She looked at him in dumb wonder. “Pistons and Coal Fire,” she croaked weakly, “how the bloody…”
He walked over to Wu and pulled him away from the edge. Untying his bonds, he bent down to sniff. “Opium. He’ll have a headache in the morning, but it won’t be as bad as yours.”
He walked back to her and stopped to pick up the crystal key. He handed it to her. “This is yours, I presume.”
“My brother’s,” she answered. “I’m not sure there’s a place for me in the future.”
“From what I can gather, the fact of your continued existence is something of a glitch.”
“You could say that.” She laughed and then grimaced in pain.
They both heard shouting from below. People were running and trying to find the source of the gunfire. She heard Gabriel calling her name.
Benjamin Franklin leaned over the railing. “Up here, men!” he barked. “Use the attic window. There’s a ledge by which you can pull yourselves up.”
He knelt down next to her and took the cloth away from her head. She could hardly credit his presence as he examined her wound more closely.
Answering her unasked question, he said, “I think I told you once that I was very observant. So when those runners were suddenly replaced by two very large, nasty-looking characters who assured us we were safer in the garden… well… I naturally was curious.” He smiled wryly. “I also don’t like doing what I’m told. I assert myself… but nicely. It’s the role of a diplomat.”
He squinted looking at the wound. “A curious mind understands much,” he continued. “So I wondered why they wanted us outside. As a student of tactics, I imagined it made us more vulnerable. So I just looked up and there you were. Hiding in plain sight is, of course, an age-old strategy. After all, very few people look up these days.” He sighed loudly. “I thought to raise the alarm would likely end in tragedy, so I came up here myself. Not my wisest move perhaps, but it worked out.”
He pressed the handkerchief back against her forehead. She hissed at the pressure. “Sorry about that.”
Odette heard clamoring just below the roof and knew they would soon be joined by others. “You listened to me,” she said in a strangely accusatory tone.
“Odette!” Gabriel had made the roof and was hastening perilously to her side.
“You came armed,” she continued as Gabriel dropped down beside her with Odell close on his heels.
“You said, ‘wise men don’t need advice,’ ” she concluded as Fancy assured herself that Wu was alive, before joining the others on the now dangerously overcrowded platform.
“You didn’t let me finish,” he replied with mock severity. “And I’m rather good with the turn of a phrase. I was going to say, ‘Wise men don’t need advice… fools won’t take it.’ ”
She laughed despite the pain and then fainted dead away.
Epilogue
Dr. Odell Speex looked out the window of the old brownstone onto a quiet tree-lined street. It was late afternoon and only a few cars were parked along the curb. He was a busy man and typically, at this time of day, immersed in his work at the university.
But the meeting was of long standing. The representative of the estate playing phone tag with his assistant for several weeks before a mutually available time had been agreed upon. He interrupted his work to come home with the expressed purpose of getting back to it as quickly as possible. The meeting had been short. Only enough time to give him the package.
He looked down at the letter in his hand. It was old—of a very soft and fine vellum. Not of the paper sort but of animal hide, most likely calf or lamb. The handwriting was strong and elegant:
London, July 28, 1765
My dearest brother,
You may find this letter rather hard to believe. I sometimes wonder myself if it is all a dream. But I open my eyes each morning to the same world. One where I have found great happiness and purpose.
Accompanying this letter is a journal. It recounts in detail my story—our story. If we succeeded, you will find yourself in a world of tremendous potential and equally abundant risk and heartbreak. In other words, life. But a life where you and all those who strive are the equals of anyone else. A world where you are not defined by your birth but by your accomplishments. I believe it will happen. Even here, hundreds of years in the past, I feel the rumblings of a new world.
However, my dear Odell, this letter has a far more personal mission. It is to turn you from a dangerous path. One perhaps you have not yet contemplated, nor ever will. I have worked every day since our last parting and will continue to work in hopes that this path can be avoided, that your story will be different than the one that led us all to the brink of annihilation.
Read my journal with the understanding that with great ability comes great responsibility. Read this letter with the knowledge that I love you and miss you every day. That no matter how alone you may feel, you are never truly alone. You are never far from my thoughts.
I wish, how I wish, there was a time where our worlds were one. But time flows for me now in only one direction and when you read this I will be long gone from the world. That is how it should be. In truth, I should have never existed. I am grateful for the time I had.
As always, your loving sister,
Odette Wright (nee Swanpoole, nee Speex)
He had read the letter over at least twenty times, the journal only once. He sat down at his desk with the laptop flipped open. The miniature propped up against the desk lamp.
A quiet knock on the study door prompted him to quickly place the letter, journal, and miniature into the top drawer of his desk.
“Yeah,” he said casually.
She poked her smiling face around the door to be followed by the rest of her. She was dressed in slim black slacks and a simple white button-down shirt. Anyone could tell just by looking at her that she was a dancer.
“Okay, Odell, if you think you can get out of one of mom’s dinner parties…” She made air quotes around “parties.” “…by hiding in your study, you are sadly mistaken.”
“No,” he said with an answering smile. “I had planned to miss the dinner by hiding out at the university, but had to come home for a meeting.”
“Oh, was that the man I saw leaving? What was it about?”
He shook his head absently. “Just work stuff.”
She came around the desk and looked down at his computer. “Hey, are you ‘googling’ me? Proud of me, eh?” she said, referring to her recent elevation to soloist. She bent closer and furrowed her brow. Over his objections, she snatched up the laptop and wandered over to the sofa.
“Who is Odette Wright?” She began to scroll down the screen. “Mid-eighteenth century. Swanpoole. Are you looking into Odette Swanpoole? Why?”
“I donno—just came up in conversation with someone today,” he replied evasively.
She looked at him through narrowed eyes. “Really? Odette Swanpoole came up in conversation with one of your nerdly colleagues?”
“I didn’t say it was a colleague.”
“Who else do you talk to,” she scoffed. “Anyway if you want to know about Odette Swanpoole, you should just ask me. I’m practically named for her. Or really, Swan Lake.” Odell grimaced and she laughed. “I know—mom! She couldn’t help herself when she knew she was having twins.”
Odette swept her long blond hair up into a ponytail using one of the ubiquitous elastic hair bands girls always wore around their wrists. “She was a famous ballerina of the time. Some contemporary accounts even describe her dancing en pointe.” Odette looked skeptical. “But there is significant doubt about their veracity. Since most ballerinas in the mid-eighteenth century didn’t even use slippers but heeled shoes.”
She leaned back against the cushions. “Whatever the case, her dancing was apparently dazzling enough to keep Noverre in England. She danced only briefly before retiring from the stage, much to the frustration of David Garrick. Even in that short time though, she was great
ly admired. No one knows what she looked like since there are no existing portraits or paintings of her. Which is kind of odd for an artist of her stature. In written accounts, though, she is described as dark haired and complexioned. Some speculate she was of Romani descent. Her background is very much a mystery.”
She closed the laptop and leaned forward to focus her blue gaze intently on her brother. “The most interesting thing, though, is that she’s now emerging as a feminist icon of sorts. My friend, Ava, you know, the college professor. She’s all over this. She says it’s almost as if someone deliberately tried to erase her from history. But they are finding traces of her everywhere. Like some kind of eighteenth-century ‘Where’s Waldo.’ She worked with Mary Wollstonecraft and other early feminists, like Fancy O’Sulliven, to found hospitals and firmly establish women as the gatekeepers of midwifery and obstetrics. Something that has remained the same, even to this day. She was also known to have close friends of different races and worked hard for the abolition of slavery.”
Odette stood and placed the laptop back on the desk.
“Maybe, Ettie, you should write a dissertation on her,” Odell said, only half joking.
She looked contemplatively off into the distance. “You know, if I did, I would begin with the explosion that killed so many of the noble heirs.”
“Yes.” He nodded knowingly. “The Succession Crisis of 1757. Why that particular event?”
“Well, because of that the laws were changed,” she answered. “The laws of succession anyway, to allow women to inherit. There were so few male heirs left. Unless they wanted the wealth to go to a lesser branch of the family or, worse, outside the family altogether, it had to change. It was okay when that happened every once in a while, but not to scores of families all at once.”
She walked to the door and opened it. “Anyway I think it allowed women, not only daughters of the nobility, but women like Odette Swanpoole, to do more in the public realm. It’s sad to think of a tragedy like that opening the way to gender equality…” Her voice trailed off and she shrugged her shoulders. “Listen don’t flake out on me tonight. Okay? No running off to your secret, mad-scientist laboratory to do God knows what.”
She gave him a baleful stare, then laughed and left.
Odell gazed at the closed door for a long while before opening the drawer and taking out the documents and portrait. The artist had done a masterful job. Her countenance was serene and her lips curved with the first hint of a smile. But the gold-flecked eyes looked back at him with muted sadness. He could sense her need to reach him—to make him understand.
Odell felt a sudden panic grip his throat. He didn’t know what to think. He didn’t know how to gauge his next move. He was uncharacteristically paralyzed by indecision. That Ettie knew who she was, that anyone knew who she was… he shook his head in disbelief and took a deep breath.
Finally he stood and walked over to the bookshelf. He pulled three large volumes from their places to reveal a wall safe. Odell punched in the combination and turned the lever, opening the thick metal door.
At first glance the safe looked empty, but a random shaft of light caught the crystal surface of a small object that glittered tantalizingly. Odell pushed it to one side and placed the journal and portrait next to it. He locked the safe and replaced the books.
Odell sighed and groaned audibly at the thought of enduring one of his mother’s interminable dinner parties. He then smiled to think that at least Ettie would be there, with furtively rolling eyes and painful grimaces, to share in his boredom.
He looked down at the fragile vellum letter he still held in his hand and, folding it carefully, placed it in his jacket pocket next to his heart.
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Epilogue
Odette Speex: Time Traitors Book 1 Page 34