© Anna-Karin 2001
The dream was strange. It began with a picture of a wheel adorned with two coats of arms, one with an owl on it, and the other with a horse holding a sword.
It reminded Ichabod Crane of something, but he couldn't figure out what.
The picture suddenly got alive, becoming a real wheel that was rolling at a high speed, with the owl balancing on top of it. The horse which had been running before it, turned around and began to attack it with its sword. But the wheel rolled over the horse and crushed it.
The killed horse transformed into a man, and Ichabod recognized him.
It was the Hessian Horseman, lying dead on the ground. Then the owl flew from its place on the wheel to land beside the Hessian.
The owl seemed to mourn the Horseman, though Ichabod couldn't understand why. He was nonplussed when the owl turned to him and talked with a human voice: Omnia Mutantur, Nihil Interit.
Katrina listened graveley when her husband told her of the dream.
"It might mean nothing, just one of those fancy dreams one gets when slumbering", she said.
"I don't know. But everything seemed so awfully familiar, as if I've seen it before."
He rose and went to his bookshelf. Idly he browsed through one of his books on chemistry. His eyes fell on something on the very first page, and he froze. Katrina couldn't see what it was, but Ichabod showed her.
"Here" he said, pointing to the printer's mark at the bottom of the title page,"is my dream."
There it was, black on white. The wheel, the owl and the horse with the sword, and above it, the words; Omnia Mutantur, and below it; Nihil Interit.
There also were the printer's name: A. Kauz.
"It was familiar after all" said Katrina. "And look here, at the sword that the horse holds."
It was small but both could see the details rather easily.
"The sword of the Hessian!"
New York had put on its best face this loveley summer day. People were walking the streets and the parks, showing off the latest summer fashions, imported from France and England.
Ichabod Crane and his wife had brought young Masbath with them for a walk, to the Kauz printing house. The boy had been as curious as they had been, and he too wanted to know what the Hessian's sword was doing on a printer's mark.
They stopped outside an ordinary-looking store. On the sign above the door was the owner's name painted in loveley Antiquan letters.
It seemed to be a plain usual printery, where you sold the products you printed. They could see some almanachs for different kinds of users, and other printed products displayed in the small window, including a few ABC books and one German-English dictionary.
"It was here I bought that book" Ichabod told the others. "A widow had it back then. It was called the 'Atwater's Widow Printery'then. But that was a couple of years ago. And the one who sold the book to me said that she had died and left the business to her business partner."
A young man was standing behind the desk, when the group entered, with his back to them, putting up a book on a shelf.
Ichabod coughed politeley.
"Oh, can I help you with something?" the young man said as he turned to see them.
Katerina could feel Ichabod go limp, but he managed to stay conscious.
At first she couldn't see why, but when she saw the young man more clearley, she understood.
The man behind the desk was a perfect copy of the Hessian himself.
Young Masbath flinched.
"Madam, your husband do not seem to be feeling very well. Is he alright?"
"Sorry, he has a sensitive stomach" Katerina smiled,"it must be something he ate for breakfast."
This young man did not seem to be very lethal, but the likeness was disturbing: Same face, with those high cheekbones and those intesiveley blue eyes, same height, but this one's hair was blonde, not pitch-black like the Hessian's.
"I wonder" said Ichabod, having recovered from his small near- faint, "if we could perhaps get to see mr A. Kauz."
"Certainly, though not right now. He's busy proof-reading up in the shop. If you wait here I'll go and tell him that you want to see him.
Your names are.."
"Mr and mrs Ichabod Crane." Katerina said.
"Right. Wait here." The man left.
"I wonder who this A. Kauz is" Masbath said aloud.
"So do I, and what has he to do with the Hessian?" responded Ichabod.
Katerina just looked around in silence.
Anders Kauz was nothing like they had expected.
It wasn't a very tall man standing in front of them, but a rather short one, with kind dark blue eyes and sand-colored hair, that were neatly tied with a dark blue ribbon.
There were a scar going from the right corner of his mouth up over the cheek and temple as the only indication that mr Kauz might not always have lad a peaceful life.
Ichabod was relieved that this man was not the doppelganger of the Hessian that he almost had envisioned.
"You wished to see me, Sir?" He asked, in a heavily accented English.
"Yes", Ichabod answered,"about your mark, the one you use for your business."
"I haven't stolen anyone else's design, if that's what you mean."
"No, not like that, but your mark might have something to do with a case I investigated last year, a string of murders in Sleepy Hollow."
Kauz flinched. "Sleepy Hollow", he said, "I've been there once, but wasn't in a position to appreciate the area."
"When was that?"
"1779, in the winter"
Ichabod,Katerina and Masbeth looked at each other. Was this a coincidence, or not?
"What were you doing in Sleepy Hollow?"
Kauz seemed a bit nervous and didn't answer their question, and they wondered why. After a moment he asked "Why are you so interested in my mark, and what do my mark have to do with that place?"
"Well, that's a long story" Katerina said with her most charming smile. She continued; "and if you would like to listen."
"I'm always interested in a good story, and my work for today have been completed, so I do have that time. And you have made me curious about what my label have to do with you, what you see in it." Kauz smiled. "Care to come into my office? I'll send for some coffee and cookies for you."
"Can I be there too?" asked the young man.
"Certainly Frederick." Kauz said and turned to his visitors. "I haven't introduced my son have I? Frederick Kauz is my adoptive son, born in December 1779, somewhere outside Tarrytown."
"He always tells that to everyone", Frederick murmured," Father thinks that's a good story so he likes to tell it."
They were seated in Kauz' office, a small room behind the room where the presses were.
"So", Ichabod ventured, "You have a story to tell us."
"Yes, I have. You are curious about my mark, right?"
"Yes."
"Well...The owl is for me; kauz means a kind of small owl in German, the horse with the sword is for a friend of mine who were murdered by American soldiers, and the wheel is for the ever-changing wheel of Fortune."
"You say that your friend was murdered", said Ichabod, "what did he look like?"
"Like no-one you ever seen before."
"Tall, pale, sharpened teeth and light blue eyes?" Katerina asked.
"Yes. How did you know?"
"We have seen him."
"Tell me. Tell me and then I'll tell you my tale". Kauz was almost begging, and Ichabod told about the murders in Sleepy Hollow, about the sorceress, and about the headless horseman.
As Ichabod told the story, Katerina kept a close look at Kauz' face to see how he would react to the story.
Ichabod ended his tale; "and then the Hessian took Lady Van Tassel into the tree, and neither of them have been seen since then."
Kauz rose and walked to the window. He looked silently out on the street for a long moment.
"His name was not 'the Hessian', or 'the Horseman'. His *name* was Friedrich Schwartz, and he was *not* a monster."
He sat down in his chair again.
"If you have got the time to stay and listen to my tale, I would like to tell it."
"Please go ahead", said Ichabod.
"My tale", Anders Kauz began, "do not begin in Hesse, but in a small town in the west of Sweden called Lödöse."
He saw their startled looks. "That's right. I'm not German, but Swedish."
"How did a Swede end up in the Hessian troops?" asked Ichabod.
"By a mix of bad luck and cowardice. Can I go on?"
"Yes, please."
"I was born in 1755 as the youngest child of a not too wealthy priest named Bengt Aelvius. At the age of thirteen, in 1768, I was apprenticed to a printer in Gothenburg. My parents died, my mother within days of my father, when I was seventeen.
The next year I ended my time as an apprentice, and asked my former master if he knew anywhere I could work. He told me that in Hesse they needed people with my language skills. I could speak, read and understand German, English and French rather fluently. And Latin too.
Since I was very eager to get out in the world I told him that I wanted to go to there, and half a year later I had arrived to Kassel.
There I worked at a printery for nearly a year, before they started to draft people into the troops that was being sent to America. I felt rather safe since in Sweden printers are excepted from military service. That wasn't the case in Hesse though, and I got drafted too.
I did protest, and told them that I was not a Hessian citizen, but they told me that the Swedish ambassador had allowed them to send me across the sea, as an interpreter. They needed someone who could translate the orders given by the British officers to the German soldiers and vice versa.
For the first time in my life I cursed my language skills.
I only got time to pack my things, write my siblings a letter and put on my uniform. One week later I was a foot soldier in the Jäger corps. That was when I first met Schwartz."
"Excuse me", Masbeth interrupted, "but you said that your father's name was B-é-ng-th Ae-l-fv-ee-oo-z."
"Aelvius", Kauz corrected. "Yes, and my name was, when I came to Hesse, Anders Bengtsson Aelvius, but Kauz was a nickname given to me when I found an owl, which had been wounded and took care of him. The owl got attached to me, and I named him Till. The others in the printery then started to call me 'the boy with the owl', and later just 'Kauz'. And then I just kept it."
"Oh. Please go on."
"Schwartz was, as I said earlier, like no-one I ever seen before. And I still don't know what he saw in me. Yet we became friends. I even got along with his horse, though only when Schwartz was nearby. That horse was never one to like people in general.
I didn't know when they assigned us our quarters that I would be sharing quarters with him, Schwartz, otherwise I might have protested and gotten myself other bunkmates. His reputation was rather wide-spread and everybody knew about him. There were tales of his battle-axe and his sword, and of his temper, and of his skills, and of how he fought like he didn't care wether he died or not, determined to take as many as he could down with him. Apparently he had joined the troops both for fun and for the money.
He was sharpening his axe when we met the first time.
'Are you the interpreter?' he asked.
'Yes, so please don't kill me!' I answered.
To my surprise he began to laugh. Apparentley he thought I was funny. It was then I saw his teeth for the first time. He had sharp-filed teeth even then.
The laugh didn't make him any less frightening. But as the days went by and the troops were marching to the Netherlands, where we were to take a ship to Canada, and then march into the revolution in the colonies, I learned not to be afraid of him.
We played cards a lot, when I was not interpreting at one offical function or the other. When we got onboard the ship we started to play checkers, and chess. Anything really to pass the long time below decks. When we were allowed to get up above decks for a moment to get some fresh air, he taught me how to use a sword.
This surprised our commanders, and they began to go through me when they wished to tell him something.
Schwartz never was very patient with officers. 'The more brass, the less brains' he'd say."