Serafina and the Twisted Staff (The Serafina Series)

by Robert Beatty

  The detective stared at her for a long time as if he knew she was deceiving him but could not quite frame the words to trap her.

  ‘Detective, we need to move on,’ Mr Vanderbilt pushed him.

  ‘I have more questions!’ the detective insisted, his voice filled with aggravation, his eyes locked on Serafina. ‘Do you know which room Mr Thorne slept in during his stay at Biltmore?’

  ‘It was on the third floor,’ she said.

  ‘Do you live here at Biltmore?’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘With the female servants on the fourth floor?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then where do you sleep at night?’

  ‘I do not.’

  The detective stopped and looked at her in surprise. ‘You do not sleep?’

  ‘I do not sleep at night.’

  The man frowned. ‘Are you a night maid?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then what are you?’

  She looked him straight in the eyes and said, ‘I’m the Chief Rat Catcher. I track down vermin.’

  He stared right back at her and said, ‘Then we have that much in common.’

  Serafina glanced at Braeden as the two of them quickly left Mr Vanderbilt’s den and crossed through the library.

  ‘We have to stay away from that man,’ Braeden whispered to her.

  ‘No, we need to get rid of him!’ Serafina said fiercely. She was still breathing heavily from her exchange with him.

  ‘If my uncle hadn’t stopped everything and dismissed us, were you going to fight the detective right there?’

  Serafina just shook her head. ‘I don’t know,’ she admitted. As they walked towards the Entrance Hall, Gidean followed at their side.

  ‘Did you see his face? All those scars?’ Braeden said. ‘That man’s scary! What’s he been fighting?’

  ‘His neck creaked every time he turned his head,’ Serafina said.

  ‘He was horrible. And he just kept asking question after question. I thought it would never end! What’s going to happen if he finds out we were involved in Mr Thorne’s death? Is he going to arrest us?’

  ‘Worse than that, I think,’ Serafina said. ‘I’m not sure he is who he says he is.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Braeden asked in alarm. Looking at her wounds, he said, ‘What happened to you last night?’

  She desperately wanted to talk to him, but as they reached the Entrance Hall she heard Mrs Vanderbilt and Lady Rowena coming in through the vestibule.

  ‘One of the servants must have notified them that we were done,’ Braeden muttered. She couldn’t be sure, but it almost sounded like there was sadness in his voice.

  ‘Do you have to go?’ Serafina asked quietly, glancing at him. She knew he probably did.

  ‘Come on!’ he said suddenly, and pulled her in the opposite direction.

  Laughing, Serafina ran with Braeden up the Grand Staircase, the wide, magnificent circular stairway that led to the upper floors. She wasn’t sure where Braeden was taking her, other than just to escape, but when they reached the third floor she had an idea where they could go and talk in secret. There was much she had to tell him.

  ‘This way!’ she said as they ran through the living hall past several smartly dressed ladies and gentlemen enjoying tea.

  ‘Hello, everybody!’ Braeden called cheerfully as they blazed through.

  ‘Oh, good evening, Master Braeden,’ one of the gentlemen said, as if it weren’t unusual at all for two children and a dog to be dashing through the living hall.

  ‘Where are we going?’ Braeden asked breathlessly as they darted down a back corridor.

  ‘You’ll see,’ she said.

  At the end of the hallway, she stopped just where the path doglegged up towards the north tower room. Two small bronze sculptures and a gathering of books sat atop a built-in oak cabinet. The first bronze sculpture depicted a horse being spooked by a rattlesnake. The second was a lean and muscular leopardess, her ears pinned back and her fangs bared as she sank her teeth and claws into some sort of wild beast.

  Serafina had noticed over the years that there were sculptures and paintings of great cats everywhere at Biltmore: two bronze lionesses prowled on the mantel above the billiard table, and two rampant lions raised their claws above the fireplace where guests enjoyed their breakfast. When she was younger she had always imagined that these were her aunts and uncles, her grandmothers and grandfathers, like family portraits on the wall. An old woodcut print of a proud, great-grandfatherly lion was displayed in the library, and there were cousin-like lion faces carved into the decorative corbels in the Banquet Hall. The statues on the house gates depicted the head and upper body of a woman, but if you looked very carefully, which she always did, you could see the lower body of a lion. The one that had always perplexed her the most was the white marble statue leading into the Italian Garden: a woman with a lion draped over her back and a little girl at her side. Even the doorbell at Biltmore’s front door depicted a great cat. She had often wondered why Mr Vanderbilt had collected so many tributes to the feline race. But of all the cats at Biltmore, this small bronze sculpture of a leopardess in the throes of a ferocious attack had always been her favourite.

  ‘What are we doing?’ Braeden asked, staring in confusion at the sculptures.

  Serafina bent down and opened the cabinet door. Inside were more of Mr Vanderbilt’s books. Getting down on her hands and knees, she moved the volumes aside and gained access to the back of the cabinet. She pushed hard on the wooden panel as she remembered doing before, but it didn’t budge.

  ‘What are you doing that for?’ Braeden asked.

  ‘Come on, help me,’ Serafina said, and soon she and Braeden were working shoulder to shoulder. The back panel of the cabinet finally pushed through, opening into a dark hole.

  ‘Follow me,’ Serafina said, her voice echoing a little as she crawled into the darkness. She hadn’t been in here in years, but when she was younger it had been one of her favourite places.

  ‘I’m not going in there until you . . .’ Braeden was saying behind her, but she kept going into the darkness.

  ‘Serafina?’ Braeden asked from out in the corridor. ‘Fine, I’m coming.’ He must have turned and petted Gidean, because in the next moment his voice became softer. ‘You wait here, boy,’ he said. ‘This doesn’t look like a good place for a dog.’

  Gidean whined a little, not wanting to be left behind again.

  Serafina crawled through the cramped, dusty, darkened tunnel until she came to the bottom rungs of a ladder.

  ‘Be careful here, Braeden,’ she whispered as she heard him coming up behind her on his hands and knees.

  ‘Here we go,’ she said. She grabbed the first rung and started climbing. The ladder was not straight like a normal ladder. It curved, climbing upward into the darkness. The space around her opened into a black void: no walls, no ceiling, no floor, just the ladder she was climbing and darkness all around. As she climbed further and further, her muscles tensed and her skin tingled. Falling meant certain death.

  ‘Where on earth are we?’ Braeden asked as he climbed up the ladder behind her, his voice sounding small in the vast space they were entering. ‘It’s terribly dark in here!’

  ‘We’re in the attic above the ceiling of the Banquet Hall.’

  ‘Oh my God, do you realise how high that is? That ceiling is seventy feet up!’

  ‘Yes, so don’t fall,’ Serafina advised. ‘It’s open along the sides.’

  ‘How do you know about this place?’

  ‘I’m the C.R.C.,’ she said. ‘It’s my job to know everything there is to know about Biltmore, especially its secret rooms and passages.’

  As they climbed the ladder into the darkness, it became more and more clear that the ladder was curving up and over the arc of the Banquet Hall’s soaring barrel-vaulted ceiling. It felt like they were climbing along one of the rib bones inside the body of a giant wooden whale.

  Finally, they reache
d a lattice of steel girders and joists suspended high above the ceiling. Serafina climbed up onto the top edge of one of the beams, just a few inches wide, and walked along its length. It was a dark and treacherous place. A single misplaced step meant a fatal fall into the darkness. The top side of the Banquet Hall’s ceiling hovered below them, but if they fell from the girders they would hit the ceiling and then tumble along the curve until they disappeared into the black chasm that ran along the side.

  ‘I can’t see anything!’ Braeden complained as he inched his way slowly and unsteadily along the top of one of the narrow girders. The only light came from a few tiny pinholes in the slate shingles of the roof. It was plenty of light for Serafina, but it left Braeden nearly blind. She reached back and guided him along until they found a good spot and sat on the girder with their legs hanging down into the darkness.

  ‘Well, this is a nice place for evening tea,’ Braeden said cheerfully. ‘It’s nearly pitch dark, and if I move in any direction I’ll die, but besides that I love the ambience.’

  Braeden could not see it, but Serafina smiled. It was good to be at her friend’s side again. But then her thoughts turned more serious. After they’d defeated the Man in the Black Cloak, she had told Braeden about how her pa had adopted her and who her mother was, and they’d been sharing with each other the truth of their lives ever since.

  ‘Braeden, I need to tell you what happened,’ Serafina said.

  Over the next half hour, she recounted the night before. She had told some of what happened to her pa earlier that morning, but when she told the story to Braeden she left nothing out. It felt good to finally tell her friend everything that had happened. Sometimes it felt as if things weren’t real, weren’t complete, until she shared them with Braeden.

  ‘That sounds terrifying,’ Braeden said. ‘You were lucky to get out of there alive, Serafina.’

  She nodded in agreement. It had been a close call, and she was glad to be home.

  ‘And are you sure Detective Grathan is the second man you saw in the carriage?’ Braeden asked.

  Serafina shook her head. ‘I don’t know,’ she admitted. ‘I think he must be, but I didn’t get a good look at him. There are horses in the Biltmore stables that look like the stallions I saw. Could you find out who they belong to?’

  ‘I’ll ask Mr Rinaldi,’ Braeden said. ‘Whoever this Detective Grathan is, I don’t like him. What are we going to do now? We can’t let him find out anything more about us, that’s for sure.’

  It was a good question, and Serafina tried to think it through. ‘We need to keep low and hidden and figure out exactly who he is,’ she said. ‘We’ll watch him very carefully and see what he does.’

  ‘Did you see what he had?’ Braeden exclaimed. ‘The Black Cloak’s silver clasp!’

  ‘Which probably means he went out to my mother’s den. I saw her just last night, so I think she and the cubs are all right, but he might have come dangerously close to discovering them. Maybe that’s why she was so anxious to leave.’

  ‘If he discovered your mother’s den, it might have been his life in danger rather than hers.’

  ‘It’s those nasty wolfhounds I’m worried about,’ she said. ‘They were truly vicious beasts.’

  ‘What about that feral boy you described? Do you think he escaped? Who do you think he was? It sounds like he fought very hard.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said, ‘but I have to find out. He saved my life.’

  ‘We could ask around about him,’ Braeden suggested. ‘Maybe one of the mountain folk who work on the estate knows who he is. But why do you think the animals are leaving the mountains? There’s been a family of otters living in the river for years, but two days ago, when I was out riding, I saw them leaving, all of them. Yesterday when I checked their holt they were gone. The den was empty.’

  ‘My mother said there were other animals leaving too, besides the luna moths and the birds I saw, but I couldn’t get her to tell me about it.’

  ‘Even the ducks that normally live on the pond are gone,’ Braeden said.

  At that moment, Serafina thought she heard something, like a faint scratching noise. She swivelled towards the sound.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Braeden asked.

  She paused and listened but didn’t hear anything.

  ‘Nothing, I guess,’ she said, realising that she was still a bit jumpy after her confrontation with Detective Grathan.

  ‘This is a good hiding spot,’ Braeden said with satisfaction. ‘We should use it more often. Detective Grathan will never be able to find us in here. But it’s probably getting late. They’re going to be ringing the bell for dinner soon. I should go.’

  Serafina remembered her pa had been excited that the Vanderbilts had sent her a message requesting her presence. But in the end, it hadn’t been an invitation to dinner. It had been a summons to an interrogation.

  ‘Yes, you better go,’ Serafina agreed, a bit too sadly.

  ‘My aunt will be looking for me,’ Braeden said.

  ‘And Lady Rowena too, I reckon,’ she said.

  Braeden looked at her and squinted, trying to see her face. ‘You know, she’s not as bad as she seems.’

  ‘All right,’ Serafina said, realising she had poked her friend a little too hard.

  ‘Her father sent her here all alone while he travels on business,’ Braeden continued. ‘He’s some sort of important man, but it seems kind of mean of him to leave her here by herself where she doesn’t know anyone.’

  ‘I agree,’ Serafina said. She could see that the two of them had been talking.

  ‘Rowena’s mother passed away when she was seven,’ Braeden said. ‘And her father doesn’t pay much attention to her. Before coming here, Rowena had barely been outside London. I know she comes across like she’s conceited, and maybe she is – I don’t know – but she worries about things just like everyone else.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ she asked.

  ‘She said she worries that she brought all the wrong kind of clothes to be at a country estate, so she doesn’t have anything to wear. She also thinks some of the other guests have been making comments about her accent.’

  Serafina frowned. It never even occurred to her that Lady Rowena would worry about her clothes and the way she spoke.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Braeden said. ‘I don’t think she’s a bad person. She’s just not used to it here. It seems like she needs our help. My aunt asked me to look after her until her father comes. But that doesn’t mean I’m not your friend.’

  ‘I understand,’ Serafina replied finally. And she did. She’d always known Braeden to be a kind person and a gentleman. ‘Just don’t forget about me,’ she said, smiling a little, then realised again that he couldn’t see her smile.

  ‘Serafina . . .’ Braeden scolded her.

  ‘I will tell you the truth of it,’ she said. ‘Over the last week, sometimes it’s felt like you didn’t want anything to do with me any more.’

  ‘What about you?’ Braeden protested, getting at least as emotional as she was. ‘What have you been doing? You’re always asleep when I’m awake and you go out every night on your own! Sometimes I think that one of these days you’re going to turn into a wild creature or something . . .’

  Not likely, Serafina thought glumly.

  ‘So you’re not trying to avoid me?’ she asked.

  ‘Avoid you?’ Braeden said in surprise. ‘You’re just about my only friend.’

  Serafina smiled to hear him say that. And then she laughed a little. ‘What are you talking about? You have many friends. Gidean, Cedric, your horses . . .’

  Braeden smiled. ‘And I have a new friend too.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’

  ‘When my uncle and I rode out to Chimney Rock the other day, I found a beautiful peregrine falcon with a broken wing at the base of the cliffs. I don’t know what happened to her. Maybe a hunter shot her or she got into some kind of battle, but she was badly hurt. I wrapped her up in my coat an
d brought her home. Her name is Kess. She’s incredible.’

  Serafina nodded as she felt a gentle and reassuring warmth filling her chest. This was the Braeden she knew. ‘I can’t wait to meet her.’

  ‘I bandaged her wing, and I’ve been trying to help her eat.’

  ‘Do you think her wing will heal over time and she’ll be able to fly again?’

  ‘No, I’m afraid not,’ Braeden said sadly. ‘My uncle gave me a book on birds from his library. It said that if a bird of prey’s wing is broken below the bend, it can sometimes heal, but if it’s broken above the bend, like Kess’s is, then it’s impossible. She’ll never fly again.’

  ‘That’s too bad,’ Serafina said, trying to imagine how terrible it would be for a falcon not to be able to fly, and for a moment she thought about her own situation, her own limitations. ‘But at least she’ll have you as her friend.’

  ‘I’m going to take good care of her,’ Braeden said. ‘Peregrine falcons are amazing birds. The book says that they can fly anywhere on earth they want to. The word peregrine actually means “wanderer” or “traveller”. Sometimes, two peregrine falcons will hunt together. And they’re the fastest creatures on the planet. Scientists estimate that they dive at over two hundred miles an hour, but it’s so fast that no one has ever been able to measure it exactly.’

  ‘That’s amazing,’ Serafina said, smiling. She enjoyed listening to Braeden talk about his birds and his other animals. This is how it should be, she thought, the two of them sitting in a dark and secret place, just talking. This was the kind of friend she had always dreamed of, someone who was eager to hear her stories and excited to tell her things and content to be with her for a little while.

  But she knew it couldn’t last. He was right when he said he had to go.

  She guided him through the darkness across the beam and over to the top of the ladder. As he began to climb down, he stopped, seeming to wonder why she wasn’t climbing down with him.

  ‘Just stay alert tonight,’ she told him. ‘Stay well clear of Grathan and don’t let him corner you alone. Be safe.’

  ‘You too,’ Braeden said, nodding. ‘But aren’t you coming out?’