Serafina and the Twisted Staff (The Serafina Series) (30 page)

‘No,’ she said. ‘I want to go home with you.’

Braeden nodded, and they continued on together towards Biltmore with Gidean and Cedric at their sides.

‘Look,’ Serafina said when she saw a rider galloping at high speed across the large lawn in front of the house. The rider was up on her stirrups, leaning forward in the saddle, her
long red hair flowing behind her. It was Lady Rowena!

Rowena rode into the stable courtyard.

When Serafina and Braeden and the two dogs walked into the courtyard a few moments later, a force of thirty men were gathering, some on foot, some with horses.

‘Mount up, men,’ Mr Vanderbilt shouted from atop his horse. ‘We’re going back out.’

Serafina and Braeden looked around at the ragged group. Many of the men from the original hunting party were wounded and exhausted. They had been fighting the coyotes in the forest all night.
The horses had suffered the worst, and the trackers had lost all but one of the Plott hounds. The badly shaken hunt master, who had dismounted from his sweating, terrified horse and now sat
collapsed on the ground, appeared too shocked by what they’d been through to even rouse himself. But most of the men were mounting fresh horses, and new men were joining the effort.

Rowena was right there with Mr Vanderbilt, on a new horse and ready to ride. Her hair was hanging down, her face was scratched, and she looked exhausted, but she seemed determined to help in the
search.

‘Come on, hurry,’ Rowena was calling to the others as she wheeled her horse around. ‘We have to go and look for them!’

Serafina’s pa, several of the stablemen and a dozen other servants were also joining the group.

But when Mr Vanderbilt pulled his horse round he saw Braeden and Serafina and the dogs coming towards him.

‘Thank God,’ Mr Vanderbilt said. He dismounted, dropped his reins and took the exhausted Braeden into his arms.

‘Serafina,’ her pa said, relieved, as he came towards her and pulled her into his chest.

‘I’m all right, Pa,’ she said. ‘I’m not hurt.’

As she hugged her pa, Serafina saw Rowena dismount and embrace Braeden, obviously relieved that he was still alive. The other men were patting the young master’s back and welcoming him
home.

Mr Vanderbilt knelt down and scruffed Cedric’s neck. ‘It’s good to see you, boy,’ he said as he petted his dog. Then Mr Vanderbilt’s dark eyes rose up and looked at
Serafina.

‘I’m sorry, sir,’ she said, her voice shaking, fearful that he’d be angry at her for leading them into such a catastrophe. As she and her pa turned towards Mr Vanderbilt,
she said, ‘I had no idea that was going to happen.’

‘None of us have ever seen anything like that,’ he said. He wasn’t angry with her. His voice was filled with a sense of common purpose. They were a pack. They were in this
together.

‘Could the coyotes have been infected with rabies?’ her pa asked.

‘I hope to God not,’ the veterinarian said, overhearing their conversation as he tended to the slashed leg of a nearby horse. ‘If it’s rabies, then all the men, horses
and dogs who were bitten last night will be dead within days, and there’s nothing we can do about it.’

‘It didn’t look like rabies to me,’ Mr Vanderbilt said, shaking his head. ‘There had to be fifty coyotes, and they had a deliberateness in their eyes.’

The hunt master shook his head. ‘Those animals were possessed,’ he mumbled, his eyes glazed with disbelief.

‘We need to go back, Uncle,’ Braeden said.

‘Go back?’ Mr Vanderbilt said in surprise.

‘There are still animals up there that need our help.’

Mr Vanderbilt shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, Braeden. We’re not going back out right now. We can’t risk it. Everyone is exhausted. We need to rest and regroup.’

‘It was awful, Uncle,’ Braeden said, and then proceeded to describe the bearded man and the animals in the cages. ‘Serafina got me and the dogs out of there, and then we
ran.’

When Mr Vanderbilt looked at Serafina, she could see the gratitude in his expression, but she knew the fight wasn’t over. ‘We need to find Mr Grathan, sir,’ she said.
‘He’s involved in this.’

‘I was suspicious of him from the start,’ Mr Vanderbilt said. ‘He represented himself as an officer of the law, so I didn’t think I should interfere with his
investigation, but I hired a private detective to check into his credentials.’

‘What did you find out?’ Braeden asked.

‘Mr Grathan has no association with any city or state agency. He’s a fraud.’

‘What are we going to do, Uncle?’ Braeden asked.

‘I’ve sent word for the Asheville police to come at once. They’ll arrest him.’

‘But where is Grathan now?’ Serafina asked.

‘We’ve searched for him. He’s not in the house,’ Mr Vanderbilt said, ‘but he may still be in the grounds.’

‘I think Grathan is far more dangerous than he seems, sir,’ Serafina said, ‘and I fear that the police will be coming on horseback or carriage and will run into the same type
of problem we did.’

Mr Vanderbilt nodded. ‘We’ll arm several groups of men and start looking for Grathan in the grounds. If and when the police arrive, we’ll go back up into that area, free those
animals and destroy the cages. Until then, I want all of you to stay in the house and stay safe.’

As the men continued talking, Serafina, Braeden and Rowena huddled beneath the arch of the porte cochère, the carriage entrance that led into the house.

‘What happened?’ Rowena asked, her voice quivering.

‘We’re all right,’ Braeden said. ‘We got the dogs. That’s the important thing.’

‘I was so worried about you,’ she said, looking at both Braeden and Serafina. Serafina realised that danger and death seemed to erase the lines of class. Suddenly, everyone was the
same, fighting to hold on to their lives and the people around them. She saw it in Mr Vanderbilt, her pa, the hunt master, the trackers and the men on their horses willing to go out into fearsome
dangers to rescue her and Braeden. And now she saw it in Lady Rowena.

‘Thank you for helping us, Rowena,’ Braeden said.

‘When my father sent me here to Biltmore, he told me to make friends,’ Lady Rowena said, looking at the two of them and smiling wanly. ‘I think maybe I have.’

‘You definitely have,’ Braeden said.

‘Will your father be coming to Biltmore soon?’ Braeden asked.

‘I believe he’ll be here rather sooner than we all expect,’ Rowena said. ‘He’s coming for Christmas.’

Serafina thought she sensed something strange in Rowena when she said this. Was it sadness? Worry? She couldn’t quite place it.

‘Are you eager to see him?’ Serafina asked.

‘The truth is,’ Rowena said, ‘my father thinks I am a rather silly little girl.’

‘I’m sure that’s not true,’ Braeden said.

Rowena shook her head. ‘No, it’s true. I’m afraid my father has never thought too much of me. But pretty soon, one way or another, he’s going to have to start.’

‘He’d be very proud of you if he knew how brave you were last night,’ Serafina said, trying to encourage her.

But, as they were talking, Rowena looked like she was going to keel over right where she stood. Exhaustion had finally begun to catch up with the poor girl. Braeden reached out to steady
her.

‘If you will excuse me,’ Lady Rowena said finally, touching Braeden’s arm and closing her eyes for a moment like she was going to faint, ‘I’m feeling rather tired.
I’m going to my room to take a bath and change into some clean clothes.’

Braeden nodded. ‘Get some rest and we’ll do the same. My uncle and the men will take care of things now.’

As two of the maids helped the bedraggled, mud-splattered Lady Rowena limp slowly back to the house, Serafina heard her mutter in bewildered shock, ‘Oh dear, I think I may have got dirt on
my dress.’ She was so exhausted she was nearly delirious.

Serafina stayed with Braeden. As she looked over at Mr Vanderbilt talking to her pa and the other men, she knew they were making sensible decisions, but she couldn’t get over the feeling
that it wasn’t enough, that everyone, including her, was missing something. It was as if they were putting together a puzzle, and they thought they were almost done, but there was a whole
other box of pieces that they didn’t even know about.

She watched as the stablemen washed the blood from the courtyard bricks and the maids cleaned the mud from the steps that led into the house.

‘Come on,’ Serafina said to Braeden, and they began to walk along the front of the house. ‘We need to figure this out.’

‘Whoever that man was last night, he seemed insane,’ Braeden said.

‘Like he was consumed by some sort of feud or blood vengeance.’

‘He said he was going to burn the place down,’ Braeden said.

Serafina remembered the chilling words.

‘What do you think he was talking about?’ Braeden asked.

‘I’m not sure,’ she said.

‘Do you think he was talking about Biltmore?’ Braeden asked.

As they reached the front entrance of the house, Serafina glanced up at the carved stone archway above the front door. It depicted a strange-looking bearded man brandishing a long spear or staff
of some kind.

‘I don’t know. It’s definitely possible. Does the Vanderbilt family have enemies?’ she asked. ‘What about your uncle? Does anyone hate him or want to do him
harm?’

‘No, I don’t think so,’ Braeden said. ‘He’s a good man.’

‘I know he is,’ Serafina said. ‘But is there something from his past that we don’t know? What about his life back in New York before he came here? And all his trips to
Europe and all over the world? Could it be that he came to the remote mountains of North Carolina for a reason?’

‘You think he was trying to escape something?’

‘Or maybe
someone
? I don’t know,’ she said.

‘Come on,’ Braeden said, leading her into the house. ‘I have an idea.’

The two of them were tired, dirty and hungry, but they were too intent on solving the mystery to stop now. Serafina followed Braeden down the gallery and into the library.

‘What are we looking for?’ Serafina asked as they entered, not sure how Mr Vanderbilt’s collection of books could help them.

‘My uncle keeps his travel records here,’ Braeden said as he went over to one of the cabinets. ‘Maybe we’ll find something.’

Serafina went to Braeden’s side and tried to help him look. But she didn’t know what they were looking for.

She found a set of black leather-bound journals entitled
Books I Have Read – G. W. V.
As she flipped through the pages, she saw that Mr Vanderbilt had been recording the title and
author of every book he’d read since 1875, when he was twelve years old. There were thousands of entries over the years, in English, French and other languages.

Braeden found evidence of his uncle’s many trips throughout the United States and abroad, to England, France, Italy, China, Japan and many other countries. And Serafina knew that the house
was full of art, sculpture and artefacts from his travels. In fact, she’d just shattered one of them. Any one of those artefacts could have been haunted or cursed in some way, which might
explain a blood vengeance against Mr Vanderbilt.

But the more she thought about it the more one particular thought came to her mind. The man she’d seen on the road that first night hadn’t struck her as a New Yorker or any other
kind of Northerner or foreigner. His skin was craggy with the weathered cracks of these mountain winds, his moustache and beard were long and grey like many of the local elders’, and his
voice was tinged with the sound of the mountain folk. She could not be sure from their brief and terrifying encounters, but he seemed like an Appalachian man.

She remembered the disturbing words he’d screamed to the owl: ‘We shall burn that place down!’

‘Let’s look into the records of Biltmore House,’ she said.

‘Not my uncle’s travels?’

‘No, let’s focus on Biltmore,’ she said, more confident now.

‘Those are over here,’ he said, leading her to a different set of boxes.

As they dug through the papers, it was hard to imagine finding any answers there, but when Braeden opened a box of scratchy, old photographs, she leaned in closer.

The first photograph she examined showed a vast stretch of clear-cut land with nothing but stumps and weeds, a team of twenty or thirty mules, a couple of wagons piled with firewood, and a score
of scroungers with axes. It was hard to imagine, but judging by the view of the mountains in the background it appeared to be the hilltop on which Biltmore was constructed. The clearing was so open
and bare and treeless. There were no gardens, no woods, just scarred and empty land. This was how it had looked when Mr Vanderbilt bought the land years before.

The next photograph showed hundreds of stonemasons, bricklayers, carpenters and other craftsmen building the lower floors of Biltmore House. There were men and women, white folk and black folk,
Americans and foreigners, Northerners and Southerners, and many mountain folk. Her heart warmed when she spotted her pa in one of the photographs, working on a geared crane system among many other
men. She smiled, for in her mind she’d always imagined her pa working alone, building Biltmore almost by himself, for that was how she’d always seen him working. She realised how
foolish she had been. He had been but one of thousands of men who had worked for six years. It was amazing to see the scaffolded walls of Biltmore rising from nothingness in photograph after
photograph.

A while later, as she searched through the documents of Biltmore, trying to find the clues they needed, Serafina looked over at Braeden. Exhausted, he had fallen asleep in one of the cushioned
chairs. Serafina let him sleep, but she kept looking.

‘I’m starving,’ Braeden announced when he awoke. They quickly retrieved some food from the kitchen. But as soon as they’d eaten and washed up they went back to work.

Later that afternoon, as Braeden was digging through yet another box, he handed her a photograph. ‘Look at this one.’

Something about it caught Serafina’s eye. Like the other photographs, this one was filled with men and wooden scaffolding, and the half-built Biltmore rising in the background. She
wasn’t even sure what the photographer had been trying to take a picture of, other than the construction site itself. Some of the men in the picture were working, some talking, some looking
at the camera, others not. When she studied the photograph more closely, one of the men drew her attention. The image was so small it was difficult to tell, but he had a heavily wrinkled face and a
long grey moustache and beard. He was not wearing a long coat or carrying a walking stick, but he was gazing into the camera and his eyes looked like dots of silver. It was their enemy – the
man she’d seen in the forest. This was him. She was sure of it. That meant he wasn’t a forest haint or nightmarish spectre, but a real person. At least, he had been years before.