Gideon had never seen this woman before, he was sure. He would have remembered. Her startling blue eyes took them both in as they reached the stretcher that had just been handed down.
“No talking to the prisoners,” one of the guards told them, but neither of them paid him any mind.
Gideon looked at the shrunken figure strapped to the stretcher. She did look dead. Her eyes were closed and her face stark white.
“Anna?” David reached out but a guard blocked him.
“She’s all right,” the blue-eyed girl said. “Or she will be.”
A guard shoved her. “No talking!”
Fury blossomed in her wonderful eyes, but she didn’t spare the guard so much as a glance. “You’re David,” she said.
This time she ducked out of the way and the guard pushed thin air.
“Yes, her brother,” he replied.
She simply nodded and went on, following Anna’s stretcher up the steps.
The guards lowered another stretcher, and Gideon pulled David out of the way. “Who is that girl?”
David shook his head. “I never saw her before.”
“Go after them. See if they’ll let you talk to Anna,” Gideon said. “I’ll wait here until all the women are inside.”
Luckily, there were only a few women on stretchers. They all seemed to be alive, too. Some even smiled weakly when he checked each of them. They wouldn’t be alive much longer if they didn’t end the hunger strike, though. He was certain of that.
By the time he got inside, the courtroom was in chaos. The women from the first wagons were trying to learn the welfare of those who had apparently been confined in the infirmary, and all of the women wanted to check on the women on the stretchers, in spite of the guards’ attempts to silence them all and get them seated.
When Gideon located his mother in the crowd, she was embracing the girl with the amazing eyes, and the look on his mother’s face told him how much the girl meant to her. She must be one of the leaders of the movement. How strange he’d never seen her before.
His mother released the girl and bent down to check on Anna, whose stretcher lay at their feet. David called out to them from where the spectators were being contained on the other side of the room, but she must not have heard him over the din.
Gideon could see that Anna’s eyes were open now, and she was responding to his mother. Thank God for that.
Meanwhile, the women who still had some strength were assisting the weaker ones to lie down on the benches. Others sank down wearily, leaning on each other for support. Finally, his mother took a seat on the bench nearest Anna’s stretcher, and the other girl—who on earth was she?—sat down on the floor beside Anna and took her hand.
Only then did Gideon find David and squeeze onto the bench beside him.
“Did you see Anna?” David asked.
“My mother and that other girl are looking after her. Her eyes were open just now, and she seemed to be talking.”
David ran an unsteady hand over his face. “If the judge doesn’t release them, I swear I’ll carry her out of here myself.”
The bailiff was trying to bring the room to order, and after a few more minutes he finally succeeded. The press were the last to find their seats in the very back of the room, and when even they were quiet, the bailiff told everyone to rise. Judge Waddill swept into the room.
He was, Gideon had learned, a true Southern gentleman who could be counted on to be fair. That was all they could ask.
• • •
“Don’t talk,” Elizabeth whispered to Anna, who had been trying to tell her something for a while now, but the room was too noisy and Anna’s voice too weak for her to hear.
Elizabeth was pretty weak herself. She heard the fellow up front call out, “All rise,” but she didn’t think she had the strength to do it. Mrs. Bates, bless her, put a hand on her shoulder and held her down in case she felt like trying, which she didn’t. Many of the other women didn’t rise, either. Some didn’t even seem to be conscious.
The judge came out in his black robes, but she didn’t get a good look at him until everybody sat down again. He didn’t look cruel, but you could never really tell about some men. Sometimes the most charming ones were the meanest in the end. This one started talking, and Elizabeth found she liked his voice, all deep and slow and easy with his Southern accent.
She knew she should pay attention. This was important. She really needed to know what was going on, because she needed to know what was going to happen to her. If they let her go, she’d have to figure out how to keep Thornton from finding her. But somewhere between the workhouse and the courthouse, her head had started to ache. Now it was pounding, and she couldn’t seem to concentrate for more than a few minutes at a time. At least she was sure Thornton and his goons weren’t here. That was really all she needed to know.
Through the haze, she did see Whittaker. He’d brought some of his thugs along with him, too. They were all done up in their Sunday best, which reminded her of a poster she’d seen once with a picture of a gorilla in a dress suit. The comparison made her smile.
The judge wasn’t happy about something. Miss Burns wasn’t here. And Mrs. Lewis. That was it. They’d disappeared from the infirmary days ago, she knew. Whittaker was supposed to have produced all the prisoners, though, and the judge wanted to know where they were. Too sick to come, Whittaker said. He’d sent them back to the D.C. jail. Matron Herndon was there, too. She was trying to look concerned, but she just looked like she was constipated.
The attorneys argued for a while, and Elizabeth’s attention wandered. She could see the back of David Vanderslice’s blond head from here. Poor Anna. Her brother had certainly been blessed. Not only was he a male, he’d also gotten more than his fair share of good looks. How sad to have a brother who was more beautiful than you. At least Jake wasn’t prettier than she was. If he was still alive. Poor Jake. She wanted to cry for him but didn’t have the strength.
And that other fellow, the one with David. Who was he? Maybe Mrs. Bates’s son. He was a lawyer, Elizabeth knew, but he wasn’t up at the front with the others. She supposed the women had enough lawyers and didn’t need his help.
Some man got up on the witness stand and swore on a Bible to tell the truth, although Elizabeth could tell just by looking at him that he wasn’t going to do it. Not only was he blinking, he was shifting in his chair and wringing his hands and looking everywhere but at the attorney asking him questions. After a bit she realized he was the warden at the D.C. jail. He was explaining to the judge why he’d sent all of them to the workhouse in Virginia instead of keeping them in his jail like he was supposed to. The judge didn’t like his answers, and no wonder. He didn’t have a single good one to his name.