The Horseman visited Caesar and construction began.
The construction itself was an great undertaking. The labor unions, always a burden to father, had secured a contract at one dollar and fifty cents per day. Agathe turned to the hordes of starving Irishmen who daily disembarked from the coffin ships in New York. These strong lads would do the same work for seventy-five cents. She hired the Irish and our Tarry-Town laborers went on strike. Father called in the City Militia of New York. The project was delayed once more.
The Horseman visited the leader of the strikers.
The men took the cut to seventy-five cents.
Not that the Irish workers came without other costs. Tarry-Town was plunged into frightful disorder. The Pocantico Hills were soon dotted with tar paper shacks and jaunty with the music of the highlands. Local farmers, their crops ruined by the earthworks, turned their barns into taverns.
The Irish were also a superstitious lot, especially those that camped by the bridge of legend, near the haunted Old Dutch Church. There in the heart of the wood stood two stone abutments overhanging the Pocantico, a sinister ruin, unused since the re-routing of the post road to cross nearer to the border of the millpond. The Irish Pat-landers encamped there all winter, until the place became known as Pat-sylvania. Whether they were familiar with the Legend or whether the goblins of the Hollow, accustomed only to Dutch manners, resented the intrusion I do not know. The poor Pattys were most grievously harried by apparitions. A wagon road through the woods from their encampment past the haunted church to certain whiskey establishments was especially beset by foul fiends. The whole wood became such a scene of spooking and devilry that the Pattys would no longer venture from their shanties at night and several whiskey shops were obliged to shut up for want of customers.
Agathe paid a crew to have the old bridge torn down.
The Irish were treated with equal disdain by our living Tarry-Towners, especially by the quarry workers whose wage had been cut. My mother attempted to bridge the divide between the workers and the town. She felt sorry for these thin men from a starving country. She brought baskets of bread and cheese, listened to their fiddlers, and read the newspaper to them. This brought much comment. Many raised an eyebrow that the wife of Brom would cavort with foreign men, after sunset no less, particularly with her husband so often in New York or Croton. Malicious rumors were spread. Thanks to the Legend, Katrina had always had a reputation as a coquette. Now, in Cornelia Beekman’s circles, she was becoming known as a “bad woman” as well.
I warned her of the gossip but she laughed at any suggestion of impropriety. She was fifty-five years of age. She enjoyed hearing the stories from far away lands. She was the Lady Van Brunt. How could idle gossip hurt her?
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
“Dylan’s Tale: Part Three”
I tremble to write of late 1837, of the events that occurred and my part in them. Know, Cornelius, that I was only seventeen, an age at which morality is easily overwhelmed by passion. 1837 is the darkest year of my life, save perhaps 1850. Yet I was a man of thirty in the year my father died. When my mother met her sad fate I was only a boy. The events of youth are felt with greater depth than those of age. The pain runs deeper, sinks its roots further into the heart. The vexations of the old are diluted by that lifetime of tears that ripple in the well of memory. The young feel every drop.
That summer was a joyous time. I was no longer the Quarry Prince but the Second Brom, the heir, widely considered to be my father’s equal or, at least, a plausible replacement. I oversaw a team of thirty-four Irish brickmen—most older than I. We baked the red brick for the aqueduct. I loved the work and marveled at the engineering feat growing beneath the hills and fields of Tarry-Town. A great pump-station spread its anthill of shafts just under Gory Brook, a wonder of machinery that much fascinated my father, who had always loved ingenious puzzle-works.
I added to my labors a girl of twenty named Elise, a passionate and generous girl, solicitous of me as all others of her type but somehow finer. Have many women, Cornelius. Have all the women you dream of and can satisfy. Yet never marry. Mistresses cost more in gold but are generous with love. Wives are frugal housekeepers but miserly in bed. And you can discard a mistress when you tire of her.
I kept a room at the Couenhoven Inn for my afternoons with Elise, those cool autumn afternoons when seventeen was eternal and sex an endless adventure.
One day my mother burst into this room, flushing with embarrassment at the sight of our nudity. I ordered my mistress to dress and leave. I dressed myself, dreading my mother’s hollow reprimands. Once we were alone together, my mother fell to her knees and pressed her face to the bedclothes, weeping.
“I have seen such things,” she said. “I had a bill that needed paying. A shipment of furnishings for Knoll has come to the dock. The ship was not supposed to arrive until next week when your father is expected home but they had caught a fair wind. They expect payment and refuse to extend credit on my signature alone. Oh, I should have waited for Abraham to return.”
“What did you do?”
“I went to find your grandmother. She keeps a secret apartment in Tarry-Town. She used to take her lovers there. Perhaps she still does. I shouldn’t have been so curious. I shouldn’t have gone in. I thought I might find a few hundreds to borrow. But I found no money.”
“What did you find?” I asked, fearing the worst.
“She keeps the skull of my father.”
I confess I lost my composure. I dropped to my knees alongside my mother. “The skull of Baltus? Are you certain? Couldn’t it have been another’s?”
“She had carved his name in the bone. And there were many other skulls as well. She is an evil woman. We must go to your father at once. We must go now.”
“To New York?”
“Yes. Do you have any gold?”
“Very little,” said I (for, as I have mentioned, mistresses are expensive).
“I know where we may obtain more. I should have gone there first.” She took my hand and led me from the inn.
As we sped through the streets of Beekmantown, I confess that my foremost emotion was neither fear nor anger but a petulant disappointment that my Agathe had kept such a collection secreted from me. Many skulls? Had she kept trophies of the Horseman’s decapitations? Could she control the spirit of my grandfather now? I was not particularly appalled that she possessed the thing, though surely she had exhumed our Baltus to obtain it. Had she gone to the woods by the two walnut trees and done the deed with the spade in her own hand?
A short carriage ride brought us to the Quarry. Men lowered their tools and bowed to us as we skirted the pit. On the shelves of stone below, the men did not see us pass and continued working. I can still hear the sound of their hammers and chisels, like horseshoes striking stone.
My father’s office stood on the western side of the pit, so that he might receive the river breeze. We entered and mother ordered the paymaster to open my father’s safe. The paymaster objected, for the coins inside were the workers wages to be paid out that afternoon, but I gave him a nod and he bowed to her wishes. My mother took handfuls of gold and filled her pockets and mine. We would go to New York and tell father what we had discovered. He would know what to do.
“I forbid you from seeing that witch again.” Her face held a touch of triumph, believing that I now saw the evil of my grandmother, that she had finally proven where my allegiance must lie.
We left the offices, skirting the pit again. My heart felt as heavy as my gold-stuffed pockets. I knew that my mother was right. Agathe was a witch, yet was I not a witch as well?
Men appeared and blocked our path.
“Thief!” someone cried. We turned and saw Agathe with the paymaster. A group of her loyal men encircled us. The sound of the chisels fell quiet.
“I’ve stolen nothing,” said Katrina. “Let us pass.”
“Turn out their pockets.”
An odorous Scotsman stepped forward.
Mother refused to be searched, but produced the coins, as did I. Agathe took them in her palm, showing them to the crowd. The men began to murmur.
“Katrina has robbed you! These are your wages from the paymaster’s safe.”
All work had ceased. All faces were turned to us. My mother stepped forward.
“That’s nonsense. I cannot steal what I already own. These are not your wages until I give them. You will be paid. I swear. I am the Lady Van Brunt.” She held out a hand. “Give me the coins, Agathe. Or I will reveal what I have seen.”
“And what do you imagine you have you seen?”
“You have desecrated my father’s grave. You practice sorcery.”
Agathe stepped forward and smiled confidentially. “Yes. I do.” A tendril of flame spindled from her finger, unseen by all but my mother and myself. Katrina gasped. “And you can tell anyone you like. You’ll only be signing their death warrant. I’m sorry for you, dear. If you believe what you say, you have only cursed yourself.”
“I believe it now,” Mother said. “And Abraham will believe it.”
Agathe’s expression grew deadly. She turned to me. “I’m sorry, my Dylan. Your mother is cursed.”
Katrina spat in Agathe’s face. “It’s you I curse.”
The men grew agitated at this sign of disrespect. Voices rose into tumult.
Agathe addressed the men. “I am the Lady Van Brunt, not she.” They applauded her. “Katrina is not your mistress. But she is mistress to another.” She drew a letter from her pocket, raising it overhead. “This was found on her person just now.”
“That’s a lie,” said Katrina.
Agathe opened the letter and read it. “Where is Aidan O’Hare? Bring him.”
The man was found and produced. I recognized him vaguely. A burly Irishman—one of those Patlanders with whom Katrina had shared fellowship.
“Is this your writing?” asked Agathe.
The man grinned. “It is, ma’am.”
“Tell us what the letter contains.”
“I asked her to run away with me.”
“Another lie,” Katrina shouted.
The man turned and addressed the crowd. “We were to run away tonight.” Jeers and catcalls rose.
Agathe showed an ugly toothless smile. “She would rob my son and workers to run away with her lover?” She raised a handful of gold shouting, “The Slut Katrina! Your Legend is well-earned!” The crowd laughed. “How many others have there been? A dozen? Two dozen? How many does it take to satisfy the famous coquette? I’m sure Mister Irving would like to know.”
“Listen to me!” Katrina cried. “I am a good woman. I am my husband’s faithful wife and my son’s loving mother. This is a deception. My son knows me, don’t you Dylan? My son can tell you. He shall tell you that I am blameless.”
I stood near the edge of the pit, poised above an abyss, mere feet from the quarry ledge. I wanted to jump. My mother waited, expecting me to defend her. She was blameless. Entirely blameless. Yet powerless as well. Agathe held all keys, all secrets. She would be the victor in all things, she and her Horseman. She was the hand of God. And I longed to know her secrets and to possess Agathe’s power for myself.
“My son will defend me! I am innocent.”
My day of choice had arrived.
“It’s true,” I said. Katrina breathed a sigh of relief but I turned and walked to Agathe’s side. “It’s true,” I repeated. “I saw them together.”
The light went out of my mother’s eyes.
“Slut!” shouted Agathe.
“Slut!” answered the crowd. They shouted the word endlessly. It echoed from the pit: cries of “Slut” and the ringing of chisels on stone. And I joined in, to my eternal shame. Agathe took my hand in her own with a fierce, powerful grip. She raised her other hand and the crowd went silent. “What do you have to say for yourself?”
Katrina looked puzzled and hurt. She shook her head. “And all this time,” she whispered, “I could have been the wife of a schoolteacher.”
She twisted away, ran for the edge of the quarry pit, and threw herself over the side.
And that was her end.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
“Dylan’s Tale: Part Four”
That night, lightning struck the Old Dutch Church. The roof burned until morning. Buckets were brought hand over hand from the millpond but fire raged through the building, leaping from pew to pew and hymnal to hymnal. Smoke poured from every window. The Dutch farmers, last of their kind, wept at the sight. It is on that night in 1837, they say, that the Old World burned away. The Sleepy Hollow of Vredryk Philipse burned with the church he had built.
Brom returned at once upon hearing the news of mother’s death. He rode a swift horse, galloping and weeping all the way from New York. When my father and I held each other at Mother’s funeral I noted with astonishment that old Brom felt frail in my arms. Grief had stolen his substance.
Brom stood mute at the funeral, stoic but unsure of himself, seemingly lost and confused. Washington Irving gave a fine speech, extolling Katrina’s beauty and generosity. Mother was buried near old Baltus, on the land between Knoll and Irving’s Sunnyside (once our Roost). Brom swore afterwards that he would not leave Mother’s bones there permanently. He would build a tomb for his family. A grand tomb. A tomb of Van Brunt stone.
This was the only building he cared to do, now. He abandoned Knoll, left it incomplete, and sold the land to former New York Mayor William Paulding, an associate of Irving’s. Paulding hired another designer and created an absurd limestone monstrosity of Gothic turrets and chimneys. Knoll was yet another Van Brunt landmark that never was. Look to Family.
Father never moved Mother’s body. She still sleeps in that shady spot between Paulding’s new estate and Irving’s Sunnyside, near Baltus’ pumpkin field, in sight of the wide blue Hudson River, near the two walnut trees where I formerly hid my liquor.
Agathe’s version of the events surrounding Mother’s death was widely spread but I do not know if Father ever truly believed that Mother had been unfaithful. He never spoke ill of her and for the rest of his life kept a ribboned bouquet of fresh flowers always on her bedside table. Yet the Irishman, Aidan O’Hare, was found beaten outside the Couenhoven Inn that November and was last seen on New Year’s Day, 1838, on the deck of the SS Catherine, sailing back to Dublin.
In Katrina’s honor, Father donated the sum of two thousand dollars for the rebuilding of the Old Dutch Church, the church of his own wedding, the church of my christening. The interior was refurbished, the woodwork restored, the windows enlarged and given Gothic peaks, as was the style. The door was moved to the western end in recognition of the new route of the post road, which no longer crosses the bridge of Irving’s Legend. One tragedy of that year, at least, was unmade.
Yet Brom’s grief stole his mind, little by little, in the years afterward. He shirked his responsibilities at the quarry, saying he disliked the place. Management of the family business fell upon my shoulders, in addition to my duties at the brickyard. I found the situation impossible. My life ceased to be my own. My hours with Elise trickled to nothing. Father preferred to spend his days making clockworks and assembling puzzles, building hidden doorways and clever locks. The first of these he integrated into Agathe’s new Gory Brook home.
As I have written, the house was itself integrated into the architecture of the aqueduct—a great convenience in those days when the outhouse stood behind the abodes of rich and poor alike, a bond uniting all mankind. Agathe often said that New York City didn’t get a drop of water that she hadn’t shit in.
The coolness of the water was a double blessing. Agathe requested that we build a pantry under the house. The coolness of the air would help to prevent spoilage of her larder. And so Brom designed a stone chamber underground, accessible from the cellar of Gory Brook, protected by a locking system of his own design as a safeguard against theft. Agathe shared the secret of the door with no one, not even myself. Only she and B
rom knew the trick of it. Often she would disappear to her pantry and hours would pass when no one could find her.
“I am old, and I need my rest,” she would say. “My pantry is cool and such a blessing in hot weather.”
Father and I worried that she would fall and injure herself while below. She installed a bell so that she could call for help but she never used it. We did not press her. Agathe’s desires were as ever unquestioned. Her pantry and its secrets remained hers alone.
The house at Gory Brook was completed just as the aqueduct, too, came to fruition. The last five years of labor on the aqueduct project fell to me for, as I have said, father absented himself from the work. He did not, of course, refuse his invitation to the opening ceremonies. He attended and gorged himself on his full portion of glory and my own. On that day I was treated with such disrespect that, had I been in possession of the Horseman’s skull, my father might have seen his own head floating down to New York.
The day began cheerfully enough. Father and I rode to Croton and were met by the head engineer and other lead contractors. Our group boarded a sturdy little rowboat and drifted into the tunnel with the first release of water. We raised lanterns and congratulated ourselves for our work, ran our hands along the top of the tunnel, and told stories of our long labors. I felt such pride as we came to the stretch of red brick beneath Tarry-Town. My accomplishment. I waited for some acknowledgement but all praise was given to my father, he who had spent those years playing with puzzles or whittling or weeping over his dead wife’s grave. Oh, how the legendary Brom was celebrated by that boat-load of fools and yet never once did he acknowledge my contribution. I sat in the back of the boat, tasked with holding a lantern so the others could see, my mood becoming black as the shadows behind and ahead.
I kept my peace for forty miles of this. We emerged blinking into the summer sun. I scowled at my father’s back even as we stood on stage at Murray Hill for The Great Water Celebration, as it was called. President Tyler affixed a cream silk ribbon to my chest all the while in animated discussion with my father. He stabbed me with the pin.
Sleepy Hollow: Bridge of Bones Page 32