A Bloom in Winter (27 page)

“ ’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe . . . ”

Victoria paused with a shudder. No. Lewis Carroll’s “Jabber-wocky” was much too frightening for this situation. Her father used to run his fingers through his hair and recite it while making the most horrible faces.
Father!
She swallowed and began again. This time choosing Rudyard Kipling’s “The Bee Boy’s Song.”

“BEES! BEES! Hark to your bees!

‘Hide from your neighbors as much as you please,

But all that has happened, to us you must tell,

Or else we will give you no honey to sell!’ ”

She started softly and then grew louder and louder as the words chased the last of the shadows from her mind.

Her heartbeat and her breathing had both returned to normal, and she racked her brain for the vast reserves of Kipling poetry she had stored there. She wouldn’t think about being alone in a dark place. Alone in a notorious prison where they sent murderers and robbers. Where women lived out their entire lives, forgotten by the world. Victoria whimpered and sank down further under the blankets.

Desperately she moved from poetry to stories: “ ‘This is the story of the great war that Rikki-tikki-tavi fought single-handed, through the bath-rooms of the big bungalow in Segowlee cantonment . . . ’ ”

*   *   *

She must have dozed, but her sleep was marred by unremembered nightmares that woke her each time into an unrelenting reality. Hours later she was awoken by the sound of the bolts being thrown open. She concentrated on the door, praying it was Eleanor.

The light blinded her when it was flicked on and she heard Eleanor’s voice. “I told you I would check on you again.”

“Thank you.” Victoria’s eyes welled up with tears of gratitude.

“Oh, stop it now. I liked you better when you were rude.”

Eleanor let her get up and use the bucket again and then took her pulse. “You’re as fit as a fiddle as long as you’re breathing,” she said. “Now if you promise to be good, I’ll just cuff your leg.”

Victoria promised. Eleanor got her settled again. “I probably won’t see you when I come back on this evening.” She looked at her and shook her head. “Look at you. Your dress costs more than my entire month’s paycheck and yet you weren’t happy or satisfied. I want the vote every bit as badly as you do, but I won’t risk everything I’ve worked so hard for to get it. Crazy girls.”

Dim light shone in the window high above Victoria’s bed and she watched it increase until the bolt was thrown and the door opened. A woman in a gray uniform walked in with another nurse wearing a uniform similar to the one Eleanor had worn.

“I told you she was ready to go,” the nurse said after removing Victoria’s cuffs and giving her a quick examination.

The other woman, who had a stern, unsmiling face, threw a black dress at Victoria. “Change into that and be quick about it.” She turned to the nurse. “She may be ready to go, but I’m not sure where we are supposed to put her. The first-class cells are all taken.”

Victoria tried to hurry, but her fingers were clumsy and she fumbled with the buttons. “If you don’t have any room for me, you could always let me go,” she quipped.

The woman in gray stopped talking and casually pulled up a billy club she had hanging from her belt. Victoria swallowed and began unbuttoning her dress with increased fervor.

When she had finished changing into the plain black wool dress, the woman took her by the arm and led her away. Victoria was almost sad to leave the horrid little room. She didn’t know what awaited her as she was led down one windowless hall after another, and she ached for something familiar.

She was put into a small room about four feet by four feet that had one chair. The gray woman, as Victoria now thought of her, didn’t say a word; she merely pointed at the chair. Victoria sat. And waited.

By the time someone came to get her, she was desperately hungry and thirsty, not to mention she had a serious need to find a WC. The woman who came wasn’t the gray woman, but so much like her that she might as well have been.

“You missed breakfast?” The woman sounded accusing, as if Victoria had done it on purpose. “Oh, Lord. Why me?”

The woman brought her a cup of water and Victoria drank thirstily. “That will have to do you. I can’t get you any extra food.”

Victoria wanted to point out that since she hadn’t had breakfast,
it could hardly be called “extra” food, but she had already learned that lesson and kept her mouth closed.

She was taken down a long hall and into a wide room with a soaring ceiling that went up three stories. On each side of the room were rows of cells stacked vertically, one on top of the other, like children’s blocks. When Victoria looked again, she realized that they were on different floors. They walked through the cavernous space and into another hallway. The walls were mostly stone and brick. At least she wouldn’t have to worry about being trapped in a fire. Holloway castle, as all of London called it, wasn’t going to burn down anytime soon.

They stopped at a locked closet on the way, and the woman handed Victoria two gray woolen blankets, a counterpane, and a white towel. The woman grabbed a large tin pitcher and filled it at a nearby spigot. By the time they finally reached Victoria’s cell, her foot, the one that had been cuffed most of the night, was swollen and sore. She didn’t dare complain, though. Just looking at the billy club caused ripples of fear to crawl up and down her spine. Victoria had never been struck before last night, and she couldn’t believe that she could now be hit for any given reason at any time, and there was nothing she could do about it.

The cell was about ten feet long and five feet wide and the walls were painted cement blocks. Against the back wall of the cell a large barred window overlooked God knew what. In the back corner of the room stood a cot and mattress folded in half, a metal washbasin, a towel, several tin buckets, and a wooden stool. A bare lightbulb hung from the center of the ceiling.

“Make up your bed with your clean blankets and then shut it again.”

When Victoria turned to the bed, trembling, the woman
set the pitcher on the stool and left the room without saying a word. The sound of a lock clicking into place struck terror in her heart, but she clapped her hand over her mouth to stop the cry. She didn’t want to be taken to an asylum, though how it could be worse than this she didn’t know. But if Eleanor said she didn’t want to be there, then Victoria believed her.

Victoria rushed to the window and saw lines of women walking a gravel path around a yard. Around and around they went, with pairs of guards, all dressed in gray, on each corner. The prisoners were all dressed in the same uniform Victoria now wore.

Remembering what the guard had said, she opened the bed and made it up. It took her a minute to figure out how to fold it back up, and by the time she had it latched, she felt a strange sense of accomplishment. Then she sat on the stool and waited.

She wouldn’t send word to her uncle first, Victoria decided. No, if this could be handled by Martha, she would just as soon spare her family the embarrassment. She hadn’t done anything wrong. She hadn’t had any idea whatsoever what Mary had planned. She had screamed, not to draw attention away from Mary but because she realized Mary had an ax. Wouldn’t anyone scream if she saw a menacing woman with an ax? They would believe her and let her go. They had to. She wasn’t a criminal like Mary. She had never been to prison before. No. She would send word to Martha. Martha had probably handled things like this quite often.

Resolve and hope buoyed her for the next couple of hours. The women disappeared from the yard and Victoria was certain that it was lunchtime, but no one came. More hours passed and still no one came. Had they forgotten her completely? Was this how all suffragettes were treated? Was it a punishment?

She had no way to tell the time, except for the shadows
outside that crept longer and longer eastward. Victoria finally pulled apart her bed again and lay on it for something to do. She counted the stones in the ceiling, anything to keep from thinking about her stomach. She drank more water but didn’t want to drink it all in case they really had forgotten her. She wrapped her blanket around herself to fight off the damp chill that was so pervasive she could feel it all the way to her bones.

When had she last eaten? What was it? Breakfast yesterday, she realized. Kippers, eggs, berries in cream. A scone. Her mouth watered. A good breakfast. She always ate a good breakfast. Without warning, the tears came and this time she couldn’t stifle the sobs that wracked her body until, exhausted, she finally let sleep overcome her.

When she awoke it was dark out again and still no one came. She used one of the buckets as a toilet and dipped the corner of her towel in her precious water to wipe her face and hands. The cell smelled strongly of urine and mildew.

It wasn’t until the light clicked off that she knew that she was in very real danger. The entire day had gone by without anyone even checking on her, let alone bringing her food. If suffragettes were going on food strikes, that meant they were being fed, so this couldn’t be a punishment.

They must have forgotten her.

Knowing it would be useless to scream at night in a room made of stone, she felt her way to her bed and crawled back under the coverlet. She would begin her campaign in the morning, trying to get someone’s attention. For now all she could do was rest.

Except that she had slept most of the afternoon and her terror of the dark kept her eyes open and staring into the oppressive blackness that engulfed her. The window, her only source of
light during the day, had transformed into an object of terror, opening into a dangerous, shadowy world. Her imagination ran wild to Dracula and Frankenstein and she felt her chest tighten. No. She couldn’t have an attack. She would die. So she counted and breathed until the tightness lessened. She kept counting until her eyes grew heavy.

She must have fallen asleep again, because by the time she opened her eyes, the sky outside was lighter, though there was no evidence that the sun had actually risen. She waited in bed until the overhead light flicked on. They probably had a schedule and would be taking food around at a set time.

She waited for as long as she dared and then, overwhelmed by hunger, started banging a bucket against the cell door. Every once in a while she would trade that racket with some yelling, but she began growing light-headed from the effort. She banged until her arms ached. Her ears were still ringing when she quit pounding and curled back up on her bed into a ball.

*   *   *

Rowena looked with horror at the building where the car had stopped. She looked at the address again. “Are you sure this is the right address?” she asked the driver.

Kit made a noise deep in his throat. “How often did you say she came here?” he asked Prudence, who sat across from them in his motorcar.

Prudence shrugged and reached for the door handle. “A couple of times a week. And what did you expect? This isn’t the National Union of Suffrage Societies. They can’t afford a nice building. They are probably spending all their money on the cause.”

Rowena felt the sting of Prudence’s retort and held her tongue. This wasn’t about her and Prudence, this was about
Victoria. She followed Prudence out the door and up the stairs, with Kit close on her heels.

Rowena thought Prudence might knock on the door, but she walked right in and stopped still. A small, dark-haired woman stood in the center of the room, packing things into a box. She startled as Rowena crowded her way past Prudence. The woman blinked. “May I help you?”

“Yes,” Rowena said. “Is this the Suffragettes for Female Equality?”

The woman hesitated and then nodded. Her eyes kept darting over to Kit, as if she was concerned with his presence.

“I’m looking for my sister, Victoria Buxton. Have you seen her in the last two days?”

“Victoria?” The woman’s voice went up in surprise. “No, I haven’t seen her in quite some time, actually. I thought she had quit. Some women are just dilettantes, you know.”

Prudence shook her head. “That isn’t like Victoria. I was under the impression she was working quite a bit for you.”

The woman’s eyes kept darting over to Kit, who was moving around the room and looking around. “May I help you?” she finally snapped.

Kit shook his head. “Just looking around.”

“Well, don’t.” The woman tried to soften her words with a smile, but it was obvious to Rowena that she was uncomfortable with Kit’s presence. She turned back to Rowena.

“Well, I’m not sure what she told you, but she didn’t work with us for very long. We liked her just fine, but like I said, she just wasn’t dedicated.”

“Dedicated to the Suffragettes for Female Equality or the Women’s Equality League?” Kit held up a paper and raised an eyebrow in inquiry.

The woman gave him a tight smile. “Either.”

“Why do you have two names?”

Rowena’s neck prickled. Something about this wasn’t right.

The woman smiled again, a public smile meant to soothe. “I’m sorry for not introducing myself, my name is Martha Long. And we have two names because both organizations have very different goals. Two names keep them from being confused. But none of that has anything to do with Victoria.”

“Are you moving?” Rowena asked, nodding her head toward the boxes.

“Just cleaning up,” Martha said. “I hope you find Victoria. She was a very nice girl. Please send word when you do. Now I really should get back to work.”

Tears of desperation filled Rowena’s eyes. In this short conversation she had lost all hope that Victoria would be found quickly. And more than that, she realized that she finally needed to tell her aunt and uncle.

“Were there any protests planned for yesterday?” Prudence asked before they turned to the door.

“Not that I know of.” Martha smiled again. She was altogether too cheerful for someone who should be concerned about a missing worker. “But then again, we don’t know about all the protests every suffragette group has planned. Now if you will excuse me?”