A Dance in Blood Velvet

by Freda Warrington

  In a small voice, as if forced to confess a secret, Holly said, “I’ve seen them too, Ben. I met Lancelyn in the street and they were with him. Three shadows.”

  Ben only believed the tale when Holly confirmed it. Then a huge shudder of emotion went through him from head to foot; pure, searing rage against a foe who could never be outwitted. He hadn’t realised how deep his animosity ran until that terrible moment.

  Lancelyn stole the Book and now he has weapons to outdo mine...

  “No,” Ben whispered. “Can I never be one step ahead of him? Damn him to hell, the bastard!”

  Karl and Andreas merely looked at him, then at each other; figures carved of milky jade, too lovely and too cold to share any human empathy.

  * * *

  “Well?” said Katerina. “What do you think of our friend Benedict?”

  She sat on the edge of a bed, tending to the first vampire they’d taken out to feed. He’d fought them all the way, taken three victims, killing two outright. The transformation wrought by the blood was astonishing.

  A tall well-muscled male was already discernible, fleshing out the framework of bones. He lay motionless as she gently sponged his naked body; Karl had a fleeting impression of a nurse preparing a corpse. Katerina was intent on her task, her strong hands moving over the pale-gold flesh as if to explore every nuance of its texture. The vampire’s eyes were closed; his hair, already growing, a flaxen mane on the pillow. His face was strong and strangely timeless; his race, impossible to pinpoint. Karl suspected that he was very old.

  “Benedict is a driven man,” said Karl. “He’s misguided, but he has power that he clearly doesn’t understand. Have you ever met a mortal with knowledge of the Crystal Ring - let alone any power to control it? That is dangerous, like a child with a bayonet. He’s bound to injure himself or someone else, eventually. And it’s his wife I fear for the most.”

  “We may be here a long time,” Katerina said, smiling. “You’re hating this, aren’t you, my dear?”

  She was right. “I still feel it’s wrong to bring these vampires back to life - but equally wrong to destroy them. I’m appalled, actually, to find a human interfering in vampire affairs.”

  She shrugged. “Interesting, though.”

  “You don’t look unhappy about it,” said Karl.

  “Oh, it’s an adventure. And I have you and Andrei again! That is all I could ask for. Anything else is... what do you say? Icing.”

  The vampire on the bed opened his eyes. The irises were topaz yellow, like a cat’s. Katerina paused, startled. The golden one smiled faintly at her, and closed his lids again.

  “He’s going to be beautiful, isn’t he?” she said.

  “Divine,” said Karl. “Have you ever seen an ugly vampire?”

  Katerina only laughed.

  “Do you know him?”

  “No, never seen him before,” she said, “but he spoke earlier. Only a few words. He said his name is Simon.”

  As she spoke, Benedict appeared in the doorway. He looked quietly furious and not rational. Difficult, Karl thought, for humans to have close contact with vampires and retain their sanity.

  “So, I’m misguided, am I? A child playing with dangerous weapons? I will not be patronised, not even by you.”

  Simon moved; his limbs twitched, his head tilted up. Katerina went towards Benedict, her hands raised to push him out of the room.

  “Mr Grey, for your own safety, you should not -”

  The pale-gold vampire surged past her, leaping for the heat of Ben’s blood. Karl felt no impulse to protect him; he simply watched. A certain detachment - exercised with cool judgment on occasion - allowed him to be scientific rather than heroic.

  Benedict’s hands hit Simon’s chest with a slap; he struggled against the predator with more than bodily strength. His eyes were wild. Unintelligible words rumbled from his throat. The vampire backed him into the door frame but Benedict kept him at arm’s length, his face crimson with effort.

  Suddenly Karl felt the fabric of the Crystal Ring in the air, like ice particles on a thin breeze. The room darkened and trembled. Simon’s grip broke and he backed away, falling to his knees, tearing at his throat as if he were being choked.

  “And I can do this to all of you!” Ben shouted, shaking a fist in Katerina’s shocked face. “I keep you all like dogs on invisible chains. If you threaten me, the chain will tighten until it takes your head off.”

  Katerina gripped her own throat and backed away from him, looking bewildered, completely human for a moment. The threat didn’t seem to touch Karl. He felt no pain, no constriction.

  “Stop this,” he said quietly. “Leave Katerina alone!”

  He lifted Simon and helped him back onto the bed, then went to Benedict and seized his arm. Shocked by his speed, Ben tried uselessly to break Karl’s grip.

  Katerina gasped with relief. “That hurt, Mr Grey,” she said furiously. “How dare you!”

  Karl’s grasp seemed to sober Ben. His face blanched patchily from red to white. Shock and unspent energy swam in his eyes.

  “Not me,” said Karl, his mouth close to Ben’s ear. “I don’t know what this hold is that you have over the others - but you cannot wield it over me.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  IN THE GARDEN

  The plush gloom of the theatre felt as familiar as home to Charlotte; the atmosphere sank into her pores like prickles of velvet, thrilling and disturbing. The collective warmth of the audience tempted her; resisting temptation was a physical ache.

  Charlotte waited for the curtain to open in a state of unbearable tension, praying for the ballet to work some healing miracle on her.

  The past few weeks had been the strangest and most wretched Charlotte had ever known. After Karl and Katerina left, she’d existed in a haze; shell shock, it might be called in a mortal. A void. Although her emotions were harsh, she found the strength to bear them, as if watching her own pain from the outside.

  At the beginning she hadn’t fed for days, becoming nearly as white and spare as Katerina. Unable to forget Violette’s horror, she punished herself for it. Starving, Charlotte lost touch with reality. She saw visions of black and silver figures that terrified her; she understood how mystics - such as Kristian - thought they’d seen the face of God. At the end of all, though, they were only hallucinations, dust.

  Everything seemed worthless.

  Difficult for a starving vampire to be rational. Eventually, blind appetite drove her to seize a victim without conscience and -above all - without illusions of love. Only then did she enter a calmer state.

  Karl sent letters that revealed only vague information; they’d found Andreas in England. He gave the address. Charlotte felt nothing; her only thought was, Thank God it’s not Cambridge. And she wrote back, but there was little to say; Karl wouldn’t want to hear about Violette, or how concerned about her Charlotte still was. The only thing she truly wanted to say could not be said, because of the way they had parted.

  I miss you.

  Ilona and Stefan visited her, but Charlotte found reasons to send them away. Ilona was too unsympathetic, mocking; Stefan too kind. She couldn’t bear company, nor could she bear being in the house alone.

  For a long time, she dared not seek news of Violette. To hear that Violette had stopped dancing, that she’d gone mad or even died - because Charlotte had indulged in one moment of sensual pleasure - would be unbearable.

  At last, unable to tolerate the lonely chalet any longer, Charlotte moved to a hotel in Salzburg. Built high on the Mönchsberg ridge, the lovely building was swathed in ivy, and gave a breathtaking view across the town and river valley to the mountains opposite. From her window she could see the almond-green house of the Ballet Janacek. Still she kept away. Numb, she simply waited, read newspapers, listened to gossip in coffee houses.

  The Ballet Janacek was still in business. Occasionally she saw a dancer or musician in the town, but never Violette. The temptation to seek her out grew stron
ger, but Charlotte resisted. To relive it all, to be rejected again - no, it would finish her.

  One morning, as she sat in a dark café in the Getreidegasse -coffee steaming untouched in front of her - she saw a newspaper announcement that shook her to the soul.

  Ballet Janacek announced the debut of a brand new ballet, Dans le Jardin, in Vienna. Prima ballerina assoluta - Violette Lenoir.

  Relief consumed Charlotte like a flash of fire. She dropped the paper and walked out, giving the startled waiter a lavish tip.

  And now she was in Vienna on opening night. She sat at the front of the balcony, no longer aware of the miasma of perfume and body heat around her. All her attention was on the stage, her breath held.

  The curtains unfurled on darkness. A curved blue line glimmered... shafts of light shone from clouds... music rolled like thunder. And in one of the most glorious solos Charlotte had ever seen, a muscular male dancer portrayed God’s creation of the world.

  Green light shimmered through a scrim, creating the illusion of a garden. The Tree of Knowledge was rooted in the earth and stretched its branches up to heaven; under its foliage, God brought the beasts to life. Delightful, the corps de ballet dressed as rabbits and birds and deer; but a sinister undertow was developing. There was menace in the modern angularity of the music, the eerie use of lighting. A story everyone knew - but why had Violette chosen it?

  Then God beckoned Adam and Eve to life. Two pale sinuous figures in flesh-coloured body-stockings - shocking to see them apparently naked beneath trails of ivy. Charlotte stared at the female dancer’s yellow hair. Why wasn’t Violette dancing the main role?

  Most shocking of all - God was portrayed as a leaping, clowning trickster. A dream figure from a William Blake watercolour, with the malicious intelligence of Puck. The dancer was magnificently believable. He took not so much pride as glee in his creation, placing the Tree in the Garden of Eden as a deliberately cruel temptation.

  Then came the Serpent.

  Even before the creature slid onstage to weave magic around the sweet blonde Eve, Charlotte was dizzy with anticipation. Violette appeared all in black, sinuous, glittering, full of energy. A world away from the innocence of Giselle. Incredibly evil and seductive, she courted Eve with the allure of a vampire. At the same time, she achieved the incredible feat of making the Serpent sympathetic, God the malevolent one.

  Take the apple. Eat. Make a fool of God.

  Violette in this role was completely in her element.

  Charlotte actually shut her eyes at times, thinking, This is impossibly daring. I dread to think how it will be received.

  The sin was committed and the Fall began. In a spectacular change of lighting, the softness of the Garden turned to harsh spiky angles, as angry and modern as the music. God’s pleasure in his creation became implacable rage... But you put the Tree there, Violette told him with expressive hands and eyes. You made me, too.

  God crushed her underfoot. The audience gasped.

  With a pointing finger he’d created Adam and Eve; with a pointing finger he drove them from the Garden. Now the corps de ballet became fiery angels set to guard the gates of Eden, and Man began his eternal exile.

  No happy ending to this tragedy. The end was the beginning; the whole history of mankind unfurled from this moment like an infinite tapestry on the red darkness... down through the ages... to the present, to the sinners sitting in this theatre.

  Utter silence greeted the curtain. Charlotte guessed how the audience would react; their disapproval had been tangible throughout. When she was proved right, though, she was furious. The polite applause that finally broke out failed to mask the babble of people surging rudely towards the exits.

  Technically the ballet was breathtaking. Emotionally, too. But it was wrong. There was a taint of insanity on it. It was too serious, too full of pain. Blasphemous.

  Charlotte made her way into the foyer, feeling stunned. Dans le Jardin was glorious... but it was the creation of a deranged mind, too far ahead of its time. She sensed disaster.

  She pushed impatiently towards the outer doors, famished. Anger made her thirsty... as did love, paradoxically. Must hurry or I’ll take one of these sneering idiots where they stand...

  “Entschuldigen Sie bitte, gnädige Frau,” said a voice behind her, “are you not Charlotte Neville?”

  Charlotte turned as if jerked by a chain, and looked into a face she’d never seen before. A man in his mid-fifties gazed at her over black-rimmed spectacles. He had a beautiful, sharp-boned face, a shock of soft grey hair, bushy iron-grey eyebrows.

  “I think you’ve made a mistake,” she said thinly.

  “Forgive me, but you look so very like the daughter of an old friend. Or rather, I should say, like his wife.”

  His words swept Charlotte abruptly into a different world. The notion that this man had met her mother transfixed her.

  “George and Annette Neville,” he said, then shook his head. “I’m sorry, I’m being foolish. If you say I’ve made a mistake...”

  “Did you know my - Mrs Neville well?”

  He smiled, more confident now she’d given herself away. It was a very warm smile. “Hardly at all, I regret to say. My name is Josef Stern. I’m delighted to meet you, for the second time. I don’t expect you to remember me. I met your father at a scientific conference before the War, you see, and a few months later while I was in England he kindly invited me and my sister Lisl to visit his house. We spent a delightful afternoon. You were barely two years old at the time, but I remember you distinctly. An enchanting child, so shy.”

  Charlotte was suddenly her human self again. Her mouth softened. “That would explain why I don’t know you, Herr Stern. I’m astonished you recognise me.”

  “You’re so like your mother. I recall that Mrs Neville was expecting her third child at the time...”

  “That was Madeleine,” Charlotte said quietly. “Mother died soon after her birth.”

  “I know, I heard. I was so very sorry.”

  “But what was she like, my mother? I was so small when she died, I barely remember her.”

  The man held her gaze. His eyes were almost black, very kind. “Shall we escape this crowd and stroll together? You will call me Josef, please. I hate formality.”

  “So do I,” she said.

  Outside, in the cool air of the street, they walked through avenues of trees and into a public garden. Charlotte forgot her thirst.

  “She was very like you,” Josef went on. “She had a glow about her. Hospitable, but rather aloof and fragile; the sort of person of whom they say, ‘She was not meant for this world.’ And I fell hopelessly in love with her, of course.”

  Charlotte was shocked, but his smile made her laugh. “Well, if you only met her once, I still envy you.”

  “I understand,” he said. “So sad, hardly to have known her; such a lovely woman. But many years have passed since then. Your father, is he well?”

  “I - I’m afraid I haven’t seen him for two years.” Odd that she was compelled to be honest, but the stranger felt like an old friend. “I heard his health is not good... but there are certain reasons why I can’t go home.”

  Josef raised a hand. “Please,” he said. “I don’t mean to intrude. Shall we talk of something else?”

  “If you don’t mind.”

  “Very well. How did you like the ballet?”

  “I thought it was wonderful. It’s a shame the audience were too stuffy to realise it.”

  Josef chuckled. “I am inclined to agree. Also a shame Madame Lenoir took the theme so literally, however.”

  “I don’t think it was at all literal!”

  “No, no, but she lifted the story we all know straight off the page. She didn’t look behind it, to other versions, the derivations. For example, did you know that the myth of Eve’s creation from Adam’s rib may have been a misinterpretation of an ancient relief?”

  “No,” Charlotte said, fascinated.

  “The relief sho
ws the goddess Anath, watching her lover Mot murder his twin Aliyan. The goddess is mistaken for Eve and Mot for Yahweh, who is actually driving his dagger beneath Aliyan’s fifth rib, not removing the sixth.”

  “Indeed? Why are we never told these things?”

  “It wouldn’t do to disbelieve the official version, would it? Still - of course she had to use the familiar creation story, or no one would have understood.”

  “Are you a scholar of Hebrew mythology, Herr - Josef?”

  “Oh, it is only an interest; I moved from science to psychology, which seems to have helped me understand nothing at all about life...” For a moment he stared at the ground, lost in thought. Then he glanced sideways at her and smiled. “Still, let us be glad we have people like Lenoir to make great art out of sorrow.”

  They walked on through the park, at ease with each other. Charlotte found Josef’s company soothing; he was courteous yet outspoken, reminding her of Karl. In fact his face captivated her, because Josef was so very much as Karl might have looked - had he stayed mortal, and grown older. And then I would never have met him, she thought with a stab of pain.

  “My dear, you looked unwell for a moment,” he said. “Or unhappy?”

  “No, it’s nothing. Memories.”

  “You know, I neglected to ask if you are married.”

  Without thinking, she said, “I don’t know,” and was astonished when he burst out laughing.

  “Of all the things to be unsure of! ‘Do you believe in God?’, ‘Will it rain next Thursday?’, ‘Are you married?’ - ‘Oh, I’m not quite sure.’ Forgive me, I’ve no right to make a joke of it. Perhaps you are separated from your husband and don’t want to be.”

  “Something like that.”

  “And it’s none of my business, anyway.”

  She half-smiled, to show she wasn’t offended. “And you?”

  “I never married. The only girl I loved turned me down, which was very sensible of her; I could never have been faithful, and would have made her terribly unhappy.”

  They stopped under a tree. Streetlights made the foliage a web of radiance. “At least you are honest,” said Charlotte, looking up at him.