Serafina and the Black Cloak

by Robert Beatty

  “Horses usually sleep standing up,” Braeden said. “And they always take shifts so that at least one of them is awake and alert for danger. If they sense something, they’ll raise the alarm. You just have to know the signals.”

  “Excellent. We have watch-horses,” she said with a smile, trying to cheer him up.

  Braeden smiled in return, but she could see he was still very frightened by what had happened, and she was, too. When a gust of wind passed through the trees, she reflexively spun around, fearful that the flying specter had returned.

  “What do you see?” Braeden asked.

  “Nothing,” she said. “It’s just the wind.”

  The night’s cold had settled onto the forest, and with the moonlight that filtered down through the trees, they could see their breath. When a screech owl gave an eerie trill in the distance, it startled Braeden, but the sound of the bird calmed Serafina. She had lived all her life hearing those sorts of sounds on her nightly prowls of Biltmore’s grounds.

  “Just an owl,” Braeden said as he exhaled.

  “Just an owl,” she agreed.

  As they climbed into the carriage, Braeden held the door open for her and helped her up the little steps, touching her back with his hand. It was as if they were entering the Grand Ballroom for the holiday dance. As a young gentleman, it was a natural gesture for him, probably just a habit, but it was a sensation she had never felt before. For a moment, that gentle touch of Braeden’s hand against her back was all she could feel or think about. It was the first time in her life that anyone other than her pa had touched her in a kind and gentle way. She tried hard to tell herself that Braeden’s touch probably meant a lot more to her than it did to him. He probably wasn’t even aware that he’d touched her. She knew that he had danced and dined with many fancy-dressed girls. It was probably silly for her to think that he wanted to be friends with a girl who wore a shirt for a dress and couldn’t ride a horse.

  “Come on,” Braeden said quietly to Gidean, and the dog hopped up into the carriage with them. Braeden shut and locked the wooden door and shook it a few times to make sure that it was secure. Gidean circled twice, then took his position on the floor guarding the door.

  “I’m sorry there aren’t any blankets,” Braeden said, looking through the carriage’s storage cabinets and trying to figure out how they were going to stay warm. “Not even a good cloak to sleep under.”

  “I’ll pass on the cloak, thank you,” Serafina said with a smile, and Braeden laughed a little, but he seemed almost as nervous as she was to be crammed inside the carriage together, with nothing to do but look at each other in the darkness.

  Braeden sat down and patted the seat beside him. “Perhaps you should sit here, Serafina, on this side. We’ve got to stay warm somehow.”

  Despite the uncomfortable tightness forming in her chest, she slowly moved toward him.

  She hoped she didn’t smell like the basement. If he was accustomed to ladies like Anastasia Rostonova, with her lavish dresses, or even Miss Whitney, with her rose-scented perfume, she couldn’t imagine that her own scent would be too pleasant for him. Excuse me, Miss Serafina, he would say, gagging and coughing, on second thought, perhaps you should indeed sleep on the floor with the dog.…

  But he didn’t say that. She sat beside him, and the world didn’t come to an end. As they snuggled together a little to stay warm, she fretted that he’d discover some bizarre characteristic about her that she didn’t even realize was bizarre. She just hoped there wouldn’t be a reason for her to take off her shoes in Braeden’s presence and have him notice her missing toes. She didn’t want him to get too close. Would he be able to feel her missing bones? She wasn’t even sure which ones they were. How many bones did a person usually have, anyway?

  She had always been content to snuggle into small places on her own, but she was surprised to find herself so comfortable cuddled up beside him. She was able to relax a little and breathe again.

  Earlier that morning, when she’d woken up wedged in a metal drying rack in Biltmore’s basement, the last place in the world she would have thought she’d spend her next evening was nestled in the velvet warmth between the Vanderbilt boy and his valiant guard dog. Gidean, for his part, seemed to have gotten over his initial reaction to her. They’d fought together on the same side, she and this dog, and maybe they were a little bit friends now, at least temporarily.

  “Serafina, I need to ask you a question,” Braeden said in the darkness.

  “All right,” she agreed, but she knew it wasn’t going to be good.

  “Why do you live in the basement?”

  She didn’t know if he considered her to be his friend or if they were just shoved together by happenstance and he was making the best out of a bad situation, but after all they’d been through together, it didn’t seem right to lie to him. And she didn’t want to.

  “I’m the machine mechanic’s daughter,” she said finally. She just said it. Just like that. Out loud. Even as she said the words, she felt both pride and a sickening feeling of impending doom that she had betrayed her father.

  “I’ve always liked him,” Braeden said casually. “He fixed the buckle on my saddle and made it much more comfortable for my horse.”

  “He likes you, too,” she said, although she remembered that her pa had spoken more about the buckle than the boy that day.

  “So, have you been down there in the basement all this time?” Braeden asked in amazement.

  “I’m good at staying out of the way,” she said simply. She wanted to tell him that she was the Chief Rat Catcher, but she held her tongue, not sure how he would react to the thought of her grabbing rats. He might want to know when she had last washed her hands. She suddenly doubted if he even cared what she did. All sorts of rich and famous people and their children came to Biltmore, so why would Braeden care what she did all night?

  “So you were down there in the basement when you saw the Man in the Black Cloak the first time…” he said. “Who do you think it is?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t even know if he’s a human or a haint.”

  “What’s a haint?” Braeden asked, his eyebrows raised.

  “A shade, a haunt. You know, a ghost. The Man in the Black Cloak may be some sort of wraith that comes out of the woods at night. But I think he’s a mortal man. I think he’s one of the gentlemen at Biltmore.”

  “What makes you think that?” Braeden said in surprise.

  “His satin cloak, his shoes, the way he walks, the way he talks. There’s something about him…like he thinks he’s better than everyone else…”

  “Well, he’s certainly scarier than anyone I’ve met,” Braeden said, but then said no more.

  She could tell that her theory that the Man in the Black Cloak was a gentleman at Biltmore had disturbed him.

  They sat in silence for a long time. She could feel Braeden’s warmth beside her, his breathing, and the beating of his heart. She could smell the faint scent of wool, leather, and horses on him. Regardless of what the two of them being in the carriage together might or might not really mean, for the moment, it brought her a wonderful sense of peace, a sense that she belonged, and that, despite everything that was going on, she was exactly where she was meant to be. It didn’t make any sense to her, or even seem possible, but there was no denying that that was how she felt.

  “I need to ask you to do me a favor,” she said quietly.

  “All right,” he said.

  “Please don’t tell anyone about me and my father. He really needs his job. He loves Biltmore.”

  Braeden nodded his head. “I understand. I won’t tell anyone, I swear.”

  “Thank you,” she said, relieved.

  It felt like she could trust Braeden. And his reputation among the kitchen staff for being a loner who preferred to spend time with his animal friends rather than human beings seemed totally unfair to her now.

  As Braeden fell asleep, his breathing became slow and st
eady.

  Remaining very still, Serafina turned to gaze upon him. She passed her eyes over his smooth, pale complexion. He was so clean. And his clothing fit so well. His woolen jacket must’ve been made just for him. Even the buttons had been wrought with his very own initials, BV, etched upon every one. Mr. and Mrs. Vanderbilt must have commissioned those buttons, she thought. Did that mean they loved and cherished Braeden? Or was it just so that he would fit into their elegant society?

  Her pa had told her the story of Mr. Vanderbilt while they were washing up after supper one night in the workshop. Like many well-off gentlemen in society, George Vanderbilt used his inheritance to build a home. But he didn’t build it in New York City like all the others. He built it in the remote wilds of western North Carolina, set deep in the densely forested mountains, miles and miles from the nearest town. The ladies and gentlemen of elite New York society thought this was extremely eccentric behavior. Why would such a highly educated man born and raised in the civilized luxury of New York City want to live in the wilderness of such a dark and forested place?

  Biltmore Estate took years to build, but when it was finally finished and everyone saw what George Vanderbilt had done, they understood his dream. He had constructed the largest, most magnificent home in America, surrounded by a working, self-sustaining estate and the gentle beauty of the Blue Ridge Mountains. He married a few years later. And everyone who was fortunate enough to earn an invitation came to the city of Asheville to visit George and Edith Vanderbilt. They were the rich, the famous, and the powerful: senators, governors, great industrialists, leaders of foreign countries, favored musicians, talented writers, artists, and intellectuals of all kinds. And it was beneath this glittering world that her pa had raised her.

  She looked at Braeden, and she remembered when he came to Biltmore two years before. The servants spoke of the tragedy in hushed tones. Mr. Vanderbilt’s ten-year-old nephew was coming to live at Biltmore because his family had died in a house fire in New York. No one knew how it started, perhaps an oil lamp or a spark from the cook fire in the kitchen, but the house caught on fire in the middle of the night. Gidean woke Braeden in a smoke-filled bedroom, pulled at his arm with his teeth, and dragged him from his bed. With the walls and ceiling ablaze around them, they stumbled out of the burning house, choking and exhausted. They barely escaped with their lives. Gidean had saved him. It was only then that Braeden discovered that his mother, father, brothers, and sisters were all dead. His entire family had been consumed by the fire. It made Serafina shudder to think about it. She couldn’t stand the thought of losing her pa. How sad and lost Braeden must have felt to lose his whole family.

  She had heard the servants talk about how hundreds of ladies and gentlemen, servants, and folk of every ilk came out for the funeral. Four black horses pulled the black carriage stacked with eight coffins, as a little boy walked alongside, holding his uncle’s hand.

  She remembered watching the boy the day he arrived at Biltmore and wondering about him. The servants said he came with no luggage, no belongings whatsoever other than the four black horses, which his uncle agreed to ship by train from New York.

  Moving closer to Braeden, she remembered what he’d said to her earlier that night: These horses and I have been friends for a long time.

  From that day forward, she had kept a lookout for the boy. She often saw him walking the grounds in the morning. He spent long periods of time watching birds in the trees. He fished for trout in the streams, but much to the consternation of the cook, he always released whatever he caught. When she watched him in the house, he didn’t seem comfortable around boys and girls his own age, or most of the adults, either. He loved his dog and his horses, but that was all. Those seemed to be his only friends.

  She remembered overhearing his aunt speaking to a guest once. “He’s just going through a phase,” Mrs. Vanderbilt had said, trying to explain why he was so quiet at the dining table and so shy at parties. “He’ll snap out of it.”

  But Serafina had a feeling that he never did.

  His aunt and uncle lived in a world of extravagant parties, but from a distance, Braeden seemed to find more accomplishment in riding a horse or repairing the wing of a wounded hawk than dancing with the girls at the resplendent proms. She remembered prowling around outside the windows of the Winter Garden when it was all lit up for a ball one summer’s eve. She watched the girls in their lovely gowns sashaying this way and that, dancing with the boys, and drinking sparkling punch from a giant fountain in the center of the room. She’d always wanted to be one of those girls in a fancy dress and shiny shoes. She remembered listening to the orchestra play and the people talking and laughing. Crouched down in the shadow beneath the windows, she could look over and see the silent gaze of the stone lions guarding the front doors of the house.

  She didn’t know how Braeden felt about her, but there was one thing for sure: she was different. Different from any girl he had seen before. She had no idea whether that fixed her as friend or enemy, but it was something.

  It was the middle of the night now, and she knew that she should sleep, but she wasn’t tired. The day hadn’t left her exhausted. It had exhilarated her. Suddenly, the entire world was different than it had been the day before. She’d never felt so alive in her life. There were so many questions, so many mysteries to solve. She kept praying that somehow, some way, despite everything she had seen, Clara, Nolan, and Anastasia were still alive, and she could save them. She wanted to go outside and hunt through the woods in search of clues about the Man in the Black Cloak.

  But she decided to stay where she was, content to remain curled up beside Braeden.

  After a while, it began to rain a heavy rain, and she listened to the sound of it on the leaves of the trees and the roof of the carriage, and she thought it was a perfect sound.

  Her eyes and ears open, she vowed that if the Man in the Black Cloak came again that night, she’d be ready.

  When Serafina awoke the next morning, the gentle rays of the rising sun filtered through the carriage window, bathing her and Braeden in a soft golden light. Braeden slept soundly beside her. Gidean lay at their feet, quiet and restful.

  Suddenly, the dog raised his head and perked his ears. Then she heard the sound as well: trotting horses, turning wheels, the rattle of approaching carriages…

  She sprang up. She didn’t know whether the carriages were bringing friends or enemies, but either way, she didn’t want to be seen. If she stayed in the carriage, she was trapped; she needed space to watch, to move, to fight.

  She hated to leave him, but she touched Braeden on the shoulder. “Wake up. Someone’s here.”

  Then she slipped out of the carriage and darted into the forest before he had even awoken.

  Hiding in the bushes and trees some distance into the undergrowth, she watched Braeden and Gidean exit the carriage. Braeden rubbed his eyes in the sunlight and looked around for her, obviously wondering where she’d disappeared to.

  “Over here! I found the carriage!” a man shouted as he climbed through the branches of the tree that had fallen across the road. Several carriages and a dozen men on horseback had come from Biltmore in search of Braeden. As the gang of men went to work with great two-man saws and lumber axes to hack away the tree, Mr. Vanderbilt climbed his way through the branches, crossed over the fallen trunk, and hurried toward Braeden.

  “Thank God you’re safe,” he said, his voice filled with emotion as they embraced.

  Braeden was obviously glad and relieved to see his uncle. “Thank you for coming for me.”

  As they separated, Braeden pressed back his sleep-ruffled hair with his hands and scanned the trees. Then he looked toward the carriages and rescuers.

  She knew he was looking for her, but she had hidden herself like a creature in the woods. She felt like a wild animal there, beneath the leaves of the rhododendrons and the mountain laurel. The forest wasn’t something she feared, like she had the night before. It was her concealment
, her protector.

  “Tell me what happened, Braeden,” Mr. Vanderbilt said, seeming to sense Braeden’s anxiety.

  “We were attacked in the night,” Braeden said, his voice ragged and his face splotchy with emotion. “Nolan was taken. He’s gone. Mr. Crankshod disappeared right when the battle started, and hasn’t shown up since.”

  Mr. Vanderbilt frowned in confusion. He put his hand on Braeden’s shoulder and turned him toward the gang of workers cutting through the tree and clearing the road. In addition to the servants, Serafina recognized a dozen other men from the house, including Mr. Bendel, Mr. Thorne, and Mr. Brahms. She let out a small gasp. There was Mr. Crankshod, working among them.

  “Mr. Crankshod said a group of bandits attacked,” Mr. Vanderbilt said. “He fended them off, but when he attempted to pursue them, he became separated from the carriage and decided it was best to head back to Biltmore as fast as possible to fetch help. I was furious he’d left you, but in the end, he was the one who led us here to you, so maybe he was right to do what he did.”

  Serafina saw Braeden look at Mr. Crankshod in surprise. The ugly man looked right back at him, his eyes betraying nothing.

  “I’m not sure it was bandits, Uncle,” Braeden said uncertainly. “I only saw one attacker. A man in a black cloak. He took Nolan. I’ve never seen anything like it. Nolan just vanished.”

  “We’ll send a mounted search party up and down this road until we find the boy,” Mr. Vanderbilt said, “but in the meantime, I want to get you back to the house.”

  As Braeden and Mr. Vanderbilt spoke, Serafina watched Mr. Crankshod. She wondered what the old rat was up to. Something wasn’t right with him. He hadn’t fought any bandits. He had simply disappeared. And now here he was again with a crooked tale of his own heroism.