Serafina and the Black Cloak

Serafina runs, finding her way up and out of the subbasement with the man right behind her. He looks like he is flying, “levitated by the power of the billowing black cloak” (21). He catches her; she breaks free, but he catches her again. This time the black cloak envelops her the way it did the girl in the yellow dress. She feels its heavy weight threaten to suffocate her and thinks she will die. Then Serafina screams “No!” and begins to fight, kicking, biting, and clawing at the man. She gets free and runs, taking a secret hole in the wall from the linen storage room to the laundry. There, she manages to squeeze into a narrow crevice of the linen-drying machine. The opening is only a few inches, but Serafina’s collarbones are unconnected to her shoulders; this physical deformity allows her to fit into tight spots. She hears the man looking for her in the kitchens, in the hallway, and finally in the laundry room. She tells herself not to panic—and not to run. She watches the man: “even though he couldn’t see her, he seemed to sense that she was there” (26). She goes still and waits.

Serafina wakes and creeps from her hiding spot the next morning when Pa comes looking for her. She tries to tell him about the man, the cloak, the little girl, and her own scare, but Pa just tells her to stop reading so many ghost stories. Pa leaves without further listening, as he must try to fix the Edison Dynamo, the generator powering the mansion. Glum and resentful because he will not believe her, Serafina does the unthinkable—she goes upstairs in the full light of day.

Serafina is overwhelmed by the splendor of the upstairs: the Entrance Hall, the Grand Staircase, the fine, fancy clothing of the women and children. The guests seem exuberant and excited. Serafina, out of habit, checks the women’s faces to see if any of them might bear a resemblance to her. None does. She tries to study the men, as one might be the man with the black cloak. She hopes to go unnoticed, standing in an alcove at the top of the basement stairs. Mrs. Vanderbilt invites the guests to hear a short violin performance from a guest named Mr. Thorne while they wait to go riding. The guests go into the adjacent music room. Mr. Thorne sounds as though he is from the South, and his violin playing is melodious and spellbinding. Another man, Mr. Bendel, comments that Mr. Thorne is good at everything—shooting, speaking Russian, and now playing violin.

A boy asks if Serafina is lost. It is the young nephew of the Vanderbilts, whose family died in a fire when he was 10. Serafina knows from gossip that the boy is a loner who would rather be with his horses and dog than socialize. He is kind to her and tells her that he is unfamiliar with some reaches of the mansion although he lives there. He tells her his name is Braeden and his dog is Gidean. Serafina knows she must look strange in her father’s old work shirt—not even like a regular servant. She tells him her name, then instantly regrets it for how much trouble she will be in with Pa. The dog, sleek and black, looks as though it wants to eat her. Serafina begins to tell Braeden what she saw the night before, but Mr. Thorne interrupts to invite Braeden to ride with him. A panicked woman, Mrs. Brahms, arrives on the scene, saying her daughter Clara is missing. Serafina thinks Clara must be the girl in the yellow dress. Mr. Vanderbilt announces that they will postpone the ride. They all divide into search parties. In a heartbeat, Serafina’s concern shifts from Clara Brahms to ridding the basement of all evidence of her and Pa’s secret quarters.

Serafina tells Pa in the workshop that search parties are coming. Pa ignores the part about the missing girl and moves rapidly to hide their belongings. Serafina tries to turn his attention back to the girl—and the fact that she, Serafina, was right. Pa, however, still insists that it was a nightmare, and he tells her to hide from the search parties. He also mentions that someone sabotaged the dynamo generator and that his priority is fixing it. Angry now, and able to hear the search parties approaching, Serafina demands to know why Pa hid her for years and why he seems so ashamed of her. This wounds him, and he leads her to the room in the subbasement where the broken dynamo sits silently. He locks the door and tells her, “Ya ain’t gonna like what I got to tell ya, but it might help ya understand” (50).

Pa tells her that years before, in his job as a train mechanic in Asheville, he lost hope of ever having a wife and family. One night he went on a long walk to think, into the woods and up the mountains. It grew dark. He heard a strange creature suddenly near “in terrible, writhing pain” (51). When the cries stopped, Pa saw the yellow eyes of a beast looking out at him from the thick undergrowth. After the beast left, Pa heard a “strange, mewling, crying sound” (52) and discovered, there on the forest floor, several small, curled creatures. Most were dead, but one was alive. He held the live one, discovering that it was a human baby. He took it to midwives and nuns, but none would care for it—they all thought it was “the devil’s work” (53): the baby’s eyes weren’t open, so they thought it was blind; it didn’t react to sound, so they thought it was deaf; it had a long, curling spine and malformed collarbones.

At this point, Serafina realizes she was the baby. Pa stole goat milk to feed her and asked local women to care for her, but none would, certain she would die. In two weeks, the baby’s eyes opened, and he determined to keep her. He brought the baby to work, and eventually she could crawl and run. Then authorities arrived to take her, but Pa hit one and they left. Before more could return, Pa took the baby and left town, finding work on the construction of Biltmore. Pa is still worried that if authorities found Serafina, they would take her from him.

Serafina is shocked and frustrated that Pa hid the truth for so long. She is also frightened and excited. She wonders if she will ever be able to come out of hiding and make friends. Pa tries to convince her that there is nothing wrong with her, despite her differences. Serafina asks about her mother, but Pa knows nothing. He warns her again to avoid the forest at all costs. He also warns her to keep out of the search for the little girl in the yellow dress. Suddenly, men pound on the door.

Serafina clings to the ceiling cables while Pa talks to the men about the dynamo. She scurries across the cables, lands on the floor without a sound, and runs to hide in a coal chute. She quietly thinks about all that Pa told her as the search parties go by. She feels confused, especially wondering if her mother is still in the forest. She thinks if Pa loves her, though, other people will someday love her too, despite her oddities; for example, maybe catching rats barehanded is not as strange as it sounds. She decides she wants to help and goes back to the subbasement to look for clues. She sees blood on the wall where the cloak consumed Clara. Then she finds a black glove with “flakes and patches of skin inside that appeared as if they had sloughed off the hand that had last worn the glove” (67). This explains the man’s bloody hands. She wonders if she might see Braeden again and if their short conversation constituted friendship. She sneaks back up to the first floor and goes from the Winter Garden to the Billiard Room. A footman, Mr. Pratt, and a maid, Miss Whitney, come in to search for Clara. From their talk, Serafina learns that Clara is a piano prodigy. After they leave, Serafina notices the portraits of the Vanderbilt family members on the wall, including patriarch Cornelius. She touches the wall and goes through the passage to the Smoking Room.

She gets to the Gun Room by a similar passage and hears guests mention the old cemetery and a deserted village out in the forest. She continues around the mansion, searching. Finally, she goes to the coatroom to look for the black cloak, figuring that if the man was “at least partially mortal and resided at Biltmore, then he’d have to stash his cloak someplace” (74). There is nothing, though. She next thinks to go look for Braeden in the stables and makes a risky run for it among guests and servants. She runs right into a man, Mr. Crankshod, who demands to know if she is the new pig girl and why she is there. He grips her arm tightly and shakes her, but Braeden speaks up from behind her and stops Mr. Crankshod.

Serafina creates the quick excuse that she is the new shoeshine girl, sent by Braeden’s aunt Mrs. Vanderbilt to shine his shoes. Braeden immediately goes along with the story, telling her that she will have to come along in the carriage to Asheville for lack of time; he is leaving right away to stay in Asheville for safety’s sake. Mr. Crankshod has no choice but to allow it. He and a young coachman board the driver’s seat, and they leave the estate by way of a narrow road through the forest.

For Serafina, the experience of being in a carriage is completely new; she is nervous about the mean looks from Gidean as well as the close proximity to Braeden. He wants to talk about Clara Brahms, though, and does not treat Serafina like she is strange, so she grows more at ease. He tells her that two weeks before, a 15-year-old girl named Anastasia Rostonova, daughter of a Russian ambassador, disappeared as well. Many assumed she got lost in the woods or ran away, but Braeden found her beloved dog the next morning in the Rambles, a tall hedge maze on the estate, searching for her as if she disappeared suddenly. Braeden asks several times where Serafina comes from; she admits that she and Pa live in the basement. She asks Braeden not to tell, and he promises he will not. Suddenly the carriage stops. It is still as death outside in the woods. The two discover that Mr. Crankshod and the coachman disappeared.