Truth Behind the Legend
The legend. I am sure each and every one of you has heard of it. Thanks to Washington Irving's classic short story that first brought it to the world's attention and the stage, film and television adaptations that keep it alive to this day, people are familiar with the love story of the lanky schoolmaster, Ichabod Crane; his strong and rowdy rival, Brom Bones; and the object of both their affections, the beguiling coquette, Katrina Van Tassel. And let us not forget the most forbidding and memorable character of the story, the Galloping Hessian, more commonly known as the Headless Horseman.
While there are some elements of truth in Irving's ghostly tale, there is much omitted from that well-known account of events. If you want to know about the facts behind the fiction, journey with me back to 1790 and let us visit the secluded glen of Sleepy Hollow ....
* * *
As to the location of this narrative, I defer to Irving's apt description: "A drowsy, dreamy influence seems to hang over the land, and to pervade the very atmosphere. Some say that the place was bewitched by a High German doctor, during the early days of the settlement; others, that an old Indian chief, the prophet or wizard of his tribe, held his powwows there before the country was discovered by Master Hendrick Hudson. Certain it is, the place still continues under the sway of some witching power, that holds a spell over the minds of the good people, causing them to walk in a continual reverie. They are given to all kinds of marvelous beliefs, are subject to trances and visions, and frequently see strange sights, and hear music and voices in the air. The whole neighborhood abounds with local tales, haunted spots, and twilight superstitions."
Sleepy Hollow is a landscape often shrouded in misty fog. Its bucolic soundtrack is enhanced by a bubbling brook that meanders through the area in the fall and summer, and races through it during the spring thaw. The very color palette of Sleepy Hollow, with its preponderance of blacks, grays and browns, adds to an otherworldly mood. There are no sunshine yellows, no scarlet reds, no vibrant blues; while most colors of the rainbow are present in one form or another, the shades are muted, dull variations.
Nowhere in Sleepy Hollow is this Edgar Allan Poe-like setting more obvious than in the churchyard. In Irving's words, "The sequestered situation of this church seems always to have made it a favorite haunt of troubled spirits. It stands on a knoll, surrounded by locust-trees and lofty elms, from among which its decent, whitewashed walls shine modestly forth, like Christian purity beaming through the shades of retirement. A gentle slope descends from it to a silver sheet of water, bordered by high trees, between which, peeps may be caught at the blue hills of the Hudson. To look upon its grass-grown yard, where the sunbeams seem to sleep so quietly, one would think that there at least the dead might rest in peace. On one side of the church extends a wide woody dell, along which raves a large brook among broken rocks and trunks of fallen trees. Over a deep black part of the stream, not far from the church, was formerly thrown a wooden bridge; the road that led to it, and the bridge itself, were thickly shaded by overhanging trees, which cast a gloom about it, even in the daytime; but occasioned a fearful darkness at night."
Now that you have been properly introduced to this wondrous setting, let us meet the heroine of our tale. To do so, we must visit the prosperous farm of Baltus Van Tassel, a contented man of wide girth and cheerful temperament, whose form and disposition, along with his fondness for a good pipe, put one in mind of a Thomas Nast rendering of Saint Nicholas. He was a good man with a kind and generous nature, a loving and loyal husband, a lenient master and a considerate neighbor.
If Old Baltus had one weakness, it was indulging his daughter, Katrina. Since God in his infinite wisdom had seen fit to grant the Van Tassels only one child, Baltus was grateful and delighted it was one as beautiful, agreeable and intelligent as his Katrina. How could a proud, loving father not do all within his power to bring a smile to her rosebud lips, to put a twinkle in her dazzling blue eyes or to see the dimples form on her rosy cheeks? What was the price of a new frock, a flattering bonnet or a dainty pair of slippers compared to his daughter's happiness?
Irving does not do the lady justice when he claims she is "a little of a coquette." Although the unmarried men of the region flock to her side when she appears in public and the married ones cast secretive, longing glances in her direction, Katrina flirts with no one. Far from being a tease, she does all in her power to discourage the amorous advances of potential suitors. Unlike her fellow maidens, she does not measure the men of Sleepy Hollow on a marriage-worthy scale. She does not rate the hardworking Petrus Van Loon above the lazy Klaas Bogart or judge the handsome Jan Vreeland superior to the homely Joris Van Hoorn. To her, coddled and adored by her father since birth, no man was suitable.
"I do not ever intend to marry," she confided to her parents when Dame Van Tassel inquired about her feelings for Abraham Van Brunt, affectionately known to the good people of Sleepy Hollow as Brom Bones.
For once, however, Baltus would not accede to his daughter's wishes.
"You must marry. A Van Tassel has farmed this land for more than a hundred and forty years. Long before our country won its independence, our forefathers lived and died here. They helped establish the Colony of New Netherland for the Dutch West India Company and later swore allegiance to King Charles II when the English ruled the area as New York. Although your children will be called by another name, they will have the blood of Van Tassels in their veins."
"But father," Katrina protested, "there is no one I want to marry, no one I love, for there is not a man in the Hudson Valley that can measure up to you."
"It does not matter. You have a duty to this family to marry and have children."
"Do you care that I will be unhappy for the rest of my life?" she cried and pouted like a little girl, a behavior she had always resorted to when she hoped to wrap her parent around her finger.
"There, there, child!" her father said soothingly. "It will not be that bad. Surely, a new dress or two will put a smile on your face."
If it is possible for a child to grow up in a moment's time, this was Katrina's moment. Baltus Van Tassel had always been her devoted father. He had given her full reign in making her own choices and supported her in her quest for an education. At a time when daughters were taught to cook and sew, Katrina learned to read, and took full advantage of that skill to explore the wondrous worlds of history, science and literature. She had prided herself on her academic accomplishments and assumed her father was proud of her as well.
All this time, she thought, bravely fighting back her tears, he has only been humoring me. I asked for books, and he gave me books. If I had asked for a pony or a puppy, he would have given me a pony or a puppy. Now, he foolishly thinks he can buy my happiness with a new dress or two.
In light of what she saw as her father's betrayal, Katrina rebelled.
"I have no intentions of marrying. Not now, not ever."
Old Baltus, as good natured a man as anyone hoped to meet and as loving a parent as ever held a child in his arms, was still a Van Tassel, a man of wealth and position in the old Dutch community. As such, he was used to having his orders followed. As much as it pained him to lay down the law for Katrina, it was his familial duty to do so.
"You will marry," he firmly insisted. "You turned seventeen this past month. By your eighteenth birthday, if you have not chosen a husband for yourself, I will be forced to choose one for you."
Eleven months. To Katrina, that time period represented a death sentence.
* * *
Even though the girl did not openly defy her father, Katrina's rebellious spirit was by no means quashed. In this case, her actions did indeed speak louder than words. That evening, when the family sat down to dinner, she appeared at the table wearing all black rather than her usual pale pinks and blues that complimented her golden hair and sapphire eyes. She spoke not a word during the repast, and not even her father's wittiest remarks would elicit a dimpled smile from her face.
"It was like attending a funeral service," Dame Van Tassel complained to her husband when the two went upstairs to bed that night.
"Do not worry about Katrina, my dear," he said, in his usual jovial manner. "She has got a good head on her shoulders. I have no doubt she will do the right thing and marry. Besides, she never liked wearing black."
"Maybe it is not whether she should marry that bothers the child but who she should marry."
"Do not be silly," Baltus laughed, putting no store in his wife's opinion when it came to their daughter. "Katrina can have her choice of any man in these parts. Why, young Brom Bones is so smitten with her, he would swim the Tappan Zee to win her hand in marriage!"
Dame Van Tassel, whose eyes were not always as clouded as her husband's when she viewed her only child, argued, "I am not sure Abraham Van Brunt is the right man for her. They are as different as night and day."
"Different? Of course, they are different! He is a man, and she is a woman. What else matters in a marriage?"
"You are not breeding livestock, Baltus! You have to take people's feelings into consideration. Give the girl time, and let nature take its course. She will find someone she cares about."
* * *
For nearly a week, Katrina moped around the Van Tassel home in her funerary attire, silently entering and exiting rooms like a ghost intent on haunting the family domicile. Finally, on Sunday morning she came downstairs dressed in a pale green frock.
"Feeling better, are you?" Baltus asked.
"As good as can be expected under these circumstances," Katrina replied, thawing somewhat.
The parents looked at each other, and the father smiled, savoring what he viewed as a victory. His daughter, he believed, had become reconciled to the idea of marriage.
Just as the Van Tassels arrived at church, they heard the rumble of a horse galloping down the road at breakneck speed. Katrina did not need to see the face of the rider to know his identity. Brom Bones got down from Daredevil, his favorite steed, and in three long strides was at the side of the family's carriage, in time to help Katrina down. The fair young lady nodded her head in gratitude but did not speak.
Brom quickly tied up his horse to a post and followed the Van Tassels into the church. He waited for Katrina to sit down; then he slid into the pew beside her, an action that brought another satisfied smile to Baltus's face and a nearly undetectable frown to his daughter's.
While the members of the congregation focused their attention on the minister in the pulpit, Katrina stole surreptitious glances at the man sitting next to her. He was, as Irving describes him, "the hero of the country round, which rang with his feats of strength and hardihood. He was broad-shouldered and double-jointed, with short curly black hair, and a bluff but not unpleasant countenance, having a mingled air of fun and arrogance."
While she grudgingly admitted Brom was a fine figure of a man with a face that made many a young lady in Sleepy Hollow swoon, Katrina had no desire to lose her cherished freedom to become Dame Van Brunt. She imagined how unbearable life would be entertaining Brom's boisterous friends and listening to boastful tales of his manly endeavors. And children! She had little doubt Brom would father a scrapping pack of boys who would grow up to be duplicates of their father.
Marriage to Brom would be exhausting! she thought with dismay. I would have no time to myself, no opportunities to enjoy a good book.
* * *
In Sleepy Hollow, where nearly all the residents were descendents of the original Dutch settlers, the appearance of any stranger was momentous news. Thus, before the new schoolmaster had the opportunity to unpack his bag, word of his arrival had already spread throughout the community. Dame Van Tassel, who preferred to do her own marketing rather than send a servant, was the first in the family to learn about the new teacher. Once she garnered the details of his marital status, she hurried home to share the news with Baltus.
"Our problems are solved!" she cried triumphantly when she found her husband overseeing construction of a new windmill.
"I was not aware we had any problems," Baltus said.
"I am talking about Katrina. You know how she has been resistant to the idea of marriage? Well, a gift from heaven has just arrived in Sleepy Hollow: a young, unmarried schoolmaster."
Baltus's raised eyebrows indicated his keen interest in his wife's announcement.
"Unmarried, you say? Splendid! It seems to me we ought to make the effort to get to know the latest addition to Sleepy Hollow. Since he is a bachelor, I am sure he would be amenable to a good, home cooked meal."
"I was thinking the same thing. Perhaps we ought to invite him to the house on Sunday."
"By all means," Baltus said.
* * *
The Van Tassels were not sure what to expect of the new schoolmaster, a Connecticut man named Ichabod Crane. The previous teacher had been a middle-aged man with a shrewish wife, seven children of his own and a fondness for beer, wine, hard cider or any other strong drink that could take his mind off of the shrewish wife and seven children.
While her parents plied their guest with numerous questions that surely must have made the poor man feel as though he were being interviewed for a position, Katrina sized him up with the same critical eye she had used on Brom Bones. Appearance-wise, he fell far short of Van Brunt's virile, masculine handsomeness.
Again, I look to Washington Irving for a somewhat exaggerated description of his person: "He was tall, but exceedingly lank, with narrow shoulders, long arms and legs, hands that dangled a mile out of his sleeves, feet that might have served for shovels, and his whole frame most loosely hung together. His head was small, and flat at top, with huge ears, large green glassy eyes, and a long snipe nose, so that it looked like a weather-cock perched upon his spindle neck to tell which way the wind blew. To see him striding along the profile of a hill on a windy day, with his clothes bagging and fluttering about him, one might have mistaken him for the genius of famine descending upon the earth, or some scarecrow eloped from a cornfield."
Still, Katrina was not so shallow a person that she would judge a man only on his outside appearance. If a comely face was all that mattered, she would marry Brom Bones and be done with it. However, Ichabod, a schoolmaster, was no doubt a man of intelligence, sensitivity and culture. He was the kind of man who could make her happy—or so she truly believed upon their first meeting.
In the weeks after his arrival, the teacher from Connecticut found not only acceptance but popularity in Sleepy Hollow. The door to every house was opened to him. Feasts were prepared in his honor as though he were the prodigal son returned to the fold. As an eligible bachelor, he was fussed over by the mothers and fathers of every unwed maiden in the village; but it soon became apparent that Ichabod had eyes only for the beautiful daughter of the wealthy Baltus Van Tassel.
"Tell me, Mr. Crane," Katrina asked as she and Ichabod were sitting together at Claes Van Riper's wedding supper, "other than the grammar and arithmetic primers you must read in your profession, what are some of your favorite books?"
When Ichabod's eyes lit up at the mention of his favorite books, Katrina believed she had found a soul mate.
"There is one book I love above all others," the schoolmaster passionately declared. "It is the only book I ever purchased, and I have read it so many times that some of the pages have come loose from the binding."
"Let me guess!" Katrina said playfully. "It is Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales."
"No, I have never read Chaucer."
Somewhat disappointed by his answer, Katrina then asked, "It is not the Bible, is it?"
"No. Everything I need to learn from the Bible, I get in church on Sundays."
"I know! It must be something by William Shakespeare, but what can it be? No, do not tell me, but give me a hint. Is it a comedy, a tragedy or a history?"
"I do believe, Miss Van Tassel, that you will never hit upon the correct answer, so I will tell you. It is a book written by Cotton Mather about witchcraft in New England."
"Surely you are joking," Katrina laughed.
"No, I am deadly serious. It is quite a scholarly account, most informative, indeed."
"But there are no such things as witches."
As though she were one of his pupils, Katrina was subjected, for the next hour, to a lecture on the existence of not only witches but also of demons, goblins and ghosts. The schoolmaster, who she believed was a man of superior learning, was nothing more than an educated fool, plagued by the same superstitions as the ignorant villagers were.
She suddenly saw herself as Mrs. Crane, married to a man who jumped at every unexpected noise and who lived in fear of what he could not understand. And he would father daughters as cowardly as himself, whimpering, whiny girls who were afraid of their own shadows.
No, she realized, Ichabod is not my soul mate. He is no more suited to me than Brom Bones is.
Her parents, or at least her mother, felt differently.
"I invited Mr. Crane to dinner next Sunday," Dame Van Tassel announced as her family waited to bid the Van Ripers farewell before heading home.
"Is that really necessary? He is at our home so often that people might get the wrong idea."
"But I thought you were fond of him," her mother cried with exasperation.
"No fonder of him than of any other man in Sleepy Hollow."
"You are not forgetting that your eighteenth birthday is only two months away?" Baltus asked, reminding his daughter of her matrimonial deadline.
"I need some fresh air," Katrina said, feeling unwell at the reminder of her familial obligation. "I am going to take a short walk in the churchyard."
Since a village as peaceful as Sleepy Hollow presented no dangers to an unescorted female, the Van Tassels did not object to their daughter being alone outside, in the dark. And Katrina, who had none of the fear of the supernatural that plagued the schoolmaster, felt only a comforting silence in the church burial ground.
Only two more months! she thought, surrendering to her anguish and letting her tears fall freely.
As she walked farther away from the church, she neared an untended grave, located a short distance from the others. There was no name on the headstone, since the identity of the man who lay beneath it was unknown. It was set apart from the other graves because that unidentified man was a Hessian soldier decapitated by a cannon ball less than twenty-four hours after British spy Major John André was captured by Patriots in Tarrytown.
From the time the enemy soldier was placed in that hallowed ground, stories spread that his headless corpse rose from his grave each night and searched the countryside for his missing head. Those who claim to have seen the restless spirit describe him as riding a ferocious black stallion, thus earning him the now-famous moniker, the Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow.
"Surely your tears are not shed for the Galloping Hessian."
The voice took Katrina by surprise, but she quickly stifled a cry of alarm.
"I did not know anyone else was out here," she explained, looking up into the face of a man so handsome that she found it hard to turn away.
The stranger spoke English with an accent, but it was not a Dutch one.
"Are you a visitor to our village?" Katrina asked. "Have you come for the wedding?"
"I believe I asked the first question," he said with a smile that made Katrina's knees go weak. "Are your tears for the Hessian whose headless body lies in this unmarked grave?"
Although Katrina would not normally discuss personal matters with a complete stranger, she felt drawn to the fair-haired, blue-eyed man.
"No, I am crying for myself," she admitted truthfully. "My parents expect me to marry by my eighteenth birthday, which is only two months away."
"Why would this make you cry? Many girls are married by your age, and those who are not are eager to find a husband, afraid they might end up as spinsters."
"I would prefer spinsterhood to being the wife of a man I do not love."
"Is there one man in particular that your parents want you to marry?"
"No, there are two, actually. I am sure my mother has her heart set on my marrying the schoolmaster. My father, on the other hand, seems to prefer Abraham Van Brunt."
"And you do not want to marry either of them. What a pity! The fair Juliet has no Romeo to awaken her heart."
"You are familiar with Shakespeare?" Katrina asked with surprise, since she had taken him for a simple farmer.
In response, he recited a line from A Midsummer Night's Dream, "'But earthlier happy is the rose distilled than that which withering on the virgin thorn grows, lives, and dies in single blessedness.' Or do you disagree with Theseus that married women are happier than single ones?"
Before the young woman could respond to the stranger's question, Dame Van Tassel called for her daughter.
"Katrina. We are ready to leave."
"I must go," she said, wishing she could stay.
"Perhaps someday our paths will cross again, and we can continue our discussion of the bard's works."
"I would like that very much."
"Katrina!" Baltus called, adding his voice to his wife's.
"Wait. I do not know your name," she said.
"My name is Wilhelm, but you may call me Romeo, my dearest Juliet, the fairest rose of the house of Capulet."
Katrina hurried back to her family, afraid they might search for her in the churchyard and discover her mysterious companion.
* * *
Wilhelm. The stranger was German. This did not surprise Katrina. As early as 1710, Palatine Germans had begun settling in the Hudson River Valley.
Wilhelm, she thought with a wistful smile on her face.
She wanted to say the name out loud, to feel its syllables on her tongue, to hear the sound of it in her ears.
Again, she imagined her future, only this time she was neither Mrs. Abraham Van Brunt nor Mrs. Ichabod Crane. Instead, she was Mrs. Wilhelm Montague—not knowing his surname, she gave him Romeo's. She saw herself and the handsome German stranger living in the Van Tassel home. He would oversee the farm once Baltus was too old for the job, and she, Dame Montague, would be every bit the lady of the manor as her mother was. They would have children, both boys and girls who, exceptionally bright, would share their parents' love of books and learning.
After our daily work is done, Wilhelm and I will sit before the fire and read to our children. My parents and Theseus are right, she concluded. A woman ought to be married.
"It looks like your walk in the fresh air did you some good," Dame Van Tassel said, noting the smile on her daughter's face when they arrived home.
"Yes, it did. I feel so much better now."
"Then you do not object to Mr. Crane coming for dinner on Sunday?"
"No, not at all. In fact, it might be amusing. He does seem to be a fount of gossip. I know if there is anyone—or anything—new in the village, he will know about it."
Unfortunately, much to Katrina's disappointment, Ichabod was unaware of any strangers visiting Sleepy Hollow.
When the schoolmaster left that Sunday evening, Dame Van Tassel cornered her daughter.
"Well, have you and Mr. Crane come to an understanding?"
Katrina could not take two more months of badgering from her parents and decided to put a stop to it.
"I have decided you and father are right. I ought to be married. I am more than willing to do so."
"Baltus!" her mother cried with joy. "Come here. You must hear this."
"What is all the commotion about?" the patriarch of the Van Tassel family demanded to know.
"Our daughter has decided to marry the schoolmaster!"
Katrina quickly denied her mother's assumption.
"I said I was willing to marry, and I am. But I never said I would marry Ichabod!"
"Ah! I was right all along!" Baltus exclaimed. "I knew it was Brom Bones who would win your heart in the end."
"I did not say I would marry Brom Bones either."
"Then who?" the older Van Tassels asked in unison.
Katrina could not very well tell her parents that she was in love with a man whose last name she did not know, a man she had spoken to for only a few brief but wonderful moments.
"You have given me until my eighteenth birthday to make up my mind. I intend to keep the identity of the man I love a secret until then."
Baltus narrowed his eyes, suspecting his daughter might be up to some form of deception, but there was a dreamy look on her face and a softness in her smile that had not been there before, one that clearly indicated she was in love.
"We will throw a party for your birthday," he announced. "We will invite all of Sleepy Hollow to celebrate. Everyone will be there, including Brom Bones and Ichabod Crane. I expect by the end of the night one of them will be named my future son-in-law."
* * *
For the next two months, Katrina searched Sleepy Hollow for any sign of Wilhelm. Unable to find him, she wrote him a letter, addressed to Romeo, imploring him to come to the Van Tassel home on the evening of October 31. She then left the missive in a sealed glass jar on top of the Hessian's grave. She sincerely doubted Wilhelm would ever read it, but she was desperate and would take any chance to find him.
Finally, the night of her birthday arrived. The doors to the Van Tassel mansion were thrown wide open, and the guests poured in. Katrina looked at every person that entered, praying Wilhelm might be among the crowd.
One of the first to arrive was Brom Bones. Encouraged that the schoolmaster was nowhere in sight, he was fully prepared to press his suit.
"Katrina," he said, taking her hand in his, "I have been meaning to talk to you."
"Not now, Brom," she said. "I have to welcome our guests."
"Later then."
Brom's spirits plummeted when the next person to walk through the door was Ichabod Crane. The tall, lanky schoolmaster eyed the bounty on display in the Van Tassel home with a covetous stare, imagining himself as master and Katrina as his wife. The object of his desire, however, paid no attention to either of her suitors. She was far too concerned with searching for a handsome German in a sea of Dutch faces.
Eventually, the guests stopped arriving, and Dame Van Tassel invited them to partake of the scrumptious repast that had been prepared. Katrina, who had taken on the demeanor of a lamb about to be slaughtered, ate and drank nothing. She had promised her parents an answer, but Wilhelm was nowhere to be seen. She must now choose between Brom Bones and Ichabod Crane.
What difference does it make? she asked herself. Death by hanging or death by firing squad: the result is the same.
When the guests had eaten to the point that they would likely burst with one more bite, they gathered in the great room, where a marvelous fire blazed in the large stone fireplace. Each person took a seat, and although a few dozed off—no doubt the result of overeating—most were eager to hear Old Baltus and his cronies exchange stories of the battle of White Plains and other nearby skirmishes between the Americans and the British.
Once the war stories were exhausted, tales of ghosts and apparitions followed, with each succeeding storyteller hoping to outdo his predecessors with more outlandish accounts of haunted domiciles and cursed families.
When it was Ichabod's turn to tell a tale, he resorted to the material he was most familiar with: Cotton Mather's book on witchcraft in New England. The schoolmaster described the events that took place in Salem during the late seventeenth century. And since he firmly believed that those innocent victims of mass hysteria were actual sorcerers in league with the devil, he swore the spirits of those hanged witches were haunting Salem to this day.
When the evening finally drew to an end, Brom Bones volunteered to tell the last story.
"You are all familiar with the tale of the Hessian whose headless body lies in an unmarked grave in the churchyard," he began.
Everyone had heard that story before, many times over. Everyone, that is, except Ichabod Crane.
"Well?" Baltus whispered to his daughter as Brom began his narrative of the Headless Horseman. "Who us it going to be?"
"I suppose it will be ...."
Even as she began her sentence, she had yet to make a choice. It was only when she saw the look of fear on Ichabod's face as he listened with rapt attention to Brom's story that she gave her parents a name.
"... Brom. I will marry Brom Bones."
* * *
As friends and neighbors began taking their leave of the Van Tassels, Brom Bones again cornered Katrina.
"I have been wanting to talk with you all night. I have something to ask ...."
"Yes," she replied, anxious to have the proposal over with so that she could go to bed and cry herself to sleep.
"I was about to ask you ...."
"Yes, I will marry you," Katrina said impatiently. "We will discuss all the particulars some other time, but for now I am going to bed. It has been an exhausting day."
Unlike Katrina, Brom was exuberant. He wanted all of Sleepy Hollow to know the good news. He began by telling his friend, Hendrick Brouwer.
"And to think you were afraid she would choose Ichabod Crane over you!" Hendrick laughed.
"That was ridiculous, was it not?" Brom agreed. "Katrina could never love a pathetic weakling like that! Did you see his face when he heard the legend of the Galloping Hessian?"
"I thought he would die of fright! I bet he is saying his prayers the whole way home!"
Brom, who had always been one to enjoy a bit of mischief, was suddenly inspired.
"Even though Katrina chose me in the end, Crane did try to win her hand when all of Sleepy Hollow knew I was courting her. I think someone ought to show him not to try to steal another man's girl."
"And that someone would be you, I take it," Hendrick said.
"I think the Galloping Hessian would make a greater impression."
* * *
Katrina, who had overheard Brom's plans to terrorize the schoolmaster, was unsure what to do. While she had no tender feelings for Ichabod, she hated to see anyone being treated so cruelly.
"The bully!" Katrina exclaimed. "I must get to Ichabod before Brom does, so I can warn him."
She grabbed her cloak and headed toward the village church. With only the light of the moon to guide her steps, she made her way along the dirt road. Her eyes were scanning the darkness ahead of her, looking for the tall, lanky frame of the schoolmaster, when she heard the sound of a galloping horse behind her.
That is Brom on Daredevil. I have to stop him.
As the sound of hoofbeats grew louder, Katrina stood in the center of the road where Brom could not miss her. The horse neared, showing no signs of slowing, but the brave young woman held her ground. Just as she thought Daredevil would trample her body into the dirt, the horse reared.
"Brom, you must not ...."
Katrina felt wonder but no terror when she looked up at the dreadful apparition. Brom Bones was not the man on the horse. Its rider was the Galloping Hessian! To her great astonishment, the Headless Horseman was wearing the same clothes Wilhelm had worn when she met him that night in the churchyard.
"It is you!" she cried to the empty space where the fair-haired, blue-eyed head ought to have been. "The legend is true. You are searching for your head, are you not?"
Katrina suddenly realized her questions were pointless. Without a head, Wilhelm could not possibly answer.
"That night in the burial ground ... it was your ghost I saw."
The specter lowered its hand toward her. Their fingertips touched, and an electric charge passed between them. Katrina felt a tingling along every nerve of her body. As though she had been awakened after a decades-long sleep, she finally recognized the power that was coursing through her veins.
Ichabod was right. There are such things as witches, and I am one of them.
With the eyes of a cat, Katrina saw through the darkness, lying by the side of the road, the shattered jack-o-lantern that Brom had thrown at Ichabod some ten minutes earlier. She picked up the pieces and used her magic to restore the smashed gourd to its rightful shape. She then handed the smiling pumpkin to the Hessian.
"Here is your head, dear Wilhelm. You need not search anymore."
The Headless Horseman placed the jack-o-lantern on his shoulders. Then Katrina cast another spell, and Wilhelm, the decapitated Hessian soldier, was made whole again.
* * *
Having pledged her troth to Abraham Van Brunt, Katrina could not go back on her word and announce her plans to marry Wilhelm Speer. But like Romeo and Juliet, the two lovers would not be parted. With her newly discovered powers of sorcery, Katrina gave life to a tattered, weathered scarecrow that had been vigilantly standing guard against marauding crows in the Van Tassel's recently harvested cornfield.
Once the imitation woman took the real one's place, Katrina was free to leave Sleepy Hollow and build a life with the resurrected Wilhelm Speer. Although her dream of being the mistress of Van Tassel mansion was never realized, she did not once regret her choice in the long life granted her.
* * *
What happened to the other characters of this oft-repeated legend, you ask.
Ichabod Crane was never seen in Sleepy Hollow again. While some people whispered that he was carried off by the Headless Horseman, other, wiser folk, say he returned to Connecticut where he married a plump young maiden whose father made the former schoolmaster heir to his busy tavern. Although his new wife was in no way comparable in beauty to Katrina Van Tassel, Ichabod was content with his lot in life. He had a successful business, a good-tempered wife and all the food and drink his heart desired. He had the added advantage of living in a village where no headless apparition roamed the night.
And as for Brom Bones, he married the girl of his dreams: Katrina Van Tassel. The Van Tassel lands, added to those of the Van Brunts, made Brom and Katrina the richest couple in the vicinity of the Tappan Zee. Over the years, Brom became the proud father of six—all boys, all carbon copies of himself when he was a young man. He, like his former rival, Ichabod Crane, was a happy man. Furthermore, his wife, whose docile and obedient nature was the envy of every husband whose own wife was a nag or a shrew, kept her youthful beauty well into her senior years.
More than half a century after the schoolmaster departed, Old Abraham Van Brunt kept a silent vigil at his dying wife's bedside, remaining long after their children and grandchildren said their goodbyes. Just moments before the conjured Katrina breathed her last, Brom took her in his still strong arms and kissed her. The old man was frankly amazed that after all the years they were together, the inexplicable scent of autumn leaves, straw and pumpkin still lingered in his wife's hair.
This story was inspired by Washington Irving's Legend of Sleepy Hollow.
The Headless Horseman once took Salem's head. Salem hasn't gone back to Sleepy Hollow in nearly 300 years!
