Serafina and the Twisted Staff (The Serafina Series)

by Robert Beatty

  ‘Now, look straight ahead,’ he said, ‘not all shifty-eyed like you’re gonna pounce on somethin’ and kill it at any second. The salad fork here is on the outside. The dinner fork is on the inside. Sera, you hearin’ me?’

  She didn’t normally enjoy her pa’s etiquette lessons, but it felt kind of good to be home, safe and sound, suffering through yet another one.

  ‘You got it?’ he asked when he’d finished explaining about the various utensils.

  ‘Got it. Dinner fork on the inside. Salad fork on the outside. I just have one question.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘What’s a salad?’

  ‘Botheration, Serafina!’

  ‘I’m askin’ a question!’

  ‘It’s a bowl of, ya know . . . greenery. Lettuce, cabbage, carrots, that sort of thing.’

  ‘So it’s rabbit food.’

  ‘No, ma’am, it is not,’ her pa said firmly.

  ‘It’s poke sallet.’

  ‘No, it ain’t.’

  ‘It’s food that prey eats.’

  ‘I don’t want to hear no talk like that, and you know it.’

  As her pa schooled her in the fineries of supper etiquette, she got the notion that he’d never actually sat at the table with the Vanderbilts. She could see that he was going more on what he imagined than live experience, and she was particularly suspicious of his understanding of salads.

  ‘Why would rich and proper folk like the Vanderbilts eat leaves when they could afford to eat something good? Why don’t they eat chicken all day? If I was them, I’d eat so much chicken I’d get fat and slow.’

  ‘Sera, you need to take this seriously.’

  ‘I am!’ she said.

  ‘Look, you’ve got a friend in the young master now, and that’s a good’n. But if you’re gonna be his friend for long you need to learn the rudiments.’

  ‘The rudiments?’

  ‘How to behave like a daytime girl.’

  ‘I ain’t no Vanderbilt, Pa. He knows that.’

  ‘I know. It’s just that when you’re up there I don’t want you to –’

  ‘To what? Horrify them?’

  ‘Well, now, Sera, you know you ain’t the daintiest flower in the garden, is all. I love ya heaps, but there ain’t no denying it – you’re a sight feral, talkin’ about prey and hunting rats. With me, that’s all fine and good, but –’

  ‘I understand, Pa,’ she said glumly, wanting him to stop. ‘I’ll be on my best behaviour when I’m up there.’

  When she heard someone coming down the corridor, she flinched and almost darted. After years of hiding, it still made her scurry when she heard the sound of footsteps approaching.

  ‘Someone’s comin’, Pa,’ she whispered.

  ‘Naw, hain’t nobody a-comin’. Just pay attention to what I’m tellin’ ya. We’ve got to –’

  ‘Pardon me, sir,’ a young maid said as she stepped into the workshop.

  ‘Lordy, girl,’ Serafina’s pa said as he turned round and looked at the maid. ‘Don’t sneak up on a man like that.’

  ‘Sorry, sir,’ the maid said, curtsying.

  The maid was a young girl, a few years older than Serafina, with a pleasant face and strands of dark hair curling out from beneath her white cap. Like the other maids, she wore a black cotton dress with a starched white collar, white cuffs and a long white lace apron. But from the look of her and the sound of her words it seemed like she was one of the local mountain folk.

  ‘Well, spit it out, girl,’ Serafina’s pa told her.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ she said, and glanced at Serafina self-consciously. ‘I have a note from the young master for the little miss.’

  As the maid said these words, she eyed Serafina. Serafina could see the girl trying to make sense of the weird angles of her face and the amber colour of her eyes. Or maybe she was noticing the bloody wounds peeking out from beneath the edges of the burlap gunnysack she was wearing. Whatever it was, there was apparently plenty to stare at, and the girl couldn’t quite resist availing herself of the opportunity.

  ‘Ah, ya see, Sera,’ her pa said. ‘I told ya. Good thing we’ve been a-practisin’. The young master is sending you a proper invitation to the supper this evening.’

  ‘Here you go, miss,’ the maid said as she stretched out her hand with the note towards Serafina as if she didn’t want to get any closer to her.

  ‘Thank you,’ Serafina said quietly. She took the note from the maid slowly so as not to startle the girl with too quick a movement.

  ‘Thank you, miss,’ the maid said, but instead of then leaving, she froze, transfixed, as she studied Serafina’s streaked hair and odd clothing.

  ‘Was there something else?’ Serafina’s pa said to the maid.

  ‘Oh no, I’m sorry, pardon me,’ the maid said as she pulled herself out of her stare, curtsied in embarrassment to Serafina and then quickly excused herself from the room.

  ‘Well, what’s it say, then?’ Serafina’s pa said, gesturing towards the note.

  As Serafina carefully opened the small piece of paper, her hands trembled. Whatever it was, it felt important. As she read Braeden’s words, the first thing she understood was that her pa had been wrong. She wasn’t receiving an invitation to a dancing party or a formal dinner. The note dealt with a far darker subject. Just the first sentence tightened her chest with fear. Suddenly, she remembered seeing the black-cloaked Mr Thorne falling dead to the ground, killed by her and her companions. Then another image flashed through her mind: her and Braeden at the gallows, hanging by their necks for the crime of murder. But, as she read the frightening note, there was another emotion as well. She glowed with the knowledge that it was Braeden who was telling her these words. At long last, it was her old friend and ally.

  S,

  A murder investigator has arrived at Biltmore. He’s the strangest man I have ever seen. You and I have been summoned at 6:00 p.m. for questioning about the disappearance of Mr Thorne. Be careful.

  B.

  Serafina suspected that the murder investigator was the second man in the carriage. It appeared that she didn’t need to look for him, because he was looking for her. She thought, too, that he must have been the stranger she’d seen with Mr Vanderbilt earlier that morning. But, no matter who he was, getting interrogated by the police couldn’t be a good thing. What was she going to say when he asked about Mr Thorne’s disappearance? ‘Oh, him? Yes, I remember him. I led him into a trap by my mother’s den, and my allies killed him. Do you want me to show you where it all happened?’

  As she headed up the narrow, unlit back stairway towards the main floor, it felt like her head was filled with more thoughts than her mind could hold.

  It was half past five in the afternoon. She had half an hour to spy on the house and gather clues before she had to report for the interrogation. But she ran into an immediate problem.

  The young maid who had stared at her earlier was waiting for her at the top of the stairs, blocking her path.

  Serafina stopped and narrowed her eyes at her. ‘What do you want?’

  When the girl stepped towards her, Serafina stepped back warily.

  ‘I need to talk to you, miss . . .’

  Serafina did not reply.

  ‘Beggin’ your pardon, miss,’ the maid said, ‘but you don’t want to go up there lookin’ like that.’

  ‘This is the way I look,’ Serafina said fiercely as she gazed steadily at the girl.

  ‘I mean your dress, miss,’ the girl said.

  ‘It’s the only one I have,’ Serafina said.

  The maid nodded, seeming to understand. ‘Then let me lend you something. My day-off dress or my Sunday dress, anything. But not . . .’

  ‘But not this,’ Serafina said, gesturing towards the burlap sack she was wearing.

  ‘I ain’t heard nothin’ but good things about your pa,’ the maid said sheepishly. ‘People say he can fix just about anything ’round here. But, beggin’ your pardon, miss, I think we can agree t
hat he ain’t no dress designer.’

  Serafina smiled. She was absolutely right about that. ‘And you’re going to help me?’ she asked tentatively.

  ‘If you want me to,’ the girl said, smiling a little.

  ‘What’s your name?’ Serafina asked.

  ‘I’m Essie Walker.’

  ‘I’m Serafina.’

  ‘The girl who brought the children back,’ Essie said, nodding. She already knew who she was and seemed pleased to meet her.

  Serafina smiled and nodded in return. T.G.W.B.T.C.B. wasn’t quite as catchy as C.R.C., but she liked it.

  As she looked at Essie more closely, it seemed to her that she had a gentle face, without any deceit or guile, and a warm, friendly smile.

  ‘Where do your people bury, Essie?’ Serafina asked, which was how she’d heard her pa ask other mountain folk where they were from.

  ‘I don’t rightly know,’ Essie said. ‘My ma and pa passed away when I was but one or two. My nanny and papaw raised me for a while, out on a farm up Madison County way, pert nigh Walnut, but when they passed, I didn’t have nowhere to go. Mrs Vanderbilt heard about me and took me in and gave me a bed to sleep in. I told her I wanted to make myself useful.’

  ‘You’re pretty young for being a maid at Biltmore,’ Serafina said.

  ‘Youngest maid ever,’ Essie said, smiling proudly. ‘Come on, let’s go. We’ll get ya sorted out.’ Essie reached for Serafina’s hand, but Serafina reflexively pulled away, snapping her whole body back before Essie was even close to touching her.

  Essie caught her breath, startled by Serafina’s quick movement.

  ‘You’re a mite skittish, aren’t ya?’ Essie said.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Serafina said, embarrassed.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Essie said. ‘We’ve all got somethin’ that spooks us, right? But come on. Time’s a-tickin’.’

  Essie turned and bolted up the stairs. Serafina followed easily right behind her. The two of them ran up three flights, then darted through a small doorway that led to a back corridor, then up another stairway to the fourth floor. Essie led them down a tight passage that ran beneath the north tower, past a cluster of maids’ rooms, round a corner, down six steps and through the main servant hall, where three maids and a house girl were gathered around the fireplace on their break.

  ‘Don’t pay us no mind,’ Essie called as she and Serafina ran through the room. They dashed down a long, narrow corridor with a Gothic arched ceiling wedged beneath the steep angle of the mansion’s slanted rooftop. There were twenty-one rooms on the fourth floor for the maids and other female servants. And Essie’s room was the third on the right.

  ‘We’ll duck in here, miss,’ Essie said as Serafina followed her in.

  During her nightly prowls, Serafina had sometimes snuck into one of the maids’ rooms when the maid went down the hall to the water closet, so she had seen the clean, plainly finished rooms before. But Essie had made up her room’s simple white metal bed with soft pillows and an autumn quilt. To Serafina, it looked like a perfect warm spot for curling up in the late-afternoon sun. But she had a feeling Essie didn’t get much time for napping. A clump of wrinkled clothing lay across the splint-reed chair, two of the drawers on the chestnut dresser were pulled out and there was water left over in the basin on the washstand.

  ‘Pardon the mess, miss,’ Essie said, quickly picking up the underclothing from the floor and pushing the dresser drawers shut. ‘Lord protect me if Mrs King comes up for an inspection this afternoon, but five o’clock comes awful early some mornin’s. Wasn’t thinkin’ on company when I left.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ Serafina said. ‘You should see where I sleep.’

  ‘I was all blurry-eyed this mornin’ on account of I stayed up with that awful Mr Scrooge,’ Essie said as she moved the clothes off the chair. Hearing these words, Serafina’s ears perked right up. Who was this Mr Scrooge? But then she saw a copy of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens on Essie’s nightstand, piled with some Asheville newspapers, a Bible and a scrap of what looked like Mrs King’s weekly work schedule. Serafina realised with a bit of a shock that Christmas was only a week away. The tan leather-bound book with gold-leaf lettering on the front looked suspiciously like the same edition of A Christmas Carol that Serafina had ‘borrowed’ from Mr Vanderbilt’s collection the year before. So I’m not the only one who steals Mr Vanderbilt’s books, Serafina thought with a smile.

  Across Essie’s dresser lay all manner of feminine accoutrements: hairbrushes, hairpins, little tins of ointment and a glass bottle of Essie’s lemon scent, which Serafina could smell from a country mile away. The room’s cream-coloured walls were cluttered with scraps of Essie’s sketches of flowers and autumn leaves. Serafina knew that she should be doing her job, creeping through the shadows, and spying on Biltmore’s guests, or at least worrying about the interrogation that was minutes away, but she could not resist the temptation of seeing a little bit of Biltmore up close in a way she never had before.

  In the centre of one of the room’s walls was mounted a single Edison lightbulb. Serafina’s pa had told her with a swell of his chest that Mr V. was friends with Mr Thomas Edison and liked using all the latest scientific advancements.

  Seeing all this amazed Serafina. Essie had her own lightbulb! Serafina knew from her pa that many of the mountain folk of western North Carolina were living in clapboard shacks and log cabins without electricity, central heating or indoor plumbing. Many of them had never even seen a lightbulb, let alone had one for their own particular use. But Essie had made herself a cosy little den up here on the fourth floor, like a tiny mouse nesting up in the attic, where no one would ever find her.

  A window set into the room’s roof-slanted wall provided something that Serafina, a denizen of the basement, seldom beheld from this height: a mesmerising westward view across the Blue Ridge Mountains. The clear sight of Mount Pisgah rising in the distance above the other peaks caught her eye. A few nights after she and Braeden had defeated the Man in the Black Cloak, they had snuck up onto the rooftop to celebrate their victory. She remembered sitting under the stars with him, looking across the mountains, as Braeden explained how that peak was more than nineteen miles away, but it was still on the estate. He had marvelled at how it took a day to get there on horseback, following twisting, rocky trails through the mountains, but a hawk soaring on the wind could simply tilt its wing and be there in a moment.

  Smiling, Serafina turned and looked around Essie’s room as Essie watched her with interest. ‘I ain’t got it too bad, do I, miss?’

  ‘Not too bad at all,’ Serafina agreed. ‘I like it here.’

  Essie pulled a nicely made beige day dress off one of the hooks on the wall. ‘It’s my Sunday best,’ she said, handing it over to Serafina. ‘It ain’t nothing fancy compared to what the ladies wear, but –’

  ‘Thank you, Essie,’ Serafina said, gently taking it from her. ‘It’s perfect.’

  Essie kept talking as she turned round so Serafina could change.

  ‘I’m a chambermaid now, but I’m fixed on being a lady’s maid someday,’ Essie said. ‘Maybe serve the lady guests when they come, or even Mrs Vanderbilt herself. Do you know Mrs V.?’

  ‘Yes,’ Serafina said as she pulled off her burlap dress. Goose bumps rose up on her bare legs and arms, half chill and half nervousness. It felt so odd to be undressing when there was someone else in the room.

  ‘I thought you must know her, you being you and all,’ Essie continued.

  The fact was that Serafina had become very fond of Mrs Vanderbilt over the last few weeks and had enjoyed their talks together, but she hadn’t seen her around the house in several days.

  ‘My friend’s been a-goin’ to the girls’ school Mrs V. set up, learning how to do her numbers and weave fabric on the loom,’ Essie said. ‘Mrs V. wants all the girls to get some sort of education so that they can fend for themselves if they have to.’

  ‘I think she’s very kind,’ Serafina
said as she tried to figure out how to get into the dress. It seemed to have a bewildering array of buttons and drawstrings and other complications.

  ‘Kind as kind can be,’ Essie continued. ‘Did you hear about the dairy boy? Two weeks ago, a dairyman and his eldest son got awful puny, real bad sick, liketa died, so Mrs V. went on over to their cabin with a basket of food to help the family get through for a while. When she saw the boy was on the down-go, she had the menfolk haul him into her carriage, and she carted him all the way to the hospital in Asheville.’

  ‘What happened to the boy?’ Serafina asked as she finally figured out how to slip into the dress and fasten up the last of the buttons.

  ‘He’s still mighty sick,’ Essie said. ‘But I hear they’re taking good care of him down there.’

  ‘You can turn around now,’ Serafina said.

  ‘Oh, miss!’ Essie said. ‘That’s a whole heap better, believe me. Come over to the mirror and take a look while I fix your hair.’

  Essie didn’t seem to care that Serafina was different from everyone else, that her face was scratched, her eyes too large and the angle of her cheeks unusually severe. She just went straight to work. ‘This hair of yourn!’ she said, and started tugging away at it like it was a bushel of misbehaving ferrets. ‘We ain’t got time for me to do a proper job, but we’ll get it wrangled up.’

  As Essie worked, Serafina found herself looking into the mirror and noticed something odd. There appeared to be chunks of long black hair growing among the rest that she’d never seen before.

  ‘What’s wrong, miss?’ Essie said, seeing her frown.

  ‘My hair is brown, not black,’ she said, mystified as she raised her hand slowly up to her head and touched the black strands.

  ‘You want ’em gone, miss? I used to cut my mamaw’s grey hairs out all the time. They’d come in all long and wiry like they’d drunk too much moonshine, and we’d cut ’em out quick as they came.’

  ‘Just yank ’em,’ Serafina said.

  ‘That’s gonna hurt, miss. There’s a lot of ’em.’

  ‘Just grab ’em hard and yank ’em out,’ Serafina insisted. If she didn’t have enough problems going to the main floor for all to see, now she had strange things growing out of her head. She looked hideous.