.
“Charlotte,” I moaned, once Nancy was out of earshot. “What if…”
“You must not think about it,” Charlotte said again. “You’ve had a shock, Katrina, but you must not let it upset you so. Think of the child.”
This did rally me somewhat. I took several deep, slow breaths, calm beginning to return to me.
Charlotte knelt on the floor and took my hands in hers. “We do not know it is him,” she said, her wide amber eyes on mine. “We don’t. Ruffians dispose of bodies in the Hudson all the time. They just don’t always wash up, so we never hear about such things.”
The certainty in her voice was such that I could not help but believe her. “But … what if it is him?” I whispered. “It might be.”
Charlotte’s hands tightened on mine. “It might be,” she conceded, “but there is a far greater chance it is not. Remember,” she added, “Gunpowder was never found. He might have been stolen, I suppose, but it is more likely Ichabod rode away under his own power. Far more likely.”
I had forgotten about Gunpowder. “That … that is true,” I admitted, the weight on my chest lifting a bit. I laughed bitterly. “Who would have guessed that the likelihood Ichabod left me would be a comfort.”
Charlotte smiled. “You loved him. Love him. Of course you’d rather he was still out there in the world, healthy and whole, than that any misfortune befell him, even if it means he left you.”
She was right, though I had not considered it until then. For his fate to be that of the unknown man dragged from the Hudson, whose body had been picked over and dissected by the women in the market just as much as by the rocks and the fish and the current—that was truly the worst thing I could imagine.
And so I would not imagine it. I could not. Charlotte was right; we did not know that this man was Ichabod.
* * *
Yet later that night, I turned to a new page in my book of stories and spells and wrote the day’s date.
At the market with Charlotte, we heard some women talk of a body that was pulled from the Hudson. A man’s body.
I recorded the details of what the farmwives had said, and at the end I wrote:
They speculated that it might be Ichabod Crane. We cannot know for certain. Yet Mevrouw Douw insists Ichabod will not be found, that he cannot be found, because he was carried off by the Headless Horseman.
Can it be?