There was a funeral held for Brom in the church, of course. They buried his headless corpse, for as hard as the men of the village looked, his head could not be found. This surprised precisely none of the old Dutch farmwives. “You’ll not find it,” Mevrouw Douw was heard to say. “It’s not to be found. It was taken by the Headless Horseman. Perhaps now that he has the schoolteacher and Brom Bones, he shall be satisfied and leave us in peace at long last.”
As Brom’s widow I was in the first pew of the church and first at his graveside. I did not know if anyone noticed the lack of tears beneath my black veil, and I did not care if they did. Nor did I cry during the funeral feast that followed, where I welcomed our close friends and family into my house and served luncheon and the doot koekjes, the huge biscuits always prepared for funerals.
I mourned Brom in my own way, though. I mourned the man he might have become, if fear and bitterness and jealousy had not warped that boy who was my friend into what he became. I mourned the life we had been slowly, hesitantly, starting to build together; the genuine love that had been growing between us. His father had much blame to bear, in my mind, for never finding his son good enough or manly enough. Meneer Van Brunt had never had much interest in Anneke, and never sought to see her after his son’s death. I was happy to keep it that way.
Yet ultimately Brom had chosen his own path. It had been his hand that plunged the dagger into Ichabod Crane, and none other. And he had suffered for it.
I wondered, sometimes, if the Headless Horseman had somehow heard Brom’s boast that night. There is no Headless Horseman. I am what haunted those woods on All Hallows’ Eve. I am the Headless Horseman. Perhaps the Hessian had taken exception to this, to Brom doing violence in his name. And so he had taken Brom Bones’s head. Perhaps that was the price that had needed to be paid. And so Charlotte’s prophecy was fulfilled more completely than I had ever thought possible.
I see blood in your future, Brom Van Brunt. Blood and death. The Headless Horseman is your fate. The Headless Horseman is your end.
I thought it had come to pass the night that I confronted him. But it seemed Charlotte’s prediction had not been quite done with Brom then, not yet.
Days passed, then weeks turned to months. Autumn gave way to winter, as it always does, and what a dark winter it was. I spent all the time I could with Anneke, and with Charlotte, and with Nancy. For any time I was alone was time spent in sorrow and anguish and rage and bloody memory and regret.
I was not the same woman I had been before I learned the truth, and I knew it. And the women around me knew it as well. But I could not go back to being who I was before I learned of Ichabod’s death, before I had seen it. And I wondered, every day, why I had thought that knowing the truth would allow me to move on. I had thought that, once I knew, my life would somehow change for the better, would become more satisfying, full of meaning. Why had I not listened to Nancy and Charlotte, who had so warned me?
Do you feel better now that you know the truth, Katrina Van Tassel? Do you feel at peace?
“Ichabod would not want you to go on this way, Katrina,” Charlotte said to me gently, one day in February. “He would want you to live life to the fullest. He loved you. He would want you to be happy, with or without him.”
I knew she was right; knew that happiness was exactly what Ichabod had always wanted for me. His death would not have changed that. But knowing it and living it are two very different things, I found.
Her words did inspire me to do one thing, though. That very day, I went home and pulled out both my old notebook and a new one, one that my father had procured for me in New York at my request.
In the last few remaining pages of the old book, I finally wrote down the first story I had ever told Ichabod: the legend of the Headless Horseman.
When that was done, I opened the new notebook. And I began to write down the story—the true story, in all its passionate and joyous and tragic and bloody detail—of Ichabod Crane and Katrina Van Tassel.
* * *
In the early spring of that year, I had a dream.
In it, Ichabod and I were sitting out in the garden of my house, the one I had shared with Brom and now lived in with Anneke and Nancy. We were on a blanket spread out on the grass, his arm around my shoulders as I nestled against him. The sun was warm on my skin, a soft, sensual caress. We sat quietly, peacefully, not speaking; then Anneke came running out into the garden.
“Mama! Papa!” she cried, tumbling onto the blanket between us.
Ichabod smiled down at her and ruffled her curls. Then he turned to look at me. “She is beautiful, our daughter,” he said.
I returned his smile. “Yes, she is. And so you will have to beat the suitors away with a stick someday, after all.”
“I once promised that I would, did I not?” he said, squeezing me to him, and we both laughed.
Then his face sobered. “We will not have another, Katrina.”
My smile faded as I looked up into his eyes.
“No,” I said slowly. “We will not.”
He turned to me and took my face in his hands, his forehead resting against mine. “Take care of her for me,” he said softly. “Take care of her, and teach her all you know, with that powerful mind of yours. It has always been what I love best about you.” He paused. “And teach her how to be happy.”
Tears were streaming down my face. “Yes,” I said, my voice thick. “I will. I promise.”
He kissed me once on the lips, gently at first, then with more passion. “Love her for me,” he whispered. “And know your love was the greatest gift of my life. Never forget that I love you. Always.”
I was still crying when I woke up. And I thanked God and whatever powers existed that I lived in Sleepy Hollow, where such magic was possible.
* * *
That day turned out to be marvelous and sunny, the first truly warm day of the spring. After I had broken my fast, I asked Nancy if she would watch Anneke for a time. “I am going to go for a walk.”
Nancy smiled encouragingly. “You do that, Katrina. It is a fine day.”
“I will take Anneke out into the garden with me when I return,” I said, donning my cloak and stepping outside.
I walked past the Jansen cottage, not seeking Charlotte’s company that day. She was likely not home, anyway. Giles had bought a plot of land along the Albany Post Road, and construction had just started on their new house. It would be modest to start with, but they could always add on to it later, if and when his new tavern became as successful as he predicted. They planned to marry in the fall, once construction was finished.
Charlotte had asked my permission to tell Giles the truth of Ichabod’s fate, and I had granted it. We would leave it to him how, and whether, Ichabod’s mother should be told. Furthermore, with Brom dead, there was no reason Giles should not also know that Anneke was Ichabod’s daughter, so long as he kept the matter to himself. She was, after all, his cousin by blood. And so Charlotte and I would soon be related, in a fashion.
I walked down the Albany Post Road, seeing a few people I knew but not stopping to greet them. When I reached the Van Tassel property, I turned left and walked down the path through the forest toward what had once been my favorite spot to read, and then my and Ichabod’s lovers’ nest.
Before I set foot in that small clearing by the stream, I froze, my breath catching in my throat. I had not been here for years now. But nothing had changed. It seemed no one else had discovered this spot and sought to claim it as their own, and for that I was glad.
I lowered myself onto the bank of the stream, spreading my skirts around me. I listened to the water trickling over rocks and branches, reminding me of Ichabod’s guitar playing. I listened to the birds in the trees above me, exultant at the coming of another spring, and to the light breeze rustling the leaves of the trees, finally feeling the first measure of true peace I had known in a long time.
I thought about how, just last month, John Adams had been sworn in as the second president of the United States of America, the same man who was a longtime patriot and revolutionary and had been George Washington’s vice president. A man who knew how the government worked, and what to expect, and what we as a country needed. The nation was, in fact, moving on. And perhaps so must I. Perhaps it was time to move ahead with my life, to revisit those dreams I had as a carefree girl, of seeing more of the world than just my ghostly little corner of it, of sailing to London and seeing a play in Master Shakespeare’s theatre. I could take Anneke. Charlotte would be happy to accompany us.
I would never cease to be sad or enraged at Ichabod’s death, nor the manner of it. I would never rest easy with it. But I could accept it, and lay the past to rest. I could let it die.
I began to hum, softly at first, then louder. It was the song about the willow tree and the lotus flower and the lovers, the one I was sure Ichabod had written for me. For us. Then I began to sing aloud, at full voice. But unlike the time I had sung it here before, when I had tried to bid goodbye to my memories, my voice was full of joy and hope, not sorrow. The lovers in the song were star-crossed, and separated, but it was not forever. I had my memories, and I would no longer try to push them away. I would cherish them. And someday Ichabod and I would meet again, on the other side.
As I finished singing, a white crane rose from behind a tree along the bank and soared up into the sky. And I smiled.