That night I stood beside Anneke’s cradle, watching her sleep; she was bathed in the silvery moonlight that came in through the window.
Oh, Ichabod, I thought. You have a beautiful daughter. How could you have left her? How could you have left us? She is the most perfect daughter who ever was, and you are not here. Why are you not here? How could you?
His words came back to me: I shall pray day and night to be so blessed as to have you bear my daughter.
Were they prayers or lies, you bastard? I wanted to scream at him. For I have borne your daughter, and where are you?
I shook with silent sobs for a long, long time.
47
The Light in the Woods
The next night, Brom went out to Sleepy Hollow’s only tavern—which was run by a cousin of my father’s—to enjoy a rare night with his old gang. I relished the thought of a quiet evening to myself, and once Anneke was fed and settled into her cradle, I sat with a book of poetry, candles blazing on the small table beside me as the daylight faded away.
While normally I was swept away by such poetry, for some reason it was failing to hold my interest. My eyes kept wandering away from the page and roaming about the room.
I attributed my lack of focus to pure weariness, and decided to go early to bed. I had just closed the book and set it on my lap when a single candle in an iron holder snagged my attention. Suddenly I was staring into the flame, letting it envelop me as it had that night with Charlotte.
I heard the piercing whinny of a horse, again from a distance. I saw the shadow of a man running amongst the trees, heard the panting of his breath. No, there were two men running, for there were two sets of footsteps, and two sets of winded lungs—or was one the horse? I could not tell. One man was chasing the other, and I heard the latter scream, a sharp cry and shout for help, and my heart constricted at the sound of his voice. Ichabod. Then, ahead of me, I could see a glimpse of the clearing, where the Hessian had supposedly met his end.
Then, as abruptly as it had before, the vision winked out, and I seemed to fall, panting and sweating, back into my chair in the parlor.
I struggled to catch my breath as I stared hard at the candle flame, wishing it to give up more of its secrets, much as those secrets frightened me. I had seen something, but not enough. I had not seen how it ended.
Yet who was to say it was anything but my own tired, overactive imagination? What truth could there be in a vision in a candle flame? I am so tired that I am dreaming while I am awake, I admonished myself. Surely, if I could see visions, they would show me something useful, would they not?
Blowing out the rest of the candles—and shivering in spite of myself—I picked up the single candle to carry it upstairs and made for my bed. I felt no small amount of relief when I was finally settled beneath the covers and was able to blow out that candle, as well.
Given my vision, or imagining, or whatever it was, it should have come as no surprise that I fell right into a nightmare.
I was running through the woods at night, only barely able to discern the black outline of the trees against the dark night sky. Branches tore at my hair, my skin, my skirts, but I kept running.
I heard my name, echoing out amongst the trees. I could not tell what direction it came from, but it was Ichabod’s voice. Yet all around his voice it seemed as though there was a second one, darker, more sinister, a somehow deafening whisper.
“Katrina! Katrina! Katrina! Katrina!”
I kept running, though whether I was running toward the voices or away from them I could not tell. Suddenly I heard the whinny of a horse and the pounding of hooves on the path behind me. Still running, I twisted my head to look behind me, and thought I could make out the shape of a figure on horseback riding straight toward me. In the darkness all I could see for certain was the fiery face of a jack-o’-lantern.
I screamed.
“Katrina,” a voice mumbled. “Katrina, wake up.”
I shot bolt upright in bed, panting and coated in sweat. Beside me, Brom had pulled himself into a half-sitting position. “You were screaming in your sleep,” he slurred, having yet to sleep off the drink he’d consumed with his friends. I didn’t know what time it was nor when he had come in; I hadn’t heard him, that much was certain.
“I … I was?” I asked, my breath still coming heavily.
He groaned and fell back against his pillow. “Yes. And muttering and calling out words.”
I froze at this. I had not been calling Ichabod’s name, had I? “I … I am sorry to have awoken you,” I said. I pushed the coverlet aside and got out of bed. I could hear Nox outside our bedchamber, whining and scratching on the door. “I may as well go and check on Anneke, now that I am awake.”
Brom made an indistinct noise of assent and fell back to sleep.
Nox leapt up and placed his paws on my shoulders as I emerged, enthusiastically licking my face. With him following, I padded to the nursery next door. I was glad to see my scream had not awoken Anneke, but as I stepped into the room she began to stir. I lifted her from her cradle and sat in the chair beside it, pulling down the shoulder of my shift to bare my breast. She suckled eagerly, and nearly as soon as she finished was asleep again.
I rose, placing her back in the cradle. Feeding the baby had calmed me somewhat, but it would be some time before I was able to sleep again. Restless and still damp with sweat in the summer heat, I went downstairs, planning to step outside for a bit of fresh air. At this hour there would be no one about to see me dressed in only my shift.
I stepped out onto the stoop, stretching my arms in the cool night air and taking several long, deep breaths.
It was the light I noticed first, off in the distance, and I realized my eyes had been trained on it for several seconds before I truly registered it. I blinked several times to clear my vision, thinking it might be some trick of my eyes.
But no, in the woods that ringed the end of our lane, I saw orange light bobbing amongst the trees. I took a few steps closer, trying to make out what I was seeing, and slowly its shape seemed to solidify out of the darkness. Was it a … a pumpkin? A flaming pumpkin? It was high enough up that it would have been carried by …
Swallowing my scream, I ran inside, bolting the door behind me. I hurried to check that the back door was locked as well before hastening back upstairs, huddling beneath the covers beside a snoring Brom. I tried to block the sight of that flaming pumpkin moving through the darkness from my mind; tried not to think what it meant in light of my latest vision and latest nightmare; tried not to think that if a supernatural rider were after me, the bolts on my doors would not keep him out.
I barely slept the rest of the night; only in fitful increments of just minutes before snapping awake again, my fear preventing any true rest. As the sun rose and the light filtered in, I began to hear Nancy downstairs, lighting the kitchen fire. I climbed out of bed—Brom still dead to the world—and went downstairs again.
I went right to the front door and opened it, peering into the woods.
I saw nothing.
48
Secrets
I visited the Jansen house as early as decently possible, having asked Nancy to watch Anneke while Brom slept off the drink. Mevrouw Jansen answered my knock. “Katrina! So early,” she said, surprised. “Is everything all right? Are you and baby Anneke well?”
“Yes, we are well, although there is a … matter I need to consult with Charlotte about,” I said. “I am sorry to call so early, it’s just that…”
Mevrouw Jansen wrapped an arm around my shoulders. “I understand completely,” she said ushering my inside, Again I wondered how much she knew about my life, and Charlotte’s, and the things we sought to learn together. “Charlotte is in back with a patient right now, but I will send her out as soon as she is through.”
“Oh, I … I don’t mean to impose. I can go home until she is done.”
“Nonsense. Wait here, and I’ll bring you a cup of tea. It is easier for you and C
harlotte to speak here, I am sure.”
I was nearly faint with gratitude as I sat on the daybed. “Is there anything I can help you with, while I’m here?” I asked as she brought me a cup of steaming tea—no doubt the kettle had been hot.
“You can mind the kitchen fire, if you like. I’m going out into the garden to pick some herbs and need the fire to stay hot. I’ve some concoctions to brew.”
I did as she said, adding a small log to the fire and turning the wood over with the iron poker to keep the blaze high. I kept my eyes averted from the flames, though, afraid of some terrifying vision that I could not explain finding me once more. Still, it was hot work in the summer, even in the relative cool of the morning. By the time Mevrouw Jansen returned, beads of sweat were dripping down my face.
She smiled upon seeing me. “Why, now you’ll need to bathe when you return home!” she said. “I’m sorry. It is a rather sweaty task, but necessary, I’m afraid. Go sit, and I’ll send Charlotte out to you.”
A few minutes later, Charlotte appeared. “Katrina! What is it? Has something happened?”
“Well … it … yes,” I said. “But … how is your patient?”
“Oh.” She glanced back over her shoulder. “Well enough. A farmhand. He is resting for a time, before I send him home. He was hit in the head with a shovel and got quite a gash. I fixed him up, but he is still a bit incoherent.” She sat on the daybed with me. “What has happened, Katrina?”
Everything poured out of me, starting with my vision in the candle flame and ending with the lit pumpkin in the woods. I spoke rapidly, trying to get the words out as quickly as I could so that I did not need to live alone with them for any longer. That Charlotte could hear them, and help me.
She listened in silence until I had finished. “Dear God,” she murmured. “Someone is trying to tell you something, it seems.”
“Or … or means me harm,” I suggested.
“Well, the pumpkin … I do not know what to make of that,” she said. “But the vision and the dream … those mean something, Katrina. You know that, don’t you? They must.”
“Or it is just my overwrought mind,” I said. I let out a sound that was half laugh, half sob. “Perhaps I imagined the pumpkin and light altogether, anxious as I was.” It was a possibility I had considered many times, simply because nothing else made sense.
But I had seen it. I knew I had. It had been there.
Charlotte shook her head. “Believe me, I understand the urge to want such visions to be meaningless fits of fancy. It would make everything so much easier. But you cannot explain them away as such. I of anyone would know. And it may well be they hold the answers that you seek.”
“But I … I cannot make sense of them,” I protested. “They are flashes and shadows and a few frightening images, but no new information. Nothing has been revealed. And what proof do I have that there is any truth to them at all? That they are not simply coming from my own mind?”
“Such visions do not come out of nowhere, not even our own minds, not unless you are ill and hallucinating,” she said. “It could be that you do not yet realize what it is that you are seeing. I can help you, Katrina. I can help you interpret them.”
I met her eyes. “I … suppose that is why I am here. And perhaps…” I swallowed down the lump of fear in my throat and lowered my voice. “Perhaps you could consult the cards again? To see if there is anything further we might learn?”
Charlotte glanced at the closed door to the stillroom, where her mother was. “Yes,” she said quietly. “But not tonight. Come back tomorrow night; I believe my mother will be out checking on one of our regular patients.”
“Very well.” I paused. “But … the pumpkin.”
“Yes.” Charlotte frowned, a trace of fear in her eyes. “Maybe it was someone playing a prank of some kind? It sounds like something Brom and his gang would get up to, honestly.”
I frowned. I had not considered this, and it was plausible, at the very least. “Brom was in bed beside me when I awoke from my nightmare,” I said. “But it could have been one of his friends, I suppose. But, Charlotte, pumpkins are not even in season. It is far too early. Where would they have gotten it?”
“Perhaps that part you imagined, then, just coming out of a nightmare as you were,” she suggested.
Perhaps.
* * *
I returned home and tried as best I could to go about my day. Brom finally awoke and dragged himself onto his horse to ride to his father’s house to help him with checking on the crops.
Late that night, when Brom and Anneke were long since fast asleep, I tried to read in the parlor, afraid to close my eyes for fear of the nightmares I might have, and of the mischief that might be wreaked as I slept. Nox rested his head on my feet, as if sensing my disquiet.
As I listlessly turned the pages of my book, Nancy came quietly into the room. Nox thumped his tail against the floor at the sight of her, his favorite giver of scraps. “Miss Katrina,” she said. “Can’t you sleep?”
I smiled wearily up at her. “No, Nancy, I am afraid I cannot. And you?”
“Sleep comes harder at my age,” she confessed, and lowered herself into the chair beside mine. She was quiet a moment longer, then spoke again. “You remember when you were in labor, and you wanted to know the story of my daughter?”
I nodded, sitting up a bit straighter. “Yes. I’d still like to hear it, if you’re willing to tell it.”
She smiled sadly. “I would. I think I must, in truth. I’ve never told the full tale to anyone, and it gets heavier the longer I carry it.”
“Then please,” I said, “tell me.”
After a deep breath, she began. “As you know, I was born into slavery on a tobacco plantation in Virginia,” she said. “Nothing special about that; most black folks in this country are. My mother was a lot like Mistress Jansen; she knew about herbs and midwifery and helped deliver the mistress’s babies. She also helped the people in the big house when they were sick, as well as the slaves. When there was no one needed tending to, she helped in the kitchen. I grew up learning many of her skills.
“Anyway, when I turned eighteen, I caught the eye of a man, a fellow slave, name of John. He caught my eye, too, and much as my mama tried to keep a weather eye on me, he and I managed to sneak around together.” She gave me a pointed smile. “As young girls will do.”
I blushed slightly.
“Soon I was pregnant, and John and I married. The master was delighted—he encouraged us all to marry and make babies. The more babies, the more slaves, and profit for him, of course.”
I blanched at this cold view of marriage and children, though I knew that was the reality among slaveholders. Still, knowing it and hearing it from someone who had lived it was another matter entirely.
“And my daughter was born. She was the most beautiful little girl. I named her Sarah, after my mother. And I nursed her and took care of her in between my work. When I was needed to assist my mother working in the kitchen, I left her with the women who were too old to work. No matter how exhausted I was at the end of each day, Sarah always made me smile.
“When Sarah was just three, the master’s sister and brother-in-law came down from New York City for a visit. They were in the market for a new cook, they said, and hadn’t found one trained up enough in the slave markets of New York. Would he know of anyone? The master had several slaves working in his kitchen, so he decided he could part with me.”
Her eyes grew wet with tears. “So he sold me to his sister and her husband. But not Sarah. And not John.”
“Oh, Nancy,” I breathed, a hitch in my voice.
“I begged him to let Sarah come with me, but he refused. She was his property, and she’d grow up to replace me in the kitchens, he said. He could find John another woman easy enough. And I hadn’t conceived since Sarah was born, so I wasn’t as valuable to him anymore.” She nearly spat the words. “I then begged my new master and mistress to buy Sarah as well, but they had no
use for a child in their small household and did not wish to spend the money, especially as my old master was of no mind to let her go.” She shook her head. “So they brought me north, and my baby girl stayed in Virginia.”
“Oh, Nancy,” I said again, taking her hand. “I … I don’t know what to say.”
She smiled at me, but there was something hard in her eyes. “Don’t know as there’s anything you can say, Katrina. You live in a world where no one will ever take your baby girl from you. And that’s the way it should be for us all, but reality ain’t about ‘should be.’”
She continued. “I missed John and especially Sarah every day. In New York, my new master and mistress would hire me out to other households in New York if they needed a cook for a big fancy event, and they let me keep some of the fee they got. It took me many years, but I eventually bought my freedom from them. They gave me my papers, and I was free.
“I had little money left after that and set about looking for work. As soon as I had some money, I wanted to find my daughter. Luckily, I met your mother and father, and your mother took a liking to me. They offered me a position for a fair wage if I was willing to move with them to their farm on the Hudson. Well, I wasn’t likely to find a better offer, so I accepted.
“Not long after I started working for them, I asked your father if there was any way he might find Sarah for me. I told him her name and the name of the plantation I’d been sold from in Virginia, and the name of the master there, and he obliged me and wrote a letter. The master’s son wrote back to say there were no slaves on the plantation named Sarah. It was clear that my daughter had been sold off, or was dead. And that was all we could do. I had nothing but her name, and it was a common enough one. To this day, I don’t know what happened to her, whether she’s alive or dead. Or if, maybe, she managed to get free.”
The Spellbook of Katrina Van Tassel Page 31