Odette Speex: Time Traitors Book 1 (32 page)

It was a testament to the strangeness of the moment, that the group standing on the street elicited no comment or second glance. Half of them were a least partially covered in dried pond muck, and the other half were garishly painted with ash streaks down their faces and clothes. They stood huddled indecisively together.

“This is Bradley’s doing,” Odell pronounced. “He’s using the smoke as cover.”

“Smoke without fire?” Simon countered, confused.

“It can be done,” Wu assured him.

“Yes,” Odell confirmed. “The Chinese have the capability, but the smoke bomb is not used in the west until the nineteenth century.” He looked at them with grim satisfaction. “Bradley would know how to make them.”

“Then we need to go!” Odette urged. “We need to find Benjamin Franklin!”

Chapter 35

Cara and Tom
were again left with the coach. The others made their way up Fleet Street walking into the ever-thickening smoke. The city street had the appearance of an eerily silent battleground with ghostlike figures emerging from and disappearing into the smoke.

One of these figures materialized into the familiar wiry physique and sharp features of Hershel Gordon.

“Hey, you there! All of you!” he shouted. “Go back! We aren’t allowing anyone past this—,” he stopped abruptly, his eyes focused intently on Odette. “Miss Swanpoole,” he said and grinned. “I was wondering when you would show up.”

How he recognized her through all the muck, not to mention her male disguise was superseded by the greater mystery of his presence.

“What are you doing here?” she demanded.

“Seems your friend Ethan Graham overheard a very strange conversation you had a couple nights ago with Mister Wright here.”

Odette and Gabriel exchanged an uncomfortable look as he continued, “Pretty unbelievable conversation at that. Stuff of fantasy, if you ask me.” His keen eyes had taken in the rest of the group and stopped on Odell. “Thing was, Graham recognized a certain element of the story. A crystal key.” He nodded with satisfaction as he watched Odell stiffen. “Seems, in his line of work, there were rumors about a man with a crystal pendant…”

“Sir Archibald Brandon,” Fancy declared with certainty.

“Right you are, young miss.”

Odette huffed, “That doesn’t explain your presence.”

“I went to my magistrate, Sir John Fielding, to explain—”

“He believed you!” She interjected, astounded.

Hershel laughed. “I’m not such a fool. I didn’t tell him everything. I didn’t have to. Sir John, he’s a nous one. He’s been suspicious of certain happenings. Rumors and the like, orders he’s received to ignore events, crimes—such as those committed against you.

“I told him from my investigations that Sir Brandon was likely involved in forming a private army. Maybe intent on the assassination of a colonial diplomat, you know, aggravating relations between the Crown and the colonies and such. So he sent me and two other runners to the Royal Society with the expressed purpose of bringing Mister Franklin to him at Bow Street.”

Odette had to admire his ingenuity but was becoming increasingly nervous. “Where is Mister Franklin?”

“At The Royal Society,” he answered with confidence. “We aren’t moving him until the smoke clears.”

Odette made as if to pass him, but he stopped her. “We have things under control.”

“Control!” she practically shouted. “You have nothing under control until you have Brandon! He just blew up a house full of people! This smoke is his doing. You have no idea what he is capable of!”

The others pressed in on Hershel arguing and talking at once. Odette felt a light tap on her shoulder. Wu jerked his head toward the back of the group, and she followed as they silently moved away and across the street. The smoke soon swallowed them up, and the argument grew distance and muffled.

“Crane Court is just up here,” he informed her, as they turned onto a wide alleyway bordered on each side by brick residences. It dead-ended into a large house with a staircase up to the door.

“That’s The Royal Society,” Wu said, pointing at the large three-story building.

The smoke was less here but still thick enough for caution. They crept along the wall and up the stairs. Odette felt a sense of foreboding as they easily opened the door and entered the foyer to the club.

She looked around at the modest interior and wondered where the members congregated when she felt Wu violently jerked from her side. She turned just in time to see a heavy gloved hand strike her across the forehead.

*

Odette’s first sense was the taste of blood mingled with the smell of fresh air. Her head hurt like the devil, and she groaned, trying to sit up.

“I wouldn’t move if I were you,” a familiar, hateful voice said through a haze of pain. “The fall would definitely kill you.”

She slowly opened her eyes and propped herself up on one elbow. She blinked several times and tried to focus on the fantastical scene before her.

They were perched on a scaffolding of sorts spread out like a web between several chimneys. Sir Brandon stood next to a cannon-like gun secured to the scaffold with heavy chains. From the edge of the platform, the roof sloped away precipitously to where she could see a modest, walled garden below. In the garden, Odette saw men milling around. Some were in groups, others in solitary contemplation.

She drew in a deep breath and opened her mouth.

“I wouldn’t if I were you,” Sir Brandon purred. “Or else your chink friend here goes splat.”

He had worked the tip of his boot underneath Wu’s still, bound form and made a motion as if to thrust him off the edge of the platform.

Odette snapped her mouth shut.

“Good girl.” He drew his foot away. “Of course I could just kill you to keep you quiet, but I’m conducting a little experiment.” He pursed his lips and clasped his hands together just under his chin. “Now. After I kill all those men down there, will you still be here? Or, will you go poof?” He gestured with his hand, bringing his fingers together then spreading them out as if releasing a powder into the air. “You know, I have no idea what’s going to happen. I’ve done so much tinkering, so to speak, with history in just this one night, it could go either way. With Drake and his minions gone you may not survive this night, even if Franklin doesn’t. And he won’t”

She pushed herself painfully up to lean against the brick chimney. “Why?” she asked as she wiped blood from her eyes. “Why?”

Sir Brandon raised his eyebrows. “Why what, Odette? Really, you must be more precise in your questions. Why the experiment? Why the gun? Why the
hate
?” he said through gritted teeth, leaning close to her his hands balled into fists.

He straightened and swallowed his anger. “People say love is the ruling passion. But I have found hate to be its equivalent.” He gave a huff of laughter. “I wouldn’t expect you to agree, considering your efforts to save the life of this boy over the many down there in the garden. Or do you believe you can somehow save them all?”

He walked over to the gun. “This is a Gatlin gun,” he informed her. “It’s not supposed to make an appearance in the annals of warfare for another hundred years or so. However, it can be made with relative ease using materials available in this time. With some modifications, it is still a very efficient weapon. I can kill everyone in that garden within two minutes.
And
, kick your little gook friend off at the same time.”

Odette gave a choke of laughter.

“You find this funny,” he sneered.

“This!” she exclaimed gruffly. “All this, because my mother dumped you! A rejected lover!” She breathed in some blood and coughed. “How banal.”

The blow landed hard against her cheek. Her head exploded again with pain.

“You think you know!” he spat through gritted teeth. “Your mother took everything from me! The vain, self-centered bitch! She took the love you only get once in a lifetime. The all-consuming love you can never feel for another, ever again!” He gripped Odette by the lapels of her jacket and forced her to look up into his distorted face. “She laughed at my ‘boyish stupidity.’ She used her connections to cast doubt on my character. My career faltered, but worse… far worse, is that she kept my own son from me!” He threw Odette vehemently away from him and strode over to the gun.

“You’re mad!” Odette forced herself to focus. “You’re not our father!”

“I am not
your
father. That particular honor belongs to whatever alternate version of me existed in your timeline.” His face took on a faraway look. “I wonder. Do we replace ourselves when we move through time? It appears Odell did.”

Sir Brandon grinned delightedly at her. “Which means, after tonight, your father will be no more.” He shook his head in mock disappointment. “Looks like you’re doomed no matter what, Odette.”

He pulled a pistol from his breast pocket and strode over to her. “Odell
is
my son. Your mother denied it, but I am not an idiot. I can add and subtract as well as the next man. And there were no others in the time we were together, your mother’s protest notwithstanding.” He bent down next to her and put the pistol to her head. “One night I went to her at the ballet. I had seen Odell at the university, spoken with him, worked with him. He was brilliant. I wanted to be part of his work. I wanted him to know who his father was.”

He pushed the gun point hard against Odette’s temple. “She wouldn’t have anything to do with me,” he said, his voice tight with anger. “She denied I was his father.” He shook his head hard as if trying to dislodge the troubling memory. “I don’t know what came over me. Next thing I knew, I was holding a bloodied letter opener and Ivy lay dead.”

He stood up and dropped the gun to his side. He looked over the edge and muttered to himself, “Where is he?”

Sir Brandon turned back to her and reached up to take the crystal key from around his neck. He held it out in one hand. “I had already stolen much of Odell’s technology. I never really planned to use it. But I knew the police, if not Odell, would eventually discover my crime. So I did everything I could to discredit his work, and then I ran. Once I arrived here, it was all so easy. I got everything I wanted. I thought, why not? Why not change history so I can get everything I want in the future as well.”

His eyes glittered insanely as he leveled the pistol at Odette. “Doesn’t everyone want to be king of the world?”

She closed her eyes.

The loud report echoed through the night. She felt nothing—no pain, no searing flesh—nothing. It took her several seconds to realize she was still breathing. That she was still in the world. Odette opened her eyes. Sir Brandon’s body lay slumped over the Gatlin gun.

Standing straddled across the eves of the roof was Benjamin Franklin. The pistol in his hand still smoking. “I don’t,” he answered coldly.

For such an elderly and portly gentleman, Odette thought he was really quite agile. He covered the few short feet to the platform without slipping or bobbing on the steep roof. Once there, he came to her and placed his folded handkerchief against her forehead. “I don’t think your skull is cracked, but you are going to have a scar.”

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 greatly 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.