“Katrina. Katrina! Wake up!”
Someone was shaking me, and Nox was barking. I groaned and opened my eyes. “What…?”
As I blinked sleep from my eyes, I saw Charlotte standing over me. And it all came rushing back again. “What is it, Charlotte?” I demanded.
“You must come with me. Quickly,” she said, pulling the coverlet off of me. “Get dressed.”
I sat up. “What do you mean? What is going on?”
“I know that you are upset with me right now, and rightfully so. But there is something you need to see.”
“Oh, now you want to show me things?” I spat, but my rage was blunted from what it had been the night before.
She flinched. “I suppose I deserve that. But please, just come.”
“What is it?” I asked, getting out of the bed and crossing the room to my wardrobe. “What’s happened?”
“I … I cannot tell you. You just need to see.”
I paused and glanced at her. “You’ve had a vision?”
“Yes.”
I pulled a dress and petticoat from the wardrobe. “Quick, help me dress.” Charlotte laced me into my clothes, and we started immediately for the stairs, Nox bounding behind us. “Let me just get Anneke and—”
“No.” Charlotte’s sharp tone stopped me. “No. Leave her with Nancy. This is not something she should see.”
“Charlotte, what…”
“Just come.” She took my hand and practically dragged me down the stairs and out the door.
She led me down the road toward the church, and when she started toward the path that led to the clearing, I stopped. “No,” I said. “I am not going back there.”
She shook her head. “Don’t worry. He’s not there. We needn’t go that far.”
He?
Soon I realized we were not the only ones coming to see whatever spectacle Charlotte wished to show me. I saw a few people from the village up ahead of us on the path, and soon there were more behind us, as well.
A crowd had gathered in the middle of the narrow path up ahead, and everyone was conversing in low voices. A few women were weeping. Charlotte’s steps slowed as we reached them, and I did the same. I still could not see what everyone was looking at.
Then someone saw me. “It is her! Let her through!”
“What is going on?” I asked. As if in answer, the crowd parted. I gasped, the breath freezing in my lungs.
In the middle of the forest path was a body. A corpse. And the cause of death was quite obvious, for his head was gone. Not merely separated from his body, but nowhere to be seen. Gone.
And it was Brom.
I knew in an instant, knew his body—as a wife would—even without his head, his face. He was still dressed in the clothes he’d been wearing last night, when we had screamed at each other.
And he was dead. Beheaded.
I remained stock still, gawping at what remained of him. The gathered villagers were watching me, waiting for me to burst into tears, to sob and tear my hair and scream and wail at the sky, or perhaps to faint.
But I did none of those things. I simply stared down at his headless corpse, silently. Nox cautiously approached the body and sniffed at it, then growled and backed away, hackles raised.
Without a word, I turned and walked away, Charlotte and Nox both following on my heels.
Though it would never bring Ichabod back to me, justice had been served.
* * *
They made excuses for my reaction in the village, of course, not that I cared. They said I had been in shock, poor thing, and with such a young child to care for, too. But I was glad he was dead. He deserved it, for what he had done, for killing Ichabod and marrying me anyway and making me, almost, start to love him. And if feeling such a thing was enough to consign me to hell, then I would see Brom Bones there.
The villagers also knew exactly who to blame for Brom’s murder. It was obvious; there was only one culprit: the Headless Horseman. Brom had been too brash, too bold for his own good, they said. He had run afoul of the Hessian, and not even Brom Bones could escape him.
If Charlotte and I were less certain, it was not by much.
“But you did not see who did it?” I asked her, once we were back in my house, a cup of calming tea in both our hands.
She shook her head. “I saw a sword separating his head from his body,” she said calmly, as though discussing the weather. “I did not see who wielded the sword.”
We were both silent for a while. “Could it have been a suicide?” I asked. “He was guilty over what he had done. He was eaten up with it. Maybe once I accused him, told him that I knew…?”
Charlotte gave me a hard look. “Is a man really capable of cutting off his own head? And even if he somehow did it himself, what then became of his head?”
I shrugged. “Animals, maybe? Stranger things have certainly happened. Who else could it have been, then?”
“I do not know.” She glanced up at me. “The ghost of Ichabod Crane, I suppose.”
“Aye, perhaps,” I said bitterly. “Would that he had killed the wretch before I married him. In that case, he shall be coming for me next, for I killed him just as surely as Brom did.”
“Katrina, no,” Charlotte said vehemently, setting down her tea and taking my hands in hers. “This is part of the reason I did not tell you. I knew you would blame yourself, I knew it. But you are not to blame, and that is the truth. It was Brom’s hand that wielded the blade, and Brom and Brom alone is the guilty party.”
I shook my head, beginning to weep again. “Brom killed him because he loved me and I him,” I said, tears dripping onto my skirt. “For that and no other reason. If Ichabod had never come here, had never met me, if we had never fallen in love…”
“No,” Charlotte said, with even more force this time. “Do not spend the rest of your life tearing yourself apart over this, Katrina. Please. I beg of you. Ichabod died because of Brom’s hate and jealousy and desire and selfishness. For no other reason. Do you hear me? You are not to blame.”
“But I could have … I should have saved him, somehow … should have made him stay with me that night … should have realized…”
“There is nothing you could have done, Katrina. Nothing. Brom turned evil, somehow. That little boy who was our closest friend died long before the man met his grisly end in the woods, and none of us noticed until it was too late.
“So this is what you will do,” Charlotte went on, tightening her grip. “You will raise your beautiful daughter, your and Ichabod’s daughter. For you have not lost him, not truly. A part of him is in Anneke. So you will raise her the best you can, and tell her all about her kind, warm, generous, intelligent, handsome, loving father.” Charlotte’s amber eyes filled with tears as well. “And someday, when she is old enough, if you choose to, you can tell her how he met his end—bravely, and with her mother’s name on his lips.”
By this time, I was sobbing, and Charlotte held me until I was through.
* * *
That night, I dreamed of the Horseman for the last time. I saw him sitting atop his horse at the entrance to the forest path behind the church, the one that led to the clearing. He sat there, facing in my direction at some distance, as he always had. The flaming pumpkin was in one hand, and his sword and axe were sheathed at his side, as always. Then, he bowed to me from his saddle, inclining his shoulders to where I stood, before wheeling his horse around and riding away.