The Wild Rose Read online

  “I wish Mum had let me go to the march. I wanted to. Would have, too, but she said I had to stay put in school,” Katie said.

  “Too right,” Joe said. “This is the third school we’ve put you in this year. If you get thrown out of this one, it won’t be so easy to find another that will take you.”

  “Come on, Dad!” Katie said impatiently, ignoring his warning.

  “Where were they taken?” he asked.

  “Holloway,” Katie said. “Mum wrote in her note that over a hundred women were arrested. It’s so unfair! Mum and Dr. Hatcher and Dr. Rosen—they’re all so accomplished and smart. Smarter than a lot of men. Why won’t Mr. Asquith listen to them? Why won’t he give them the vote?”

  “He feels it won’t go over well with the Liberal Party’s voters, all of whom are men, and most of whom are not yet ready to acknowledge that women are every bit as smart, if not smarter, than they are,” Joe said.

  “No, I don’t think so. That’s not it.”

  Joe raised an eyebrow. “It isn’t?”

  “No. I think Mr. Asquith knows that if women get the vote, they’ll use it to throw him out on his bum.”

  Joe burst into laughter. Katie scowled at him. “It’s not funny, Dad. It’s true,” she said.

  “It is indeed. Stuff those folders in my briefcase and bring it along, will you?”

  Joe watched her as she put her pad and pen down and then collected his things, and as he did, his heart filled with love. He and Fiona had six children now: Katie, fifteen; Charlie, thirteen; Peter, eleven; Rose, six; and the four-year-old twins, Patrick and Michael. Looking at Katie now, so tall and grown-up, so beautiful, he remembered the day she was put into his arms, the day he became a father. From the moment he held her, and looked into her eyes, he was a changed man. He’d held that tiny girl in his arms that moment; he would hold her in his heart forever.

  Joe loved all his children fiercely, and delighted in their differences, their passions, their opinions and abilities, but Katie, his firstborn, was more truly his child than any of the others. In looks, she was a younger version of her mother. She had Fiona’s Irish loveliness, her slender build and her grace, but Katie had got her driving passion—politics—from him. She was determined to go up to Oxford, read history, and then go into politics. She’d declared that once women were fully enfranchised, she would run for office on the Labour ticket and become the country’s first female member of Parliament, and already her ambitions had gotten her into hot water.

  Six months ago, she’d been asked to leave the Kensington School for Young Ladies after she’d single-handedly got the school’s cleaners and groundsmen into a labor union. He and Fiona had found her a place at another school—Briarton—and then, three months ago, she was asked to leave that school, too. That time, it was three unexplained absences from her afternoon French and deportment classes that had gotten her into trouble. After the third infraction, the headmistress—Miss Amanda Franklin—had called Katie into her office. There, she asked Katie why she had missed her classes and what could possibly be more important than French and deportment.

  For a reply, Katie had proudly handed her a single sheet newspaper, printed front and back. On the front, at the top, were the words Battle Cry, in twenty-two-point type. Followed by KATHARINE BRISTOW, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, in eighteen-point.

  “I should have told you about it, Miss Franklin. I would have, but I wanted to wait until it was finished, you see,” she said proudly. “And here it is, hot off the presses.”

  “And what exactly is it, may I ask?” Miss Franklin had asked, raising an eyebrow.

  “My very own newspaper, ma’am,” Katie replied. “I just started it. I used my allowance money to get the first edition printed. But money from advertisements will help with the next one. I intend for it to be a voice for working men and women, to chronicle their struggle for fair working conditions, higher wages, and a stronger voice in government.”

  Katie’s newspaper featured a story about the prime minister’s refusal to meet with a delegation of suffragists, another about the appalling work conditions at a Milford jam factory, and a third about the enormous turnout for a Labour rally held in Limehouse.

  “Who wrote these stories?” Miss Franklin asked, her hand going to the brooch at her neck, her voice rising slightly.

  “I did, ma’am,” Katie said brightly.

  “You spoke with factory workers, Miss Bristow? And with radicals? You sat in upon debates in the Commons?” Miss Franklin said. “By yourself?”

  “Oh, no. I had our butler with me—Mr. Foster. He always goes with me. Do you see those there?” Katie asked, pointing at advertisements for men’s athletic supporters and bath salts for women’s troubles. “I got those by myself, too. Had to knock on quite a few doors on the Whitechapel High Street to do it. Would you like to buy a copy, Miss Franklin?” Katie asked her eagerly. “It’s only three pence. Or four shillings for a year’s subscription. Which saves you one shilling and two pence over the newsstand price. I’ve already sold eleven subscriptions to my fellow students.”

  Miss Franklin, whose students included many privileged and sheltered daughters of the aristocracy—girls who had no idea that men had bits that needed supporting, or that women had troubles only bath salts could solve—went as white as a sheet.

  She declined Katie’s offer, and promptly wrote to her parents to inquire if their daughter’s extracurricular activities might be more fully fostered at another school.

  Joe supposed he should have been stern with Katie after she was sent down for a second time—Fiona certainly was—but he hadn’t been able to. He was too proud of her. He didn’t know many fifteen-year-old girls who could organize a labor force—a small one granted, but still—or publish their very own newspapers. He’d found her a new school, one that offered no deportment lessons and that prided itself on its progressive teaching methods. One that didn’t mind if she missed French to attend Prime Minister’s Questions—as long as she made up her homework and did well on her tests.

  “Here you are, Dad. All packed,” Katie said now, handing Joe his briefcase. Joe put it on his lap and wheeled himself out from behind his desk. Katie picked up her pad and pen and followed him.

  Joe had been paralyzed by a villain’s bullet fourteen years ago and had lost the use of his legs. An East End man by the name of Frank Betts, hoping to discredit Fiona’s brother Sid—then a villain himself—had dressed like Sid, appeared in Joe’s office, and shot him twice. One of the bullets lodged in Joe’s spine. He’d only barely survived and spent several weeks in a coma. When he finally came to, his doctors gave him no hope of a normal, productive life. They said he would be bedridden, an invalid. They said he might well lose both his legs, but Joe had defied them. Six months after the shooting, he was healthy and strong. He’d had to give up the Tower Hamlets seat he’d won just before he’d been shot, but in the meantime, the MP for Hackney had died and a by-election had been called. Joe went out campaigning again, this time in a wheelchair. He won the seat for Labour handily and had held it ever since.

  Joe rolled himself into his waiting room now and explained to his constituents what had happened to his wife. He apologized and asked them to please come back first thing in the morning. All agreed to his request, except a group of church ladies outraged over the posters they’d found plastered all over Hackney advertising a racy new musical revue—Princess Zema and the Nubians of the Nile.

  “Lass has got about as much clothing on her as she had the day she was born!” one indignant lady—a Mrs. Hughes—said.

  “I have to cover me grandkiddies’ eyes when they walk down the very street we live on!” another—Mrs. Archer—exclaimed. “We’ve got the kaiser making ructions, and Mrs. Pankhurst and her lot throwing bricks through windows. Our young girls are smoking and driving, and to top it all off, we’ve now got naked Egyptians in Hackney! I ask you, Mr. Bristow, what’s the world coming to?”

  “I don’t know, Mrs. Archer, but I
give you my word that I will personally see to it that the posters are removed by the end of the week,” Joe said.

  After he’d mollified the women, and they’d left his office, Joe, together with Katie, Seamie, and Mr. Foster, took the elevator to the street, where Joe’s driver and carriage were stationed. Another carriage, the one Katie and her escorts had traveled in, waited behind his.

  “Thanks for coming to get me, luv,” he said to Katie, squeezing her hand. “I’ll see you at home.”

  “But I’m not going home. I’m going with you,” Katie said.

  “Katie, Holloway is a prison. It’s not a Labour rally, or a jam factory. It’s a terrible place and it’s not fit for a fifteen-year-old girl,” Joe said firmly. “Go with your uncle and Mr. Foster. Your mother and I will be home shortly.”

  “Come on, Kate the Great,” Seamie said.

  “No! I won’t go home! You’re treating me like a child, Dad!” Katie said hotly. “The suffrage movement is something that will affect me. It’s politics. And women’s rights. It’s history in the making. And you’re putting me on the sidelines! I want to write about the march and the arrests and Holloway itself for my paper and you’re going to make me miss the whole thing!”

  Joe was about to order Katie home when Mr. Foster cleared his throat. “Sir, if I may make an observation,” he began.

  “As if I could stop you, Mr. Foster,” Joe said.

  “Miss Katharine does present a most persuasive argument—a skill, I might add, which will serve her well in Parliament one day. What a remarkable boon for the country’s first female MP to be able to say she was on the front lines of the fight for women’s suffrage.”

  “You’ve got him in your pocket, too, haven’t you?” Joe said to his daughter.

  Katie said nothing. She just looked at her father hopefully.

  “Come on, then,” Joe said. She clapped her hands and kissed him.

  “We’ll see if you’re so happy once you’re inside Holloway,” he said. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  “Can you use a hand, Joe?” Seamie asked. “I’m feeling a bit useless here.”

  “I could,” Joe said. “And an extra bit of dosh, too. Since it seems I’m expected to liberate half the prison. Have you got any?”

  Seamie checked his wallet, said that he did, and handed Joe twenty pounds. Joe asked Mr. Foster to take the second carriage home.

  “I will, sir,” Mr. Foster replied. “And I shall have the maid ready a pot of tea.”

  “Good man,” Joe said.

  He, Seamie, and Katie got into his carriage, a vehicle custom made to accommodate his chair. The driver carefully urged his pair of bay horses into traffic, then headed west, toward the prison. In only a few minutes they were at London Fields, the park where the suffrage march was to have terminated. The three passengers had been talking during the ride, but they all fell silent as the carriage rolled past the green.

  “Blimey,” Joe said, looking out one of the windows.

  Wherever they looked, they saw devastation. The windows of a local pub and several houses were broken. Costers’ carts were upended. Apples, oranges, potatoes, and cabbages had rolled everywhere. Banners, torn and tattered, hung limply from lampposts. Trampled placards littered the ground. Residents, costermongers, and the publican were trying their best to restore order to the square, sweeping up glass and debris.

  “Dad, I’m worried about Mum,” Katie said quietly.

  “Me, too,” Joe said.

  “What happened here?” Seamie asked

  Joe could hear a note of alarm in his voice. “I’m not sure,” he replied, “but I don’t think it was good.”

  As the carriage rolled out of the square, Joe saw the publican throw a bucket of water over the cobbles in front of his pub. He was washing something red off them.

  “Was that—” Seamie started to say.

  “Aye,” Joe said curtly, cutting him off. He didn’t want his daughter to hear the word, but it was too late.

  “Blood,” she said.

  “Blood?” Seamie said, shocked. “Whose blood?”

  “The marchers’,” Joe said quietly.

  “Wait a minute … you’re telling me that women—women—are being beaten up on the streets of London? For marching? For asking for the vote?” Seamie shook his head in disbelief, then said, “When did this start happening?”

  “You’ve been off tramping across icebergs for quite a few years, mate,” Joe said wryly. “And then off on your lecture tours, too. If you’d stayed in London, you’d know that no one’s asking for much of anything anymore. The have-nots—whether they’re the poor of Whitechapel, or national labor unions, or the country’s suffragists—are all demanding reform now. Things have changed in dear old England.”

  “I’ll say they have. What happened to the peaceful marches?”

  Joe smiled mirthlessly. “They’re a thing of the past. The struggle for suffrage has turned violent,” he said. “We’ve now two factions pushing for the vote. There’s the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies—led by Millicent Fawcett, with Fiona a member—which wants to work constitutionally to achieve its aims. And then there’s the Women’s Social and Political Union, let by Emmeline Pankhurst, which has become fed up with Asquith’s foot-dragging and has turned militant. Christobel, Emmeline’s daughter, is a firebrand. She’s chained herself to gates. Thrown bricks through windows. Heckled the PM in public. Set things on fire. The Pankhursts’ activities get a lot of press coverage. Unfortunately, they also get the Pankhursts—and anyone who happens to be near them—arrested.”

  Joe glanced at Katie as he spoke, and saw that she’d gone pale. “It’s not too late, luv. I can still get you home,” he told her. “I’ll have the driver take us there first, then Uncle Seamie and I can continue on to Holloway.”

  “I’m not afraid, Dad. And I’m not going home,” Katie said quietly. “This is my battle, too. Who’s Mum doing this for? You? Charlie? Peter? No. For me. For me and Rose, that’s who. The least I can do is go with you to fetch her. And write about what I see for my paper.”

  Joe nodded. Brave girl. Just like your mother, he thought. Bravery was good and bravery was noble, but bravery couldn’t protect one from horses and batons. He was anxious about his wife, worried she might’ve been hurt.

  “I guess that old dear was right,” Seamie said.

  “What old dear?” Joe asked.

  “The one in your office. The one complaining about the musical revue. She asked you, ‘What’s the world coming to?’ I thought she was just a cranky old bat, going on about naked Egyptians, but now I’m wondering if maybe she had a point. England, London … they’re not the same places that I left back in 1912. I sound like an old dear myself, but stone me, Joe—roughing up women? What is the world coming to?”

  Joe looked at his brother-in-law, whose expression was still one of astonishment. He thought of his wife and her friends in some dank holding cell in Holloway. He thought of the strikes and labor marches that were nearly a daily occurrence in London now. He thought of the latest volley of threats from Germany, and of Winston Churchill’s telephone call, which had almost certainly been about garnering support for the financing of more British battleships.

  And he found that he had no answer.

  Chapter Three

  Seamie Finnegan thought he knew about prisons. He’d been in one for a few days once, years ago in Nairobi. His brother Sid had been incarcerated there for a crime he had not committed. Seamie and Maggie Carr, a coffee plantation owner and Sid’s boss, had contrived to break him out, which had involved Seamie and Sid trading places. It hadn’t been a difficult thing to do. There had only been one guard on duty and the building itself was, as Mrs. Carr had put it, “a two-bit ramshackle chicken coop of a jail.”

  Now, however, as he gazed at the building looming in front of him, Seamie realized he knew nothing about prisons, for Holloway was like nothing he’d ever seen.

  It looked like a dark m
edieval fortress, one with a keep, an iron gate, and crenellated turrets. A pair of gryphons flanked the entrance—an arched passage wide enough to permit carriages—and through it he could see the cell blocks—long, rectangular structures with row upon row of small, high windows.

  He felt suffocated just looking at it. His explorer’s soul craved the vast, open places of the world—the snowy expanses of Antarctica and the soaring peaks of Kilimanjaro. To him, the mere thought of being confined behind Holloway’s ugly stone walls was crushing.

  “Uncle Seamie, this way. Come on,” Katie said, tugging on his hand.

  Joe had already rolled through the passage in his wheelchair and was halfway across the lawn and heading toward an inner building marked RECEIVING. Seamie and Katie quickly caught up with him.

  The scene inside the receiving area was chaos. As Joe counted out Fiona’s and her friend Maud Selwyn Jones’s bail money to a uniformed man seated behind a desk, and Katie interviewed a woman holding a bloodstained handkerchief to her head, other women—many wearing torn and bloodied clothing, some with cuts and bruises—angrily denounced the wardresses and the warden. Family members and friends who’d come to collect them pleaded with them, trying to convince them to leave, but they would not.

  “Where’s Mrs. Fawcett?” one of them shouted. “We won’t leave until you release her!”

  “Where are Mrs. Bristow and Dr. Hatcher?” another yelled. “What are you doing with them? Let them go!”

  The chant was taken up. Scores of voices rang out as one. “Let them go! Let them go! Let them go!”

  The noise was immense. Over it, a wardress yelled that they must all leave, right now, but she was soon shouted down. Seamie saw an older man in a black suit and white collar going from guard to guard, a worried expression on his face.

  Joe saw him, too. He called to him. “Reverend Wilcott? Is that you?”