The Pearl Brooch

by Logan, Katherine Lowry

  After removing the chocks from the wheels, he climbed up into the cockpit, where JL was plugging in her aviation headset. Surprisingly, she treated them with more respect. A wide, proud grin replaced the sad, basset-hound look she had been wearing since waking up without a good-morning hug from their four-year-old.

  “What’s up?” he asked.

  She flashed her phone. “Elliott just sent this picture of Blane stomping through the California vineyards.”

  Kevin enlarged the picture. “Look at him. He’s copying Elliott’s arrogant stance.”

  “Seriously? He’s copying you. You stand the same way. You’re both Elliott’s clones. I hope little Lawrence”—she patted her belly—“copies Pops instead. His stance isn’t arrogant.”

  “You’re right about that. He carries himself as the mean ol’ son of a bitch he was as Assistant Deputy Chief Lawrence O’Grady. I don’t want people afraid of my kids.”

  “What? You’d rather people think they’re assholes?”

  “Dad and I aren’t assholes.”

  “Well, at least you aren’t.”

  To show her what a good guy he truly was, he clamped his hand over the back of her head and kissed her like his life depended on it. The kiss was hungry, hard, and over far too soon. God, he loved her. He reached over her and made sure the door was shut properly. “Buckle up, sweetheart.”

  She kissed him back with even more fervor, and he growled against her lips.

  “I was hoping you wouldn’t notice the belt.” She pulled it under her belly and over her hips and adjusted the shoulder strap so it fit snugly between her breasts. When the tongue clicked into the buckle, she glanced up at him. “Satisfied?”

  “Not in the least, babe. And you look sexy as hell in those skimpy white shorts.” He loved the way her clothes hugged this and molded to that. The shorts and halter top looked damn good on her, but he loved her best with nothing on at all, riding him, her heavy breasts in his hands.

  “You have no idea how uncomfortable this is.”

  He gave her an arch look. “The sexy shorts?”

  She rolled her eyes. “The seat belt.” An uncharacteristic dent appeared between her sleek eyebrows, which were a little darker than her brown hair these days, since her hair had turned almost bronze from walking in the Tuscan sun during May and June.

  “I don’t want you bouncing out of your seat if we hit turbulence. And don’t try to unhook it when I’m not looking.”

  He turned his attention to the aircraft. After a call to flight service for his clearance, he taxied to the runway. But before the plane lifted off, he removed a laminated card from his pocket and tucked it into the corner of the instrument panel—his lucky charm. It was a quote attributed to Leonardo da Vinci: “Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.”

  Kevin could have written it. Other than when he was wrapped in JL’s arms or hugging his son, there was no place he’d rather be, especially on glorious days like this.

  The plane soared off the runway. He banked the aircraft and headed east toward Virginia and into an ocean of air. The Cessna, with its decks and rudder, its port and starboard, its logs and small library of aeronautical charts, flew toward a state whose history could be charted back to Jamestown, Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, and the fall of Richmond.

  The flight was uneventful, and JL was asleep before the plane even left Blue Grass Airport’s airspace. Not surprising, since she was up and down all night with heartburn. Being pregnant was harder on her this time, and she frequently swore this was the last one. He didn’t believe it. She wanted a daughter, and so did he.

  Now, as the plane descended on approach to the runway at Chesterfield County Airport in Richmond, she woke up, stretching. “That was a short flight.”

  “You missed some incredible views of the Shenandoah Valley.”

  “I’ve seen them all before. I’d rather arrive rested than awe-inspired.”

  “Now there’s the cynic I love.”

  “What can I say?” She held up her hands. “Beneath all my carefully crafted cynicism, I’m really a romantic at heart.”

  He laughed, then turned his attention to landing the aircraft. For a perfect landing you had to fly a perfect pattern on approach. Airspeed was king. He didn’t want to be too slow or too fast. He notified the tower. “Chesterfield traffic, 32 Alpha Charlie is turning left base, runway five, full stop at Chesterfield.”

  He was a bit high and needed to get down. But he decided not to add any more flaps, bringing the power back instead. He kept the nose down, nailing his airspeed. Ninety on downwind, eighty on base, seventy on final, slowing to sixty. It was a stabilized approach all the way to the ground.

  Just before reaching the threshold, a sudden downburst of wind rocked the aircraft and the wheels hit the ground hard. JL screamed, grabbed the edge of the seat with one hand, the door with the other.

  The plane bounced back into the air a few feet, and when it came down again the left gear collapsed, so the Cessna touched down only on the rear and right front wheels. The plane swerved and the left wing tipped toward the ground.

  Kevin was hit with a surge of adrenaline. He could recover from this, but he could do nothing to reassure JL except bring the plane to a stop without killing them.

  The plane skidded off the runway into an open field, and the wing dug into the grass and whipped the plane into a sharper left turn which he was powerless to correct. He muttered a string of obscenities, then stood on the brakes. They were useless. The impact must have severed the hydraulic line.

  Operating on training and reflexes, he kept the plane from flipping over as it plowed through a chain-link fence and uprooted a post, which then slammed against the windshield and created a star break, obscuring his vision.

  JL screamed again.

  The plane hit a tree, the nose crumpled, and the tail tipped up before slamming back on the ground, hitting them with a double whammy, snapping Kevin’s teeth together so hard he bit his tongue.

  He tasted blood. His brain was rattled. But the plane had stopped, and it wasn’t engulfed in flames.

  They’d survived.

  He found the master switch and killed the electrical power.

  Then he looked over at his bride. A lump in his throat cut off his breath.

  JL’s white shorts were spotted with blood.

  3

  Paris (1789)—Sophia

  The colonnades and shops emptied as the mob, stinking of sweat and rotting teeth, raced into the streets with pitchforks and pruning hooks raised high in the air, yelling, “Vive le roi. Vive Monsieur Necker, Vive le tiers état! Liberté.”

  Long live liberty. Long live the third estate.

  Sophia didn’t have time for political demonstrations. She was on a tight schedule. If she didn’t find Vigée Le Brun’s studio and commission her portrait today, there wouldn’t be enough time for the artist to complete the painting.

  Her plan was to start her search at the Louvre. Any artist with an atelier there would know where to find Le Brun. But to get to the Louvre, Sophia had the daunting task of navigating through the throng of revolutionaries. She knew the rules of walking through crowds: stand straight, square her shoulders, and set her elbows at a defensive angle.

  Sophia asked a woman pinning a cockade to her brown wool dress, “Qu’est-ce que se passe, Madame?”

  “Le roi a embauché des étrangers pour détruire nos récoltes,” the woman said.

  The king hired foreigners to destroy our crops? That made absolutely no sense to Sophia.

  “Nous devons nous défendre.”

  “Où va tout le monde?” Sophia asked.

  The woman pointed. “À l’Hôtel National des Invalides.”

  “Quelle est la date aujourd’hui?” Sophia asked, but the woman looked at her oddly, then disappeared into the crush of rioters. Maybe she didn’t know the date. All Sophia
wanted was confirmation the year was 1786.

  While she tried to figure out what was going on, hundreds of Parisians spilled out of narrow side streets, as if the gates of hell had been lifted and the hordes set loose. A fitful breeze exacerbated the stink of so many unwashed people in one place.

  She was jostled, pushed, and compressed into a sea of filth and anger.

  Going home and starting the adventure over would be the smart thing to do.

  She reached into her pocket, surreptitiously pulled out the brooch, and lifted the pearl on its hinge. She turned slightly and adjusted her sleeve to hide it from those around her. Then she whispered the incantation, “Chan ann le tìm no àite a bhios sinn a’ tomhais an’ gaol ach ’s ann le neart anama.”

  Nothing happened.

  She said it again, a louder whisper this time, but still nothing. She rubbed the brooch, trying to warm the pearl. But there was no fog and no roller-coaster ride through the time warp. She gave it a third try. When nothing happened, fear reduced life to slow motion. It was a sure sign of insanity when she tried to do the same thing over and over but expected a different result.

  The brooch was not going to take her home yet.

  Shots rang out, and men yelled, “Prendre les armes.”

  White gunpower smoke burned her eyes. Good God. Weren’t thousands of pitchforks and other makeshift weapons dangerous enough without bringing out the guns?

  An unstoppable force with a destination in mind swept her along in the middle of the insanity. When the Hôtel National des Invalides came into view and thousands of peasants rushed the hospital to take possession of the guns stored there, a single overriding truth became obvious:

  The mob was preparing to storm the Bastille. She didn’t have to wonder about the date now. It was July 14, 1789.

  Her fingers clenched around the brooch, something solid to keep her grounded. The stone had never been an unreliable partner before. It had always taken her to the exact place and time she commanded, and two weeks later returned her home.

  Now, it was off by three years, and had abandoned her in the middle of a revolution for two frigging weeks. But it had brought her here and would take her home again. Keep that in mind and stick to the plan. The start of a revolution caused only a minor course adjustment. Vigée Le Brun was still in Paris. Sophia could still get her portrait painted.

  All she had to do was escape thousands of enraged revolutionaries.

  She shuffled forward. If she didn’t keep moving, she’d be knocked down, run over, stomped on, and wouldn’t survive the next hour, much less two weeks. There had to be a way to break free of the sardine-like mob packed shoulder to shoulder in the narrow street.

  The city stank worse than sixteenth-century Florence. Open gutters clotted with waste ran along the middle of the streets. Even if she could, she didn’t dare look down to see where she was stepping.

  If the mob was on its way to the Bastille, then people were going to die. Just because she wasn’t from this time didn’t mean she was exempt from becoming a casualty of Bastille Day.

  Time didn’t stand still or move rapidly, either. It just existed in paralyzing madness. The horde swept her forward in an endless wave of anger and threats.

  The rumor buzzing through the rabble said there was a trove of two hundred fifty barrels of gunpowder stored in the cellar of the Bastille. Sophia didn’t know if it was true, but the mob certainly seemed to believe it. Should a spark reach the gunpowder, the Bastille would be leveled, possibly killing everyone inside and out, including Sophia, stuck somewhere in the middle of the teeming horde.

  The Bastille was razed around Bastille Day. But did it blow up, or was it demolished?

  Another rumor reached her that Governor de Launay was surrendering. She didn’t know who he was, but the idea of surrender was a positive sign. Then came another one—Monsieur de Corny had asked for a parlay. Again, a good step forward. No one wanted to shed French blood, but the revolutionaries were demanding the gunpowder, and the forces inside the Bastille were refusing to give it to them.

  Parlay, please!

  Then news reached them that the drawbridge to the first courtyard was breached. That excited the mob further, and the horde pushed forward. Then the second courtyard was taken as well, and the mob smelled victory.

  As Sophia neared the second courtyard, Bastille defenders were taking positions on the roof, their muskets aimed at the throng.

  A man shouted from the roof, “Withdraw or be fired upon.”

  Somebody near Sophia yelled, “He won’t fire.”

  Sophia yelled, “They will. Get back!” Her voice was muffled by the crowd surging forward. People were going to be killed.

  I’ve got to get out of here. Now.

  But no matter where she turned, she couldn’t find an opening.

  The fortress had stood on the east side of Paris for four hundred years. And, today of all days, the crazed mob intended to raze it.

  The order to fire was given, and the men on the roof fired their muskets. The heavy lead balls shredded the flesh, organs, and bones of the rioters. Screaming and moaning, they fell to the courtyard’s paving stones, wounded and dying.

  Shaking, Sophia ducked, as did others. The white smoke blinded her. The chaos was disorienting. The courtyard reverberated with the sounds of more gunshots and men barking orders. The barrage of gunfire momentarily shocked the mob, but the rioters gathered their forces and charged forward again, discharging their weapons at men on the roof, some hitting their targets. The second charge was met with another blistering volley of musket fire. This time the crowd fled farther back, leaving the second courtyard littered with corpses.

  Sophia huddled with a group of women. Now would be the time to escape, but she would be noticed if she ran in the opposite direction, making her an easy mark.

  How was she going to get out of this nightmare? When the rebel artillery moved forward to set up and take aim at the final drawbridge, it created a small opening in the crowd.

  This might be her chance.

  She angled her way toward an open gate leading to a different section of the courtyard and a pathway out of the Bastille. Should she take it?

  She who hesitates is lost. I know. I know, but…

  The rebel artillery cannon fired. Rolling vibrations shuddered up through the rocky ground. The third courtyard was breached, the rebels charged forward, and their screams reached a deafening pitch.

  She bolted, hurrying through the second courtyard and away from the battle. A strong wind carrying thick white smoke and the charcoal smell of gunpowder swirled around her. The drawbridge was only a few yards away.

  Two men carrying cannonballs stepped out of nowhere, both wearing coarse trousers and jackets that hung loose on their skeleton-like frames. Their stares were unnerving. Using her peripheral vision, Sophia hunted for other avenues of escape. Forward was the only way out.

  The man on the right straightened with arrogant confidence and pointed at Sophia. “There’s de Launay’s daughter trying to escape.”

  Sophia had a flashback to when she was attacked in Florence. She would not allow it to happen to her again.

  Both men dropped the lead balls and advanced on her. Her instinct said to run. Her training said, Prepare to fight.

  She balanced on both feet. “You’ve got the wrong girl. I’m not anybody’s daughter.”

  She angled her body toward the men to present a narrower target. The position was front-weighted, with the forward leg more bent than the back leg, preventing her from being pulled forward. Damn skirts.

  Her moves confused the men, and they stopped. But one of them, the most insolent of the two, leered suggestively and elbowed his crony, nodding toward her.

  “Come on,” she said, bravely tempting them. She was tired of all this crap.

  Then wham.

  She was grabbed from behind, knocking off her hat and smashing the feather as the two men in front rushed forward.

  Great. Three a
gainst one.

  She pushed against the man holding her and kicked out, adding more force to compensate for the weight of her skirts. Amid a blur of blue, she slammed a foot into the crotch of one of the men. He dropped and rolled, groaning.

  The other man had the reflexes of a rattlesnake. He yanked her skirts and twisted them around her legs, preventing her from kicking again. Then, out of pure meanness, he slapped her. If her clothes hadn’t been so restrictive, her elbow would be smashing up against his nose with a sickening crunch.

  With one man crushing her in his iron grip and the other lugging her legs, they rushed back to the rebels, yelling, “We found de Launay’s daughter trying to escape.”

  Her emotions were scattered into twisting layers of fear, helplessness, and outrage, but they quickly organized themselves into a steely determination to survive. “I’m not de Launay’s daughter,” she yelled in French. “You’ve got the wrong girl.”

  A brute of a man dragged a filthy mattress out of a room facing the courtyard. “Bring her here. We’ll use her to get her father to surrender.”

  Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.

  Several terrifying possibilities for how they intended to persuade de Launay came to mind. “I’m not his daughter.”

  Blessed art thou amongst women…

  A lump lodged in her throat, threatening to cut off her air. Stay calm. Fear would only impair her judgment. And right now she needed all her senses razor-sharp and focused.

  …and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.

  They threw her onto the mattress. She landed hard enough to bite the inside of her lip, and she tasted the tang of iron.

  The taste of blood spiked her fighting spirit. With her legs free, she rolled off the other side. The man in the loose jacket raised his foot to kick her, and before she had even a split second to prepare, his boot crashed squarely into her sternum, expelling every bit of air from her lungs and sending a shock wave of pain through her. She sailed backward and rolled.