LITMIR.BIZ

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“Shall we go?”

      Athena, after all, was never late to battle.

      The Duke of Averton’s grand townhouse, Acropolis House, was lit up like the Colossus of Rhodes set down in the middle of London. Even from their place far back in the long line of carriages, Calliope was dazzled by the amber glow.

      Acropolis House was not the usual among aristocratic townhouses. No plain white stone, no mellow red brick set in tidy rows for the duke. No. Acropolis House was like a vestige of medieval London, a fortress of solid, dark rock, turreted and many-chimneyed, the shutters of all its mullion windows thrown open to let out all that candlelight. It was set back in its own small garden, surrounded by high walls. The iron-tipped gates were usually closed and chained tight, but tonight they were open to admit the flood of carriages, the gawking curiosity seekers. As their own conveyance entered the gates, Calliope peered out to find leering gargoyles staring back at her. They topped the gates and lined the walls, discouraging the curious.

      Calliope shivered and drew back into her shawl.

      “You’d think the duke was Charlemagne,” Thalia sniffed. “And look at that obelisk over in the corner of the garden! Twenty feet high at least.”

      “Terribly pretentious,” their father agreed. But Calliope thought she saw a tiny glint of envy in his eyes as he peered at the towering obelisk. “I wonder where he obtained it? The hieroglyphs are quite fine.”

      “Somewhere he had no business being, I’m sure,” Clio said tartly.

      Calliope did not answer, for their carriage at last rolled to a halt before the massive, iron-bound front doors and it was their turn to alight at last. The duke’s footmen, clad in chitons and sandals for the evening, hurried forward to assist them. Calliope held tight to her spear and shield as she followed Clio’s glittering green train into the very lair of the Duke of “Avarice”.

      The foyer, where they surrendered their cloaks to more classically garbed servants, was a soaring, octagonal space with black-and-white marble floors and walls inlaid with dark wood panels. Tall, wrought-iron candelabras provided the only light, flickering on tightly closed doors, on Minoan frescoes of slim bull jumpers, on suits of armour, and bristling maces and swords, and on two massive Assyrian lions guarding one of the doors, as if ancient Persia rested just beyond that portal.

      “My, what eclectic tastes our host has,” Clio muttered, as they joined the line of revellers making their way up the twisting staircase towards the ballroom.

      “To say the least,” Calliope answered, eyeing the treasures tucked in niches. Sculptures, vases and amphorae, even Byzantine icons. They were all impressive pieces, beautifully restored, elegantly displayed. Yet Calliope noticed something odd about them all. Unlike her father’s own antiquities, which depicted the gods and Muses, wise scholars, merry parties, the finest of human endeavours, these pieces all had some element of violence about them. Battles, fights, sacrifices. Even the icons depicted martyred saints: Catherine and her wheel, Sebastian and his arrows, and St George driving his sword into the dragon.

      Calliope turned away from them, disquieted.

      “Or perhaps not so eclectic as all that,” Clio said quietly. “Murder and bloodletting are sadly a part of every civilisation. The duke seems bent on reminding us of that fact.”

      “Indeed he does,” Calliope said.

      The higher up they went, the more the noise of the party grew, a hum that expanded into a vast river of sound as they spilled into the ballroom. Calliope usually had little use for balls and routs that earned the coveted society accolade of “dreadful crush”. There was little real conversation possible amid such clamour, just overheated air and far too much noise. Tonight, though, she welcomed the crowd. It seemed a bright haven of normalcy in this very bizarre house.

      The ballroom was not as eerie as the foyer and staircase, but was merely a large, bright space with white walls and gleaming parquet floor. The domed ceiling was painted with an elaborate fresco of an Olympian banquet where, thankfully, no one was killing anyone else. Around the walls were more ancient frescoes, no doubt snatched from some Italian villa, scenes of cosy domestic life. Marble statues were interspersed with the paintings of scantily clad nymphs, satyrs, gods and goddesses that echoed the costumes of the revellers.

      As Calliope expected, there was no one quite like Clio among the crowds who were forming a dance set or milling among the statues, sipping champagne and nibbling on lobster patties and mushroom tarts—rather unGrecian hors-d’oeuvres, Calliope thought. There was a Minotaur, hulking and hairy, flirting with Ariadne and her ball of twine; several Achilles and Hectors; some giggling Aphrodites with various versions of Ares and Cupid. Their father soon joined a cluster of other philosophers in the corner to argue about how man could examine his reasons to be in harmony with the cosmos, and Thalia was swept into the dance by an Orpheus, their respective lyres deposited with a footman.

      Calliope tucked her spear under her arm and reached for a glass of champagne from a passing servant’s tray. It was the finest quality, of course, a rich, tart golden liquid that blended well with the exotic setting, the swirl of music and laughter. For a moment, she felt transported from London, from everyday life, and lifted into some phantasmagoric fantasy world where reality was gone, vanished amid the sea of masks.

      She held the glass up to the light, wondering if the enchanting little bubbles concealed some hallucinogenic elixir, some Shakespearean “love in idleness”.

      “Is something amiss with the champagne, Miss Chase?” an amused voice asked.

      Calliope whirled around to find their host standing behind her, a smile on his lips. He was as unusual as his house, dressed as Dionysus with a leopard skin over his chiton, his long, red-gold hair loose over his shoulders. Dionysus, the god of wine and revels. Of maddened followers who tore their victims limb from limb in their bloodlust.

      Or stole treasures that did not belong to them.

      Calliope stiffened under his intense regard. “Not at all, your Grace. The champagne is excellent, as are your arrangements. Your house is most—extraordinary.”

      “That is high praise, indeed, coming from a Chase. For you are all experts in art and antiquities, are you not?”

      “I would not say expert. We are all students, in our own ways.”

      “And is your interest strategic warfare?” he said, gesturing towards her Athena shield.

      “Or perhaps olives,” she said flippantly.

      “Ah, yes. For it was Athena who ordered olive trees planted on the hills of her Acropolis. The very foundations of her followers’ prosperity.”

      “Until rapacious thieves ordered them dug up, in search of buried treasure. Now glorious Athens is just a dusty little town. Or so I hear.”

      The duke laughed. “My dear Miss Chase, how kind of you to defend a people you do not even know! Yet if your so-called rapacious thieves did not dig on the Acropolis, think what would be lost to us. So much beauty and learning. Is it better that these things should moulder in the ground, disintegrating in the care of people who have no regard for them?”

      Calliope grudgingly had to admit that he said nothing she herself had not argued. But his smug tone of voice, his patronising smile, made her want to quarrel with him. To slap that expression off his face. She shrugged, and drained her glass of champagne.

      “Come, Miss Chase, let me show you one of the treasures that would have been lost for ever,” he said, taking the empty glass from her hand.

      “The Alabaster Goddess?” Calliope asked.

      “Are you trying to gain an early glimpse of the masterpiece of my collection? No, she will be revealed later. At the right moment.”

      “One last chance for her to be admired before she is shut away?”

      “She is hardly a cloistered nun. She is being taken to a place where she can be properly protected, unlike other antiquities in our fair city of late,”

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