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Synopsis
The Wild Rose is a part of the sweeping, multi-generational saga that began with The Tea Rose and continued with The Winter Rose. It is London, 1914. World War I looms on the horizon, women are fighting for the right to vote, and explorers are pushing the limits of endurance in the most forbidding corners of the earth. Into this volatile time, Jennifer Donnelly places her vivid and memorable characters: Willa Alden, a passionate mountain climber who lost her leg while summiting Kilimanjaro with Seamus Finnegan, and who will never forgive him for saving her life; Seamus Finnegan, a polar explorer who tries to forget Willa as he marries a beautiful young schoolteacher back home in England; Max von Brandt, a handsome German sophisticate who courts high society women, but has a secret agenda in wartime London.
Many other beloved characters from The Winter Rose continue their adventures in The Wild Rose as well. With myriad twists and turns, thrilling cliffhangers, and fabulous period detail and atmosphere, The Wild Rose provides a highly satisfying conclusion to an unforgettable trilogy.
Release date: September 1, 2009
Publisher: Hachette Books
Print pages: 512
* BingeBooks earns revenue from qualifying purchases as an Amazon Associate as well as from other retail partners.
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The Wild Rose
Jennifer Donnelly
Contents
PROLOGUE
PART ONE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
CHAPTER FORTY
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
PART TWO
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
CHAPTER FIFTY
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
CHAPTER SIXTY
CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE
CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR
CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE
CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX
CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE
CHAPTER SEVENTY
CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE
CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO
CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE
CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER SEVENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER SEVENTY-SIX
CHAPTER SEVENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER SEVENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER SEVENTY-NINE
CHAPTER EIGHTY
CHAPTER EIGHTY-ONE
CHAPTER EIGHTY-TWO
CHAPTER EIGHTY-THREE
CHAPTER EIGHTY-FOUR
CHAPTER EIGHTY-FIVE
CHAPTER EIGHTY-SIX
CHAPTER EIGHTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER EIGHTY-NINE
CHAPTER NINETY
CHAPTER NINETY-ONE
CHAPTER NINETY-TWO
CHAPTER NINETY-THREE
CHAPTER NINETY-FOUR
CHAPTER NINETY-FIVE
CHAPTER NINETY-SIX
PART THREE
CHAPTER NINETY-SEVEN
CHAPTER NINETY-EIGHT
CHAPTER NINETY-NINE
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED ONE
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED TWO
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED THREE
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED FOUR
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED FIVE
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED SIX
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED SEVEN
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED EIGHT
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED NINE
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED TEN
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED ELEVEN
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED TWELVE
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED THIRTEEN
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED FOURTEEN
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED FIFTEEN
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED SIXTEEN
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED NINETEEN
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED TWENTY
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-TWO
EPILOGUE
BIBLIOGRAPHY
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
DISCOVER MORE
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
READING GROUP GUIDE
A CONVERSATION WITH JENNIFER DONNELLY
ALSO BY JENNIFER DONNELLY
COPYRIGHT
PROLOGUEAugust 1913—Tibet
Did all English girls make love like a man? Or was it only this one?
Max von Brandt, a German mountaineer, wondered this as he stroked the hair out of the face of the young woman lying next to him in the dark. He’d been with many women. Soft, pliant women, who clung to him afterward, extorting promises and endearments. This woman wasn’t soft, and neither was her lovemaking. It was hard and quick and without preliminaries. And when it was over, as it was now, she would turn away, curl into herself, and sleep.
“I don’t suppose there is anything I can say. To make you stay with me,” he said.
“No, Max, there isn’t.”
He lay on his back in the dark, listening as her breath slowed and deepened, as she drifted off to sleep. He couldn’t sleep. He didn’t want to. He wanted to make this night last. To remember it always. He wanted to remember the feel of her, the smell of her. The sound of the wind. The piercing cold.
He had told her he loved her. Weeks ago. And he’d meant it. For the first time in his life, he’d meant it. She’d laughed. And then, seeing that she’d hurt him, she’d kissed him and shaken her head no.
The night passed quickly. Before the sun rose, the woman did. As Max stared ahead of himself, into the darkness, she dressed, then quietly left their tent.
He never found her beside him when he woke. She always left the tent or cave or whatever shelter they’d found while it was still dark. He’d searched for her in the beginning, and always he’d found her perched somewhere high, somewhere solitary and still, her face lifted to the dawn sky and its fading stars.
“What are you looking for?” he would ask, following her gaze.
“Orion,” she would answer.
In only a few hours, he would say good-bye to her. In the time he had left, he would think of their first days together, for it was those memories he would hold on to.
They’d met about four months ago. He’d been traveling in Asia for five months prior. A renowned Alpine climber, he’d decided he wanted to see the Himalayas. To see if it was possible to conquer Everest; to take the world’s highest mountain for Germany, for the fatherland. The kaiser wanted conquests, and better to satisfy him with a beautiful mountain in Asia than a wretched war in Europe. He’d left Berlin for India, traveled north through that country, then quietly entered Nepal, a country closed to Westerners.
He’d made it all the way to Kathmandu before he was apprehended by Nepalese authorities and told to leave. He promised he would, but he needed help, he told them; a guide. He needed someone to take him through the high valleys of the Solu Khumbu and into Tibet over the Nangpa La pass. From there he wanted to trek east, exploring the northern base of Everest on his way to Lhasa, the City of God, where he hoped to ask permission of the Dalai Lama to climb. He had heard about a place called Rongbuk, and hoped he might find an approach there. He’d heard of one who might be able to help him—a woman, another Westerner. Did they know anything about her?
The authorities said that they did know her, though they had not seen her in several months. He gave them presents: rubies and sapphires he’d bought in Jaipur, pearls, a large emerald. In return, they gave him permission to wait for her. For a month.
Max had first heard of the woman when he’d arrived in Bombay. Western climbers he’d met there told him of her—an English girl who lived in the shadow of the Himalayas. She’d climbed Kilimanjaro—the Mawenzi peak—and had lost a leg on Kili in a horrible accident. She’d almost died there. Now, they said, she was photographing and mapping the Himalayas. She was trekking as high as she could, but the difficult climbs were beyond her. She lived among the mountain people now. She was strong like them, and had earned their respect and their liking. She did what almost no European could—moved over borders with goodwill, receiving hospitality from Nepalese and Tibetans alike.
But how to find her? Rumors abounded. She had been in China and India, but was in Tibet now, some said. No, Burma. No, Afghanistan. She was surveying for the British. Spying for the French. She’d died in an avalanche. She’d gone native. She’d taken a Nepalese husband. She traded horses. Yaks. Gold. He heard more talk as he made his way northeast across India. In Agra. Kanpur. And then, finally, he’d found her. In Kathmandu. Or at least he’d found a hut she used.
“She’s in the mountains,” a villager told him. “She’ll come.”
“When?”
“Soon. Soon.”
Days passed. Then weeks. A month. The Nepalese were growing impatient. They wanted him gone. He asked the villagers again and again when she was coming, and always he was told soon. He thought it must be a ruse by the wily farmer with whom he was staying to get a few more coins out of him.
And then she’d arrived. He’d thought her a Nepalese at first. She was dressed in indigo trousers and a long sheepskin jacket. Her shrewd green eyes were large in her angular face. They assessed him from beneath the furry fringe of her cap. Turquoise beads hung from her neck and dangled from her ears. She wore her hair in a long braid ornamented with bits of silver and glass as the native women did. Her face was bronzed by the Himalayan sun. Her body was wiry and strong. She walked with a limp. He found out, later, that she wore a false leg made of yak bone, carved and hollowed for her by a villager.
“Namaste,” she’d said to him, bowing her head slightly, after the farmer had told her what he wanted.
Namaste. It was a Nepalese greeting. It meant: The light within me bows to the light within you.
He’d told her he wished to hire her to take him into Tibet. She told him she’d just returned from Shigatse and was tired. She would sleep first, then eat, and then they would discuss it.
The next day she prepared him a meal of rice and curried mutton, with strong black tea. He’d sat with her on the rug-covered floor of her hut and they’d talked, sharing a pipeful of opium. It killed the pain, she said. He’d thought then that she was referring to her damaged leg, but later he realized that the pain she spoke of went much deeper, and the opium she smoked did little to dull it. Sadness enfolded her like a long black cape.
He was astonished by the depth and breadth of her knowledge of the Himalayas. She had surveyed, mapped, and photographed more of the range than any Westerner had ever done. She kept herself by guiding and by publishing papers on the topography of the mountains for Britain’s Royal Geographical Society. The RGS would soon publish a book of her Himalayan photographs, too. Max had seen some of them. They were astonishingly good. They captured the fierce magnificence of the mountains, their beauty and cold indifference, like no other images ever had. She never went to the RGS in person, for she would not leave her beloved mountains. Instead she sent her work to be presented there by Sir Clements Markham, the RGS’s president.
Max had exclaimed over her photographs and the precision of her maps, amazed by both. She was younger than he—only twenty-nine—and yet she’d accomplished so much. She had shrugged his praise off, saying there was so much more to do, but she couldn’t do it—couldn’t get high enough to do it—because of her leg.
“But you’ve had to climb in order to do this much,” he said.
“Not so high, really. And not on anything tricky. No ice fields. No cliffs or crevasses,” she replied.
“But, it’s all tricky,” he said. “How do you climb at all? Without . . . without both legs, I mean.”
“I climb with my heart,” she replied. “Can you?”
When he had proved to her that he could do that, that he could climb with love and awe and respect for the mountains, she agreed to take him to Lhasa. They’d left Kathmandu with two yaks to carry a tent and supplies, and had trekked through mountain villages and valleys and passes that only she and a handful of sherpas knew. It was hard and exhausting and unspeakably beautiful. It was brutally cold, too. They slept close to each other in a tent, under skins for warmth. On the third night of the trek he told her he loved her. She laughed and he’d turned away, upset. He’d meant it, and his pride had been deeply wounded by her rejection.
“I’m sorry,” she said, placing a hand on his back. “I’m sorry, I can’t . . .”
He asked if there was someone else and she said yes, and then she took him in her arms. For comfort and warmth, for pleasure, but not for love. It was the first time in his life his heart had been broken.
They’d arrived three weeks ago at a bleak Tibetan village at the base of Everest—Rongbuk, where she lived. They waited there while the woman, who was known and well connected, used her influence to get him papers from Tibetan officials which would allow him to enter Lhasa. He stayed with her in her house—a small whitewashed stone structure, with a smaller building tacked on that she used to house her animals.
She’d taken photographs during those days. Once he’d seen her try to climb. She attempted an ice field when she thought he wasn’t watching, with her camera strapped to her back. She was not bad even with only one leg. But then she suddenly stopped dead and did not move for a solid ten minutes. He saw her struggling with herself. “Damn you!” she suddenly screamed. “Damn you! Damn you!” until he feared she would start an avalanche. At whom was she yelling? he wondered. At the mountain? Herself? At someone else?
His papers had finally come through. The day after he received them, he and the woman left Rongbuk with a tent and five yaks. Yesterday, they’d reached the outskirts of Lhasa. It had been their last day together. Last night, their last night. In a few hours, he would begin the trek to the holy city alone. He planned to stay for some months, studying and photographing Lhasa and its inhabitants, while he tried to obtain an audience with the Dalai Lama. He knew his chances were slim. The Dalai Lama tolerated one Westerner—the woman. It was said that on occasion he would drink with her, sing Tibetan songs with her, and swap bawdy stories. She was not going into Lhasa this time, however. She wanted to get back to Rongbuk.
Max wondered now, as he rose in the cold gray dawn, if he would ever see her again. He quickly dressed, packed a few things into his rucksack, buttoned his jacket, and walked out of the tent. Four yaks, presents for the governor of Lhasa, were stamping and snorting, their breath white in the morning air, but the woman was nowhere to be seen.
He looked around and finally spotted her sitting on a large, jutting rock, silhouetted against the sky. She sat still and alone, one knee hugged to her chest, her face lifted to the fading stars. He would leave now. With morning breaking. With this image of her forever in his mind.
“Namaste, Willa Alden,” he whispered, touching his steepled hands to his forehead. “Namaste.”
CHAPTER ONE
“Aunt Eddie, stop! You can’t go in there!”
Seamus Finnegan, sprawled naked across his bed, opened one eye. He knew that voice. It belonged to Albie Alden, his best friend.
“For heaven’s sake, why not?”
“Because he’s asleep! You can’t just barge in on a sleeping man. It’s not decent!”
“Oh, bosh.”
Seamie knew that voice, too. He sat up, grabbed the bedcovers, and pulled them up to his chin.
“Albie! Do something!” he yelled.
“I tried, old chap. You’re on your own,” Albie shouted back.
A second later, a small, stout woman dressed in a tweed suit threw open the door and greeted Seamie loudly. It was Edwina Hedley. She was Albie’s aunt, but Seamie had known her since he was a boy and called her Aunt Eddie, too. She sat down on the bed, then immediately jumped up again when the bed squawked. A young woman, tousled and yawning, emerged from under the covers.
Eddie frowned. “My dear,” she said to the girl, “I earnestly hope you have taken preventive measures. Otherwise, you’ll find yourself with a baby on the way and the father en route to the North Pole.”
“I thought it was the South Pole,” the woman said sleepily.
“It was,” Seamie replied.
“Has he told you about all the children?” Eddie asked the girl, lowering her voice conspiratorially.
Seamie started to protest. “Eddie, don’t . . .”
“Children? What children?” the woman asked, her sleepy look gone now.
“You know he has four children, don’t you? All illegitimate. He sends the mothers money—he’s not a complete bounder—but he won’t marry any of them. They’re completely ruined, of course. London girls, all of them. Three left for the country. Couldn’t show their faces anymore. The fourth went to America, the poor dear. Why do you think the whole thing with Lady Caroline Wainwright ended?”
The girl, a pretty brunette with a short bob, turned to Seamie. “Is this true?” she asked indignantly.
“Entirely,” Eddie said, before Seamie could even open his mouth.
The girl wrapped the duvet around herself and got out of bed. She picked her clothes up off the floor and huffed out of the room, slamming the door on her way.
“Four children, Aunt Eddie?” Seamie said, after she’d gone. “Last time it was two.”
“A gold digger through and through,” Eddie sniffed. “I saved you just now, but I won’t always be around at times like these, you know.”
“What a pity,” Seamie said.
Eddie leaned over and kissed his cheek. “It’s good to see you.”
“Likewise. How was Aleppo?”
“Absolutely splendid! Stayed in a palace. Dined with a pasha. Met the most extraordinary people. A Tom Lawrence among them. He traveled back to London with me. He’s staying in the Belgravia place and—”
There was a loud, resounding boom as the house’s heavy front door slammed shut.
Eddie smiled. “Well, that’s the end of that one. Won’t be seeing her again. What a tomcat you are.”
“More of a stray dog, I’d say,” Seamie said ruefully.
“I heard about Lady Caroline. It’s all over London.”
“So I gathered.”
Seamie had come to Highgate, Eddie’s beautiful Georgian brick house in Cambridge, to recuperate from a brief and heady love affair that had soured. Lady Caroline Wainwright was a privileged young woman—wealthy, beautiful, spoiled—and used to getting what she wanted. And what she wanted was him—for her husband. He’d told her it would never work. He wasn’t good husband material. He was too independent. Too used to his own ways. He traveled too much. He told her any bloody thing he could think of—except the truth.
“There’s someone else, isn’t there?” Caroline had said tearfully. “Who is she? Tell me her name.”
“There’s no one else,” he’d said. It was a lie, of course. There was someone else. Someone he’d loved long ago, and lost. Someone who’d ruined him, it seemed, for any other woman.
He’d finished with Caroline, and then he’d hightailed it to Cambridge to hide out with his friend. He had no home of his own to go to, and when he was in England, he tended to bounce between Highgate, his sister’s house, and various hotels.
Albie Alden, a brilliant physicist, taught at King’s College and lived in his aunt’s house. He was constantly being offered positions by universities all over the world—Paris, Vienna, Berlin, New York—but he wanted to stay in Cambridge. Dull, sleepy Cambridge. God knew why. Seamie certainly didn’t. He’d asked him many times, and Albie always said he liked it best here. It was peaceful and quiet—at least when Eddie was away—and he needed that for his work. And Eddie, who was rarely home, needed someone to look after things. The arrangement suited them both.
“What happened?” Eddie asked Seamie now. “Lady Caroline break your heart? Didn’t want to marry you?”
“No, she did want to marry me. That’s the problem.”
“Mmm. Well, what do you expect? It’s what happens when you’re a dashing and handsome hero. Women want to get their claws into you.”
“Turn around, will you? So I can get dressed,” Seamie said.
Eddie did so, and Seamie got out of bed and grabbed his clothing off the floor. He was tall, strong, and beautifully made. Muscles flexed and rippled under his skin as he pulled his pants on, then shrugged into his shirt. His hair, cut short on the sides, long and wavy on the top, was a dark auburn with copper glints. His face was weathered by the sun and the sea. His eyes were a frank and startling blue.
At thirty-one years of age, he was one of the world’s most renowned polar explorers. He’d attempted the South Pole with Ernest Shackleton when he was still a teenager. Two years ago, he’d returned from the first successful expedition to the South Pole, led by the Norwegian Roald Amundsen. In demand all over the world, he’d embarked on a lecture tour shortly after returning from Antarctica and had traveled nonstop for nearly two years. He’d come back to London a month ago and already he felt it, and everyone in it, to be dull and gray. He felt restless and confined, and couldn’t wait to be gone again on some new adventure.
“How long have you been in town? How are you liking it? Are you going to stay for a bit this time?” Eddie asked him.
Seamie laughed. Eddie always talked this way—asking a question, and before you could answer it, asking ten more.
“I’m not sure,” he said, combing his hair in the mirror above the bureau. “I may be off again soon.”
“Another lecture tour?”
“No. An expedition.”
“Really? How exciting! Where to?”
“Back to Antarctica. Shackleton’s trying to get something together. He’s quite serious. He announced it in the Times last year, and he’s already drawn up some very detailed timetables. All he has to do now is scare up some funds.”
“What about all the war talk? Doesn’t that worry him?” Eddie asked. “People talked about nothing else on board the ship. In Aleppo, too.”
“It doesn’t worry him a bit,” Seamie replied. “He doesn’t give much credence to it. Says it’ll all blow over, and wants to sail by summer’s end, if not earlier.”
Eddie gave him a long look. “Aren’t you getting a bit old for the lad’s life? Shouldn’t you settle down? Find a good woman?”
“How? You chase them all away!” Seamie said teasingly. He sat down on the bed again to put his socks on.
Eddie flapped a hand at him. “Come downstairs when you’ve finished dressing. I’ll make us all some breakfast. Eggs with harissa sauce. I bought pots of the stuff back with me. Wait till you taste it. Simply marvelous! I’ll tell you and Albie and his boffin friends about all my adventures. And then we’ll go to London.”
“To London? When? Right after breakfast?”
“Well, perhaps not right after,” Eddie conceded. “Maybe in a day or two. I’ve got the most fascinating man staying in my town house whom I want you to meet. Mr. Thomas Lawrence. I was telling you about him just a moment ago, before your paramour nearly slammed my door off its hinges. I met him in Aleppo. He’s an explorer, too. And an archaeologist. He’s traveled all around the desert, knows all the most powerful poohbahs, and speaks flawless Arabic.” Eddie suddenly stopped speaking and lowered her voice. “Some people say he’s a spy.” Eddie said this last word in a whisper, then resumed her normal, booming tone. “Whatever he is, he’s thoroughly amazing.”
Eddie’s words were punctuated by a sudden clap of thunder, followed by the pattering of rain against the mullioned windows, one of which had a cracked pane.
“Water’s coming in,” she said. “I must call the glazier.” She sat watching the rain for another minute. “I never thought I’d miss the English weather,” she added, smiling wistfully. “But that was before I’d seen the Arabian desert. It’s good to be back. I do love my creaky old house. And creaky old Cambridge.” Her smile faded. “Though I do wish the circumstances of my return were different.”
“He’ll be all right, Eddie,” Seamie said.
Eddie sighed heavily. “I hope so,” she said. “But I know my sister. She wouldn’t have asked me to come home if she wasn’t terribly worried.”
Seamie knew that Mrs. Alden, Albie’s mother and Eddie’s sister, had wired Eddie at Aleppo, asking her to return to England. Admiral Alden, her husband, had taken ill with some sort of stomach complaint. His doctors had not yet figured out what was wrong with him, but whatever it was, it was bad enough to keep him in bed and on pain medication.
“He’s made of tough stuff,” Seamie said. “All the Aldens are.”
Eddie nodded and tried to smile. “You’re right, of course. And anyway, that’s about enough moping for one morning. There’s breakfast to attend to and then I must call the glazier. And the gardener. And the chimney man, too. Albie’s done nothing in my absence. The house is dusty. My mail is up to the rafters. And there’s not one clean plate in the entire kitchen. Why doesn’t he get that girl from the village up here to do some cleaning?”
“He says she disturbs him.”
Eddie snorted. “I really don’t see how she could. He never comes out of his study. He was in it when I left two months ago. And he’s in it now, working harder than ever, even though he’s supposed to be on sabbatical. He’s got two more boffins in there with him. I just met them. Dilly Knox, one’s called. And Oliver Strachey. They’ve got blackboards and charts and books strewn all over. What on earth can they be doing in there? What can possibly be so fascinating?”
“Their work?”
“Hardly. It’s all just numbers and formulas,” Eddie said dismissively. “That boy needs a wife. Even more than you do, I daresay. He’s far too odd and absentminded to continue without one. Why is it that you have more women after you than you can possibly cope with and poor Albie hasn’t any? Can’t you push some of your admirers in his direction? He needs a good woman. And children. Oh, I would so love to hear the happy noise of little ones in my home again. How wonderful those years were when Albie and Willa were little and my sister would bring them here and they’d swim in the pond and swing from that old tree—that one right there,” Eddie said, pointing at the huge oak outside the bedroom window. “Willa would climb so high. My sister would plead with her to come down, but she wouldn’t. She’d only climb higher and—”
Eddie suddenly stopped talking. She turned and looked at Seamie.
“Oh, crumbs. I shouldn’t have spoken of her. Do forgive me.”
“It’s all right, Eddie,” Seamie said.
“No, it isn’t. I . . . I don’t suppose you’ve had a letter from her recently, have you? Her own mother hasn’t. Not for the last three months anyway. And she’s been writing to Willa twice a week. Trying to get word to her about her father. Well, I suppose getting letters to and from Tibet is a rather tricky business.”
“I suppose it is. And no, I haven’t heard from her,” Seamie said. “But I never have. Not since she left Africa. I only know as much as you do. That she nearly died in Nairobi. That she traveled through the Far East afterward. And that she’s in the Himalayas now, looking for a way to finish the job.”
Eddie winced at that. “You’re still pining for her, aren’t you?” she said. “That’s why you go through women like water. One after another. Because you’re looking for someone who can take Willa’s place. But you never find her.”
And I never will, Seamie said to himself. He had lost Willa, the love of his life, eight years ago, and though he’d tried, he’d never found a woman to come close to her. No other woman had Willa’s lust for life, for adventure. No other woman possessed her bravery or her passionate, daring soul.
“It’s all my fault,” Seamie said now. “She wouldn’t be there, a million miles away from her family, her home, if it hadn’t been for me. If I’d handled things properly on Kilimanjaro, she’d be here.”
He would never forget what had happened in Africa. They’d been climbing Kilimanjaro, he and Willa, hoping to set a record by being the first to climb the Mawenzi peak. Altitude sickness had plagued them both, but it had hit Willa especially hard. He’d wanted her to go down, but she’d refused. So they went up instead, summitting much later than they should have. There on Mawenzi, he’d told her something he’d felt for years, but had kept to himself—that he loved her. “I love you, too,” she said. “Always have. Since forever.” He still heard those words. Every day of his life. They echoed in his head and in his heart.
The sun was high by the time they’d begun their descent, too high, and its rays were strong. An ice-bound boulder, loosened by the sun’s heat, came crashing down on them as they were heading down a couloir. It hit Willa and she fell. Seamie would never forget the sound of her screams, or the twisting blur of her body as it flew past him.
When he finally got to her, he saw that her right leg was broken. Jagged bone stuck through her skin. He went down the mountain to their base camp to get help from their Masai guides, only to find they’d been murdered by hostile tribesmen. He’d had to carry her off the mountain, and through jungle and plains, alone. After days of walking, he’d found the train tracks that run between Mombasa and Nairobi. After flagging down a train, he managed to get Willa to a doctor in Nairobi, but by the time they got there, the wound had turned gangrenous. There was no choice, the doctor had said; it would have to be amputated. Willa begged and pleaded with him not to let the man cut her leg off. She knew she’d never climb without it. But Seamie hadn’t listened to her pleas. He’d let the doctor amputate to save her life, and she’d never forgiven him for it. As soon as she was able, she left the hospital. And him.
I wake up every morning in despair and go to sleep the same way, she’d written in the note she left for him. I don’t know what to do. Where to go. How to live. I don’t know how to make it through the next ten minutes, never mind the rest of my life. There are no more hills for me to climb, no more mountains, no more dreams. It would have been better to have died on Kilimanjaro than to live like this.
Eddie reached for his hand and squeezed it. “Stop blaming yourself, Seamie, it’s not your fault,” she said resolutely. “You did everything a human being could have done on that mountain. And when you got her to Nairobi, you did the only thing you could do. The right thing. Imagine had you not done it. Imagine standing in my sister’s drawing room and telling her that you did nothing at all, that you let her child die. I understand, Seamie. We all do.”
Seamie smiled sadly. “That’s the hard thing of it, though, Eddie,” he said. “Everyone understands. Everyone but Willa.”
CHAPTER TWO
“Pardon me, Mr. Bristow,” Gertrude Mellors said, poking her head around the door to her boss’s office, “but Mr. Churchill’s on the telephone, the Times wants a comment from you on the trade secretary’s report on child labor in East London, and Mr. Asquith’s requested that you join him for supper at the Reform Club this evening. Eight o’clock sharp.”
Joe Bristow, member of Parliament for Hackney, stopped writing. “Tell Winston if he wants more boats, he can pay for them himself. The people of East London need sewers and drains, not dreadnoughts,” he said. “Tell the Times that London’s children must spend their days in schools, not sweatshops, and that it’s Parliament’s moral duty to act upon the report swiftly and decisively. And tell the prime minister to order me the guinea hen. Thanks, Trudy luv.”
He turned back to the elderly man seated on the other side of his desk. Nothing, not newspapers, not party business, not the prime minister himself, was more important to him than his constituents. The men and women of East London were the reason he’d become a Labor MP back in 1900, and they were the reason why, fourteen years later, he remained one.
“I’m sorry, Harry. Where were we?” he said.
“The water pump,” Harry Coyne, resident of number 31 Lauriston Street, Hackney, said. “As I was saying, about a month ago the water started tasting funny. And now everyone on the street’s ill. Lad I talked to works down the tannery says they’re dumping barrels of lye on the ground behind the building at night. Says the foreman don’t want to pay to have the waste carted away. Water lines run under that building and I think the waste from the tannery’s getting into them. Has to be. There’s no other explanation.”
“Have you told the health inspector?”
“Three times. He don’t do nothing. That’s why I came to you. Only one who ever gets anything done is you, Mr. Bristow.”
“I have to have names, Harry,” he said. “Of the tannery. The man in charge. The lad who works there. Anyone who’s been ill. Will they speak to me?”
“I can’t answer for the tannery man, but the rest will,” Harry said. “Here, give us that pen.” As Harry wrote down names and addresses, Joe poured two cups of tea, pushed one over to Harry, and downed the other. He’d been seeing constituents since eight o’clock that morning, with no break for lunch, and it was now half past four.
“Here you are,” Harry said, handing the list to Joe.
“Thank you,” Joe said, pouring more tea. “I’ll start knocking on doors tomorrow. I’ll pay a personal visit to the health inspector. We’ll get this solved, Harry, I promise you. We’ll—” Before he could finish his sentence, the door to his office was wrenched open. “Yes, Trudy. What, Trudy?” he said.
But it wasn’t Trudy. It was a young woman. She was tall, raven-haired, blue-eyed—a beauty. She wore a smartly tailored charcoal gray coat and matching hat, and carried a reporter’s notebook and fountain pen in her gloved hands.
“Dad! Mum’s been arrested again!” she said breathlessly.
“Bloody hell. Again?” Joe said.
“Katie Bristow, I’ve told you a hundred times to knock first!” Trudy scolded, hot on her heels.
“Sorry, Miss Mellors,” Katie said to Trudy. Then she turned back to her father. “Dad, you’ve got to come. Mum was at a suffrage march this morning. It was supposed to be peaceful, but it turned into a donnybrook, and the police came, and she was arrested and charged, and now she’s in jail!”
Joe sighed. “Trudy, call the carriage, will you? Mr. Coyne, this is my daughter, Katharine. Katie, this is Mr. Coyne, one of my constituents,” he said.
“Very pleased to meet you, sir,” Kate said, extending a hand to Mr. Coyne. To her father she said, “Dad, come on! We’ve got to go!”
Harry Coyne stood. He put his hat on and said, “You go on, lad. I’ll see meself out.”
“I’ll be on Lauriston Street tomorrow, Harry,” Joe said, then he turned to his daughter. “What happened, Katie? How do you know she’s in jail?” he asked her.
“Mum sent a messenger to the house. Oh, and Dad? How much money have you got on you? Because Mum says you need to post bail for her and Auntie Maud before they can be released, but you can do it at the jail, because they were taken straight there, not to the courts, and crikey but I’m parched! Are you going to finish that?”
Joe handed her his teacup. “Did you come all the way over here alone?” he asked sternly.
“No, I have Uncle Seamie with me and Mr. Foster, too.”
“Uncle Seamie? What’s he doing here?”
“He’s staying with us again. Just for a bit while he’s in London. Didn’t Mum tell you?” Katie said, between gulps of tea.
“No,” Joe said, leaning forward in his wheelchair and peering out of his office. Amid five or six of his constituents sat Mr. Foster, his butler, upright, knees together, hands folded on top of his walking stick. Upon seeing Joe looking at him, he removed his hat and said, “Good afternoon, sir.”
Joe leaned farther and saw his usually brisk, no-nonsense secretary fluttering madly around someone. She was blushing and twisting her necklace and giggling like a schoolgirl. The someone was his brother-in-law. Seamie looked up, smiled, and gave him a wave.
“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 first-born, 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 medieval 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?”
The man turned around. He wore spectacles, was clean-shaven, and looked to be in his fifties. His hair was graying, his expression kindly and befuddled.
He squinted at them, lifted his glasses, and said, “Ah! Mr. Bristow. Well met in Islington, eh?”
“Hardly, Reverend. Jennie’s been arrested, too, then?”
“Indeed she has. I’ve come to collect her, but she doesn’t appear to be here. I’m most concerned. The warden has released many of the women to family members, but not Jennie. I’ve no idea why. I spotted Mr. von Brandt a moment ago, looking for Harriet. Ah! Here he is now.”
A tall, well-dressed man with silvery blond hair joined them. Introductions were made and Seamie learned that Max von Brandt—German and from Berlin originally, but currently living in London—was Dr. Harriet Hatcher’s cousin and had been sent by Harriet’s anxious mother to fetch her.
“Have you found her?” Joe asked him.
“No, but I did see the warden briefly, and he told me that Harriet and several other officers from the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies are being held elsewhere in the prison.”
“Why?” Joe asked.
“He said it was for their own safety. He told me that he’d had to separate officers of Mrs. Fawcett’s group from those of Mrs. Pankhurst’s. There were some harsh words between them, apparently, and he feared further hostilities would take place. He said they would be released shortly, but that was an hour ago and there’s still no sign of them.”
Joe, frustrated, wheeled himself over to a harried wardress to try to find out more. Max went with him. Katie continued to interview marchers and scribble notes. Seamie and the Reverend Wilcott attempted to make polite conversation. The reverend knew Seamie’s name and asked about his adventures in Antarctica. Seamie learned that the reverend headed a parish in Wapping and that his daughter Jennie, who lived in the rectory with him, ran a school for poor children in the church.
“It’s also a de facto soup kitchen,” the Reverend Wilcott explained. “As Jennie always says, ‘Children who are hungry cannot learn, and children who cannot learn will always be hungry.’ ”
As Reverend Wilcott was talking, a gate at the far end of the receiving room was opened and a group of dazed and weary-looking women walked through it. Seamie recognized his sister immediately, but his relief at seeing her soon turned to dismay. Fiona’s face was bruised. There was a cut on her forehead and blood in her hair. Her jacket was torn.
As the women entered the receiving area, a cheer went up from their fellow marchers—those who had been released but had refused to leave. There were hugs and tears and promises to march again. Joe and Katie hurried to collect Fiona. Seamie followed them. Women’s voices swirled around him as he made his way across the room. Seamie didn’t know most of the women, but he recognized a few of them.
“God, but I need a cigarette,” one woman said loudly. Seamie knew her. She was Fiona’s friend Harriet Hatcher. “A cigarette and a tall glass of gin,” she said. “Max, is that you? Thank God! Give us a fag, will you?”
“Hatch, is that a cigarette? Have you got an extra?” Seamie knew that voice, too. It belonged to Maud Selwyn Jones, the sister of India Selwyn Jones, who was married to his and Fiona’s brother Sid.
“You all right, Fee?” Seamie asked his sister when he finally got to her. Joe and Katie were already on either side of her, fussing over her.
“Seamie? What are you doing here?” Fiona asked.
“I was at home when your message arrived. I accompanied Katie.”
“Sorry, luv,” Fiona said.
“No, don’t apologize. I’m glad I came. I had no idea, Fiona. None. I . . . well, I’m so glad you’re all right.”
He was upset to see the marks of violence on her. Fiona had raised him. They’d lost both parents when she was seventeen and he was four, and she’d been both sister and mother to him. She was one of the most loving, loyal, unselfish human beings he had ever known, and to think that someone had hurt her . . . well, he only wished he had that someone here now, right in front of him.
“What happened?” Joe asked her.
“Emmeline and Christabel happened,” Fiona said wryly. “Our group was marching peacefully. There were crowds there, and police constables, but very little heckling or baiting. Then the Pankhursts showed up. Christabel spat at a constable. Then she lobbed a rock through a pub window. Things went downhill from there. There was a great deal of shouting. Fights broke out. The publican’s wife was furious. She walloped Christabel, and went after other marchers, too. The police started making arrests. Those of us who had been marching peacefully resisted and, as you can see, paid for it quite dearly.”
“The warden told us you were being held downstairs for your safety,” Joe said. “That there was scuffling between the two factions here at the prison.”
Fiona laughed wearily. “Is that what he told you?”
“It’s not true, Mum?” Katie asked.
“No, luv, it’s not. The warden held us downstairs, but not for our safety. There was no scuffling between us. The war. . .
PROLOGUE
PART ONE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
CHAPTER FORTY
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
PART TWO
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
CHAPTER FIFTY
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
CHAPTER SIXTY
CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE
CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR
CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE
CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX
CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE
CHAPTER SEVENTY
CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE
CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO
CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE
CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER SEVENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER SEVENTY-SIX
CHAPTER SEVENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER SEVENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER SEVENTY-NINE
CHAPTER EIGHTY
CHAPTER EIGHTY-ONE
CHAPTER EIGHTY-TWO
CHAPTER EIGHTY-THREE
CHAPTER EIGHTY-FOUR
CHAPTER EIGHTY-FIVE
CHAPTER EIGHTY-SIX
CHAPTER EIGHTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER EIGHTY-NINE
CHAPTER NINETY
CHAPTER NINETY-ONE
CHAPTER NINETY-TWO
CHAPTER NINETY-THREE
CHAPTER NINETY-FOUR
CHAPTER NINETY-FIVE
CHAPTER NINETY-SIX
PART THREE
CHAPTER NINETY-SEVEN
CHAPTER NINETY-EIGHT
CHAPTER NINETY-NINE
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED ONE
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED TWO
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED THREE
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED FOUR
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED FIVE
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED SIX
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED SEVEN
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED EIGHT
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED NINE
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED TEN
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED ELEVEN
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED TWELVE
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED THIRTEEN
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED FOURTEEN
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED FIFTEEN
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED SIXTEEN
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED NINETEEN
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED TWENTY
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-TWO
EPILOGUE
BIBLIOGRAPHY
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
DISCOVER MORE
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
READING GROUP GUIDE
A CONVERSATION WITH JENNIFER DONNELLY
ALSO BY JENNIFER DONNELLY
COPYRIGHT
PROLOGUEAugust 1913—Tibet
Did all English girls make love like a man? Or was it only this one?
Max von Brandt, a German mountaineer, wondered this as he stroked the hair out of the face of the young woman lying next to him in the dark. He’d been with many women. Soft, pliant women, who clung to him afterward, extorting promises and endearments. This woman wasn’t soft, and neither was her lovemaking. It was hard and quick and without preliminaries. And when it was over, as it was now, she would turn away, curl into herself, and sleep.
“I don’t suppose there is anything I can say. To make you stay with me,” he said.
“No, Max, there isn’t.”
He lay on his back in the dark, listening as her breath slowed and deepened, as she drifted off to sleep. He couldn’t sleep. He didn’t want to. He wanted to make this night last. To remember it always. He wanted to remember the feel of her, the smell of her. The sound of the wind. The piercing cold.
He had told her he loved her. Weeks ago. And he’d meant it. For the first time in his life, he’d meant it. She’d laughed. And then, seeing that she’d hurt him, she’d kissed him and shaken her head no.
The night passed quickly. Before the sun rose, the woman did. As Max stared ahead of himself, into the darkness, she dressed, then quietly left their tent.
He never found her beside him when he woke. She always left the tent or cave or whatever shelter they’d found while it was still dark. He’d searched for her in the beginning, and always he’d found her perched somewhere high, somewhere solitary and still, her face lifted to the dawn sky and its fading stars.
“What are you looking for?” he would ask, following her gaze.
“Orion,” she would answer.
In only a few hours, he would say good-bye to her. In the time he had left, he would think of their first days together, for it was those memories he would hold on to.
They’d met about four months ago. He’d been traveling in Asia for five months prior. A renowned Alpine climber, he’d decided he wanted to see the Himalayas. To see if it was possible to conquer Everest; to take the world’s highest mountain for Germany, for the fatherland. The kaiser wanted conquests, and better to satisfy him with a beautiful mountain in Asia than a wretched war in Europe. He’d left Berlin for India, traveled north through that country, then quietly entered Nepal, a country closed to Westerners.
He’d made it all the way to Kathmandu before he was apprehended by Nepalese authorities and told to leave. He promised he would, but he needed help, he told them; a guide. He needed someone to take him through the high valleys of the Solu Khumbu and into Tibet over the Nangpa La pass. From there he wanted to trek east, exploring the northern base of Everest on his way to Lhasa, the City of God, where he hoped to ask permission of the Dalai Lama to climb. He had heard about a place called Rongbuk, and hoped he might find an approach there. He’d heard of one who might be able to help him—a woman, another Westerner. Did they know anything about her?
The authorities said that they did know her, though they had not seen her in several months. He gave them presents: rubies and sapphires he’d bought in Jaipur, pearls, a large emerald. In return, they gave him permission to wait for her. For a month.
Max had first heard of the woman when he’d arrived in Bombay. Western climbers he’d met there told him of her—an English girl who lived in the shadow of the Himalayas. She’d climbed Kilimanjaro—the Mawenzi peak—and had lost a leg on Kili in a horrible accident. She’d almost died there. Now, they said, she was photographing and mapping the Himalayas. She was trekking as high as she could, but the difficult climbs were beyond her. She lived among the mountain people now. She was strong like them, and had earned their respect and their liking. She did what almost no European could—moved over borders with goodwill, receiving hospitality from Nepalese and Tibetans alike.
But how to find her? Rumors abounded. She had been in China and India, but was in Tibet now, some said. No, Burma. No, Afghanistan. She was surveying for the British. Spying for the French. She’d died in an avalanche. She’d gone native. She’d taken a Nepalese husband. She traded horses. Yaks. Gold. He heard more talk as he made his way northeast across India. In Agra. Kanpur. And then, finally, he’d found her. In Kathmandu. Or at least he’d found a hut she used.
“She’s in the mountains,” a villager told him. “She’ll come.”
“When?”
“Soon. Soon.”
Days passed. Then weeks. A month. The Nepalese were growing impatient. They wanted him gone. He asked the villagers again and again when she was coming, and always he was told soon. He thought it must be a ruse by the wily farmer with whom he was staying to get a few more coins out of him.
And then she’d arrived. He’d thought her a Nepalese at first. She was dressed in indigo trousers and a long sheepskin jacket. Her shrewd green eyes were large in her angular face. They assessed him from beneath the furry fringe of her cap. Turquoise beads hung from her neck and dangled from her ears. She wore her hair in a long braid ornamented with bits of silver and glass as the native women did. Her face was bronzed by the Himalayan sun. Her body was wiry and strong. She walked with a limp. He found out, later, that she wore a false leg made of yak bone, carved and hollowed for her by a villager.
“Namaste,” she’d said to him, bowing her head slightly, after the farmer had told her what he wanted.
Namaste. It was a Nepalese greeting. It meant: The light within me bows to the light within you.
He’d told her he wished to hire her to take him into Tibet. She told him she’d just returned from Shigatse and was tired. She would sleep first, then eat, and then they would discuss it.
The next day she prepared him a meal of rice and curried mutton, with strong black tea. He’d sat with her on the rug-covered floor of her hut and they’d talked, sharing a pipeful of opium. It killed the pain, she said. He’d thought then that she was referring to her damaged leg, but later he realized that the pain she spoke of went much deeper, and the opium she smoked did little to dull it. Sadness enfolded her like a long black cape.
He was astonished by the depth and breadth of her knowledge of the Himalayas. She had surveyed, mapped, and photographed more of the range than any Westerner had ever done. She kept herself by guiding and by publishing papers on the topography of the mountains for Britain’s Royal Geographical Society. The RGS would soon publish a book of her Himalayan photographs, too. Max had seen some of them. They were astonishingly good. They captured the fierce magnificence of the mountains, their beauty and cold indifference, like no other images ever had. She never went to the RGS in person, for she would not leave her beloved mountains. Instead she sent her work to be presented there by Sir Clements Markham, the RGS’s president.
Max had exclaimed over her photographs and the precision of her maps, amazed by both. She was younger than he—only twenty-nine—and yet she’d accomplished so much. She had shrugged his praise off, saying there was so much more to do, but she couldn’t do it—couldn’t get high enough to do it—because of her leg.
“But you’ve had to climb in order to do this much,” he said.
“Not so high, really. And not on anything tricky. No ice fields. No cliffs or crevasses,” she replied.
“But, it’s all tricky,” he said. “How do you climb at all? Without . . . without both legs, I mean.”
“I climb with my heart,” she replied. “Can you?”
When he had proved to her that he could do that, that he could climb with love and awe and respect for the mountains, she agreed to take him to Lhasa. They’d left Kathmandu with two yaks to carry a tent and supplies, and had trekked through mountain villages and valleys and passes that only she and a handful of sherpas knew. It was hard and exhausting and unspeakably beautiful. It was brutally cold, too. They slept close to each other in a tent, under skins for warmth. On the third night of the trek he told her he loved her. She laughed and he’d turned away, upset. He’d meant it, and his pride had been deeply wounded by her rejection.
“I’m sorry,” she said, placing a hand on his back. “I’m sorry, I can’t . . .”
He asked if there was someone else and she said yes, and then she took him in her arms. For comfort and warmth, for pleasure, but not for love. It was the first time in his life his heart had been broken.
They’d arrived three weeks ago at a bleak Tibetan village at the base of Everest—Rongbuk, where she lived. They waited there while the woman, who was known and well connected, used her influence to get him papers from Tibetan officials which would allow him to enter Lhasa. He stayed with her in her house—a small whitewashed stone structure, with a smaller building tacked on that she used to house her animals.
She’d taken photographs during those days. Once he’d seen her try to climb. She attempted an ice field when she thought he wasn’t watching, with her camera strapped to her back. She was not bad even with only one leg. But then she suddenly stopped dead and did not move for a solid ten minutes. He saw her struggling with herself. “Damn you!” she suddenly screamed. “Damn you! Damn you!” until he feared she would start an avalanche. At whom was she yelling? he wondered. At the mountain? Herself? At someone else?
His papers had finally come through. The day after he received them, he and the woman left Rongbuk with a tent and five yaks. Yesterday, they’d reached the outskirts of Lhasa. It had been their last day together. Last night, their last night. In a few hours, he would begin the trek to the holy city alone. He planned to stay for some months, studying and photographing Lhasa and its inhabitants, while he tried to obtain an audience with the Dalai Lama. He knew his chances were slim. The Dalai Lama tolerated one Westerner—the woman. It was said that on occasion he would drink with her, sing Tibetan songs with her, and swap bawdy stories. She was not going into Lhasa this time, however. She wanted to get back to Rongbuk.
Max wondered now, as he rose in the cold gray dawn, if he would ever see her again. He quickly dressed, packed a few things into his rucksack, buttoned his jacket, and walked out of the tent. Four yaks, presents for the governor of Lhasa, were stamping and snorting, their breath white in the morning air, but the woman was nowhere to be seen.
He looked around and finally spotted her sitting on a large, jutting rock, silhouetted against the sky. She sat still and alone, one knee hugged to her chest, her face lifted to the fading stars. He would leave now. With morning breaking. With this image of her forever in his mind.
“Namaste, Willa Alden,” he whispered, touching his steepled hands to his forehead. “Namaste.”
CHAPTER ONE
“Aunt Eddie, stop! You can’t go in there!”
Seamus Finnegan, sprawled naked across his bed, opened one eye. He knew that voice. It belonged to Albie Alden, his best friend.
“For heaven’s sake, why not?”
“Because he’s asleep! You can’t just barge in on a sleeping man. It’s not decent!”
“Oh, bosh.”
Seamie knew that voice, too. He sat up, grabbed the bedcovers, and pulled them up to his chin.
“Albie! Do something!” he yelled.
“I tried, old chap. You’re on your own,” Albie shouted back.
A second later, a small, stout woman dressed in a tweed suit threw open the door and greeted Seamie loudly. It was Edwina Hedley. She was Albie’s aunt, but Seamie had known her since he was a boy and called her Aunt Eddie, too. She sat down on the bed, then immediately jumped up again when the bed squawked. A young woman, tousled and yawning, emerged from under the covers.
Eddie frowned. “My dear,” she said to the girl, “I earnestly hope you have taken preventive measures. Otherwise, you’ll find yourself with a baby on the way and the father en route to the North Pole.”
“I thought it was the South Pole,” the woman said sleepily.
“It was,” Seamie replied.
“Has he told you about all the children?” Eddie asked the girl, lowering her voice conspiratorially.
Seamie started to protest. “Eddie, don’t . . .”
“Children? What children?” the woman asked, her sleepy look gone now.
“You know he has four children, don’t you? All illegitimate. He sends the mothers money—he’s not a complete bounder—but he won’t marry any of them. They’re completely ruined, of course. London girls, all of them. Three left for the country. Couldn’t show their faces anymore. The fourth went to America, the poor dear. Why do you think the whole thing with Lady Caroline Wainwright ended?”
The girl, a pretty brunette with a short bob, turned to Seamie. “Is this true?” she asked indignantly.
“Entirely,” Eddie said, before Seamie could even open his mouth.
The girl wrapped the duvet around herself and got out of bed. She picked her clothes up off the floor and huffed out of the room, slamming the door on her way.
“Four children, Aunt Eddie?” Seamie said, after she’d gone. “Last time it was two.”
“A gold digger through and through,” Eddie sniffed. “I saved you just now, but I won’t always be around at times like these, you know.”
“What a pity,” Seamie said.
Eddie leaned over and kissed his cheek. “It’s good to see you.”
“Likewise. How was Aleppo?”
“Absolutely splendid! Stayed in a palace. Dined with a pasha. Met the most extraordinary people. A Tom Lawrence among them. He traveled back to London with me. He’s staying in the Belgravia place and—”
There was a loud, resounding boom as the house’s heavy front door slammed shut.
Eddie smiled. “Well, that’s the end of that one. Won’t be seeing her again. What a tomcat you are.”
“More of a stray dog, I’d say,” Seamie said ruefully.
“I heard about Lady Caroline. It’s all over London.”
“So I gathered.”
Seamie had come to Highgate, Eddie’s beautiful Georgian brick house in Cambridge, to recuperate from a brief and heady love affair that had soured. Lady Caroline Wainwright was a privileged young woman—wealthy, beautiful, spoiled—and used to getting what she wanted. And what she wanted was him—for her husband. He’d told her it would never work. He wasn’t good husband material. He was too independent. Too used to his own ways. He traveled too much. He told her any bloody thing he could think of—except the truth.
“There’s someone else, isn’t there?” Caroline had said tearfully. “Who is she? Tell me her name.”
“There’s no one else,” he’d said. It was a lie, of course. There was someone else. Someone he’d loved long ago, and lost. Someone who’d ruined him, it seemed, for any other woman.
He’d finished with Caroline, and then he’d hightailed it to Cambridge to hide out with his friend. He had no home of his own to go to, and when he was in England, he tended to bounce between Highgate, his sister’s house, and various hotels.
Albie Alden, a brilliant physicist, taught at King’s College and lived in his aunt’s house. He was constantly being offered positions by universities all over the world—Paris, Vienna, Berlin, New York—but he wanted to stay in Cambridge. Dull, sleepy Cambridge. God knew why. Seamie certainly didn’t. He’d asked him many times, and Albie always said he liked it best here. It was peaceful and quiet—at least when Eddie was away—and he needed that for his work. And Eddie, who was rarely home, needed someone to look after things. The arrangement suited them both.
“What happened?” Eddie asked Seamie now. “Lady Caroline break your heart? Didn’t want to marry you?”
“No, she did want to marry me. That’s the problem.”
“Mmm. Well, what do you expect? It’s what happens when you’re a dashing and handsome hero. Women want to get their claws into you.”
“Turn around, will you? So I can get dressed,” Seamie said.
Eddie did so, and Seamie got out of bed and grabbed his clothing off the floor. He was tall, strong, and beautifully made. Muscles flexed and rippled under his skin as he pulled his pants on, then shrugged into his shirt. His hair, cut short on the sides, long and wavy on the top, was a dark auburn with copper glints. His face was weathered by the sun and the sea. His eyes were a frank and startling blue.
At thirty-one years of age, he was one of the world’s most renowned polar explorers. He’d attempted the South Pole with Ernest Shackleton when he was still a teenager. Two years ago, he’d returned from the first successful expedition to the South Pole, led by the Norwegian Roald Amundsen. In demand all over the world, he’d embarked on a lecture tour shortly after returning from Antarctica and had traveled nonstop for nearly two years. He’d come back to London a month ago and already he felt it, and everyone in it, to be dull and gray. He felt restless and confined, and couldn’t wait to be gone again on some new adventure.
“How long have you been in town? How are you liking it? Are you going to stay for a bit this time?” Eddie asked him.
Seamie laughed. Eddie always talked this way—asking a question, and before you could answer it, asking ten more.
“I’m not sure,” he said, combing his hair in the mirror above the bureau. “I may be off again soon.”
“Another lecture tour?”
“No. An expedition.”
“Really? How exciting! Where to?”
“Back to Antarctica. Shackleton’s trying to get something together. He’s quite serious. He announced it in the Times last year, and he’s already drawn up some very detailed timetables. All he has to do now is scare up some funds.”
“What about all the war talk? Doesn’t that worry him?” Eddie asked. “People talked about nothing else on board the ship. In Aleppo, too.”
“It doesn’t worry him a bit,” Seamie replied. “He doesn’t give much credence to it. Says it’ll all blow over, and wants to sail by summer’s end, if not earlier.”
Eddie gave him a long look. “Aren’t you getting a bit old for the lad’s life? Shouldn’t you settle down? Find a good woman?”
“How? You chase them all away!” Seamie said teasingly. He sat down on the bed again to put his socks on.
Eddie flapped a hand at him. “Come downstairs when you’ve finished dressing. I’ll make us all some breakfast. Eggs with harissa sauce. I bought pots of the stuff back with me. Wait till you taste it. Simply marvelous! I’ll tell you and Albie and his boffin friends about all my adventures. And then we’ll go to London.”
“To London? When? Right after breakfast?”
“Well, perhaps not right after,” Eddie conceded. “Maybe in a day or two. I’ve got the most fascinating man staying in my town house whom I want you to meet. Mr. Thomas Lawrence. I was telling you about him just a moment ago, before your paramour nearly slammed my door off its hinges. I met him in Aleppo. He’s an explorer, too. And an archaeologist. He’s traveled all around the desert, knows all the most powerful poohbahs, and speaks flawless Arabic.” Eddie suddenly stopped speaking and lowered her voice. “Some people say he’s a spy.” Eddie said this last word in a whisper, then resumed her normal, booming tone. “Whatever he is, he’s thoroughly amazing.”
Eddie’s words were punctuated by a sudden clap of thunder, followed by the pattering of rain against the mullioned windows, one of which had a cracked pane.
“Water’s coming in,” she said. “I must call the glazier.” She sat watching the rain for another minute. “I never thought I’d miss the English weather,” she added, smiling wistfully. “But that was before I’d seen the Arabian desert. It’s good to be back. I do love my creaky old house. And creaky old Cambridge.” Her smile faded. “Though I do wish the circumstances of my return were different.”
“He’ll be all right, Eddie,” Seamie said.
Eddie sighed heavily. “I hope so,” she said. “But I know my sister. She wouldn’t have asked me to come home if she wasn’t terribly worried.”
Seamie knew that Mrs. Alden, Albie’s mother and Eddie’s sister, had wired Eddie at Aleppo, asking her to return to England. Admiral Alden, her husband, had taken ill with some sort of stomach complaint. His doctors had not yet figured out what was wrong with him, but whatever it was, it was bad enough to keep him in bed and on pain medication.
“He’s made of tough stuff,” Seamie said. “All the Aldens are.”
Eddie nodded and tried to smile. “You’re right, of course. And anyway, that’s about enough moping for one morning. There’s breakfast to attend to and then I must call the glazier. And the gardener. And the chimney man, too. Albie’s done nothing in my absence. The house is dusty. My mail is up to the rafters. And there’s not one clean plate in the entire kitchen. Why doesn’t he get that girl from the village up here to do some cleaning?”
“He says she disturbs him.”
Eddie snorted. “I really don’t see how she could. He never comes out of his study. He was in it when I left two months ago. And he’s in it now, working harder than ever, even though he’s supposed to be on sabbatical. He’s got two more boffins in there with him. I just met them. Dilly Knox, one’s called. And Oliver Strachey. They’ve got blackboards and charts and books strewn all over. What on earth can they be doing in there? What can possibly be so fascinating?”
“Their work?”
“Hardly. It’s all just numbers and formulas,” Eddie said dismissively. “That boy needs a wife. Even more than you do, I daresay. He’s far too odd and absentminded to continue without one. Why is it that you have more women after you than you can possibly cope with and poor Albie hasn’t any? Can’t you push some of your admirers in his direction? He needs a good woman. And children. Oh, I would so love to hear the happy noise of little ones in my home again. How wonderful those years were when Albie and Willa were little and my sister would bring them here and they’d swim in the pond and swing from that old tree—that one right there,” Eddie said, pointing at the huge oak outside the bedroom window. “Willa would climb so high. My sister would plead with her to come down, but she wouldn’t. She’d only climb higher and—”
Eddie suddenly stopped talking. She turned and looked at Seamie.
“Oh, crumbs. I shouldn’t have spoken of her. Do forgive me.”
“It’s all right, Eddie,” Seamie said.
“No, it isn’t. I . . . I don’t suppose you’ve had a letter from her recently, have you? Her own mother hasn’t. Not for the last three months anyway. And she’s been writing to Willa twice a week. Trying to get word to her about her father. Well, I suppose getting letters to and from Tibet is a rather tricky business.”
“I suppose it is. And no, I haven’t heard from her,” Seamie said. “But I never have. Not since she left Africa. I only know as much as you do. That she nearly died in Nairobi. That she traveled through the Far East afterward. And that she’s in the Himalayas now, looking for a way to finish the job.”
Eddie winced at that. “You’re still pining for her, aren’t you?” she said. “That’s why you go through women like water. One after another. Because you’re looking for someone who can take Willa’s place. But you never find her.”
And I never will, Seamie said to himself. He had lost Willa, the love of his life, eight years ago, and though he’d tried, he’d never found a woman to come close to her. No other woman had Willa’s lust for life, for adventure. No other woman possessed her bravery or her passionate, daring soul.
“It’s all my fault,” Seamie said now. “She wouldn’t be there, a million miles away from her family, her home, if it hadn’t been for me. If I’d handled things properly on Kilimanjaro, she’d be here.”
He would never forget what had happened in Africa. They’d been climbing Kilimanjaro, he and Willa, hoping to set a record by being the first to climb the Mawenzi peak. Altitude sickness had plagued them both, but it had hit Willa especially hard. He’d wanted her to go down, but she’d refused. So they went up instead, summitting much later than they should have. There on Mawenzi, he’d told her something he’d felt for years, but had kept to himself—that he loved her. “I love you, too,” she said. “Always have. Since forever.” He still heard those words. Every day of his life. They echoed in his head and in his heart.
The sun was high by the time they’d begun their descent, too high, and its rays were strong. An ice-bound boulder, loosened by the sun’s heat, came crashing down on them as they were heading down a couloir. It hit Willa and she fell. Seamie would never forget the sound of her screams, or the twisting blur of her body as it flew past him.
When he finally got to her, he saw that her right leg was broken. Jagged bone stuck through her skin. He went down the mountain to their base camp to get help from their Masai guides, only to find they’d been murdered by hostile tribesmen. He’d had to carry her off the mountain, and through jungle and plains, alone. After days of walking, he’d found the train tracks that run between Mombasa and Nairobi. After flagging down a train, he managed to get Willa to a doctor in Nairobi, but by the time they got there, the wound had turned gangrenous. There was no choice, the doctor had said; it would have to be amputated. Willa begged and pleaded with him not to let the man cut her leg off. She knew she’d never climb without it. But Seamie hadn’t listened to her pleas. He’d let the doctor amputate to save her life, and she’d never forgiven him for it. As soon as she was able, she left the hospital. And him.
I wake up every morning in despair and go to sleep the same way, she’d written in the note she left for him. I don’t know what to do. Where to go. How to live. I don’t know how to make it through the next ten minutes, never mind the rest of my life. There are no more hills for me to climb, no more mountains, no more dreams. It would have been better to have died on Kilimanjaro than to live like this.
Eddie reached for his hand and squeezed it. “Stop blaming yourself, Seamie, it’s not your fault,” she said resolutely. “You did everything a human being could have done on that mountain. And when you got her to Nairobi, you did the only thing you could do. The right thing. Imagine had you not done it. Imagine standing in my sister’s drawing room and telling her that you did nothing at all, that you let her child die. I understand, Seamie. We all do.”
Seamie smiled sadly. “That’s the hard thing of it, though, Eddie,” he said. “Everyone understands. Everyone but Willa.”
CHAPTER TWO
“Pardon me, Mr. Bristow,” Gertrude Mellors said, poking her head around the door to her boss’s office, “but Mr. Churchill’s on the telephone, the Times wants a comment from you on the trade secretary’s report on child labor in East London, and Mr. Asquith’s requested that you join him for supper at the Reform Club this evening. Eight o’clock sharp.”
Joe Bristow, member of Parliament for Hackney, stopped writing. “Tell Winston if he wants more boats, he can pay for them himself. The people of East London need sewers and drains, not dreadnoughts,” he said. “Tell the Times that London’s children must spend their days in schools, not sweatshops, and that it’s Parliament’s moral duty to act upon the report swiftly and decisively. And tell the prime minister to order me the guinea hen. Thanks, Trudy luv.”
He turned back to the elderly man seated on the other side of his desk. Nothing, not newspapers, not party business, not the prime minister himself, was more important to him than his constituents. The men and women of East London were the reason he’d become a Labor MP back in 1900, and they were the reason why, fourteen years later, he remained one.
“I’m sorry, Harry. Where were we?” he said.
“The water pump,” Harry Coyne, resident of number 31 Lauriston Street, Hackney, said. “As I was saying, about a month ago the water started tasting funny. And now everyone on the street’s ill. Lad I talked to works down the tannery says they’re dumping barrels of lye on the ground behind the building at night. Says the foreman don’t want to pay to have the waste carted away. Water lines run under that building and I think the waste from the tannery’s getting into them. Has to be. There’s no other explanation.”
“Have you told the health inspector?”
“Three times. He don’t do nothing. That’s why I came to you. Only one who ever gets anything done is you, Mr. Bristow.”
“I have to have names, Harry,” he said. “Of the tannery. The man in charge. The lad who works there. Anyone who’s been ill. Will they speak to me?”
“I can’t answer for the tannery man, but the rest will,” Harry said. “Here, give us that pen.” As Harry wrote down names and addresses, Joe poured two cups of tea, pushed one over to Harry, and downed the other. He’d been seeing constituents since eight o’clock that morning, with no break for lunch, and it was now half past four.
“Here you are,” Harry said, handing the list to Joe.
“Thank you,” Joe said, pouring more tea. “I’ll start knocking on doors tomorrow. I’ll pay a personal visit to the health inspector. We’ll get this solved, Harry, I promise you. We’ll—” Before he could finish his sentence, the door to his office was wrenched open. “Yes, Trudy. What, Trudy?” he said.
But it wasn’t Trudy. It was a young woman. She was tall, raven-haired, blue-eyed—a beauty. She wore a smartly tailored charcoal gray coat and matching hat, and carried a reporter’s notebook and fountain pen in her gloved hands.
“Dad! Mum’s been arrested again!” she said breathlessly.
“Bloody hell. Again?” Joe said.
“Katie Bristow, I’ve told you a hundred times to knock first!” Trudy scolded, hot on her heels.
“Sorry, Miss Mellors,” Katie said to Trudy. Then she turned back to her father. “Dad, you’ve got to come. Mum was at a suffrage march this morning. It was supposed to be peaceful, but it turned into a donnybrook, and the police came, and she was arrested and charged, and now she’s in jail!”
Joe sighed. “Trudy, call the carriage, will you? Mr. Coyne, this is my daughter, Katharine. Katie, this is Mr. Coyne, one of my constituents,” he said.
“Very pleased to meet you, sir,” Kate said, extending a hand to Mr. Coyne. To her father she said, “Dad, come on! We’ve got to go!”
Harry Coyne stood. He put his hat on and said, “You go on, lad. I’ll see meself out.”
“I’ll be on Lauriston Street tomorrow, Harry,” Joe said, then he turned to his daughter. “What happened, Katie? How do you know she’s in jail?” he asked her.
“Mum sent a messenger to the house. Oh, and Dad? How much money have you got on you? Because Mum says you need to post bail for her and Auntie Maud before they can be released, but you can do it at the jail, because they were taken straight there, not to the courts, and crikey but I’m parched! Are you going to finish that?”
Joe handed her his teacup. “Did you come all the way over here alone?” he asked sternly.
“No, I have Uncle Seamie with me and Mr. Foster, too.”
“Uncle Seamie? What’s he doing here?”
“He’s staying with us again. Just for a bit while he’s in London. Didn’t Mum tell you?” Katie said, between gulps of tea.
“No,” Joe said, leaning forward in his wheelchair and peering out of his office. Amid five or six of his constituents sat Mr. Foster, his butler, upright, knees together, hands folded on top of his walking stick. Upon seeing Joe looking at him, he removed his hat and said, “Good afternoon, sir.”
Joe leaned farther and saw his usually brisk, no-nonsense secretary fluttering madly around someone. She was blushing and twisting her necklace and giggling like a schoolgirl. The someone was his brother-in-law. Seamie looked up, smiled, and gave him a wave.
“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 first-born, 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 medieval 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?”
The man turned around. He wore spectacles, was clean-shaven, and looked to be in his fifties. His hair was graying, his expression kindly and befuddled.
He squinted at them, lifted his glasses, and said, “Ah! Mr. Bristow. Well met in Islington, eh?”
“Hardly, Reverend. Jennie’s been arrested, too, then?”
“Indeed she has. I’ve come to collect her, but she doesn’t appear to be here. I’m most concerned. The warden has released many of the women to family members, but not Jennie. I’ve no idea why. I spotted Mr. von Brandt a moment ago, looking for Harriet. Ah! Here he is now.”
A tall, well-dressed man with silvery blond hair joined them. Introductions were made and Seamie learned that Max von Brandt—German and from Berlin originally, but currently living in London—was Dr. Harriet Hatcher’s cousin and had been sent by Harriet’s anxious mother to fetch her.
“Have you found her?” Joe asked him.
“No, but I did see the warden briefly, and he told me that Harriet and several other officers from the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies are being held elsewhere in the prison.”
“Why?” Joe asked.
“He said it was for their own safety. He told me that he’d had to separate officers of Mrs. Fawcett’s group from those of Mrs. Pankhurst’s. There were some harsh words between them, apparently, and he feared further hostilities would take place. He said they would be released shortly, but that was an hour ago and there’s still no sign of them.”
Joe, frustrated, wheeled himself over to a harried wardress to try to find out more. Max went with him. Katie continued to interview marchers and scribble notes. Seamie and the Reverend Wilcott attempted to make polite conversation. The reverend knew Seamie’s name and asked about his adventures in Antarctica. Seamie learned that the reverend headed a parish in Wapping and that his daughter Jennie, who lived in the rectory with him, ran a school for poor children in the church.
“It’s also a de facto soup kitchen,” the Reverend Wilcott explained. “As Jennie always says, ‘Children who are hungry cannot learn, and children who cannot learn will always be hungry.’ ”
As Reverend Wilcott was talking, a gate at the far end of the receiving room was opened and a group of dazed and weary-looking women walked through it. Seamie recognized his sister immediately, but his relief at seeing her soon turned to dismay. Fiona’s face was bruised. There was a cut on her forehead and blood in her hair. Her jacket was torn.
As the women entered the receiving area, a cheer went up from their fellow marchers—those who had been released but had refused to leave. There were hugs and tears and promises to march again. Joe and Katie hurried to collect Fiona. Seamie followed them. Women’s voices swirled around him as he made his way across the room. Seamie didn’t know most of the women, but he recognized a few of them.
“God, but I need a cigarette,” one woman said loudly. Seamie knew her. She was Fiona’s friend Harriet Hatcher. “A cigarette and a tall glass of gin,” she said. “Max, is that you? Thank God! Give us a fag, will you?”
“Hatch, is that a cigarette? Have you got an extra?” Seamie knew that voice, too. It belonged to Maud Selwyn Jones, the sister of India Selwyn Jones, who was married to his and Fiona’s brother Sid.
“You all right, Fee?” Seamie asked his sister when he finally got to her. Joe and Katie were already on either side of her, fussing over her.
“Seamie? What are you doing here?” Fiona asked.
“I was at home when your message arrived. I accompanied Katie.”
“Sorry, luv,” Fiona said.
“No, don’t apologize. I’m glad I came. I had no idea, Fiona. None. I . . . well, I’m so glad you’re all right.”
He was upset to see the marks of violence on her. Fiona had raised him. They’d lost both parents when she was seventeen and he was four, and she’d been both sister and mother to him. She was one of the most loving, loyal, unselfish human beings he had ever known, and to think that someone had hurt her . . . well, he only wished he had that someone here now, right in front of him.
“What happened?” Joe asked her.
“Emmeline and Christabel happened,” Fiona said wryly. “Our group was marching peacefully. There were crowds there, and police constables, but very little heckling or baiting. Then the Pankhursts showed up. Christabel spat at a constable. Then she lobbed a rock through a pub window. Things went downhill from there. There was a great deal of shouting. Fights broke out. The publican’s wife was furious. She walloped Christabel, and went after other marchers, too. The police started making arrests. Those of us who had been marching peacefully resisted and, as you can see, paid for it quite dearly.”
“The warden told us you were being held downstairs for your safety,” Joe said. “That there was scuffling between the two factions here at the prison.”
Fiona laughed wearily. “Is that what he told you?”
“It’s not true, Mum?” Katie asked.
“No, luv, it’s not. The warden held us downstairs, but not for our safety. There was no scuffling between us. The war. . .
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