A Death for a Cause Read Online Free Page B

The mood in the square was changing fast. The singing continued in snatches across the square, in groups and the single women who held firm, but mostly the air was shrill with cries of outrage and screams.
    Some of the women had been carrying flags on poles. I saw these now raised as weapons. Who struck first I could not in all honesty say. It was mayhem. A woman pushed past me wielding her flag before her. She headed towards the side where we could now hear the whinnying of horses.
    Hans will never forgive me if I do not find Richenda, I thought, but the likelihood of doing so seemed remote. Indeed, if I, and the terrified girl who had attached herself to me, were to get away, we had to go now.
    I cursed Richenda a thousand times as I turned my back on her. I could only hope her stout form and strong temperament would bring her through. Even then I could not bring myself to believe that the London police would use force against women. I told myself they were only trying to frighten us.
    I pushed through the crowd. The tidy rank and file had disintegrated. It seemed to me that the women were a mixture of those who were ripe for battle and those who desperately wanted to flee.
    This is not a happy mix for any army in close quarters, for army we were about to become. The policemen advanced into the throng. Batons raised, they lashed out around them. I glimpsed one women, her straw hat askew and blood running down her face. Her companion, a matron long past middle years, thumped the policeman heartily with her flag, beating him off her colleague. Two men came up behind her and grasping her by the arms dragged her back, with no thought given to her age or fragility. I saw her mouth open, whether she was screaming or cursing I could not tell, but they bore her off. Her companion bloodied and confused stumbled back into the fray and I did not see her again.
    To my right I heard the whinny of a horse. Unbelievably the police had ridden their horses into the heart of the crowd. Women scattered from the beast’s path as the rider lashed out right and left with his baton. I tried to pull my charge out of the way, but I was too slow. The baton came down and caught her a glancing blow on the cheek. She gave a small cry and slumped to the ground, the horse above her. Without thinking I leapt for the horse’s reins, and pulled it sharply round to the right, so the hooves fell close, but not on her. The rider struck at me with his baton, and with a strength I did not know I had I grabbed at his belt and hauled him from his seat.
    The horse, wanting even less than its rider to be among the crowds, made off. The rider attempted to struggle to his feet, but already my actions had been noted. A cry of triumph arose around and women surged forward beating at the man with umbrellas, flags, reticules, and even in one old woman’s case, her shoe. I might have feared for his life were it not that the unseating of the rider had been noticed and forces quickly despatched in our direction.
    Within moments my arms were pulled behind me by two policemen who addressed me in such language that I had never heard before in my life. Instinct warned me this was no time to fight. These men’s blood was up, but so was mine. I managed to twist hard to my right and bite one man savagely on the hand. I tasted blood.
    The next moment a blow of such force landed on my head that the world went completely dark.
    13 Even I am not so foolish as to believe this!
    14 See my journal A Death in the Asylum .
    15 What my mother would have made of me making such a spectacle of myself I shuddered to think. I could only have made things worse if I had marched in my petticoats.

Chapter Six
    Infamy! Infamy!
    I woke slowly and in great pain. I was lying on something hard. As a child I had learned, from a particularly poisonous little girl who attended my father’s Sunday School, not to open my eyes the moment I woke. Surprisingly it is a knack I have found useful