Sleepy Hollow Deleted Scenes, For Fan Reference
Transcription of scenes from pages 28-33 of the Sleepy Hollow novelization by Peter Lerangis (1999)
Summary: While in her room, Katrina overhears Ichabod and the town elders conversing, and her stepmother stops by for her usual evening chat/hairbrushing session. Katrina contrives an excuse to visit Ichabod in his garret room to have a conversation with him. Ichabod is trying to work, but can't stop thinking about Katrina, and fumbles his way awkwardly through their talk.
XXX
The sound of the men’s conversation floated through the house and up to the room of Katrina Van Tassel. She could make out the voices, more or less, but not the words. Besides her father’s only one other voice seemed to have a tone of kindness and compassion. Too bad the constable was otherwise such an oaf.
Long after the conversation ended, when the brooding young man was in his room, Katrina prepared for sleep. As always, Lady Van Tassel stopped for a good-night chat. She picked up a brush and slowly, rhythmically, began brushing her stepdaughter’s hair.
“Well, I’m disappointed,” Katrina said. “Our first visitor from New York - he doesn’t know where to put himself, and his feet are all over the place.”
Lady Van Tassel nodded. “Yes, not like your Brom.”
At a knock on the door, she gave Katrina the hairbrush. “Go on brushing. I got to forty-four strokes.”
Lady Van Tassel pulled open the door to reveal Sarah. “That constable, he wants the Bible, mum,” the girl said, curtseying meekly.
“Bible?” Lady Van Tassel repeated.
“I’ll bring it to him,” Katrina volunteered.
Sarah curtseyed again, backing away.
As the servant girl vanished down the hallway, Lady Van Tassel raised a knowing eyebrow to Katrina.
“We’ll see if his city talk fits him better than his clothes,” Katrina said with a smile.
XXX
My first day here has raised even more Obstacles than I anticipated. Enemy Number One, I’m afraid, is the superstitious Nature of these good but benighted Country Folk…
Ichabod read his own words for the hundredth time. Finally he set down his pen. He hadn’t the mind to continue, nor to look at the books he had laid on his desktop.
This would be a challenge, an enormous one; he would be fighting ignorance as much as crime. If only his thoughts would not continue to be side-tracked to… to her.
She is promised. Betrothed. To the - the ape - the overgrown dirt farmer.
Work, Ichabod. That is the one thing which will get you through.
As Ichabod picked up his pen once again, he heard a knock on the door. At last, the servant girl with the Bible. He’d sent her so long ago, he thought she’d forgotten.
“Yes, yes, come in!” he shouted over his shoulder. Perhaps that family tree on the Bible’s inner leaf would reveal something. Something odd had caught his eye during his brief perusal in the parlor, a familiar surname that he couldn’t now recall.
Behind him, the door clicked open. Soft footsteps trod the wooden floor.
“Thank you,” Ichabod called out. “Just leave it on the reading stand. That will be all.” No. She is a resource. You can learn from her. “Wait. Tell me about that big brute who seems to be Miss Katrina’s - ”
As he spoke, he turned around and came face-to-face with Katrina Van Tassel.
He shot up out of his chair. His hip knocked against the desk, which thudded against the wall, sending papers cascading to the floor. “Forgive me! I asked Sarah to bring me - ”
“So, your clever books have failed you,” Katrina said with an amused smile, “and you turn to the Bible after all.”
Ichabod collected himself. “I see I am talked about downstairs.”
“In passing only. We have many things to talk about, even in this backward place.”
“I am sorry. Please excuse my manner. I am not used to - ”
Speechless. She renders me speechless.
“Female company?” Katrina asked.
“Society,” Ichabod shot back.
“How can you avoid society in New York? How I should love the opera and theaters - to go dancing! Is it wonderful?”
Ichabod fought the urge to lie, to make himself sound cultured and urbane. She would see through him; she saw everything. “I have never been.”
“But there is an art museum? A concert hall?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then you have nothing to teach me.”
The words made Ichabod shrink away with disappointment, but an idea was forming. “Perhaps I have,” he said. “Do you believe the Van Garetts and the Widow Winship were murdered by a Headless Horseman?”
“Not everyone here believes it is the Horseman.”
At last. A realist. “Good!” Ichabod said.
“Some say it is the Witch of the Western Woods who has made a pact with Lucifer.”
Ichabod’s shoulders sank. Katrina was one of them, after all, provincial and irrational. “There are no witches or galloping ghosts either. Is everyone in this village in thrall to superstition?”
“Why are you so afraid of magic? Not all magic is black. There are ancient truths in these woods which have been forgotten in your city parks.”
“If they are truth, they are not magic; if magic, not truth,” Ichabod told her.
“You are foolish. When there is fever in the house, it is well known that willow herb roots and a crow’s foot must be boiled in the milk of a pure white goat with special charms uttered over the fire - and the fever abates.”
“Next time try the herb without the rest.” Ichabod had heard enough. “And now I must ask you to excuse me.”
“Gladly. I should not have interrupted our town’s savior. Good night.” Katrina turned and walked toward the open door. “And as to your first question, that big brute you were asking about has proposed to me.”
The statement caught Ichabod off guard. “I - I - I’m happy that - ”
Katrina looked back over her shoulder. “He’s proposed to me… several times.”
She paused and smiled, letting the last two words linger. And as she left, she seemed to take all the air in the room with her.
Ichabod had to sit down.
Eyeing the Bible, he took deep, clearing breaths. Work needed to be done. Difficult mental work, involving logic and clear thought. No room for sentimental notions and cryptic feminine innuendoes.
He opened the cover to the family tree and began taking notes:
Katrina Van Tassel - born 1777.
Baltus Van Tassel’s first wife (Elizabeth Kierstadt) -
died 1797.
Katrina’s mother was only two years dead, he realized. Somehow this did not surprise him. He had seen the sadness behind Katrina’s smile, the hint of dark corners within her fire and gaiety, of places into which she would let no one. She must have loved her mother with all her soul.
Of course. A mother’s death is a wound that never heals, no matter how tough the scar tissue. One can only protect that scar, hide it from others.
And, if necessary, from the self.
All words, all paths of thought, led to Katrina. He allowed himself to imagine holding her, comforting her, and whispering that he knew. That she needn’t say a thing, but he knew.
And as he thought of her face, another merged with it - similar in some ways, kind and lovely - opening the wound and letting the darkness out of his own cold, forbidden corner.
His mother’s face…
No. Not now. Stay at your task. It is finally yielding something.
He picked up his pen again, writing with firm resolution:
The current Lady Van Tassel - Baltus’s second wife.
The name of Baltus’s uncle by marriage (the husband of his father’s sister) is Van Garrett.
Van Garrett - two of the murder victims, father and son. Could Van Tassel himself be involved? Did he have a motive of some sort?
Ichabod barely noticed the distant rumbling outside as he resumed work.
Summary: While in her room, Katrina overhears Ichabod and the town elders conversing, and her stepmother stops by for her usual evening chat/hairbrushing session. Katrina contrives an excuse to visit Ichabod in his garret room to have a conversation with him. Ichabod is trying to work, but can't stop thinking about Katrina, and fumbles his way awkwardly through their talk.
XXX
The sound of the men’s conversation floated through the house and up to the room of Katrina Van Tassel. She could make out the voices, more or less, but not the words. Besides her father’s only one other voice seemed to have a tone of kindness and compassion. Too bad the constable was otherwise such an oaf.
Long after the conversation ended, when the brooding young man was in his room, Katrina prepared for sleep. As always, Lady Van Tassel stopped for a good-night chat. She picked up a brush and slowly, rhythmically, began brushing her stepdaughter’s hair.
“Well, I’m disappointed,” Katrina said. “Our first visitor from New York - he doesn’t know where to put himself, and his feet are all over the place.”
Lady Van Tassel nodded. “Yes, not like your Brom.”
At a knock on the door, she gave Katrina the hairbrush. “Go on brushing. I got to forty-four strokes.”
Lady Van Tassel pulled open the door to reveal Sarah. “That constable, he wants the Bible, mum,” the girl said, curtseying meekly.
“Bible?” Lady Van Tassel repeated.
“I’ll bring it to him,” Katrina volunteered.
Sarah curtseyed again, backing away.
As the servant girl vanished down the hallway, Lady Van Tassel raised a knowing eyebrow to Katrina.
“We’ll see if his city talk fits him better than his clothes,” Katrina said with a smile.
XXX
My first day here has raised even more Obstacles than I anticipated. Enemy Number One, I’m afraid, is the superstitious Nature of these good but benighted Country Folk…
Ichabod read his own words for the hundredth time. Finally he set down his pen. He hadn’t the mind to continue, nor to look at the books he had laid on his desktop.
This would be a challenge, an enormous one; he would be fighting ignorance as much as crime. If only his thoughts would not continue to be side-tracked to… to her.
She is promised. Betrothed. To the - the ape - the overgrown dirt farmer.
Work, Ichabod. That is the one thing which will get you through.
As Ichabod picked up his pen once again, he heard a knock on the door. At last, the servant girl with the Bible. He’d sent her so long ago, he thought she’d forgotten.
“Yes, yes, come in!” he shouted over his shoulder. Perhaps that family tree on the Bible’s inner leaf would reveal something. Something odd had caught his eye during his brief perusal in the parlor, a familiar surname that he couldn’t now recall.
Behind him, the door clicked open. Soft footsteps trod the wooden floor.
“Thank you,” Ichabod called out. “Just leave it on the reading stand. That will be all.” No. She is a resource. You can learn from her. “Wait. Tell me about that big brute who seems to be Miss Katrina’s - ”
As he spoke, he turned around and came face-to-face with Katrina Van Tassel.
He shot up out of his chair. His hip knocked against the desk, which thudded against the wall, sending papers cascading to the floor. “Forgive me! I asked Sarah to bring me - ”
“So, your clever books have failed you,” Katrina said with an amused smile, “and you turn to the Bible after all.”
Ichabod collected himself. “I see I am talked about downstairs.”
“In passing only. We have many things to talk about, even in this backward place.”
“I am sorry. Please excuse my manner. I am not used to - ”
Speechless. She renders me speechless.
“Female company?” Katrina asked.
“Society,” Ichabod shot back.
“How can you avoid society in New York? How I should love the opera and theaters - to go dancing! Is it wonderful?”
Ichabod fought the urge to lie, to make himself sound cultured and urbane. She would see through him; she saw everything. “I have never been.”
“But there is an art museum? A concert hall?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then you have nothing to teach me.”
The words made Ichabod shrink away with disappointment, but an idea was forming. “Perhaps I have,” he said. “Do you believe the Van Garetts and the Widow Winship were murdered by a Headless Horseman?”
“Not everyone here believes it is the Horseman.”
At last. A realist. “Good!” Ichabod said.
“Some say it is the Witch of the Western Woods who has made a pact with Lucifer.”
Ichabod’s shoulders sank. Katrina was one of them, after all, provincial and irrational. “There are no witches or galloping ghosts either. Is everyone in this village in thrall to superstition?”
“Why are you so afraid of magic? Not all magic is black. There are ancient truths in these woods which have been forgotten in your city parks.”
“If they are truth, they are not magic; if magic, not truth,” Ichabod told her.
“You are foolish. When there is fever in the house, it is well known that willow herb roots and a crow’s foot must be boiled in the milk of a pure white goat with special charms uttered over the fire - and the fever abates.”
“Next time try the herb without the rest.” Ichabod had heard enough. “And now I must ask you to excuse me.”
“Gladly. I should not have interrupted our town’s savior. Good night.” Katrina turned and walked toward the open door. “And as to your first question, that big brute you were asking about has proposed to me.”
The statement caught Ichabod off guard. “I - I - I’m happy that - ”
Katrina looked back over her shoulder. “He’s proposed to me… several times.”
She paused and smiled, letting the last two words linger. And as she left, she seemed to take all the air in the room with her.
Ichabod had to sit down.
Eyeing the Bible, he took deep, clearing breaths. Work needed to be done. Difficult mental work, involving logic and clear thought. No room for sentimental notions and cryptic feminine innuendoes.
He opened the cover to the family tree and began taking notes:
Katrina Van Tassel - born 1777.
Baltus Van Tassel’s first wife (Elizabeth Kierstadt) -
died 1797.
Katrina’s mother was only two years dead, he realized. Somehow this did not surprise him. He had seen the sadness behind Katrina’s smile, the hint of dark corners within her fire and gaiety, of places into which she would let no one. She must have loved her mother with all her soul.
Of course. A mother’s death is a wound that never heals, no matter how tough the scar tissue. One can only protect that scar, hide it from others.
And, if necessary, from the self.
All words, all paths of thought, led to Katrina. He allowed himself to imagine holding her, comforting her, and whispering that he knew. That she needn’t say a thing, but he knew.
And as he thought of her face, another merged with it - similar in some ways, kind and lovely - opening the wound and letting the darkness out of his own cold, forbidden corner.
His mother’s face…
No. Not now. Stay at your task. It is finally yielding something.
He picked up his pen again, writing with firm resolution:
The current Lady Van Tassel - Baltus’s second wife.
The name of Baltus’s uncle by marriage (the husband of his father’s sister) is Van Garrett.
Van Garrett - two of the murder victims, father and son. Could Van Tassel himself be involved? Did he have a motive of some sort?
Ichabod barely noticed the distant rumbling outside as he resumed work.