A Dance in Blood Velvet by Freda Warrington Page B

curious,” said Ilona, “to know how Katerina escaped from the Weisskalt ? Something is happening. Did we imagine that we could kill Kristian without consequences?”

CHAPTER FOUR
THE EBONY GATE
    T he morning was fine, the cool air loud with birdsong. Benedict decided to walk rather than cycle to Lancelyn’s; the extra time would help him to collect his thoughts.
    The small town, Ashvale, lay between the rugged, bracken-covered hills of Leicestershire in the east, the mining villages of South Derbyshire in the west. Ben’s cottage was off the main street, while Lancelyn lived downhill on the opposite side of town, in a large red-brick Victorian villa set in its own grounds.
    There was little traffic about in Market Street; a few horse-drawn carts and delivery vans, cyclists, a crimson tram crossing the bottom of the road on its way to the station. Roofs shone under the ice-blue sky, trees were netted with faint veils of green. Ben enjoyed the stroll but his superficial confidence gave way to anxiety when he thought of confronting Lancelyn.
    The truth was, Benedict didn’t know his brother well. Lancelyn was eighteen years older, and had left home before Ben was three. All Ben recalled was a faceless youth who’d had constant shouting matches with their parents. He remembered hiding in his room during the fights.
    Why Lancelyn left, he didn’t find out for years. His parents refused to discuss their elder son. As far as his mother and father were concerned, Lancelyn was dead. It was only through tactless relatives that Ben knew he was still alive.
    So to Ben, his older brother became a figure of mystery. His parents, strict and religious, discouraged his friendships with “rough” boys in the village, so Ben created an invisible playmate: Lancelyn.
    In those days, they lived amid wild hills near the Peak District in Derbyshire. Their huge, eccentric folly of a house never felt like home to Ben. It was more like living in a cathedral. The rooms were of bare stone, cavernous and echoic, with huge stained-glass windows in every room. On the dullest day there was colour, while sunlight threw floods of ruby and emerald light over his father’s collected paraphernalia: brass candlesticks, incense burners, painted icons in starbursts of gold, crimson velvet cloths, paintings of the Madonna and saints. In later life, Benedict realised that his father had loved the trappings of religion as much as he loved God Himself.
    This rare atmosphere of symbols and colours, of naked stone and lush rich cloths, permeated Ben in a strange way.
    His father was a schoolmaster who always walked the two miles to school with his son. Ben lived for weekends, when he could venture out alone to explore. He loved the hills rising through the mist, their near-vertical flanks grazed by sure-footed sheep. Streams and waterfalls poured over rocks in the valley below the house. There were rumours of caves, too, although he never found them.
    The imaginary “Lancelyn” was always with him. Ben pictured him as a shining, handsome hero from a Boy’s Own adventure. Lancelyn led, Ben followed. The image stayed with him into adulthood.
    Ben was nineteen when the Great War destroyed his dreams.
    He served in the trenches in the worst of conditions, enduring cataclysmic battles. While he was there, the first letter came from Lancelyn.
Dearest baby brother,
    Forgive me for never writing before. I wanted to. When I realised you were old enough to be dragged into this disaster, I couldn’t bear to think I might lose you without even having said “Hello”. Do you remember me at all? I still see you as a red-faced toddler covered in egg and jam. I can’t believe they’ve sent you out there to be shot at.
    I couldn’t write to you at home. Mother would have destroyed the letters. Whatever she’s made you think of me, I am not the Anti-Christ. Come home safely, so I can meet you and explain...
    The letter began a correspondence that kept Ben from outright