I tried desperately to regain my breath, Charlotte’s eyes and mine locked across the flames crackling between us. She did not look away, silent and still and unflinching as a statue. Her pale skin and red hair glowed in the light of the flames, unearthly and ethereal, like a spirit of the fire. Finally, when I could breathe normally again, she spoke. “You know. You saw.”
I stared hard at her. “You knew.”
She nodded once, slowly. “Yes.”
I felt as if a dagger had been plunged into me as well. “You knew,” I repeated, “and you never told me.”
She nodded again, not bothering to deny it. “Yes.”
“How could you?” I whispered.
She arched an eyebrow at me. “Would you have believed me if I had just told you?”
“Yes,” I said, in an anguished whisper.
She went on as though I had not spoken. “Would you truly have believed me if I had told you? If you had not seen it yourself? If you had not found out on your own?”
“I…” As her words began to penetrate my drugged, grief-fogged haze, I began to wonder.
“You would not have,” she said. “I know you, Katrina, better than anyone else on earth. You would have denied it, insisted on finding the truth for yourself. On seeing it for yourself.”
I could not deny what she said, yet her betrayal still stung. “How long have you known?” I asked, voice hushed.
“Since that winter day when we came here to investigate.”
I remembered that day well, remembered the moment when I had seemed to stir her from a reverie. She had been staring off into the distance, at nothing, seemingly. I had recognized the look on her face, had known it well, yet when she’d brushed my questions aside I had not pushed the matter. I was merely lost in thought, she had said, and like a fool—even though I knew better—I had not questioned her further.
“You knew, all this time. The day … oh God, the day we heard about the body in the Hudson. You reassured me. You reassured me it likely was not Ichabod. But no doubt it was. You knew, and you were giving me false hope.”
She shook her head. “What was I supposed to do? You were eight months pregnant. I needed to calm you down, for the good of yourself and the child, so I said what I needed to say.”
But they were still lies! I wanted to rage at her. You knew better, and you lied to me!
“I had a vision,” she said, her words slow and clear. “I was in Giles’s bed at the inn, trying to fall asleep, when I saw you here, with your fire and your herbs. And I knew I had to leave my lover’s bed to come to you.” She looked at me evenly. “You stole the herbs from me.” She paused. “What you did was dangerous. Did you think that I would not find out?”
“I had no choice, Charlotte. I couldn’t not know any longer. Why did you not let me have them when I asked? Why did you not let me see this so it could all be over?”
“Has it occurred to you yet I was trying to help you?” she asked. “Once I knew the truth, I did everything I could to protect you.”
“Protect me?” I cried. “By hiding the truth, denying that you knew it, and lying to me? By deciding on your own what is best for me?”
“And now that you know?” she inquired, almost conversationally. “Do you feel better now that you know the truth, Katrina Van Tassel? Do you feel at peace?”
I closed my eyes, as if that could block out her words, or the screams of anguish still reverberating inside my head. “You should not have lied to me,” was my reply when I finally looked at her. “You should not have made that choice for me.”
She bowed her head. “Perhaps you are right.”
I rose on unsteady, shaky legs. I gathered my things blindly, tossing them all into my basket.
“Katrina,” Charlotte said, reaching out to me, as if now she wanted to offer me comfort.
“Just tell me this,” I said, not moving toward her. “You did not knowingly let me marry my lover’s murderer, did you?”
“No,” Charlotte said at once. “I told you, I did not know until we came here together, after your wedding, and by then there was nothing to be done. I would never have let you marry him had I known the truth. I swear it to you.”
I believed her. Donning my cloak, I walked out of the clearing and toward home.
Charlotte let me go. Despite her betrayal, she was a good enough friend to know I was in need of consolation, and a good enough friend to know she could not give it to me just then.