Sleepy Hollow: Children of the Revolution

by Keith R. A. DeCandido

  “So it would seem,” Crane said lamely. While he was sure this young woman had ample charms in her own right, he needed to speak to Lieutenant Mills immediately.

  She put a hand out. “Well, my name isn’t Katrina, it’s Lianne, and I came back here because I realized I didn’t introduce myself. My mom taught me better than that, especially when the other person in the conversation is as polite as you are. Seriously, you’re the nicest guy I’ve met since I moved here for college.”

  Crane immediately took Lianne’s hand and bent forward in a proper bow. “The pleasure has been entirely mine, Miss Lianne. My name is Ichabod Crane, and I remain at your service.” He returned her hand to her and stood upright. “I’m afraid, however, that my—my daydream has reminded me of a pressing matter to which I must immediately attend. If you will excuse me.”

  Lianne was just holding the hand he’d kissed, in a state of befuddlement that Crane might have found amusing under different circumstances.

  Giving her another bow and taking her stunned silence for assent to his request to be excused, Crane turned and headed off the bridge down the stone path that would take him to the Broad Way. Reaching into the pocket of the coat that Lianne had so admired, he pulled out the device that was referred to as a “cell phone.” He assumed the modifier “cell” was a joke referring to how much modern humanity was imprisoned by such devices, as it seemed that the citizens of the twenty-first century relied on them to an appalling degree.

  Still, Crane could not help but be impressed by the accomplishment. By simply entering a prearranged code into this object that appeared to be a simple block of refined metal, Crane could, theoretically, communicate with anyone in the world. It was a capacity that Crane found unimaginable, and he often mused on what the Continental Army could have done with such communicative powers.

  Then again, the Regular Army would have had access to same. If nothing else, they might have communicated to Lord George Germain that Jonas Bronck’s River could not accommodate a vessel any larger than a rowboat, which would have saved his lordship a certain amount of embarrassment when he ordered gunboats to sail up that river passage.

  Crane managed to navigate the phone’s code system to connect himself to the lieutenant.

  Abigail Mills answered after only one sounding off of the phone’s bell. “Talk fast, Crane, I’m in the middle of a call with the ADA about the Ippolito case.”

  “Who is this Ippolito gentleman?”

  “Before your time—Ippolito’s a guy Corbin and I busted for B-and-E. The case is finally going to trial after a ton of delays, so I’m going over my testimony with Czierniewski.”

  Crane only followed about half of what Mills said, but he didn’t bother to inquire further, as he had more pressing matters to discuss. “I need to see you immediately, Lieutenant. There is another crisis brewing, though I’m afraid the nature of said crisis remains a mystery that you and I must unravel.”

  “Which means it’s another day ending in Y for us Witnesses,” Mills said dryly.

  Crane frowned. “Every day ends in—” He sighed. “Ah, yes, I see. Very droll.”

  “Look, I’ve got at least another ten minutes with Czierniewski. Why don’t I meet you across the street in fifteen?”

  “Very well.”

  By this time, Crane was walking down the Broad Way and headed for the armory that the local constabulary had converted to an archive. After the previous sheriff, August Corbin, was murdered, his personal files were sent there. Corbin had collected a great deal of information about the supernatural happenings in and around Sleepy Hollow, so Crane and Mills had, with the blessing of Corbin’s replacement, Captain Frank Irving, taken over the armory as their de facto headquarters in the ongoing battle against the mystical forces that were arrayed against them.

  Irving had proven a valuable ally, as had Jenny Mills, the lieutenant’s sister, who had aided Corbin in his quest to learn all he could about the battle they were all enmeshed in. Miss Jenny had taken to referring to the armory as “the Batcave,” a reference that Crane had found impenetrable.

  The armory itself was one of the few structures that remained from Crane’s time. According to the histories he’d read over the past few months, the village received an influx of new residents both rich and poor after the invention of the railroad, and another after the invention of the automobile. Both waves of population expansion were accompanied by new construction, much of which replaced the existing farmhouses. By the turn of the twentieth century, the agrarian village that Crane knew was all but gone.

  A few exceptions remained, such as the Old Dutch Church, which had already been standing for a century when Crane first visited it, and this very armory, in which several of the strategies enacted in the Battle of Lexington and Concord had been plotted.

  It was a short, brisk walk up the Broad Way to Beekman Avenue, the thoroughfare on which both police headquarters and the armory lay.

  He entered the latter, nodding to the uniformed officer who sat behind a metal desk reading a copy of the Journal News, the newspaper that serviced this vicinity.

  “Afternoon, Mr. Crane.”

  Crane blinked, not recalling having been introduced to this particular constable. “Good afternoon. I’m afraid you have the advantage of me—” He glanced at the nameplate on the woman’s chest. “—Officer Marble. Have we met?”

  She folded the newspaper and put it down on the desk. “No, but trust me, everyone knows who you are.”

  “Do they?” Crane was a bit nonplussed by that.

  Marble snorted. “C’mon, Corbin gets killed, Abbie decides not to go to D.C., and you and her spend all your time holed up in here. Plus, she ain’t been in the rotation, and Irving’s covering both your asses.” She grinned. “It’s a small town, and we don’t have that much to talk about, least till baseball season starts.”

  “Ah, you are a fan of baseball, then? I’m afraid I did not acquire a taste for the sport until Lieutenant Mills took me to a game.”

  “Yeah, well, don’t let her fool you into thinking the Mets are a good team. You wanna see real baseball, go to Yankee Stadium.”

  “I will bear that in mind,” Crane said diplomatically, though he followed only part of what Marble said. “If you’ll excuse me.”

  “You bet.” She picked the paper back up. “Good luck with whatever you guys are doing back there.”

  Crane reached into his coat pocket to retrieve the metal band that contained the ever-growing collection of keys he’d accumulated. It took him a moment to find the configuration that matched that of this particular door, and then he allowed himself ingress.

  A few minutes after he settled into one of the chairs of dubious comfort that had been placed in the room, he heard Mills conversing with Officer Marble. They seemed to be discoursing on the subject of gentlemen by the names of Harvey, Tanaka, Sabathia, and Wright, as well as someone with the appellation “Ayrod.”

  Finally, Mills joined him, shaking her head. “I don’t know who’s crazier, Liz Marble for thinkin’ the Yanks aren’t gonna suck again this year or Johnny Ippolito for not pleading out. If he’d just taken the plea that Czierniewski offered him when Corbin and I busted him a year and a half ago, he’d already be back on the streets.” She blew out a breath. “So what’s our latest mystery?”

  After providing Mills with a précis of his vision, Crane concluded with “I can only surmise that Katrina was forced to keep our contact brief as a consequence of my sojourn to visit her in purgatory.”

  Mills nodded. “Yeah, Moloch’s probably keeping the bonds pretty tight on her after that. So what medal do you need to retrieve?”

  “I’ve no idea.” Crane shook his head and rose to his feet. He told Mills the story while seated, but now he felt restless. “I received no medal from either the Crown or the colonies.”

  “Did she give you any kind of hint?”

  Testily, Crane said, “The sum total of her words to me were what I quoted to you: ‘You
must retrieve the medal you were awarded.’ ”

  “Maybe it wasn’t just words. What else did you see?”

  “I saw flashes of people who are in some way involved in our conflict, either present-day or during the war: General Washington, van Brunt, you, Moloch, and—” Crane blinked. “Wait—of course! I also saw Willett!”

  “Who’s that?”

  Crane shook his head. “Marinus Willett, the leader of the Sons of Liberty. The Continental Congress awarded ten of us with the Congressional Cross. It was a citation for bravery in the struggle against the Crown. It was one of several decorations that were distributed—they also issued elegant swords to some soldiers, as well as the Fidelity Medallion, which John Paulding and his compatriots received after capturing Major André.”

  Mills smiled. “Kinda surprised Mr. Photographic Memory forgot that. What happened to the cross after you died?”

  Tartly, Crane said, “Mr. Photographic Memory did not forget it, because he was never issued the cross. While the Congress did declare that ten of us were to receive the honor, the actual crosses were commissioned to be created by a French silversmith. But they had not been completed by the time of my semi-fatal encounter with the Horseman.”

  “I like ‘semi-fatal.’ Okay, so usually when someone’s awarded a medal posthumously, it goes to a family member.”

  Crane shook his head. “Hardly an option. Katrina was on the run after she cast her spell upon my corpse, and our son was not publicly known to be my heir.” Crane shuddered involuntarily. The recent revelation that Katrina had birthed a son by him had shaken him to his very core. She herself had been unaware of the pregnancy until after Crane’s battle with the Horseman. Katrina had left young Jeremy in the care of trusted comrades, but after they were killed, he was raised in an orphanage. “I’m afraid the only other family I had was my father. I doubt the nascent United States government would have issued such a citation to a member of the British aristocracy who disowned the recipient of that citation when he switched sides.”

  “ ‘Here’s a medal your dead son got for rebelling.’ Yeah, probably not, no.” Mills sighed. “All right, I think the first thing we need to do is find out everything we can about the Congressional Cross. Who else got them?”

  “I’m afraid I couldn’t say. Marinus Willett, van Brunt, and I were informed of our honors together after the fact. I was never informed of the full roster of ten.”

  “Too bad.” She went over to the laptop computer in order to utilize the invisible library that was the Internet.

  After several manipulations of the keyboard, Mills found herself on a page that provided some information. “Looks like that silversmith you mentioned was named Gaston Mercier, and he finished the crosses in 1785. They were shipped to the United States. George Washington awarded them to the surviving recipients or to their families.”

  Crane shook his head. “As we’ve established, that is not applicable to all who received it. Does this webbed page provide a list?”

  “Web page, and there’s only one other name besides Willett and van Brunt: Tench Tilghman.” She looked up. “What kind of parent names their kid ‘Tench’?” Then she shook her head. “And why am I asking the person whose parents named him ‘Ichabod’?”

  Crane raised an eyebrow. “In fact, Lieutenant, my given name derives from the Book of Samuel. As for Mr. Tilghman, I’m afraid I never met him, though I do know that he was one of Washington’s most trusted lieutenants.”

  She leaned back in her chair. “Well, there isn’t much online about these crosses. I’ll keep digging, but if that’s all Katrina gave us, I’m not sure what else we can do.”

  “Indeed. I love Katrina more than life itself, Lieutenant, but with each passing day I realize that I knew her far less than I should have. We can only hope that my ignorance does not prove fatal for us all.”

  TWO

  NEW YORK, NEW YORK

  JANUARY 2014

  BEFORE THE ACCIDENT, Frank Irving had paid very little attention to the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.

  He was aware of it, certainly. If nothing else, when he was a uniformed rookie in the New York Police Department, his sergeant would sometimes task him with ticketing duty, telling him to paper cars that violated parking ordinances. He often wrote citations for vehicles parked in handicapped spots without proper tags or ones that blocked the lips in sidewalks to accommodate wheelchairs and strollers. And he was occasionally guilty of using the elevators in the subways when he just didn’t feel like climbing the stairs.

  But it wasn’t until after the accident, after Macey was released from the hospital, after the doctors made it clear that she would never walk again, that Irving was able to truly appreciate the kindness that Congress had done his family with that law.

  Macey herself took it for granted, which was easy for her, not having been born yet when the law passed. If Irving had been confined to a wheelchair when he was Macey’s age back in the 1980s, he’d have had a much harder time of it: fewer elevators and ramps, fewer lips in the sidewalks, fewer parking spots set aside, and so on.

  Then again, he’d been thinking a lot lately about how things had changed over the years. Having a displaced Revolutionary War soldier in his life had that effect.…

  He and his teenage daughter were working their way up Fifth Avenue toward the ground-floor entrance to the Metropolitan Museum of Art that sat opposite East Eighty-First Street, passing the street artists and food and drink vendors that dotted the crowded sidewalk.

  “Here we go, Little Bean,” he said with a smile as he held the large metal door open for her. “I ever tell you that my earliest memories are of coming here?”

  “Only a thousand times, Dad.” Macey grinned indulgently. They went through this routine every time he brought her to the Met.

  “You sure?” Irving asked with mock confusion. “I really told you about the time I was four years old?”

  “Yes, Dad. You don’t remember the whole trip, just quick images like pictures. Standing in the main entrance, looking at a Rembrandt, staring down at all the pennies in the wishing well at the Temple of Dendur …”

  “And the pigeons, don’t forget the pigeons.” Irving shrugged out of his coat, then helped Macey slide out of hers as they got in the coat-check line. “Dive-bombing me on the steps. It was like being in an Alfred Hitchcock movie. But even after that, I’ve been coming back here my whole life.”

  Macey smiled. “Didn’t you tell me that you were the only cop in your precinct who had a membership to the museum?”

  “Yeah, I was. Least I only made the mistake of asking the guys to come with me once.” Cops and art generally didn’t mix, and Irving took some serious ribbing after making that request. “Took me ten years to get them to stop calling me Picasso.”

  Once they checked their coats, they went to the membership desk and got the stickers with the Met’s logo and the date. Wearing those on their shirts would permit them access to the museum for the rest of the day. While waiting for the elevator, Irving asked his daughter, “Where you wanna visit first?”

  “Can we go to the Astor Court? One of the kids in the anime club went there, and I’m dying to see it!”

  Irving frowned. “When did you join the anime club?”

  “Like, forever ago, Dad. Remember, I went to that Miyazaki marathon?”

  “Sure, right,” Irving said quickly, though he recalled no such thing. He silently admonished himself for not paying near enough attention to his daughter’s life and made a mental note to look up the name Miyazaki later to make sure his oeuvre was suitable for a teenager.

  Murphy’s Law being what it was, the Astor Court was all the way on the other end of the museum, an edifice that took up four city blocks. They took the elevator to the first floor, then moved slowly through the Greek sculpture, the main lobby with its high ceilings, wooden benches, and large crowds, then through the Egyptian wing before reaching another elevator.

  When they went through
the lobby, Macey noticed the much longer line for the coat check up here, and grinned. “See? There are benefits to being crippled.”

  Irving winced. He and his ex-wife, Cynthia, had gone to great lengths to never use the word crippled in Macey’s presence, so naturally their daughter had decided one day to embrace the term. Part of it was an attempt at empowerment, something Irving could get behind. Certainly lots of the people he came up with in the neighborhood would embrace racial slurs for their own use, not to mention gay people similarly embracing queer. But Irving also had a sneaking suspicion that Macey used the word precisely because it made her parents uncomfortable. Just a little something to remind him that, whatever else she’d been through, Macey was still a teenager.

  The elevator deposited them on the second floor right opposite the moon gate, the circular entryway to the Astor Court. First opened in 1981, the space was a re-creation of a Chinese garden, with a small body of water with koi swimming about, several plants, a small gazebo, several rock sculptures, and a skylight. Irving’s first visit had been the year it opened, when he was thirteen.

  Even at its most crowded, the place exuded calm.

  Since the accident, Irving had gotten in the habit of walking behind Macey. At first, it was to push her wheelchair, but even after she started manipulating the chair herself, he remained behind her in order to keep an eye on her.

  But halfway through the moon gate, he stopped, unable to continue forward.

  It took Macey a moment to notice, and then she glanced back over her shoulder. “Dad?”

  “Sorry, Little Bean, I just—” He shook his head and then finally went the rest of the way in, staring at the rock gardens and plants and simple-yet-ornate window designs and floor patterns.

  Macey wheeled herself down the ramp onto the main part of the floor. “You okay, Dad?” she asked as he followed her.

  “I just realized that I haven’t been here since—since the accident.”