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

by Melanie Karsak

  “Salvatore?” he said, seemingly shocked.

  “Anthony,” Sal said with familiarity in his voice.

  “Salvatore!” the man yelled and pulled Sal into a hug, kissing him on both cheeks. The man turned and looked at me. “Chi è questo?”

  “This is Beatrice. My wife,” Sal said.

  Beatrice? Both Anthony and I were stunned to silence. I raised an eyebrow at Sal who simply smiled lovingly at me.

  “English, eh? Well, she is still beautiful! Oh, Salvatore, you old devil. Someone finally captured you! And I thought you would never find a girl good enough for you. Too bad your mama is not alive to see it. She would be so proud of you,” Anthony said with a laugh then turned to me. “Mrs. Colonna,” the man said happily, kissing me on both cheeks.

  “Beatrice, this is Anthony Arcumenna,” Sal introduced. “We grew up together in Rome.”

  “Pleasure to meet you, Signor Arcumenna,” I replied.

  “Come in, come in. My goodness, I cannot believe I am seeing Salvatore in Venice. And I thought you swore you’d never return to Italy.”

  “Yes, well, under the right conditions, we all outgrow our past,” Sal said simply.

  I looked deeply at Sal. I had never questioned him about his former life, his youth in Rome. It suddenly seemed odd to me to think he had a mother, a mother who would have been proud of him for marrying me… well, at least Beatrice. And I hadn’t known he’d forsaken Italy.

  “Let’s have a drink. It is early, but I like this news,” Anthony said with a laugh and poured us all a small glass of sambuca. I tried not to drink mine the way I knew how.

  The two old friends made conversation; I paid attention. They exchanged news on common friends and people from home. They reminisced a bit. Their youth was typical of most boys, except they were both geniuses. Then Anthony turned serious, asking Sal about the matter with his brother. “He is what he is,” Sal said dismissively, but I saw a line of worry furrow on Sal’s forehead that I’d never seen before. “I do have a favor I need help with, old friend,” Sal added.

  “Of course. Anything,” Anthony answered.

  Sal motioned to me to give Anthony the kaleidoscope. I unwrapped it, leaving the wrapper safely stowed in my bag, and handed it to him.

  “Ah, now, this is something,” Anthony said, pulling a jeweler’s monocle from his pocket and pressing it into his eye.

  “We’ve come by it with a bit of trouble attached, I must warn you,” Sal said. “I can see there is some tampering in the colored glass display, but I cannot make out what is there without taking it apart, which we do not wish to do. What do you see?”

  As Anthony looked over the kaleidoscope, he too translated the Ancient Greek lines. “The symbols on the side, Salvatore, are not just decorative. These are all symbols of the Goddess Venus: the doves, swans, apples, shells. I use these in my jewelcraft. Ah, and here I see the anemone flower. Do you know the story of Venus and Adonis, Mrs. Colonna?”

  I shook my head.

  “It is a very romantic tale fit for a young bride. The Goddess Venus once loved a mortal man, Adonis, with a depth of passion she had never felt for another. Adonis, a rough young youth who liked the hunt, flirted with danger in an effort to impress his Goddess lover. Though Venus told him she did not need his bravado and advised him to be cautious, Adonis insisted on showing his strength. He hunted a wild boar, piercing it with a spear. But the boar would not be defeated. It snapped the spear from its side and ran Adonis through with its tusks, mortally wounding him. As Adonis lay dying, Venus came to his side and wept bitterly. Adonis died in her arms. In her grief, Venus transformed his spilled blood into the anemone flower. The red blossom, which can bloom and die in the same strong wind, is a memorial to the fragility of love. That is why the anemone is called the wind flower. A tragic story, is it not, Mrs. Colonna?”

  “Truly,” I replied. I suddenly felt like I needed another drink.

  “Without dismantling it, I can only tell you it is very old,” Anthony said, handing it back. “And by that, I would guess it is from the ancient world. It is quite a find. I’ve never seen its like. You say it came along with some trouble?”

  “Indeed, so I would appreciate it if you did not mention having seen it—if anyone asks. Now… let’s have a gift for my bride. Let me see your cases, Anthony.”

  Anthony rose. “Oh, indeed! Yes, yes, let me see. Let’s have a nice ladies’ cuff,” the man muttered distractedly as he began pulling cases from the shelves. He set several in front of me. Inside were beautifully crafted cuff watches. I looked them over. I could not help but notice a petite watch decorated with freshwater pearls crafted to look like cattails. They surrounded a watch face adorned with a swan. Gold and brass colored gears gleamed in the background of the watch face. Dragonflies with topaz wings and abalone shell lily-pad charms decorated the cuff.

  “That one,” I said, pointing to it.

  “Ah, of course, Mrs. Colonna. After such an excellent story, that is the right choice. After all, swans are the very symbol of love.”

  Anthony looked at Sal who nodded permissively then boxed up the watch. Sal thanked Anthony heartily, passing him an uncomfortable amount of money, and promised to stop by to see him again before we returned to London. Sal asked again for Anthony’s discretion, and we left. By the time we were out of the room, the ticking of the clocks had given me a headache.

  “Your friend is very sweet, dear husband, but his head must pound all day long,” I said as I leaned against the wall at the bottom of the stairs. I rooted around my bag for the laudanum. I pulled out the bottle and turned from the crowd to take a drop. I offered the bottle to Sal who imbibed as well.

  Sal handed me the box containing the watch. “For my Lily,” he said with a smile.

  “Oh Sal, it was too expensive. Please, let me pay you back.”

  Sal shook his head, and as he put the box into my satchel, he leaned close to me and kissed my neck. “I liked you as Mrs. Colonna,” he whispered, wrapping his arm around my waist.

  I grinned. “Beatrice?”

  “Well, who else could lead me to heaven but Beatrice?” Sal leaned back and looked deeply at me. He had a sentimental look on his face. Perhaps taking him out of his workshop had been a bad idea.

  “Sal… I didn’t know you had forsaken Italy. Why did you agree to come with me?”

  “Did you give me a choice?” Sal replied. He stroked my cheek. “I would not miss out on a chance to be with you.”

  I laughed nervously. “Let’s find Angus and Jessup,” I said, giving him a quick kiss, then led us back toward the crowd.

  The piazza thronged with people. The smells that had formerly delighted me now made me feel nauseous. My head was aching, the bright sunlight hurting my eyes. I put on my dark glasses and followed behind Sal. It was reaching tea time and the market was packed. The crowd of people bumped and pushed us. I don’t know how, but soon Sal and I got separated. I don’t even know how long I stumbled along before I realized Sal was gone.

  “Sal!” I yelled into the crowd of ladies and gentlemen who glared at me. “Sal!” I turned around in the rushing crowd, but Sal was nowhere to be seen. I walked deeper into the market, thinking I would find Angus or Jessup amongst the tinkers, but I couldn’t find them anywhere.

  I was just about to head back to the gondolas when I realized I was being followed. Behind me, a man in a dark suit tried to look nonchalant as he perused a stall displaying carnival masks. The random nature of my searching made his presence obvious, but in true Lily fashion, I didn’t know I was in trouble until I was already in the middle of it.

  I slipped my hand into my bag and grabbed my sidearm. I turned then and advanced on the man. Startled, he turned and began walking in the other direction. He passed between two tents; I followed him. When I made the turn, he grabbed me.

  “What are you doing in Venice, Lily?” he asked, knocking my gun from my hand then twisting my arm behind my back as he tried to reach into my satchel.<
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  With my free arm, I elbowed him hard in the side. He let go. I turned and kneed him in the crotch. When he fell to the ground, I grabbed my gun and fled.

  Thankful I had forsaken Byron’s dainty heels for my boots, I hiked up my skirts and took off through the crowd. I turned back to see the man picking himself up off the ground. I ran. I rushed through the crowds, dodging between the tents, then under the arched walkways of the piazza to an alleyway behind the square. I ran into the belly of Venice, my assailant pursuing me. I dodged between buildings then paused, peering out of an alley to see the man talking to two other gentlemen also dressed in dark suits. While I could not make out their words, they were speaking English. All three men had sidearms drawn. Taking a deep breath, I slid down the alleyway. At its end, I found myself stuck between a four-foot wide trench and the alley leading back to the street and the men who pursued me. I pulled my dress up to my knees and taking a running jump, I leapt across the water.

  “There she goes,” I heard one of the men yell. He spotted me just as I landed on the other side. I ran between the buildings, dodging children and workers on velocipedes. I turned and looked back to see one of the men emerging from the buildings behind me. I ran over a footbridge, down another street, then found myself cornered between three palazzi. There was no way out. I looked around for a means of escape. To my surprise, I noticed that above the door directly across from me was a façade carving of a swan with an anemone flower in its beak.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  “Go that way,” I heard a man yell from the alley.

  I ran to the door and knocked hard. A confused looking maid answered. “Please, let me in,” I told her.

  She shook her head.

  “Please,” I said, gesturing toward the swan, but the woman did not budge.

  Just then a startlingly beautiful woman with raven black hair and round, gold colored eyes appeared behind the woman. “What’s the matter?” she asked.

  The men’s rough voices floated toward the alley. “Please, let me in,” I said, trying to push my way inside.

  The woman started to push the door closed. “I don’t invite trouble.”

  Desperate, I grabbed her hand. “I have the kaleidoscope.”

  Her big eyes grew even larger. She peered closely at me then pulled me inside. She clapped the door shut behind her.

  “She’s not here,” one of the men called from the alley outside just moments later.

  The woman peered out the window. The midmorning sun shone in on her causing flecks of blue to sparkle in her black hair. After a moment, she leveled her golden eyes on me.

  “Hello, Lily,” she said in a rich voice that poured out of her like liquid velvet, “I didn’t recognize you dressed like that. Please, come with me,” she said, offering her hand. “I’m Celeste. Welcome to Palazzo del Cigno, the House of the Swan.”

  Chapter 13

  Celeste 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.