“I have a feeling Brom’s attentions make me very unpopular in town,” she admitted to Annika Van Wees with a small laugh. “I suppose I should feel lucky. He’s the man everyone wants, isn’t he? I’m supposed to be happy with his interest, I know. That doesn’t keep me from wishing he was someone else some of the nights he comes to call. Suffice to say, I am probably the last woman in town he ought to be calling upon.”
“I’m sure there’s a bit of jealousy,” Annika shrugged, her smile gentling out. “But you don’t need to feel that you’re unworthy of the great Brom Bones’s intentions.” A snort and a shake of the head, her eyes rolling. “And if you had a sweetheart before him, well . . . we all have our secrets. Everyone in this village has secrets, Katrina, the women especially. Don’t go thinking otherwise. Folks may be eager to put Brom up on a pedestal, but the Van Brunt’s have their fair share of scandal, whether folks care to acknowledge it or not.”
Katrina perked up. “What do you mean? What kind of scandal?” She waited as Annika said nothing for a moment, focusing on her pot before setting it aside with a conspiratorial wink and an air of mischief.
“His father died in the war, you know. Common song ’round these parts. I was just a girl then, but I can’t tell you how many women were left to pick up the pieces. It’s the men who’ve all forgotten. Pieter knew the girls and I would be just fine without him, but it’s convincing every single man with an eye on our land who comes swinging their cock up the lane that we don’t need them. He was right to have hired you on. The girls need to be able to sign their own names, no need for some man to force their hand on a marriage log. I won’t pretend that the whole thing wasn’tmyidea, of course . . .”
Katrina laughed, and Annika grinned anew.
“Anyway, Brom’s father never came home. Abraham was a good man, that’s what folks say. Brom was born after he was killed, that’s another popular verse to the song. The thing is, though, his father had been gone near a year before he was killed in battle. He’d been marched out all the way to Newport, but somehow Lena saw fit to give birth to her healthy boy more than a year after she’d last seen her husband. I suppose she must have been crossing her legs very tightly to manage that one.”
Katrina shook in shocked laughter. Annika was right. ‘Brom Bones, bastard of Sleepy Hollow’ was a sobriquet that somehow didn’t quite match up with the accolades heaped upon him.
“You’re right,” she giggled. “Thatdoesmake me feel better.”
“No one took note of the timing, nor the fact that Abraham had been a short fellow with hair like straw,” Annika went on, reveling in the gossip shared.
“Do you suppose he’s the smithy’s son? Or the brewer?” Both men had dark hair. The blacksmith was as wide as an ox, while the brewer at least shared Brom’s great height.
“Well, you’d have to get the whole tale from old Aggie, down the hill. She knows all, sees all, and is at least a hundred bloody years old. But the way she tells it, Lena wasveryfriendly with the Reds who set up barracks nearby, just on the other side of the lake. Aggie said she saw Lena coming and going in the wee hours, and she wasn’t just gathering apples. A whole battalion of those Germans to pick from. Who knows how many Hessian pricks she took a ride on. So just remember, the next time you’re feeling poorly about yourself, dearest. We’ve all got secrets.”
Her smile kept its place, her laughter ringing out at the appropriate times as Annika continued, sharing tidbits of gossip about other residents in town, but Katrina listened with barely half an ear. A queer wind had carried her to Sleepy Hollow, and on it a portent. She was meant to be here. She was meant to take care of something here.Unfinished business. They were intricately cut pieces of a quilt, slotting together sloppily for months, but now she was able to see the whole shape of the pattern, for the first time since that night after the clambake last Autumn. She’d never been especially good at quilting, and now she could see they were tangled, their three pieces, placed in the wrong sequence, with no way to recover the thread.
She had no need to go down the hill and speak with old Aggie, although she might yet do so, just to hear the details. Katrina’s skin buzzed as if she’d been lightning-stuck, a vibration that rattled her insides, making it hard to keep still. There existed not a single shred of doubt in her mind that Lena Van Brunt had indeed taken up with a soldier from the other side — a tall, broad-shouldered German with wavy dark hair and sparkling dark eyes. She wondered if he, too, had once had the sly smile of a fox. She had spent so much time trying to envision his features, when the reality had been right in front of her all along.
“You’re right,” she piped up finally, recovering her composure. Ghosts and men, and she knew how to handle both. “I should get ready for the party. If Brom comes to call, I don’t want to keep him waiting.”
Intheend,itwas almost laughably easy.
Katrina Van Tassel was no stranger to the passions of men, no stranger the longings of ghosts. Life tethered to death, straddling the line between each her whole life. It was only fair, Katrina thought, that she should be able to get the best of both worlds, in whatever manner she sought them.
When the ground thawed with the coming spring and the sun began to peek out for longer stretches, her classes resumed. She rode home in the late afternoons, when the air was still warm and lit with sunshine. She had no cause to cross town after dark, and so she didn’t.
Summer brought a field of lush clover, dotted with buttercups before the Van Wees’ front door, hazy hot days, and a renewed determination within her. Annika and the girls traveled to visit family, and Katrina used the time to capitulate to the town hero at last, adding the Van Brunt farmstead to her rotation of beds, her first glimpse at the household. It needed a woman’s touch, she thought, but there had been no time to place a signature of her presence on any of the rooms. It seemed every moment she was not engaged with her classroom, she was stuffed with Brom Bones’s fat bludgeon of a cock, fucking her in the fields, barn, and bed alike.
She spent the whole summer keeping his cock satisfied and drained, letting him have her, spending himself against her back and belly over and over again, preventing his seed from ever taking root. The Verhoevens were also traveling that summer, the pink-cheeked heiress he wanted to marry removed as a distraction for the moment, and Karina did not let the opportunity go to waste. She kissed the shiny tip of Brom Bones’s cockhead one evening near the end of the summer, her lips still coated in his copious release, and made a promise.Soon.
Katrina didn’t care if ghosts did not hold memories. She wouldmakehim remember. She would seek him out when the leaves began to fall, would go hunting for the ghost. She would titillate him with her body, knowing he would be unable to touch her until Hallowmas approached once more. She would remind him of who she was, what they had done, and if he could not remember, she would show him all over again.
You could have them both. Katrina wasn’t sure how or why the thought had occurred to her, only that she felt wicked the instant it crossed her mind, but once it had burrowed there, like an unwanted parasite, she could think of nothing else. Two lovers — one living, one deceased. Life tethered to death. Tangled. Knotted. Inextricably tied together.Eventually you’ll be too knotted to function.
She’d never been particularly skilled at quilting, but she was no stranger to the correction of mistakes. An improperly laid piece must be corrected, elsewise the whole design would be spoiled, and there was only one way in which she knew to do so. The leaves had begun to tumble in a crimson billow from the trees, and it was time to set her plan in motion.
She shivered atop her horse. “Easy, girl,” she murmured, patting the side of the horse’s mane, uncertain which one of them was the recipient of her words.
Gunpowder was enjoying his retirement on the Van Wees farm. Too old to work the fields, too cantankerous to be a child’s mount, and while she’d taken him out through the spring and summer, now that the colder weather was setting in once more, Katrina was concerned the old horse might throw a shoe and do himself an injury, and he was quite satisfied to stay in his comfortable stall, a ready supply of oats and hay and apples, and plenty of fillies to mount.
She was on one of those fillies now, a tawny-colored beauty one of the younger girls had named Applesauce. She had walked into the stable that afternoon to find Gunpowder atop the pretty horse, deciding it was a good omen for the evening’s task. Her mount had enjoyed being stuffed with a fat cock that day, and would carry her mistress to do the same that evening.
The horse was nervous, nickering softly as they approached the heavy tree cover of the dell. An auspicious sign for hauntings, she thought. Sure enough, it did not take long for the sound of a second horse clip-clopping behind them to rise out of the trees. Katrina smiled grimly. She kept the filly steady for as long as she was able, waiting until they were past the sections of the pathway she knew were most dangerous, before kicking the lovely girl into a run. As she’d known he would, the Horseman gave chase.
Her heart thrilled at the first sound of that maniacal laughter, rising up from the dirt in the road and hanging in the branches, racing in exhilaration as they entered the old Major’s covered bridge. Applesauce was faster than Gunpowder, faster and nimbler, and it washishorse that made most of the racket in the covered enclosure. Katrina whooped when the wind hit her face, bracing and cold, steering Applesauce to follow the road until they reached the church yard. The horse hesitated only a moment before entering the gate, navigating her way to the back hill.
He had dropped back, and for a moment, she was unsure if he would follow. When she heard the second horse enter the gate, she breathed in relief, loosening her laces. She had just freed her arms from the dress’s confines, letting it puddle against the saddle when he approached, a huge, looming black shape in the darkness. The Horseman stood watching, silently. His axe, she took note, was still strapped securely to his side.
“Hello, again.” No response, not that she’d been expecting one. “It’s me . . . Katrina. I told you I would be waiting. That I would be waiting for you. Were you waiting for me? Do-do you even remember me?”
Freeing her arms from her shift, Katrina allowed it to fall down around her waist as well, atop her dress, shivering when she straightened. It was going to be a cold winter, they said, and from the damp chilliness of these Autumn nights, she believed it.You’re going to catch your death out here, then you won’t have to worry about any plots or plans. You’ll be joining him on the other side.
