Gideon didn’t really agree with Devoss, but the man wasn’t completely wrong, either. “I can’t speak for the women, Mr. Devoss, but I do know someone needs to find them and get them released from jail. With your permission, I would like to take a few days to go to Washington City and do just that.”
For a moment, Devoss simply gaped at him, and Gideon knew a moment of satisfaction at having struck his employer speechless. Only one small moment, though, before Devoss’s expression turned thunderous again.
“Why do you need to go to Washington? Surely, they have attorneys there who can see to this matter.”
“I know they do, sir, but”—he hated admitting this to Devoss, but he had no choice—“my mother is also among the missing prisoners.”
“Your mother?” Devoss echoed. “Hazel is a suffragette? I can’t believe it!”
Devoss and Gideon’s parents had been friends their entire lives. Gideon had even suspected Devoss would have courted his mother after his father died if she’d given him any encouragement at all. Gideon waited for the ramifications of his revelation to sink in.
“And she’s missing, you say?” Devoss said, his anger dissipating a bit.
“Yes, sir, and naturally, I feel I must go to her assistance.”
But Devoss’s anger had only dissipated a little. “I can’t stop you, Bates, but I also can’t approve of this conduct. I’ll expect you back in three days.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And if you’re not back in three days, you may consider yourself dismissed from the firm.”
? ? ?
Why was she sleeping in the outhouse? Elizabeth wondered in that last shadowy moment between sleep and wakefulness. Then she opened her eyes and the memories came rushing back. She was in the Occoquan Workhouse, which only smelled like an outhouse.
She pushed the filthy blanket away from her face and rose up on one elbow. The straw mattress crackled beneath her. It had provided little in the way of comfort except as a scant barrier against the chill of the stone floor. At some point during the night, she had finally fallen into an exhausted sleep, but it hadn’t done her much good. All around her the rest of the women were also beginning to stir in their cages.
Anna awoke with a yelp of terror and sat bolt upright on her cot. Mrs. Bates, who had shared Elizabeth’s mattress, automatically reached out a comforting hand even though she was only half-awake herself.
“Oh, oh, oh, I thought it was just a nightmare,” Anna said, hugging herself and rocking back and forth.
“I’m afraid not,” Mrs. Bates said. “And we must make the best of it. Think of the stories you’ll tell your children one day, Anna. They will be amazed to learn how brave you were.”
“I’m not brave at all!”
“Then pretend to be,” Elizabeth said. “Don’t let them see you’re afraid, or it’ll be that much worse for you.”
Mrs. Bates stared at her in amazement, but Elizabeth just pushed herself to her feet and tried to shake the wrinkles out of her skirt. In the light of day, their prison looked even worse. The cells were black with years of dirt, and the guards had told them they were in the men’s punishment cells.
Not exactly what Elizabeth had signed on for.
“Mrs. Nolan!” a guard called.
“I’m here!” The elderly woman who had told off the judge yesterday came to her cell door.
He unlocked it and pulled her out.
“Where are you taking me? Are we being released?”
The guard simply locked the door, grabbed her arm and started pulling her along with him.
“Where are you taking me?” she cried again, but the guard didn’t even glance at her. All the other women had rushed to the bars of their cells, and they called out encouragement in the moments before she and the guard disappeared from sight.
“Where are they taking her?” Anna asked.
“They’re probably going to let her go,” Mrs. Bates said. “As a mercy, because of her age, I’m sure.”
Mrs. Bates wasn’t a good liar, but she was good enough to fool Anna. Or maybe Anna just wanted to believe her.
But Mrs. Nolan was only the first. One by one, each woman was summoned by a guard and escorted out. None of them came back.
About half a dozen had gone when Anna started crying. Elizabeth wanted to shake her.
Mrs. Bates sat down on the cot beside her. “Now, now, there’s nothing to cry about.”
“What’s happening to them?”
“I don’t know, dear.”
“They’re either releasing them or moving them to the women’s section,” Elizabeth said.
Anna looked up in surprise. “How do you know?”
Elizabeth wanted to say that even a worm like Whittaker wouldn’t dare keep a bunch of respectable females locked up in the men’s section with male guards to ogle them for more than one night, but she couldn’t appear too knowledgeable about jailhouse life. “It only stands to reason. What else could they do, sell them into slavery?”
Mrs. Bates said, “Miss Miles is right, dear. It only stands to reason.”
“Elizabeth Miles,” the guard called.
Elizabeth sighed. “Here.”
It was one of the brutish guards from last night. He grinned, showing blackened teeth, as he unlocked the door. Elizabeth gave him her best glare and shook off his hand when he would have grabbed her. Annoyed, he gave her a little shove with his stick, but she’d been expecting it and hardly even stumbled. Head high, she strode past the other cells and through the door into the yard.
“Ain’t you gonna ask where we’re going?” the ape taunted.
She shot him another glare, the one she’d practiced in the mirror until the Old Man said she had it right. “No.”
He looked like he wanted to crack her over the head with his stick, but he apparently thought better of it. Beating a woman last night during the confusion might be excused, but doing so in the light of day with possible witnesses might not be so wise. For all he knew, she was the daughter of a millionaire. She could certainly glare like one, as she well knew.
She’d been walking toward the building where they’d waited last night. When she reached the door, she stopped expectantly, and the ape actually opened it for her. One small victory, she thought.
Several clerks sat at the two desks in the large room, and one of them asked her name and checked her off a list. The ape left with the name of the next woman, and the clerk took her to an office down the hall a ways. Warden Whittaker sat behind a big, bare desk looking like a toad wearing a cheap suit. He didn’t get up.
The clerk pointed at the straight-backed chair sitting square in front of Whittaker’s desk. Elizabeth sat, folding her hands primly in her lap, and waited. The clerk handed the warden a sheet of paper and left.
Whittaker studied the paper for a long moment, while Elizabeth studied him. A small man who wasn’t aging well, he seemed shrunken inside his clothes. A big black birthmark covered his temple, like a spider that had settled there to read over his shoulder. She bit back a smile. He didn’t look like a man who would take kindly to being laughed at.
“You’re a long way from home, Miss Miles.”
“Women come from all over the country to support the cause.”