She hated the coppers, every last stinking one of them, but she’d never been so happy to see anyone in her life. They were just standing around, though. They couldn’t just stand around. She needed them to act.
The women stood in clusters, a good three dozen of them at least, clutching their gaily colored banners demanding the right to vote and looking nothing like the harridans the newspapers had described. Just a bunch of upstanding ladies in their fashionable coats and ridiculous hats and skirts so rebelliously short you could see the tops of their high-button shoes. The newspapers had described the suffragette riots and the wild women who had to be taken kicking and screaming to jail, but these women merely looked determined. And calm. Much too calm to get themselves arrested.
Elizabeth slowed her pace, acutely aware of the men on her trail, but she had to appear calm, too, so she’d fit in. She joined the closest group of women and tried not to sound breathless or desperate. “What’s happening?”
They looked at her in surprise, three respectable women who saw what they thought was another respectable woman.
“They sent us home,” one of them said.
“Home?”
“The judge told us to go home,” another woman said in disgust. Younger than the others, pale and blonde and not quite pretty, she had blue eyes that burned like the heart of a flame, making up in passion what she lacked in beauty. “But we didn’t go home. We came right back here.”
Elizabeth frowned in confusion. “You were already in court today?”
“Yes, just an hour ago,” the blonde girl said. “They arrested us yesterday. All of us.” She waved to include the rest of the women on the sidewalk in front of the White House. “Someone said this is the largest picket line of our campaign. But they didn’t have room in the jail, so they told us to go home.”
“Can you imagine?” the first woman asked. She was older, well into middle age, but the same passion burned in her eyes. She seemed familiar somehow, although Elizabeth knew she’d never seen her before. “Of course we came back. President Wilson must take notice.”
Elizabeth saw them then, Thornton’s two thugs. He hadn’t come after her himself. He was too good for that. They’d just come around the corner, their black overcoats flapping because they hadn’t taken the time to button them. But they’d stopped dead at the sight of so many women and the cops milling around the edges of their demonstration.
“Yes, President Wilson must take notice,” Elizabeth said. “I don’t have a banner.”
The blonde girl smiled and offered hers. Elizabeth glanced at the words, something about President Wilson sending men to fight for freedom in Europe when American women still weren’t free. She didn’t care what it said. She turned her back on her pursuers, silently daring them to accost her now, with so many witnesses.
She held up the banner, struggling to keep the raw November wind from snatching it. “We demand to see President Wilson!”
She strode toward the nearest copper, defiant and angry because she was just a woman and didn’t dare let those two men catch her because she could never defend herself against them.
The blonde girl followed her. “Yes, we demand to see President Wilson!”
Others took up the cry and moved to join her, their bodies a living barrier between her and the two men. They closed around her as one creature, united in purpose, many voices with a single message, crying for recognition.
For one horrible moment, Elizabeth was afraid the coppers would ignore them, but then a shrill whistle rent the air, cutting through the women’s chants. They’d just been waiting for an excuse. The coppers moved as one, too, their shouts and their shoves breaking the women’s momentum, forcing them back. Rude hands ripped the banner from Elizabeth’s grasp and threw it to the ground. The blonde girl cried out as she stumbled, and Elizabeth instinctively grabbed her arm, holding her upright as the cops herded them backward.
No, you idiots, not toward the two men! But when Elizabeth managed a glance in their direction, she couldn’t see them anymore. The roar of engines drowned out the women’s screams as the police vans pulled up. The cops yanked open the rear doors of the Black Marias and shoved, pushed and, when the women stumbled or faltered, literally threw them inside.
Elizabeth didn’t resist, but a fat copper with onions on his breath still sent her sprawling onto the dark, filthy floor of the van. The stench of old urine and vomit and fear nearly choked her, but female hands lifted her onto one of the rough benches that ran along the sides.
“Are you hurt?” the blonde girl asked.
“No, no.” Elizabeth managed a quick glance at the other women’s faces before the doors slammed shut, plunging them into darkness. The tiny windows up near the roof in the front of the van allowed only a few rays of light to penetrate.
“Thank you for helping me back there,” the girl said. “I might’ve been trampled if I fell.”
“What happens now?”
“Haven’t you been arrested before?”
“No, I’m new. I just arrived in the city yesterday.” A lie, but then, she hardly ever told the truth about anything anymore. Would she even remember how?
“I didn’t think I’d ever seen you before. My name is Anna Vanderslice. I’m very pleased to meet you.”
“Elizabeth Miles.” A half truth. “I’m pleased to meet you, too.”
Other women murmured their names, but Elizabeth couldn’t make out their faces in the gloom.
“You were quite brave, Miss Miles.” This was the first woman who had spoken to her, the one she’d thought was familiar. For some reason, she seemed even more familiar in the dark.
“I only wish I could have been here weeks ago.” Another lie. “I don’t want to make a fool of myself, so could you tell me what to expect when we reach the jail?”
“I suppose we’ll go before the judge again,” Anna said.
“They’ll probably lock us up this time,” another woman said.
“I would consider it an honor to be jailed,” a voice near the door said.
“Are you frightened?” Anna asked.
Terrified, in point of fact, but not of doing a bit of time. “I would also consider it an honor to be jailed.” But mostly a relief.
“You really are brave, Miss Miles,” Anna said. “I only hope I can follow Miss Paul’s example.”
“Miss Paul?”
“Alice Paul. She’s on a hunger strike.”
“At the district jail,” another woman said. “She went on a hunger strike when they jailed her in London, too. She nearly died that time.”