Her head pounding from hunger and terror and guilt, she punched the lumpy pillow and tried rolling over again. She’d just settled when she heard an odd, mewling sound coming from Anna’s cot.
“Are you all right?” she whispered.
“I . . . I’m so afraid.”
Elizabeth sighed. “No one’s going to bother you tonight.”
“How do you know?” Her voice broke on a sob.
“Stop crying! You don’t want the guard to hear you.” No telling what torments those harpies might dream up if they knew Anna was so frightened.
“I . . . I can’t!”
“You have to!”
She sobbed again. “Can I . . . Can I come over there?”
Elizabeth swallowed a groan. At least she’d be warmer with Anna in the bed. “Yes, but be quiet! Don’t draw the guard’s attention.”
A rustle of cloth, and then she was sliding beneath the blanket. After a few moments of wiggling and rearranging, they were spooned together with Anna’s back tucked against her.
The girl’s slender body shuddered with one last sob. “Thank you so much.”
“Don’t thank me. I just wanted to shut you up so I could go to sleep.”
Anna giggled. “You’re so funny.”
Elizabeth rolled her eyes in the darkness.
“I wish I could be like you.”
“No, you don’t. Go to sleep.”
“I want to be strong. That’s why I came to Washington with Mrs. Bates. She was the strongest woman I knew, until I met you. You’re strong in a different way than Mrs. Bates, and I want to be like that.”
Elizabeth didn’t want to know what that meant. “What about your mother? Isn’t she a suffragette, too?”
“It’s ‘suffragist.’”
“What?”
“The term ‘suffragette’ is demeaning. We call ourselves ‘suffragists.’”
“Oh.” Elizabeth hoped she hadn’t revealed her ignorance. There was a lot she didn’t know about this business. “So isn’t your mother a suffragist?”
“Not really, not like Mrs. Bates. She’d never march or anything. Oh, she wants things to change, for my sake, she says. She wants me to have an easier time of it. The world is a dangerous place for women.”
How well Elizabeth knew. “Do you think getting the right to vote will change that?”
“Men will have to take us seriously then, won’t they? It’s not just the vote, you know. Women hardly have any rights at all. Legally, I mean. When my father died, he left everything to my brother. If David decided to put my mother and me out on the street, he could do it. We don’t own anything, not even the clothes on our backs. What would become of us then?”
“You’d get a job, I expect.”
“Doing what?”
What indeed? Anna gave no evidence of being able to fend for herself. “If you ever learn to run that sewing machine, you could do that.”
Anna’s body shook with suppressed laughter. “I’m better at it than you!”
Elizabeth recalled her trials today with the mechanical beast. Most of the other women knew how to sew, but Elizabeth had never felt the need to learn. “That’s nothing to brag about.”
“Which just goes to prove how hard it would be to make my own living. Girls don’t get paid as much as men, either, even for doing the same job. I could never earn enough to keep myself and Mother, too.”
She was right, of course, and Elizabeth didn’t want to work in a factory any more than Anna did. That’s why she’d convinced the Old Man to teach her all he knew, so she’d never have to worry about it. “I guess getting the vote will change all that.”
“Of course it will. I heard Mrs. Pankhurst speak, and she explained it.”
Elizabeth didn’t know who Mrs. Pankhurst was, but she figured any self-respecting suffragist would, so she didn’t ask. “What did she say?”
“It’s all about the laws. Politicians make the laws, and they have to please the people who vote for them, so they make laws to benefit the voters, who are all men. Women don’t vote, so they don’t have to pay attention to what we want. If we could vote, though, they’d have to pay attention, and they’d have to pass the laws we want.”
Elizabeth thought the reasoning was a little naïve. This Mrs. Pankhurst obviously didn’t understand that there was more to politics than pleasing voters. You could lie to voters, but you really had to come through for the rich people. Being a successful politician cost a lot of money, and rich people expected a good return on their investments. Still, getting the vote might give women an edge they didn’t have now. At least it couldn’t hurt. She’d have to revise her opinion of the suffragists. Maybe they weren’t completely wasting their time.
“You need to get some sleep,” Elizabeth said. “Tomorrow will be just as bad as today.”
“Do you think so?”
She knew so, but she said, “No, probably not, because we won’t have to see Whittaker before breakfast tomorrow.”
Anna giggled again. “You’re so funny.”
“Go to sleep.”
• • •
Gideon couldn’t ever remember being so angry. Or so frustrated. He paced the small room again, glaring at the armed guard, who seemed more amused than annoyed by his behavior. Which was probably a good thing. He was armed after all.
“Please, Mr. Bates,” Mrs. Young said. “You’ll exhaust yourself.”
She and Miss Morey were sitting at a table, the only real furniture in what had been the parlor of this house. They were, according to the guard, a mile or so from the workhouse, but they had been allowed no nearer. When they’d been denied entry, O’Brien had gone in search of a cooperative judge and a court order to allow him to see the prisoners. That had been hours ago.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Young,” Gideon said, remembering the manners his mother had drilled into him since birth. “I didn’t mean to distress you.”
“Nothing you do would distress me under the circumstances, Mr. Bates,” she said with a sad smile. “It was so kind of you to come with us today to look after Miss Morey and me.”
Gideon hadn’t done it out of kindness, but he could at least do a little more to look after the ladies. “Aren’t you going to offer the ladies something to eat?” Gideon asked their scruffy-looking keeper.