‘Maybe your pa was mistaken about the rats,’ Braeden said.
‘It’s possible,’ she said, ‘but I saw the wires, and they definitely looked like they’d been chewed.’
Just after midnight, she and Braeden gave up the hunt and went back upstairs to the main floor. There was no one there. All the lights were off and the candles had been extinguished. The servants had gone to their rooms upstairs and down. The musicians had closed up their cases and gone home for the night. The Banquet Hall and all the other rooms on the main floor were dark and empty.
‘Come on,’ she said, waving for him to follow her as she crept up the darkened Grand Staircase. ‘We’ll search Grathan’s room.’
At the top of the second floor, they hunkered down and looked upward to make sure the stairs were clear, then padded quietly up to the next level.
When they reached the third floor, they crouched down once more, protected by nothing but darkness and the sweep of the staircase. At that moment, Serafina realised they were in the exact location where she and Gidean had gone over the railing. She looked over into the dark, empty living hall. The moon shone in through the windows, casting the room in an eerie silver light.
A shiver ran through her.
She heard something on the other side of the living hall.
When she looked at Braeden, she could tell by his expression that he had heard it too.
It was faint and difficult to make it out. She cupped her hands behind her ears to amplify the sound.
Then she heard it again.
A faint slithering just ahead.
The scrabbling of tiny feet on bare floor.
She touched Braeden rather than use her voice, and together they crept forward along the wall.
When the sound stopped, they stopped as well. When the sound resumed, they crept forward once more.
Now she could hear the creatures breathing, the scratching of their toenails on the floor and the dragging of their tails. She felt the familiar trembling in her fingers and the tightness in her legs.
‘It’s the rats,’ she whispered to Braeden.
They crept slowly and quietly across the darkened living hall until they reached the corridor between the north tower and the south. When she peeked round the corner, a dark fear boomed into her chest. At the end of this corridor was the cabinet with the hidden door that led to the attic where the chimney swifts had attacked her.
Were the rats in there?
She stepped slowly forward, still listening, still trying to figure out exactly where the rodents were. She heard what sounded like the grinding teeth of a hundred rats.
She was now standing in the exact spot where Gidean had attacked her that night.
‘Serafina . . .’ Braeden whispered, his voice filled with terror, as his trembling hand searched for and then touched her arm.
And then she saw it. Attached to the wall was a large wooden fire-alarm box with a glass front and brass instrumentation inside. It had been there for years. But crammed inside the box tonight was a mass of roiling dark fur and scaly tails. Their gnawing teeth clicked like the sound of a thousand cockroaches. The rats were chewing on the electrical wires.
She watched the rats in horror, too shocked to move. Braeden clutched her arm tighter.
Then the sound stopped abruptly.
All at once, all the rats craned their necks and looked at her.
A large, grisly-looking rat, half out of its mind, crawled out of the box. Then another followed it. The rats rose up onto their back legs and stared at Serafina. Then they all started moving towards her.
She couldn’t believe what she was seeing. She wasn’t hunting them – they were hunting her!
Filled with fierceness, she charged towards them, wondering how she was going to catch them all. But they weren’t moving like normal rats moved. They weren’t scurrying away in fear at the sight of her. They ran towards her.
‘Serafina!’ Braeden whispered in terror, looking around them.
When Serafina looked down, she saw what he was seeing: hundreds of spiders and centipedes crawling out of the woodwork.
‘Serafina!’ Braeden cried again as he frantically wiped the spiders off his legs.
Serafina heard a terrible tick-tick-ticking sound and a long, raspy hiss. She felt the hot air of a breath on the back of her neck. She spun round in panic, but there was nothing there except a darkened corridor.
‘Braeden, run!’ she shouted.
They turned and ran. They tore through the living hall and down the Grand Staircase. She glanced over her shoulder. A brown slithering carpet of hundreds of rats flooded down the staircase behind her. It was like a waterfall of rats. She burst forward with speed, but Braeden couldn’t run nearly as fast as she could. The rats were going to eat him alive.
But just as she slowed down to wait for him something flashed by her.
‘Come on, slowpoke!’ Braeden shouted as he slid at incredible speed down the endless, smooth wooden railing of the spiral staircase.
The wave of rats slammed into her feet and scratched their way up her bare legs. She tried to tear them away, but it was no use – there were too many of them. She took a flying leap onto the rail, grabbed on and went sliding down behind Braeden.
It felt like she’d been dropped off the edge of a cliff. The swoosh of her spinning descent made her insides float. She and Braeden slid down, down, spiralling down to the next level, then ran and leapt, and slid again, following the great arch of the railing all the way down to the main floor. When they reached the bottom, they leapt off the rail and ran down into the basement.
Serafina knew she shouldn’t, but at the bottom of the basement stairs, she turned and looked behind her.
The rats were gone.
Those dirty, awful, insane creatures had chased her three floors down and then simply disappeared.
Had they vanished into thin air, or had they slunk back into the walls? Had the rats been some sort of conjuration?
She growled in frustration, angered by what had just happened. She was the Chief Rat Catcher! There weren’t supposed to be rats in Biltmore House. She had made sure of it for years. And now all of a sudden there were hundreds of huge vicious ones, the likes of which she’d never seen before!
And since when did spiders crawl out of walls and attack? It was as if the creatures’ only purpose was to scare her off the third floor.
Braeden sat on the floor beside her, panting, his back against the wall as he tried desperately to catch his breath.
‘Goodnight!’ he exclaimed, shaking his head. ‘If this is what rat catching is like, you can count me out next time!’
‘Come on,’ she said, touching his shoulder.
‘Tell me where we’re going,’ he said as he got up off the floor.
‘We’re going back up there.’
‘What?’ he said, holding his ground. ‘Please say we’re not.’
‘Don’t you want to see if they’re still up there? That was Biltmore’s Grand Staircase! How can there be rats on it?’
‘I swear, your curiosity is going to get you killed one of these days, Serafina. And me too, I think.’
‘Come on,’ she said. ‘We’ve got to see.’
Gathering their courage, they crept up the basement stairs to the main floor, then came slowly and carefully round, and looked up the Grand Staircase. There were no rats or spiders or centipedes. There was no sign of them at all. They were gone.
The moonlight lit the staircase in a silver light, as if inviting them to ascend once more,. But as they stared at the foreboding threat of the empty steps and felt the hairs on the backs of their necks tingling, they both knew there was no way they were going to try to get back up to the third floor tonight. That was just about the last place on earth they wanted to go.
‘There shouldn’t be that many rats in the house,’ Braeden whispered.
‘There shouldn’t be any rats in the house!’ Serafina said fiercely, smoothing down the back of he
r neck with her hand. ‘Something isn’t right, Braeden.’
‘A lot of four-legged nasty somethings,’ Braeden agreed. ‘Come on, let’s find someplace safe to rest.’
Avoiding the Grand Staircase, they used the back stairs to reach the second floor, then padded quietly to Braeden’s room.
Gidean greeted Braeden happily at the door, then came over to Serafina, his tail nub wagging. She knelt down. Her eyes closed, she hugged him and petted his head, feeling a warmth in her heart. She was so glad that he seemed to have no memory or confusion about the battle they’d fought against each other that terrible night.
While Braeden slept in his bed, Serafina was happy to curl up with Gidean in the warm glow of the fireplace and try not to have nightmares of rats that didn’t flee.
She awoke a few hours later, just before dawn. She had reconnected with Braeden and her pa, and even Lady Rowena now, but after everything that had happened – breaking the Ming vase, her fight with Gidean, biting the footman, terrifying the guests, and all the rest – she wasn’t sure if everyone in the house would be glad to see her, so she had stayed low and quiet. But there was one more person she thought she could trust. And it might be a perfect, sneaky way to get safely into Detective Grathan’s room when he wasn’t there.
She quickly ran up the back stairs to the fourth floor, snuck down the hall and slipped into the third room on the right.
‘Oh, miss, it’s you!’ Essie said, smiling in surprise. Freshly dressed in her maid’s uniform and getting ready to start her workday, Essie set down her hairbrush and went to Serafina. ‘I heard tell about everything that happened. I’ve been so worried about you! Where’d ya go?’
‘I ran away up into the mountains,’ Serafina said.
‘Oh, miss, you shouldn’t have done that,’ Essie said. ‘That’s far too dangerous for a little thing like you. There are panthers up there!’
Serafina smiled. ‘Those were the least of my problems.’
‘What? What happened?’ Essie said, clutching her arm.
‘I’m all right,’ Serafina said. But then she stepped back and presented her sorry state. ‘I’m sorry about ruining your nice dress, Essie.’
‘Oh, you never mind about that, miss,’ Essie said, pulling Serafina back towards her. ‘Come sit down here on the bed. I can see you’re mulling over somethin’.’
‘Do you know that man Detective Grathan?’
‘Yes, I’ve seen him,’ Essie said. ‘He’s been askin’ all sorts of questions about Mr Vanderbilt and Mr Olmsted, and about you too, and Master Braeden, and the dogs.’
‘He asked about Gidean and Cedric?’
‘Oh, yes! He’s been askin’ after the young master’s dog in particular. I can tell you one thing for sure: everyone is mighty tired of that man.’
The night before, Serafina hadn’t known for sure if she should trust Lady Rowena, but so far what the girl had said about Detective Grathan had turned out to be true.
‘Do you clean Detective Grathan’s room?’ Serafina asked, finally coming to the purpose of her visit.
Essie scowled. ‘Maggie and me are supposed to be cleaning it, but he ain’t been givin’ us the chance.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘He always locks his door and he’s given us strict instructions to never enter his room. He could have a dead cat in there for all we know, and there’d be nothin’ we could do about it.’
‘A dead cat?’ Serafina asked in alarm.
‘It’s just an expression,’ Essie said.
‘Do you have a master key or anything like that?’
‘Oh, no, miss. I ain’t got permission for that. Most guests don’t lock their doors. No reason to. But Mrs King says if a guest wants privacy then we should give it to them.’
Serafina shook her head in frustration. This seemed like another dead end.
‘So what’s the big interest in Detective Grathan?’ Essie asked.
‘I think he’s up to no good, and I want to catch him at it,’ Serafina said, which was the God’s honest truth.
‘Well, you be careful,’ Essie warned gravely. ‘He strikes me as a bad awful man.’
Serafina nodded. Remembering the rats the night before, she said, ‘I’ll do my best.’ Then one more thought came into her mind.
‘Which room is Detective Grathan in?’ she asked Essie. She thought it would be good to double-check what she’d learned from Rowena.
‘Well, when he first arrived, Mrs Vanderbilt told us to put him in the Sheraton Room, which is a very nice room, but Detective Grathan had some sort of problem with it.’
‘What did he say?’
‘No one could understand what he was yammerin’ on about, but he complained high and low about it so much that they finally just give in and put him where he wanted to be. I mean, how rude, to be a guest in someone’s house and then to demand a particular room!’
‘What room did he demand?’ she asked.
‘The Van Dyck Room at the top of the stairs on the third floor.’
This was the same room that Lady Rowena had named, so this wasn’t new information in itself, but when Serafina heard Essie say these words her heart began to thump. The room at the top of the stairs on the third floor. That was right where she and Braeden had encountered the rats, and right where Gidean had attacked her, and before that where the chimney swifts had chased her. Then she remembered that the black-cloaked Mr Thorne had used the same room.
‘On my way back from the water closet this mornin’,’ Essie continued, ‘I heard the other girls talkin’ about Detective Grathan.’
‘What did they say?’
‘Well, you know he missed dinner last night, which was extremely rude to Mr and Mrs Vanderbilt. He came in late, went straight up to his room, trackin’ mud all the way, which poor Betsy had to clean up before Mrs King saw it in the mornin’, and then he rang his bell. He had the gall to demand his dinner be brought up to him in his room. The chef had to get hisself out of bed, reopen the kitchen, warm up a plate for him and send a footman all the way up there. That would have been no problem at all if he’d showed a speck of gratitude, but he wouldn’t even let the footman in his room. He shouted at him to set the tray on the floor outside the door and go away.’
Serafina listened with fascination. ‘So Detective Grathan is back in the house . . .’
‘Oh, yes, he’s back, but I wouldn’t cry none if Mr Vanderbilt kicked him right on out again. All the other guests are so friendly and appreciative, especially ’round the holidays, but he’s just a very rude and demanding man.’
‘Thank you for all the information, Essie,’ Serafina said, clutching her arm. ‘You’ve been a good friend to me. I’ll pay you back for your dress as soon as I can.’
‘I know you will, miss,’ Essie said. ‘I’ve got a few minutes before I have to go. Do you want me to do your hair? It looks like you’ve been through a right lot of trouble.’
Serafina smiled and nodded appreciatively. ‘That would be nice.’
‘How would you like me to do it?’ Essie said, standing behind Serafina and gathering her hair up into her hands.
‘Have you seen Consuelo Vanderbilt, the Duchess of Marlborough?’ Serafina asked with a twinkle in her eye.
‘Oh, miss, that would take an hour!’ Essie said. ‘I’m a-fixin’ to get to work!’
‘All right, a roll and a twist it is,’ Serafina said, laughing.
After talking with Essie, Serafina ventured down to the lower floors. Moving from one hiding spot to another, she watched the comings and goings of the bustling house for the rest of the morning, but she didn’t see anything suspicious or out of the ordinary. There was no sign of Detective Grathan. The rat seemed to have gone to ground. She wondered if her two allies had spotted anything. Somehow, they had to come up with a plan to defeat Grathan once and for all. They couldn’t keep dodging him. But so far they hadn’t even been able to get into his room. She felt like she needed some sort of trap.
That afternoon, she went outside to patrol the perimeter of the grounds. She wondered if there was a point at which the old man of the forest would attack head-on. From what direction and in what form would he come? Or would the attack come from Grathan himself, within the house?
She spotted Mr Vanderbilt and Mr Olmsted walking down a path together in the gardens and hurried to listen in on their conversation.
‘Have you checked in on the planting crews working down along the river?’ Mr Vanderbilt asked Mr Olmsted.
‘They’re making good progress,’ Mr Olmsted said. ‘Mr Schenck has a good eye for the land.’ Serafina recognised the name of the chief forester they had hired to manage Biltmore’s woodlands. ‘All we need now are a few more decades, and we’ll have a lovely forest again,’ Mr Olmsted added.
The two men laughed a little, but Serafina could see a seriousness in Mr Olmsted’s expression, in the wrinkles around his eyes. The old man was hiding something from Mr Vanderbilt, just as Lady Rowena had said.
‘I just want to keep making progress,’ Mr Vanderbilt said to Mr Olmsted as the two friends walked together.
‘Don’t worry, George. We’ll keep at it,’ Mr Olmsted assured him. ‘We’re going to make it so beautiful at Biltmore that no one will ever know what it was like before. You and your family and your guests will be able to enjoy the bounty of nature for years to come.’
‘I appreciate that, Frederick,’ Mr Vanderbilt said.
‘I learned long ago,’ Mr Olmsted continued, ‘that whether it’s a delicate tea rose or a three-foot oak, planting and growing requires an immeasurable amount of patience.’
‘I don’t always have it,’ Mr Vanderbilt said.
‘Neither do I,’ Mr Olmsted admitted.
Serafina thought that Mr Olmsted should have chuckled or smiled when he said that, but he didn’t. There was a darkness in him that she did not understand. There were thoughts on his mind that he was not sharing with Mr Vanderbilt. She wondered again why he’d come back to Biltmore now, at this particular time.
As she watched and listened to these two men, she thought about her own life. Years ago, she had often seen these two friends together, walking and planting, talking about what species of trees would grow in each area, how they could bring in more water here or protect an area from the wind there, like shepherds of the forest. She had never thought about it before, but lately she had started to realise that all the comforts, buildings and machines around her were once nothing more than someone’s dream. In the not-too-distant past, these things had just been an idea in someone’s head. When Mr Vanderbilt’s grandfather grew up, people had to walk or ride horses to travel great distances, but he’d imagined trains crisscrossing America. It was only by those trains that his grandson was able to venture from New York to the wilds of western North Carolina. And then his grandson had dreams of his own and built a great house in the mountains. Mr Edison had imagined a lightbulb that would bring light to the darkest nights. Other people had imagined the elevator, and the dynamo, and all the other inventions her pa worked on every day. But, unlike the men of iron, Mr Olmsted had dreamed of vast gardens and endless forests. Those were the things he’d brought into the world. Thinking back in time, she wondered if the mountains, and the rivers, and the clouds, and even human beings, had been God’s dream a million years before.
Serafina and the Twisted Staff (The Serafina Series) Page 18