Breathless and terrified and nearly hysterical, clinging to each other until no one knew who was really helping whom, they finally staggered back to the hideous safety of the workhouse. Only when they reached the familiar sewing room could Elizabeth be certain the baying of the hounds was now just an echo in her head.
Elizabeth and the other six women who had been out with her collapsed onto their chairs at the sewing machines, unable to do anything but gasp for breath. After what seemed an age, when she could breathe almost normally again and finally became aware of her surroundings, she sensed a current of unease that had nothing to do with their return.
The women who had stayed behind were stiff and silent, their eyes guarded, their lips pursed.
“What happened?” Elizabeth asked the one nearest her.
The woman glanced around to make sure no guard was near. “They took Miss Burns.”
Elizabeth looked around, too. Sure enough, the woman with the fiery red hair was nowhere in sight. “Where?”
“No talking!” the guard called from across the room.
Elizabeth muttered a curse.
She had to wait until after supper to find out. In the last hour before they went to bed, the women were herded into the large “recreation” room and allowed some time to socialize. Weary beyond bearing, they all sought the chairs placed around the edges of the room and sat in numbed silence.
The regular prisoners were there, too, the ones wearing rags so the suffragists could have the “nicer” clothes. They sat in clusters apart from the suffragists, talking and picking nits out of each other’s hair.
Elizabeth found Mrs. Bates and sank onto the floor beside her chair because the chairs beside her were already taken. “What happened to Miss Burns?”
“She asked to see Whittaker. She wanted to repeat her demands that we be treated like political prisoners. He came into the sewing room and . . .” Mrs. Bates shuddered at the memory. “He came in furious. I’m not sure why he was already so angry, but he just wanted to know what nonsense—that’s the word he used—what nonsense Miss Burns had to say now. She told him she wanted to see an attorney and find out the status of our case, but he told her to shut up or he’d put her in a straitjacket and a buckle gag.”
There it was again. “What’s a buckle gag?”
Mrs. Bates shuddered again. “It’s a device they use on insane people to keep them from screaming or biting.”
Elizabeth winced at the thought. “I guess she didn’t shut up.”
“No, she didn’t. She demanded her right to see an attorney, and Whittaker had her taken away.”
“Where is she now?”
“No one knows.”
Elizabeth doubted that very much. In a place like this, someone always knew something. “I’ll find out.”
She got wearily to her feet and strolled as nonchalantly as she could over to where some of the colored prisoners sat in a group. They eyed her warily, so she tried a smile. They didn’t return her smile, but they didn’t turn their backs, either.
“What you want, miss?” one of them asked. She was a little older than the others, and they probably considered her their leader.
“The warden took one of the suffragists today, Miss Burns.”
“The one with red hair,” she said with a nod.
“Yes, that’s right. Do you know what happened to her?”
“I do.”
She’d expect some kind of payment for the information. “I don’t have anything to offer you in return. I was hoping that you’d help out of kindness from one woman to another.”
The woman smiled, showing a missing tooth and little humor. “When did you folks ever do a kindness for us?”
“When women get the vote, it will help you, too. It will help all women.”
They all grinned at that, and one even chuckled aloud.
“You ain’t never gonna get the vote, miss. Might as well give up on that.”
Elizabeth returned her grin. “Then help us because you feel sorry for us.”
“Didn’t think I’d ever feel sorry for no white ladies, but you folks is kinda sad, ain’t they, girls?” The others nodded, enjoying themselves at Elizabeth’s expense.
Elizabeth was perfectly willing to amuse them if she got the information she wanted. “Miss Burns?”
“They put her in the DT ward. You know what that is?”
Elizabeth shuddered. She knew only too well. “Thank you. I’m in your debt.”
“I’ll remember that.”
Elizabeth was sure she would.
She hurried back to where Mrs. Bates waited. Anna had joined her, and they both watched anxiously as she crossed the room to them.
“What is it?” Mrs. Bates asked, seeing Elizabeth’s expression.
Elizabeth sank down on the floor beside her chair. “They say he put her in the DT ward. Do you know what that is?”
“No.”
“It’s where they treat prisoners with delirium tremens.”
“What’s that?”
Elizabeth went cold at the memory, Jake’s mother screaming in terror . . . “It’s what happens when somebody who drinks a lot stops suddenly. They get the shakes and start seeing things that aren’t there. I guess that happens to some prisoners when they’re locked up here and can’t drink anymore.”
“So they’d probably put them in straitjackets.”
“And buckle gags,” Anna said in outrage. “But she’s not crazy, and she doesn’t have the delirium tremens. They can’t do that to her!”
Mrs. Bates gave her a sad smile, as if to say they most certainly could, and of course they already had. They could do anything they wanted.
Elizabeth gritted her teeth against the rage boiling within her, the rage that had made her want to beat Mrs. Herndon and club Whittaker over his stupid head and shoot Thornton right between the eyes.
“Betty Perkins! Which one of you is Betty Perkins?”
Elizabeth’s rage evaporated as she looked up at the female guard walking slowly around the room, staring each of the prisoners in the face.
“Come on, Betty. Somebody’s paid your fine. Just speak up and you can leave,” she coaxed, looking Elizabeth right in the eye.
Gooseflesh rose on her arms, but she stared the woman down until she turned to Mrs. Bates for a reaction. Then she tried to glare at Anna, but the girl had already gotten up to start spreading the word about Miss Burns, so the guard moved on.
“I don’t understand,” Mrs. Bates said. “Why don’t they know who this Betty Perkins is? They certainly took every bit of information about all of us that they could. They must know who all their other prisoners are, too.”
Elizabeth could have explained it, of course, but she said, “Maybe she didn’t use her real name.”
“Why would she do that?”
Elizabeth tried to imagine being so innocent that she couldn’t think of a reason to lie about her identity. “Maybe she’s ashamed to be in jail and doesn’t want her family to find out.”
“None of the suffragists are ashamed to be here, so it can’t be one of us.”
“Is that true, ma’am?” a girl sitting on the other side of Mrs. Bates asked. She was one of the regular prisoners, a white girl with a sharp, thin face and hair the color of poppies growing in black at the roots.
“Is what true?” Mrs. Bates asked.
“That this Betty Perkins isn’t one of you ladies.”