Robert Beatty - Serafina and the Twisted Staff

‘We’ll clean the mud off ya, get the sticks and blood outten your hair, and you’ll be fine. Your dress will cover them there scratches.’

‘My dress has more holes in it than me,’ she protested as she examined the bloodstained, tattered pieces of the dress Mrs V. had given her. She couldn’t show up in that.

‘Them toothy mongrels sure did a number on you,’ he said as he examined the tear in her lower ear. ‘Don’t that hurt?’

‘Naw, not no more,’ she said, her mind on other things. ‘Where’s that old work shirt of yours that I used to wear?’

‘I threw that thing out as soon as I saw that Mrs Vanderbilt gave you something nice to wear.’

‘Aw, Pa, now I ain’t got nothin’ at all!’

‘Don’t fuss. I’ll make ya somethin’ outta what we got up in here.’

Serafina shook her head in dismay. ‘What we got around here is mostly sackcloth and sandpaper!’

‘Look,’ her pa said, taking her by the shoulders and looking into her eyes. ‘You’re alive, ain’t ya? So toughen up. Bless the Lord and get on with things. In your entire life, has the master of the house ever demanded your presence upstairs? No, he has not. So, yes, ma’am, if the master wants you there, you’re gonna be there. With bells on.’

‘Bells?’ she asked in horror. ‘Why do I have to wear bells?’

How could she sneak and hide if she was wearing noisy bells round her neck? Or did they go on her feet?

‘It’s just an expression, girl,’ her pa said, shaking his head. Then, after a moment, he muttered to himself, ‘At least I think it is.’

Serafina sat, mad and miserable, on the cot while her pa did his level best to clean and bandage her wounds. As usual, she and her pa were surrounded by the workshop’s supply shelves, tool racks and workbenches. But her pa seemed to have forgotten the work he was supposed to be doing that morning. His mind had become consumed with her.

Some of the copper piping and brass fittings from the kitchen’s cold box sat in a twisted clump on the bench. The previous day, her pa had explained something about an ammonia-gas brine system, intake pipes and cooling coils, but none of it took. He’d raised her in his workshop, but she had no talent with machines. She couldn’t remember anything about the contraption other than it was complicated, kept food cold and was one of the few refrigeration systems in the country. The mountain folk kept their food cold by sticking it in a cold spring tumbling down into a creek, which seemed far more sensible to her.

As soon as her pa was done fussing with her, she slipped off the bed, hoping he’d forget his threat to make her rest. ‘I’ve gotta go, Pa,’ she said. ‘I’m gonna sneak upstairs and see if I can spot the intruder.’

‘Now, listen here,’ he said, holding her arm. ‘I don’t want you confrontin’ anybody up there.’

She nodded. ‘I’m with ya, Pa. No confrontin’. I just want to see who’s up there and make sure everyone is all right. No one will ever see me.’

‘I’m needin’ your word on this,’ he said.

‘You got my word, Pa.’

Off she went to the main floor. She spotted a few guests strolling this way and that or lounging in the parlours, but nobody suspicious. She moved up to the second floor next, but she didn’t see anything out of the ordinary there, either. She scoured the house from top to bottom, but there was no sign of the stranger she’d seen with Mr Vanderbilt or anyone else who seemed like they might have been the second passenger in the carriage. She listened for scuttlebutt from the servants as they prepared for the event in the Banquet Hall that evening, but she didn’t pick up anything other than how many cucumbers the cook wanted the scullery maid to fetch and how many silver platters the butler needed for his footmen.

She tried to think through everything she had seen the night before, wondering if she’d missed any clues. What had she actually seen when the bearded man threw his walking stick up into the air towards the owl? And who was the second passenger who’d remained in the shadows of the carriage? Was it the stranger she’d seen walking with Mr Vanderbilt? And who was the feral boy who had helped her? Was he still alive? How could she find him again?

Another bushel of questions I don’t have answers to , she thought in frustration, remembering her pa’s words.

Later that afternoon, when she walked back into the workshop, her pa asked, ‘What did you find out?’

‘A whole lot of nothin’,’ she grumbled. ‘No sign of anyone suspicious at all.’

‘I spoke to Superintendent McNamee. He’s sendin’ out a group of his best horsemen to hunt down the poachers.’ As he spoke, her pa wiped his grease-smeared hands with a rag.

‘Elevator actin’ up again, Pa?’ she asked.

Her pa had often boasted that Biltmore had the first and finest electric elevator in the South, but he seemed a mite less keen on the machine today.

‘The gears in the basement keep gettin’ all gaumed up when it hits the fourth floor,’ he said. ‘Everwho installed the thing got them shafts all sigogglin’, this way and that. I swear it ain’t gonna work proper till I tear out the whole thing and start again.’ He waved her over to him. ‘But take a look at this. This is interestin’.’ He showed her a thin piece of sheet metal that looked like it hadn’t just broken but had been torn. It was odd to see metal ripped like that. She didn’t even know how that was possible.

‘What is that, Pa?’ she asked.

‘This here little bracket was supposed to be a-holdin’ the main gear in place, but whenever the elevator ran it kept flexing back and forth, you see?’ As he spoke, he showed her the flexing motion by bending the sheet metal with his fingers. ‘The metal is plenty strong at first. Seems unbreakable, don’t it? But when ya bend it back and forth over and over again like this, watch what happens. It gets weaker and weaker, these little cracks start, and then it finally breaks.’ Just as he said the words, the metal snapped in his fingers. ‘You see that?’

Serafina looked up at her pa and smiled. Some days, he had a special kind of magic about him.

Then she looked over at the other workbench. Somewhere between mending the elevator, fixing the cold box and tending to his other duties, her pa had cobbled together a dress for her made out of a burlap tow sack and discarded scraps of leather.

‘Pa . . .’ she said, horrified by the sight of it.

‘Try it on,’ he said. He seemed rather proud of the stitching he’d done with fibrous twine and the leather-working needle he sometimes used to patch holes in the leather apron he wore. Her pa liked the idea that he could make or mend just about anything.

Serafina walked glumly behind the supply racks, took off her tattered green dress, and put on the thing her pa had made.

‘Looks as fine as a Sunday mornin’,’ her pa said cheerfully as she stepped out from behind the racks, but she could tell he was lying through his teeth. Even he knew it was the most god-awful, ugly thing that ever done walked the earth. But it worked. And to her pa that’s what counted. It was functional. It clothed her body. The dress had longish sleeves that covered most of the punctures and scratches on her arms, and a close-fitting collar that hid at least part of the gruesome cut on her throat. So at least the fancy ladies at the shindig or the supper, or whatever it was, wouldn’t swoon at the corpsy sight of her.

‘Now, sit down here,’ her pa said. ‘I’ll show you how to behave proper at the table.’