Hans screamed and hid beneath the table.
Mother appeared above. “Daniel Van Ripper! You are a fool!”
I kissed Papa’s fingers. I believed him wise, for I loathed that spinning wheel. I’d seen my mother there, spinning her life away, as did all the women of Tarrytown. I’d be no slave to the circle, as they were. I’d be no toothless ghost, spinning and haunting little girls. I felt pity for such a spirit and gratitude to have her example before me, steeling my resolve.
Every night thereafter, I would leave a crust of bread for Old Willow, and sleep with one eye open, in case she came to spin for me again.
March 21st, 1849
I was filled with fascination for the underworld, for tales mysterious and dark. I searched out the most spider-bit and superstitious housewives, learning of chimney elves and star-maidens, of wisps in the sedge and giants in the Highlands, they who snore like thunder, feet propped on great stone footstools tasseled with moss.
The Dutch of Tarrytown respect the spirit world far more than did their Old World ancestors. The Netherlands are flat, and the approach of neighbors may be seen from miles away. Transplant a people so acclimated to this claustrophobic valley, gathered in and overshadowed, brambled and untamed, full of weird glens and red-skinned mischief, and, naturally, they will grow fearful and believe themselves harried by ghosts and witches and haunted woods. Oh yes, the haunted woods of Sleepy Hollow figured into many a tale, for the dead lived there and would not be displaced as easily as the Alipconk villagers had been. On this our spinsters universally agreed: when one passed the haunted forest, one shivered and looked away. Yet I did not shiver. I did not look away. I longed to explore that shadow above, reverse of the river glittering below.
I must tell you something of my Tarrytown, for it is much changed.
Our lives revolved around The Road.
Of its many names—King’s Road, Highland Turnpike, Broad-way, the Post Road—“The Road” was all anyone spoke of. It was the spine of our world, our connection to such exotic lands as New York and Albany. It was not our only road, of course. We had the Old Loop, now divided into Main and Franklin, but the loop was merely a dirt lane that took farm wagons downhill to the dock and back up again. We had the road to White Plains, crossing the hills to the Overback, as we called it, the fertile land beyond the ridge, where the most successful tenant farms lay.
But that was all.
At the intersection of the Old Loop and the road stood the Couenhoven Inn, owned by Egbert Couenhoven, who was deaf in one ear. Across the road and slightly uphill stood the Van Tassel Tavern, owned by Petrus Van Tassel and operated by his sister Eleanor, who gained much disrepute thereby. Down at the bottom of the loop, the merchants Paulding, Martling, and Requa owned houses near the docks. Aside from this bustling center of boredom, a fistful of farmers ploughed the rocky fields on the river-side of the ridge, scratching out the rent due to Frederick the Third, our lord, the last master of Philipsburg.
This was all of Tarrytown. No train, no steamships, no streetlamps, no theater, one tavern, one church. The most rustic and backward place imaginable, full of buffoons and pious gossips, scythe-sharpeners and oyster-shuckers, henpecked husbands full of beer and nattering Dutch wives full of brimstone. A thoroughly disagreeable little village.
And yet I long for it, even now.
To walk on The Road was to walk in peace. No whistles, no rattling machines, only the sound of our own steps, the rustling of the trees, and the occasional clatter of a wagon wheel sauntering up behind. And the smells, Dylan. You cannot imagine the smells. Forest loam and wild mushroom, the hazy burn of garden rakings, the upturned earth from all the spring fields at once. Bread ovens and beehives and wild eglantine. When the wind slipped the Overback, bringing the aroma of apple orchards and lemon orchards and peach orchards, our valley fell under a haze of incense, as in some drowsy oriental den.
I was not a girl made for indoors, which aggrieved my mother. I was perpetually sunburnt and chapped and covered with mud. She despaired of making me a seamstress. I traded my thimble to an Indian girl to use as a jangler, and got a little oyster-shell knife for it. I did not need my thimble. I liked pricking my thumb and tasting my own blood. Blood fascinated me. Why would God fill us with red water? It is such a peculiar thing.
Mother put me to work in my father’s barber shop. It occupied one small room on the second floor of the inn, so as to be available to travelers on their way to more important places. It contained one straight-backed chair and a few shelves of medicines, ointments, and pomades. My mother tried to keep me ladylike. She tasked me with setting wigs. I’d wrap the hair in clay curlers and newspaper, block them, then carry them downstairs to cook in the inn’s bake oven, a row of severed heads licked by flame. Woe to little Agathe if she let one burn!
But my joy, my love, my great contribution, was the hunting of leeches.
April 4th, 1849
My father bled all ills. He prescribed a leech on the temple for headaches, a leech on the eyelid for nearsightedness, a leech on the knee for rheumatism. Once, he performed a tricky bit of dentistry on a passing fur trader and received the gift of a bleeding bowl such as you never saw. I keep it here in the attic and it is my treasure.
The farmers sat patiently as the red ran. I’d watch from the corner, pretending to play with my doll, a little aproned thing with one eye, that I called Nana. I’d watch the blood gather and think, “How marvelous that such strong men would consent to be bled by my father.” I was proud to help, and hunted leeches in Wildey Swamp.
Between the inn and our home, a small path cut the meadows, plunging into marshy lands. I would skip along with my jar under one arm and, oh, how the trees gathered me in. No mother was ever as demonstrative as those weeping trees. I loved the feel of the ground growing soft and squishy beneath my feet. I had a special place where I set my traps. Mother called it my “Slough of Despond,” after the dreadful swamp in Pilgrim’s Progress, the only book she knew. The Slough of Despond was a mire of guilt into which the sinning Christian fell and could not escape. I liked the name, and I would often say to her “I’m off to the Slough” when I went to hunt.
Do you know how to hunt leeches, Dylan? I tried to teach you when you were young. You take a little meat and put it in a bag, then let it steep for days. The leeches wriggle in, searching for a meal. I did not bring all my leeches back to Father. Some I kept as secret pets. My mother would allow me no other. Hunting dogs were for men. Birds were for dinner. And cats were the familiars of witches. But I had my leeches and I loved them.
I would let them feed on me. This was disobedience, for father needed them hungry. Still, I liked to watch them pulse in time with my heartbeat. Somehow it felt like magic. Besides, was bleeding not the cure for all ills?
There was a sandbar in my slough. I would pick through the sedge, mount that hillock of mud, and sit cross-legged as on the back of a beast. I would ride that starlit mirror, chasing water-skippers across the moon, and let my leeches feed on me. We would listen to the songs of bullfrogs. Braaaap. Braaaap. Oh, how I loved the dragonflies and the rot and the pull of my leeches!
My mother disapproved of everything I did. I was no lady. I was a wild thing, with feet too big for dainty shoes, hands too clumsy for embroidery. I was too tall, too thin, too clever, too dirty, too inquisitive. A wildfire to be put out. Oh, yes, the fire was growing in me, even then.
She doused it with buckets of church.
I dreaded our Sunday services. It was as if I knew what was to come, that I would face the whole congregation someday and be ridiculed. When that fatal day arrived, I thought “Of course,” though it did not lessen my humiliation. I believe I might never have become a witch, but for that night in 1772.
April 5th, 1849
From Mr. Coenhoven, we learned that Lord Frederick Philipse the Third was returning to Tarrytown to inspect his holdings. This was a rare visit, for the lord now busied himself at the Lower Mills, down in Yonkers, an
d had leased the Upper to William Pugsley. Most of us had never seen a Philipse, except for the paper silhouette that hung in the inn. We were delighted, even if it meant a special trip to church for twilight service.
Traveling to church was a great burden to us. Even the most pious grumbled over it. When the first Lord Philipse built the church, he did so merely to bless his new milldam, and so built it nearer the mill. No tenants lived so close to Lord Philipse’s house, and so we traveled miles for our services, even in thunder. Petrus Van Tassel, one of the wealthier tenant farmers, had the worst of it, for his home was our old Roost, now Irving’s Sunnyside—far to the south. As his journey took him the length of Tarrytown, he graciously provided transportation to we horse-less merchants. The Van Tassel taxi-wagon arrived each Sunday outside his sister Eleanor’s tavern, across from the inn. Old Petrus was often in New York, so the driver was Petrus’s son, Eleanor’s nephew, Baltus Van Tassel, your grandfather.
Baltus was my closest friend. Does that surprise you? He assisted his aunt at the tavern, for he was quite fat and not very good at fieldwork. Eleanor kept him perpetually glutted on beer and hard cider, which made for a cheerful twelve-year-old. Baltus loved ghost stories, and shared his tavern-tales with me. Mother thought the friendship improper, but few children lived in our neighborhood, and none our age. Most worked the fields and had no leisure, certainly none to spend with such misfits as we: the strange leech-hunter and the tipsy wagon-master.
Hans worshipped Baltus and followed him like a pup. I found Baltus comic. Red-headed and round as a barrel. He found me beautiful, a secret he kept for years, locked away in his head.
The same head I keep downstairs.
April 6th, 1849
I have descended to my pantry, though it is dreadful cold and that is bad for the ink. I wished to gaze upon Baltus’s skull, which I keep under glass. It still has a little of his hair attached, no longer red but white. The cheekbones are very high, so I think Baltus might have been rather handsome if he hadn’t been so fat. Our bones tell the truth of our beauty, even if it is hidden from others in life. Do not think me a ghoul for obtaining your grandfather’s skull. Even I am sentimental, and it warms my heart to see him, for we were dear companions. It wounded me terribly to send my Horseman after him, but it could not be helped. I’d grown tired of waiting for Katrina to inherit, and I had a quarry to finance.
Here, too, is the skull you obtained for me from beneath the church altar, of Frederick Philipse, the first Lord. I tremble, still, to look upon it, for he was a man of such power.
Remember: We are Dutch, and we were here first.
What existed on these shores before men like Philipse came? Before our woodsmen and farmers cut trees and broke ground? Nothing. A wild wilderness. Your blood crossed the ocean first. Jan Van Brunt sailed with Henrik Hudson on the Halve Maen when that great man charted the river that bears his name. Erik Van Brunt shepherded colonists to the “New Amsterdam” and won himself a bowery. He witnessed the purchase of Manhattan Island for wampum by Peter Minuit the clever. Verick Van Brunt patrolled the wall, from whence we get the Wall Street. Reed Van Brunt was first to damn Governor Peter Stuyvesant on the day that peg-legged coward surrendered all that we had built to the fleet of a British king and the New Amsterdam became “New York.”
Frederick Philipse was the richest of all new world Dutchmen, for he welcomed the British and ingratiated himself. Philipse built the King’s Bridge over the Spuyten Duyvil Creek at the northern tip of Manhattan—and his manor encompassed everything northward, up to the Croton River, where he shared a border with Stephanus Van Cortland, his ally by marriage. He collected tolls, built his mills and church, rented his fields, and when he died, the lands of Philipsburg Manor passed to his heirs, until his grandson, Frederick the Third, ran the countryside.
When that same Lord Frederick made his momentous visit, none were more curious than Baltus and I. We whispered together, as the adults climbed into the taxi-wagon. Would Frederick wear a gold crown? Would he carry a scepter? We felt as if Christ was returning, and we searched our conduct for blemishes.
The taxi-wagon rattled northward. I sat in the back with my family, buffeted mercilessly. Our wagons had no springs, and The Road was full of stones and roots. Baltus cushioned his wagon with foul-smelling hay, infested with grasshoppers and cicadas. Butterflies trailed us through the twilight.
The road broke to either side of the hanging tree. We passed to the right and clattered into the swamp. I remember the wheels bogged down at the corduroy road over the brook—a stretch of mud-packed logs within sight of my slough. Baltus got out and pushed us through, swelling with pride at his Herculean accomplishment, though it was likely the absence of his own weight that made the difference. We collected Mr. See at the Continental Road and clattered downhill… toward the church bridge.
The church bridge over the Pocantico lay just inside the haunted forest. It had nothing holy about it. Wild grapevines and twisted branches overshadowed it, making the place look like a descent into an abyss. The adults fell silent as we approached that twilight span, already dreading the nighttime return. The horses became skittish. Oh, you cannot know what I felt at the approach of that bridge. I tingled with expectation, scanning the woods for ogres and imps, lifting my feet as we clattered over, as one does when crossing a lair of trolls.
We gained the far shore and skirted the river, riding westward again. We expected to see the Philipse Mills, but found ourselves in fairy-land. Mr. Pugsley had hung lanterns all around the millpond, to welcome his landlord, and flickering candlelight marked the path up the knoll to the church. Do you remember the church as it was before the fire, Dylan? The door was on the southern side then, the windows square and high, so no Indians could peek in.
We entered, and I felt the eye of my mother upon me as we sat on our hard benches and waited for the lord’s arrival.
My mother bent and whispered, “See there? That is what a young lady should be.” Across the aisle, in the section reserved for the better sort, sat Cornelia Van Cortland, a descendant of the great lord to the north, come to pay respects to her Philipse kin. Cornelia was older than I, a blossoming beauty, dressed in finery. My buckles were pewter, hers were silver and encrusted with precious stones. She wore a ring with emeralds and earrings of pearl. She held her chin high, as a noblewoman does. She looked as if her feet had never touched the ground.
I despised her on sight.
My mother whispered, “That could be you, someday, if you only tried.”
The domine ascended his pulpit and began The Sermon of Prodigious Length. Halfway through his hellfire, Pugsley stood and all heads turned. Frederick Philipse! I sat up straight, which pleased my mother, and I gazed up the aisle as a bride looks to her future husband.
I was horrified.
He was immense. If Baltus was a barrel, Frederick Philipse was a brewery. He filled the entire aisle, waddling and dripping sweat, leaning on a cane, favoring a foot swollen with gout, and his wig needed setting. I looked to Baltus. He sat stone-faced so as not to laugh.
Yet behind Philipse, another man had entered, part of the retinue. Here, I thought, was the sort of god one would gladly worship. He was tall and rugged, with a shock of black hair and a strong chin, and I loved him on sight.
My mother saw my passionate intensity. “That is Gerard Beekman,” she said, and in a flash, the name had etched itself indelibly on my heart. I would be Agathe Beekman someday, I was sure of it. Here was a man tall and strong, with golden braid, who would steal me away, keep me as his ward until I became a woman, then marry me and make me the queen of Philipse Castle. This was my hope, a little flowering dream of my twelve-year-old heart, a dream that was wilted within moments of being born. A dream I’ve attempted to revive with blood, ever since.
Gerard sat near to Cornelia Van Cortland and looked at her with unmistakable love. Oh, Dylan, you cannot imagine my grief, for I knew that a man such as Gerard Beekman would always choose a Cornelia ov
er me. However hard I tried, I would never be a delicate beauty. I saw in myself all those failings of which my mother was so vocal. I looked to the domine and I thought, “God cannot be so cruel,” for Gerard Beekman was my image of what a man should be, and I knew my own unworthiness to ever approach such an altar.
“They’re engaged,” my mother said. I bowed my head in imitation of piety, to hide the rise of my tears.
And then the terrible thing happened.
An evil noise rose below my bench. My mother gasped, shrinking back. Others must have thought it was a rattlesnake, for they recoiled from whatever shivered and spat beneath my skirts. I shot to my feet, searching the ground. I felt something prickle my arm, and then the noise exploded above my head. Hiss! Hiss! Hiss! Rattle! Hiss!
The people of Tarrytown laughed at me. I’d brought a hitchhiker from the hay wagon. A fat black cicada made its cry from atop my bonnet. Hiss! Hiss! Rattle! Hiss! I panicked, crying, “Get it off! Get it off!” My mother reached for it, but the cicada evaded her and prickled my neck. I swatted at it myself and it fled to my crown again. The domine covered his face, the boys giggled. Hans fell to the floor in hysterics. Then, to my horror, Lord Frederick Philipse struggled to his feet, raised a hymnal, and crushed the thing with a blow to my head.
My mother pulled my bonnet off, gathering the little corpse, hiding it from view. I had shamed my parents and myself. I had shamed my community in front of their lord. I had tracked in mud from my Slough of Despond. Tears broke down my cheeks. I ran from the church and down the knoll. I fell at the foot of the church bridge, skinning my knees, and knelt there like a penitent.
SLEEPY HOLLOW: General of the Dead (Jason Crane Book 3) Page 42