AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The two men broke into a chorus of raucous laughter as they turned to stroll away.
Ellie snapped.
Somehow, the sign flew from her hand. It soared across the pavement and struck Atkins firmly in his black-suited back. He stumbled forward, irritably adjusting his hat.
“I say, now!” he protested.
Whatever it was Atkins planned to say was cut off as Ellie roared out, raising a fist to the sky.
“To the gates, sisters!” she shouted. “We shall not let them pass!”
The words sparked through the demonstration’s careful facade of dignity, breaking open the roiling emotions that hid beneath. The women around Ellie ignited.
A group of the demonstrators surged forward, charging the enormous wrought iron gates that separated the public pavement from the palace yard. The press of women shoved the heavy doors forward, bringing them to a resounding close.
Now that the MPs were entirely blocked from getting inside, they actually began to pay attention to what was going on.
There were surprised exclamations ofGood Lord!andRather unexpected, wot?A few of the men managed to reach around the white clad bodies of the suffragists to grasp the gates and give the bars a shake. The iron grid behind Ellie’s back rattled alarmingly even as she twined her arms through either side of it.
“We can’t hold it closed!” one of her fellow demonstrators cried out.
The gate behind Ellie lurched, knocking off her hat.
“This might help!” someone in the crowd shouted.
A familiar figure pressed forward through the melee, holding up a set of thick gray chains that ended in sturdy manacles.
Earlier, Ellie had seen Miss Reynolds holding the chains in her upraised hands as a prop. At the time, Ellie had thought them quite effective as a piece of symbolic theater. Based on the solid thunk they made as Miss Reynolds approached, the metal links were more than purely decorative in function.
“I can use these to secure one of us to the opening,” Miss Reynolds called out breathlessly as the iron clanked in her hands. “But fair warning, I have no idea where the key has gone off to. I wasn’t exactly expecting to—”
“Bugger off, you daft witches!” a voice called angrily from the cluster of politicians.
In the face of the flood of verbal bile as the bars jerked with frenzied force behind her back, Ellie felt a remarkable sense of calm wash over her.
“Good morning, Florabelle,” she said firmly through the outraged male faces pressing toward her. “You may affix the manacles to me.”
?
The following afternoon, Ellie watched the relentless gray rain wash down the high, narrow windows of the Public Record Office as she waited to be fired.
The PRO was charged with cataloging and archiving official government documents for the entirety of the United Kingdom. Ellie had been told many times that she ought to be grateful for the opportunity to work there… despite the fact that she had scored nearly perfectly on her civil service exams and was eminently qualified for the position. After all, she was the only woman thus far in the PRO’s history to be offered the position of archivist instead of being relegated to the typing pool.
Of course, even though Ellie had been working in the great, gray monolith of a building for the last three years, she was still regularly stopped in the halls and directed to the typing pool rather than the archivists’ room. There was one gentleman, Mr. Ruddingford, who had very courteously directed her to the typing pool no less than twenty-six times. There was no deliberate malice in it. During each and every encounter, he simply neglected to bother remembering who she was.
On this particular rainy afternoon, Ellie was not in the archivists’ room. She sat in an uncomfortable chair in the office of Mr. Charles Henbury, Assistant Keeper of the Rolls—Ellie’s supervisor, who at any moment would enter the office and gleefully issue her notice of dismissal.
All for the teensy bother of having been arrested.
Her reflection stared waveringly back at her from the rain-streaked glass, sporting brown hair of a standard hue and hazel eyes, which were currently a bit more gray than green. The neat spray of freckles across her nose was accented by a colorful bruise on her cheekbone. Ellie had acquired said bruise when a flailing, portly baron tripped over the leg of a policeman and fell into her where she hung at the gates.
A framed certificate with a gilded seal and a tricolor ribbon hung on the thick, gray stones behind Mr. Henbury’s desk. It was signed by the Master of the Rolls, a silver-haired gentleman who was both the ceremonial head of the PRO and the second-most-senior judge in the kingdom. The certificate honored Mr. Henbury for exceptional work compiling a complete descriptive catalog of the ancient deeds among the PRO’s holdings.
Mr. Henbury had not had much to do with it. Ellie had compiled the catalog, and had done quite a bit of work stabilizing the moldering and irreplaceable documents while she was at it. For his part, Mr. Henbury had ignored her requests for necessary supplies and occasionally interrupted her to demand that she fetch him biscuits.
(Mr. Henbury did not ask the male archivists to fetch him biscuits.)
Mr. Henbury had also ignored Ellie’s concerns about the level of humidity in Room B14, where the deeds were stored. Several of the fourteenth-century parchments were already damaged by mildew. Finally, Ellie had asked her colleague, Mr. Barker, to bring the issue to Mr. Henbury’s desk. Though Mr. Barker was unfortunate enough to be a socialist, he was still a man, and at last the order for a new ventilation shaft was put in.
