Chasing the Star Garden: The Airship Racing Chronicles (Volume 1) (11 page)

Chapter 13

C
eleste led me through the kitchens to a sitting room in the front of the house. She asked me to take a seat while she exchanged whispered words in Italian with someone unseen. Moments later the back door of the palazzo opened and shut. Pensive about Sal and the others, I paced the room.

“Please, Lily, you’re safe here,” Celeste said. Taking a seat opposite me, she gestured for me to sit.

“I was with my crew, a friend… they will be looking for me.”

“I’ve sent a messenger to Ca’ Mocenigo,” Celeste said.

“Wait, how did you kno-”

“Gossip flows like the water in Venice. When Lord Byron moves, people talk.”

“All right. Then how about you tell me what the hell is going on?”

Celeste smiled at me as she leaned forward to pour us both a cup of tea. Her hands were long and elegant. Her light blue chiffon dress was cut so low that it revealed the very tops of her nipples. While the back of the gown was floor length, the front was cut into a very short skirt. Her long legs were covered with garters and white silk stockings; she wore painful looking high heels with metal rosettes and spiked bronze heels. I looked around the room. Nude statuary and painted images of lovers decorated the place.

“Sugar or lemon?” she asked with a smile.

“Who are you?”

Celeste raised an eyebrow at me in assessment. “Sugar,” she decided and stirred two cubes into a cup and slid it toward me. “It depends on who you ask. I am known as a courtesan. The House of the Swan is a house of love.”

“A brothel?”

“Not quite. I am a courtesan… the lovers I take are of a certain level, a certain repute.”

“I see, a high class brothel,” I said and paused. “You said, ‘it depends on who you ask.’ What does that mean?” I forced myself to sit and drink tea in hope it would calm my nerves.

Celeste frowned at my bluntness. “My associates and I are practitioners of Venus. We are, in fact, priestesses of her cult, her ancient and secret worship. That truth would have us all in the stocks, but since you’ve made it here with the kaleidoscope, it seems you are trusted.”

“By whom?”

“Venus.”

“Okay then,” I said, having heard enough. I set the cup down. Again, the tea leaves had fallen into the shape of a swan. “I really don’t know why someone passed me the kaleidoscope or what I am supposed to do with it, so why don’t I just give it to you and be on my way.”

“Lily,” Celeste said, looking at me very seriously, “we need you. That is why the kaleidoscope came to you.”

“Need me for what?”

Celeste sighed. “A very ancient treasure is about to fall into the wrong hands. We need to recover it and secret it away before that happens. But we needed the kaleidoscope to find it, and we need you to make the kaleidoscope work.”

“I don’t understand.”

“More than a thousand years ago, a treasure was stolen from the cult of Aphrodite. Our early efforts to recover the artifact were in vain; we never found it. The passage of time has kept this treasure hidden, despite of our best efforts to locate it. Now your countrymen are roaming around the ancient world raping it of all its goods. Your new British Museum is slowly filling with more Ionian artifacts than there are in Greece. My order is on a quest to recover our lost item before your countrymen find it first. What we seek to recover is something very special, not something to display in a museum. It is something your countrymen are desperate to find. We must find her before they do.”

“Her?”

“The Aphrodite of Knidos. The famed sculpture by Praxiteles.” Celeste rose and crossed the room. She took a small statuette from a pedestal and set it before me. “A replica,” she said. I looked at the statuette and realized I had seen the sculpture of naked Aphrodite, her hand in front of her pubis, before. My parents had one in our garden in Cornwall.

“The real statue is no ordinary thing,” Celeste continued. “She is something special. For many years we have promoted a lie, saying she was destroyed in a fire in Constantinople. We thought our lie would help us hide the truth until we could recover her ourselves, but the British are good at examining details. We must recover her before the Dilettanti learn her location.”

I had heard of the Dilettanti before. They were a group of Englishmen, mainly drunken gentry, who had a passion for antiquities. They were, in fact, building up the artifacts in the British Museum.

“The Dilettanti see the Aphrodite of Knidos as a key artifact for their erotic collection, a crowning jewel,” Celeste continued. “She is, after all, the first nude ever sculpted, but she is so much more than that. They are desperate to find her, so desperate they stole the kaleidoscope, our only key to her true whereabouts, from our people in Paphos. They are so desperate, in fact, that you were just on the run from them. Yet, Venus saw you safely here.”

“Why do you need me?” I asked.

“Do you know the Greek dialogue called the
Erōtes
?”

I shook my head.

“In the dialogue it relates the tale of how three friends visited the Aphrodite of Knidos and contemplated the nature of love. The story is a bit absurd, but buried within the tale is the allusion to a second story told by a temple priestess. The priestess tells a story from the time of Praxiteles, nearly 1500 years ago, about a man who so loved Aphrodite that he spent night and day in worship before Praxiteles’ statue. So in love, he hid in the temple one night and made love to her. He was discovered, his lusty guilt left on the statue’s thigh. The man, a citizen of Knidos of high repute, was banished from the city. His name was Dorian Temenos.”

I froze. It was like a ghost had walked into the room. Temenos. My family name. My real family name. That dead girl who had been thrown into the Thames awoke when she heard the name Dorian Temenos spoken aloud; it was her father’s name.

“Yes, the name Dorian is repeatedly used down your family line. It was your ancient ancestor, Dorian Temenos, from Praxiteles time, who stole and hid the Aphrodite of Knidos. Upon his banishment, he secreted away the sculpture. The oracle at Delphi foretold that when the time came to protect her, only a true lover, a Temenos, would be able to recover the Aphrodite. Now you understand why we sought you. With your father dead, you are now the only remaining descendant of the ancient Dorian Temenos. It took us some work to find you. Who would have guessed that the world-famous airship racer Lily Stargazer was actually Penelope Temenos.”

I rose then, took the kaleidoscope from my bag, and set it on the table. Without saying another word, I walked back to the door that led to the alley.

“Lily? Lily, please wait,” Celeste called behind me.

I did not turn around.

I pushed open the back door and entered the alley where I had, not an hour before, scratched like a stray dog. I put on my dark glasses and walked away.

Celeste ran after me. She grabbed my arm.

“Lily, please, we need you.”

“When I knocked on your door you told me ‘I don’t invite trouble.’ Let me tell you the same. I’m really sorry that a bunch of old men are after your statue. And I’m really sorry that you are still running around after ancient prophecies and dead gods, but it’s none of my business. Please don’t bother me again,” I said, shrugging her hand off.

“But Lily, don’t you understand? The statue is not just a statue. She is more; she is the embodiment of love. Will you forsake her? ”

“I’ll forsake her only as much as she has forsaken me,” I replied and walked away.

Chapter 14

I
flagged down a gondolier and returned to Ca’ Mocenigo rattled and confused. When I arrived, I found Vittorio in a worried huff. Moments before Celeste’s messenger had gotten there, Jessup and Angus had gone to the
Stargazer
to look for me, and Sal had gone back to the Piazza.

“Lord Byron would never forgive me if something happened to you,” Vittorio said.

I asked Vittorio to send someone to the
Stargazer
to retrieve the crew then turned to head upstairs. But Vittorio stopped me.

“Oh, Signorina, I nearly forgot,” Vittorio said, looking pale and shaken himself, “there is a British gentleman, a former Parliament member, or so he introduced himself, waiting to speak to you. I did try to get rid of him, but he was insistent. Will you see him?”

“A former member of Parliament?”

“Yes, um, Richard Payne Knight. He is an older gentleman. I believe he is in the antiquity trade.”

Good lord, the day was getting better and better. “I need a minute to get out of this dress,” I said.

“Of course,” Vittorio replied and motioned for a maid to take me upstairs through the servant stairwell.

As I slipped into my regular clothes, I tried to remember anything I knew about Richard Payne Knight. He was, as Vittorio suggested, an antiquarian. Knight’s exploits into Athens were well known; he had spent the last decade cataloging and collecting the ancient world on behalf of the British Museum. It did not take a genius to figure out what he wanted from me.

When I entered the drawing room, he was standing at the window looking down toward the canal. In his youth he had no doubt been impressively tall. He was still more than six feet in height but stood slumped, supported by a cane. His gray hair curled around his shoulders. He wore all black save an expensive looking white silk shirt with a ruffled collar.

“Sir,” I said generously, considering he was likely behind the little jog I had taken across Venice earlier that day.

“Ah, Miss Stargazer at last,” he said, crossing the room to take my hand.

Reluctantly, I extended it. His hand was extremely white, wet, and luke-warm to the touch. When he kissed my fingers, a feeling of revulsion rocked my stomach. “Richard Payne Knight,” he introduced.

“Seems you already know who I am. Would you like to take a seat?” I offered, wiping my hand on my trousers.

“Yes, thank you. Sorry to surprise you, Miss Stargazer. I had actually heard Lord Byron was in residence and had come by to see him. When I learned that it was, in fact, Lily Stargazer at Ca’ Mocenigo, I thought to make your acquaintance. Old as I am, I love the races. We’re rather proud to have a lioness battling it out in the air on behalf of the crown. Do you know some have nicknamed you the valkyrie?”

I did not like his face. His long nose was situated over too wet looking lips. Fat hung two-fold under his chin. While he spoke, his pale colored eyes roved around my body like snakes. “Do they? Can I offer you something to drink?”

“Ah, no, Venetian hospitality has been hard at work in your absence. I am already full on the house wine.”

Terrific, he was drunk. “What can I do for you, Mr. Knight?”

“Ah, straight to the point, are you, Miss Stargazer? Perhaps that is why Lord Byron likes you, aside from your obvious qualities and talents. I’m looking for something, actually,” he said with a tap of his cane. I noticed then that the handle on his cane was shaped like a phallus.

“Aren’t we all?”

He laughed. “Well, what I am looking for is rather special,” he said and looked piercingly at me, “something that was recently stolen from my associates and me.”

“I’m sorry to hear it.”

“Yes, well, it was a rather unique ancient artifact. We suspect it was the work of the ancient astronomer Eudoxus. We are a bit desperate to recover it.”

My patience had worn out. “Mr. Knight, I beg your pardon, British as I am I do appreciate tact, but I am not patient with intrigue. I already told Father Magill that I don’t have what you’re looking for… and in truth, I don’t have anything.”

“Yes, yes, Arthur told us. Miss Stargazer, the Dilettanti are very fond of Lord Byron. He defines a level of eloquence we most admire. As well, from time to time, Lord Byron has been generous to us. We seek only to return his generosity and to support icons of our realm such as yourself,” he said very carefully, measuring his words as one might measure salt. “Our main interest lies in recovering what has been lost—on many levels—and that is all.”

Celeste was right; this was a man on a crusade. I leaned forward and looked closely at him. “I don’t have anything, and I am not interested in being involved in finding anything. I am a simple air jockey.”

The old man eyed me over and considered my words. “I understand,” he said finally. “Well, thank you for your time. We do wish you luck in Valencia,” he said, rising to leave.

I followed him to the door, motioning for an attendant to show him out. He was about to leave when he paused and tried once more. “Lily, did you sell it? You’ve, I’m sorry for saying, a reputation as a bit of an opium eater. Perhaps-”

“Good day, Mr. Knight,” I said, cutting him off. I closed the door on him and listened to the tap, tap, tap of his cane as he was led out of the palazzo. I leaned against the window and watched a gondolier load the old man into one of the sleek vessels. I was about to turn from the window when I heard an odd trumpeting sound. I looked out in time to see a pair of swans fly overhead.

I rolled my eyes. I was beginning to feel like the Goddess of Love was stalking me. I took a deep breath and headed upstairs.