“Refuse?”
“Yes, refuse to be pardoned and stay in jail.”
Mrs. Bates considered this. “I don’t know. They always try to make us pay our fine so we don’t have to go to jail at all, but we refuse because that would be an admission of guilt, and we haven’t done anything illegal.”
“You sound like you want to stay in jail, Miss Miles,” Anna said.
“Only if it serves the cause,” Elizabeth said, pleased that she’d come up with such a pious-sounding lie.
Anna’s stomach growled, and she pressed a hand to it. “I wonder when they’ll give us supper.”
One glance at Mrs. Herndon’s evil smirk made Elizabeth think they’d starve before she took pity on them.
Gradually, the other women followed Elizabeth’s example and sat or lay down on the floor, some using their coats as makeshift bedding as the room warmed from the massing of over forty people. Quiet conversations died away as fatigue claimed them. Would the matron really keep them sitting here all night? And if she did, what did Elizabeth care? At least she was safe.
After what seemed hours, Elizabeth felt as much as heard the disturbance outside. Someone was coming.
“Get up. Put your coats on,” she said to her companions.
Anna had been dozing again. “What?”
“Get up! Someone’s coming.”
Then the others heard it, too, and began to stir. Before they could shake off their lethargy, however, the door burst open and an ugly old man strode in like he was the king of England. From the looks of him, he ate little babies for breakfast, so a few dozen suffragettes were no more than a nuisance.
One cruel man was a bother, but behind him, she saw a crowd of men straining to get at them, and for the second time that day, Elizabeth knew real fear.
Mrs. Lewis stood up. “Mr. Whittaker, we demand to be treated as political prisoners.”
“Shut up! I have men here to handle you. Seize her!”
Like somebody had pulled a cork from a bottle, the mob outside surged through the open door. They wore no uniforms and carried no weapons, but they didn’t need any to overpower the weary women.
“They’ve taken Mrs. Lewis!” someone screamed.
A brute who looked like an ape grabbed Anna’s arm. “Come with me, sweetheart. We’ll have a good time.” Anna screamed and struggled, but another man took her other arm and they lifted her off her feet and whisked her away.
“You damn suffrager!” a mug said, clapping a beefy hand on Elizabeth’s shoulder. “My mother ain’t no suffrager!”
Elizabeth thought of a few choice things she could say about his mother, but she clamped her mouth shut and forced herself not to struggle. It didn’t matter. He and his buddy still nearly tore her arms from their sockets as they pulled her outside and across the yard. Biting back her cry of pain, she concentrated on keeping her feet. No sense giving them an excuse to drag her. All around her, women screamed and struggled and men shouted obscenities, but she saw only shadows in the pitch-dark yard. She tried to run to keep up with her captors, but her skirts tangled and tripped her, and she stumbled at last, so they dragged her the rest of the way.
For a moment she feared they were being abducted, but then she realized they were only going to the building where she’d seen the lights illuminating the American flag.
The front door opened into a long corridor lined with stone cells. The goons were throwing the women into the cells, three and four at a time. A man in uniform kept poking women with a long stick as the men shoved the prisoners in.
Two men pushed Mrs. Bates into a cell so hard that she smacked against the rear wall and slumped down in a heap. Furious, Elizabeth wrenched one arm free and threw herself into the same cell before her captors could make another choice for her. Before she could see if Mrs. Bates was all right, someone outside her cell screamed in agony.
The plug-uglies had Anna’s arms twisted above her head, and they slammed her slender body over the arm of an iron bench, then dropped her onto the cement floor, where she lay unmoving.
“Anna!” Mrs. Bates cried. “Help her!”
Elizabeth scrambled to her feet and scurried out into the melee, dodging the other women and their captors. Anna’s eyes were wide with terror on her chalk white face, but she hadn’t moved a muscle. Just as Elizabeth reached her, she suddenly drew a gasping breath, and Elizabeth realized with relief that she’d just had the wind knocked out of her.
Grabbing Anna’s arm, she dragged her toward her cell. Mrs. Bates hurried to help, and they got her inside. Mrs. Bates cradled her gently. “Anna, are you hurt? What did they do to you?”
She gasped a few more times. “I couldn’t breathe!”
“They knocked the wind out of her,” Elizabeth said. “It scares you to death, but no harm done.”
Outside, the screams had died down as the last of the women were run past and deposited into cells, but no sooner had they finished than the women began calling out the names of their friends, checking to make sure everyone was safe.
“Mrs. Lewis!”
“Mrs. Nolan!”
“I’m here!”
“Where’s Mrs. Lewis?”
Across the way, two women were lifting a third onto the single cot. She appeared to be unconscious, and the other two were crying over her.
“She’s here,” one of them called, “but I think they’ve killed her.”
“Quiet!” a man shouted. The ugly old man was back. What was his name? Whittaker. He looked like he might have apoplexy. “Be quiet, all of you!”
“Is Mrs. Lewis truly dead?” This from the red-haired woman who had spoken up for them at the courthouse.
“Shut up!” Whittaker screamed. “Guards, handcuff her!”
To Elizabeth’s horror, two of the big apes slapped manacles on the woman’s wrists and chained her to the bars with her arms over her head.
Undaunted, she cried, “Mrs. Lewis!”
“She’s alive,” someone called. “She was only stunned!”
“Quiet, all of you, or I’ll put you in a straitjacket with a buckle gag!” Whittaker cried.
Elizabeth didn’t know what a buckle gag was, but the threat of it frightened the women to silence.
“Let’s put her on the bed,” Mrs. Bates whispered, and Elizabeth helped her lift Anna onto the narrow iron cot, the only furniture in the cell except for a toilet.