“Why did she go on a hunger strike?” Elizabeth asked. “She won’t be of use to anyone if she’s dead.”
“That’s just it,” the older woman said. What was her name? Mrs. Bates. “The government can’t let her die. They would be humiliated. A hunger strike is the perfect way for the powerless to force the powerful to capitulate.”
Elizabeth sincerely doubted that, but she wasn’t going to argue with this bunch.
“They force-feed her, of course,” Anna said.
“How do they do that?”
“They put a tube down her throat and pour milk and raw eggs into her,” Mrs. Bates said.
Elizabeth felt Anna’s slender body shudder beside her.
“Miss Paul is a true heroine of the movement,” someone else said, and other voices agreed.
The women continued to chat about what an honor it was to go to jail, their excitement almost palpable. They were fools, of course. Elizabeth usually spent a good portion of her energies staying out of jail. Why get yourself arrested over the right to vote? Men voted all the time, and she’d never noticed it making their lives any better.
“Will they really keep us in jail this time?” Anna asked.
God, I hope so, Elizabeth thought. She didn’t know where she’d go if they didn’t.
“You brought your toothbrush, didn’t you?” Mrs. Bates asked.
“Yes, and a few other things, just in case.”
“I’m sure the judge will be angry to see us again so soon,” someone else said.
In Elizabeth’s experience, judges were always angry about something or other, but would he really lock up so many ladies? She might have to cause a disturbance in court to ensure that she was safely locked away, at least.
At police headquarters, the cops booked them, and those who hadn’t had their photos taken before were mugged, too. Elizabeth scowled for the camera, hoping for a bad likeness. Another trip in the filthy, stinking police vans took them to the courthouse. As predicted, the judge wasn’t happy to see them. One woman got up and made a speech about their cause, but Elizabeth just kept watching the door. Lots of people came in wanting to see the show, and she wondered if Thornton’s thugs had dared follow her here.
After a lot of arguing, which was mostly the women pointing out how unfairly they’d been treated, the judge finally banged down his gavel to shut them up. Elizabeth wasn’t surprised: judges rarely paid any attention to fairness. He pronounced them guilty of obstructing traffic.
Obstructing traffic? Was that all he could come up with? Nobody laughed, so apparently it was. Then he started pronouncing sentences. The red-haired woman who had given the speech got six months, and most of the rest of them got three months, except for one little old lady who looked to be about a hundred.
“Mrs. Nolan,” the judge said in a voice he must have thought sounded kind, “I am only sentencing you to six days in deference to your advanced age, but you may avoid even that by paying your fine of twenty-five dollars. I urge you to do so, since a stay in jail might be too severe and bring on your death.”
She looked like twenty-five dollars might not be too hard for her to scrape together, and Elizabeth would have advised her to take the deal, but the tiny old woman pulled herself up as tall as she could go. “Your honor, I have a nephew fighting for democracy in France. He is offering his life for his country. I should be ashamed if I did not join these brave women in their fight for democracy in America. I should be proud of the honor to die in prison for the liberty of American women.”
Most of the women nodded their approval, although Elizabeth wondered how many of them would be willing to die for the old woman’s liberty. Even the judge looked ashamed of himself, but he didn’t back down. They never did.
He sent them off to the district jail to start their sentences.
Three months. The district jail was a roach-infested dump, but she’d be safe from Thornton there, and she’d have time to figure out what to do next. Maybe she’d be able to get a message to the Old Man. The guards started herding the women out and putting them back in the vans.
Anna slipped her arm through Elizabeth’s. “I wish I were as brave as you.”
Elizabeth looked at her in surprise. “I’m not brave.”
“Oh, but you are. The way you took my banner and marched right toward the police. And now, you aren’t a bit afraid to go to jail.”
“Of course I am. The trick is not to let it show.”
Now Anna was surprised. “How do you do that?”
One of the first lessons the Old Man had ever taught her. “Just smile.” She forced her face to obey, and she felt her own fear slipping away.
“But how can you . . . ?”
“Just do it.”
Tentatively, Anna stretched her mouth, but it didn’t look anything like a smile.
“Pretend I’m a fellow you want to notice you.”
Anna blinked uncertainly, and her gaze locked with Elizabeth’s for a moment. Then she smiled. She really smiled.
Elizabeth smiled back.
“It works!” Anna said.
“Of course it does. Don’t let them see how you really feel inside. Don’t give them the satisfaction.”
They were among the last to be loaded into the waiting vans. The other trucks had already left. Elizabeth scanned the busybodies on the sidewalk who had gathered to watch the suffragettes getting their just punishment, but she didn’t see any potential danger in the moments before they slammed the van doors shut. Three months from now, she’d walk out of the district jail and disappear. She’d never have to worry about Thornton again.
But when the van doors opened a short time later, they weren’t at the jail. They were at Union Station. The guards dragged them out, prodding the laggards with billy clubs. Elizabeth knew better than to resist a cop with a club, and she moved along with the others toward a waiting train.
“Where are they taking us?” Anna asked.
“I don’t know.”
One of the other women said, “They’re sending us to Virginia, to the Occoquan Workhouse.”
Elizabeth shuddered and swallowed down hard against the bile in her throat. She knew all about the Occoquan Workhouse.
• • •
Oscar Thornton looked up from his newspaper when the boys finally came back to his hotel suite. “Well?”
They exchanged a glance that told Thornton all he needed to know.
Rage boiled up in him, but he knew better than to let his anger show unless he could use it to his own advantage. He’d lost control once today and look where that had gotten him. “You lost her.”