They plunged onto the path through the woods behind the church. Some of what I now saw I had seen before. I heard the hoof beats, heard the whinny of the black horse.
Suddenly, the Headless Horseman’s coat shifted down. He now had a head. His blond hair glinted through the darkness as he leaned forward in his saddle, urging his horse on. As he moved into a shaft of moonlight, I saw his face, and the shock that tore through me was even greater than when I had seen what I thought was the Headless Horseman, for I had been expecting him.
I had not been expecting Brom.
Ichabod did not duck in time to avoid a low tree branch, and he was knocked clean out of his saddle. Gunpowder whinnied in surprise, yet without the burden of his rider he increased his pace, tearing onward through the trees and brush and out of sight.
On foot now, Ichabod ran, running for his life, looking somewhat dazed from the blow he’d suffered, and I wondered if he knew it was Brom Bones chasing him, or if he still thought it was the Headless Horseman, straight out of the legend I’d told him that day as we’d walked back from our sheltered spot by the stream.
As Ichabod ran on, the path through the trees narrowed, and the branches came down too low for a mounted rider. Brom pulled up his horse—whom I now recognized as Daredevil—who whinnied in surprise and protest, rearing up. For a second I thought that was it; that Brom, having had his fun and played his joke and scared off his rival, would cease and turn back. That this was the end; that Ichabod had simply been too desperately frightened to return to Sleepy Hollow.
Yet the terrifying scene was far from over. Brom leaped down from his own saddle and, leaving Daredevil waiting obediently on the path, started after his quarry on foot.
They ran along the path, in another scene I recognized from my very first vision: two men in shadow, one chasing the other through the trees, breathing heavily as they ran. Ichabod let out a wordless shout of fear and panic. The knot of anxiety in my chest was unbearable as they burst out into the clearing, the same one where I now sat in body, watching the scene in the flames.
Ichabod halted, whirling around, looking for another pathway out, and I wondered if he recognized the clearing from the tale I’d told him of the Horseman. Yet whether he did or not, his hesitation proved a grave error, for then Brom was upon him.
Brom seized him from behind, wrapping one beefy arm around his throat, trying to drag him to the ground. The force of Brom’s attack proved too much for Ichabod, who dropped to his knees, disturbing the fog that covered the ground. Yet once on the ground Brom’s hold must have loosened somewhat, for Ichabod was able to slip away and crawl toward the trees, back to the path, scrambling to get back on his feet. Brom was upon him again, tackling him and knocking him flat. Ichabod struggled, but Brom had hold of his jacket collar and arm, and dragged him to the edge of the clearing, flinging him up against a large tree. “What are you doing, Van Brunt?” Ichabod yelled, the sound of his voice a bullet piercing my heart. “Let me go! What in hell are you—”
Brom silenced him by striking him across the face, hard. It took everything in me not to cry out, not to break the vision, though a part of me wanted to end it here and not see what came next.
Brom hit him again, and Ichabod let out a groan of pain, blood now pouring from his nose. Brom punched him one last time and his lip split, more blood trickling out as he slumped against the tree trunk, no longer able to try to escape.
“How dare you,” Brom hissed, breathing heavily. “How dare you come here and take what belongs to me.”
Ichabod groaned. “No,” he denied sluggishly. “I don’t know…”
“Katrina,” Brom said. “Katrina. She was supposed to be mine, and you took her.”
Ichabod tried, with a shaky hand, to wipe the blood from his face. “I love her,” he said, his voice thick. “And she loves me.”
Even more enraged now, Brom reached to his side and, in a near blur, unsheathed a dagger that was strapped there, one I had not seen before. The sound that had haunted me, in both visions and dreams for two years, now rang out. I was vaguely aware of tears streaming down my face.
“No,” Ichabod protested, seeing the dagger and seeing what Brom surely meant to do. “No—”
Yet in one swift movement, Brom brought his arm back and plunged the dagger into Ichabod’s gut.
I screamed. I screamed so loudly it tore at my throat, and I did not know whether I would ever be able to speak again. I did not care. I could not care about anything else ever again.
Ichabod’s eyes snapped to mine, to where I stood watching the macabre, chilling scene play out. His beautiful, wide green eyes, just like his daughter’s, widened, and I knew he could see me. Somehow, that night, he had seen me. He opened his mouth, and blood poured from it. “Katrina…” he gasped.
This only incensed Brom further, however. He withdrew the dagger and plunged it in again, and then one more time, his head thrown back, as if even he could not bear to watch what he was doing.
I screamed again and again, the vision fading around me. The last thing I saw were Ichabod’s eyes, still locked on mine, go dark and empty as he breathed his last, blood still trickling from his mouth.
I was still screaming when the fire spit me back out. My voice echoed back to me from the surrounding trees, the fog. “Ichabod! No! No! No!” I collapsed to the ground, sobbing so hard I could not breathe, my hair dragging in the dirt. I screamed and cried and thought that I would never stop.
He is dead. Dead, and Brom killed him. Murdered him. I am married to the murderer of my true love, the father of my child.
And the last word he ever spoke was my name.
I could not bear it. I wanted to die as well, right where I lay, did not want to open my eyes to the sight of the clearing where Ichabod had died, did not want to wonder which tree had absorbed his blood. I prayed, begged, bargained, asking whatever spirits or goblins or demons that could hear me to come take my life right there, so I did not need to face the rest of my life with this truth I now carried within me, heavier than gold or lead or sin or death.
The sharp whinny of a horse shattered the silence like glass.
I sat up, thinking my wish was going to be answered. That the Headless Horseman was coming for me.
I sat up, screaming again as I saw a figure seated on the other side of the fire, opposite me.
But it was not the Headless Horseman.
It was Charlotte.
57
What Charlotte Knew
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 remember
ed 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.
58
The Headless Horseman
I moved slowly, incapable of walking faster, as though it was my body and not my soul that had been injured—and no doubt I was still feeling the aftereffects of the herbs I had taken.
I did not want to go home to face Brom, this man I had married and lived with and begun to trust and, oh God, felt affection for. I had reveled in his touch, let him make love to me and pleasure me, and all this time he had been the cause of my greatest sorrow. I almost could not breathe past the pain.
Yet I had nowhere else to go. I could not seek refuge at Charlotte’s cottage, not tonight. Nor could I walk to my parents’ house. I would never make it there, not in my current state, and even if I could have, I did not want to see those rooms where Ichabod and I had first met and fallen in love.
So I went home, knowing that what would come would come.
When I walked into the house, the clock on the mantelpiece struck three o’clock in the morning. It was All Hallows’ Eve again.
I climbed the stairs to my bedchamber and pushed open the door. All I wanted was to collapse into bed and never wake. Yet this was not to be.
Brom was seated in a chair by the window, a single lamp lighting the room. He brought a whiskey bottle to his lips and took a swig. “There you are,” he said, though his voice was not as slurred as I would have expected at this hour. “Where have you been?”
I slammed the door behind me, shutting out Nox, who had trailed me anxiously up the stairs. At the sight of Brom, the sound of his voice, my lethargy vanished and was replaced by blinding, crippling rage. I stared at his hands, one draped over the arm of the chair and the other clutching the neck of the bottle. Those hands had been soaked with Ichabod Crane’s blood … and he had touched me with them, and I had let him …
With a scream worthy of a banshee, I launched myself across the room at him, wanting to gouge his eyes out with my fingers; rip his hair out; hurt him as much as I possibly could with my bare hands. Brom Bones, if you knew what was good for you, you would never have come home this night, I wanted to scream.
Jumping up, he caught my wrists in his strong hands, holding me away from him. I struggled, but I was no match for his brute strength. Just as Ichabod had not been. “Katrina, damn it,” he said, his tone a mix of anger and bewilderment. “What in hell has gotten into you?”
I laughed then, laughed so hysterically I knew I sounded like a madwoman. Brom still did not release me, but I could feel him staring at me quizzically. “What the…”
I wrenched away from him violently. “You,” I hissed, my voice low and venomous. “You monster. You monster.”
“What the devil are you talking about?” he demanded.
This caused me to laugh maniacally again. “What the devil,” I gasped between gales of laughter. “The devil, indeed.”
“Katrina, have you gone mad?”
“I must have, to have ever married you,” I cried, shoving against his shoulders hard enough that he stumbled back.
“What the–”
“I know what you did, Brom Van Brunt!” I shrieked. “I know what you did!”
Fear briefly flickered across his face. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, but he could not hide the tremor of panic in his voice.
“You do!” I screeched. “You do! Or must I tell you? Must I speak the words aloud and accuse you? Have you forgotten?”
He went very still.
“You murdered Ichabod Crane!” I screamed.
Complete, utter silence fell over the house. Nox did not bark or whimper outside the door; even Anneke, in the next room, did not make a peep, though I did not see how she could have slept through the racket I was making.
I suppose I expected Brom to deny it; expected him to hide behind the haughty, untouchable arrogance that was always his refuge. I had not imagined that he would, or could, do anything else. Yet his shoulders slumped forward. “You know,” he said softly.
I was flabbergasted he would admit it. “Yes,” I said. “Yes, I know.”
He looked back up at me, hatred smoldering in his eyes. “And how is it you came to know, or needn’t I ask? I suppose the witch has everything to do with it.”
“Not that it makes any difference, but Charlotte told me nothing,” I said. Brom could not know how deeply rang the truth of those words, how much they hurt, how much it cost me to say them aloud. “I discovered the truth all on my own.” Charlotte was exactly right: being able to speak those words was exactly what I had wanted all along. But I could not admit it yet.
Brom hung his head wearily. “I suppose I always knew you would find out sooner or later. That someone would find out.”
“So you do not deny it?” I spat.
“No. What good would that do me?” he asked.
My horror and rage returned in a fresh wave. “You … you are a monster who murdered an innocent man,” I said. “The man I loved! How could you? How could you?”
“How could I not?” he burst out. “It didn’t seem to
me like I had any other choice.”
I was speechless, gaping at him.
“I … nothing else had worked,” he said. “I had challenged him to a duel, had won, even. Wounded him. But he lived, and you wouldn’t see him for the weakling he was. I … I didn’t know what else to do.” He curled his hands into fists. “He had taken the woman I loved, the woman I had always loved. The one thing I had ever wanted. I knew he would never leave you of his own free will. I … I lost my head. I figured he had asked your father for your hand that night, at the All Hallows’ Eve feast, and it seemed your father had said no. I couldn’t take the chance that you would run away with him. And so I followed him, meaning to scare him off by making him think I was the Headless Horseman. But then I … I got carried away. I was angry, so angry that you loved him and not me. I got angrier and angrier, thinking of him touching you, kissing you. I was drunk, too, and I kept chasing him, and once I got my hands on him I … I snapped.” He looked up at me, eyes pleading. “I didn’t set out to kill him, Katrina. I swear to you.”
There was earnestness in his gaze, which perhaps shocked me most of all. That he would tell me this truth, and think his honesty would endear him to me. “Do you think that absolves you of your crime?” I demanded.
“No, obviously it does not!” He took another deep swig from the bottle. “Obviously it does not,” he repeated. He laughed harshly, and I could hear the drink beginning to creep into his voice. “For I got what I wanted, did I not? I wed you, as I always wanted, as I always promised you I would. As I always promised myself I would. And what has it gotten me? What good has it done me?” He took another long drink and laughed bitterly again. “I cannot look at you without seeing his face. I cannot touch you without feeling his blood on my hands. I cannot get into bed with you without remembering the look on your face the first time I saw you after he disappeared—after I killed him. That look in your eyes when I knew it had all been for naught; that this sin which stained my soul was for nothing, for you would never love another man except for him.” He shook his head. “I am like the king in that tale you told us when we were children—the king whose touch turned everything to gold, even his food, so that it was cold and metallic in his mouth and could not nourish him. Why do you think I have been drinking so much?”
The Spellbook of Katrina Van Tassel Page 36