Impossible Saints

by Clarissa Harwood

  They told her to lie down on her plank bed, and she obeyed. But when the wardresses held her limbs down and the doctor ordered her to open her mouth, she could no longer be passive. Clenching her teeth as tightly as she could, she began to struggle against her restraints.

  The doctor cursed her and pried her mouth open with a steel gag. She felt it cutting into her gums and began to choke as the blood ran down into her throat. He paid no attention, taking a tube that seemed impossibly wide and pushing it down her throat. Her throat felt torn, and as the tube went down there was a searing pain in her chest.

  The food was poured quickly into the tube, and Lilia began to choke again, writhing and struggling beneath her attackers. She was sick almost at once, her body involuntarily doubling up as she vomited, but the doctor leaned on her knees and a wardress pulled her head back. She nearly lost consciousness.

  It seemed like forever before the doctor removed the tube and stepped back, looking down with disgust at the vomit on his sleeve. He only met her eyes for a second, and Lilia saw utter contempt on his face. Then, unbelievably, he slapped her. It wasn’t a violent slap, not the sort meant to cause physical harm. He merely wanted to show how much he despised her.

  As her torturers left, Lilia collapsed on the bed, shaking uncontrollably. But she didn’t make a sound, and she didn’t cry. Neither Joan Burns nor Lilia Harris—and especially not Lilia Brooke—would cry over this, at least not where others might hear.

  Words were scrawled on her cell wall from previous prisoners, mostly quotations from the Bible or from Mrs. Pankhurst’s speeches. Her eyes now fell upon one she hadn’t noticed before, adapted from Thoreau’s On the Duty of Civil Disobedience: “Under a Government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just woman is also a prison.”

  Lilia lost track of time. She had at first used her twice-daily force-feedings to mark how many days had elapsed. But as she became weaker, she was forced to use all her strength just to recover from each session of torture. She tried to judge how much more her body could withstand. She sometimes worried that she couldn’t remember clearly what was happening, and she needed to remember the details of her treatment in order to reveal the truth once she was released.

  She read the words on her cell wall over and over again. They gave her comfort, even the Bible verses. After one force-feeding she meditated upon “Deeds, not Words,” the WSPU motto. After another, when she couldn’t rise from the floor for some time, she found parts of the twenty-third Psalm scrawled low on the wall: “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, Thou art with me.” Who was with her? Was God with her? Was there a God? She prayed, but didn’t know to whom she prayed. She felt Paul’s presence with her more than the presence of a god, so she prayed to him. Help me bear this. Don’t be angry. Be my support and my strength instead.

  She could have revealed her true identity. Sometimes when a wardress removed Lilia’s spectacles before the force-feeding, the doctor would look at her as if he suspected she wasn’t who she said she was. No doubt they would release her, or at least treat her more kindly, if they knew she was Mrs. Pankhurst’s deputy, a lady with influence. But Lilia Harris was there, too, in spirit. She was protecting Joan Burns, comforting her and saying, I will help you. The world will know what you are suffering. Don’t be afraid.

  One day, a different doctor came, a younger doctor with a sneer and cruel eyes. “I don’t know what Doctor Gilbert was complaining about,” he bragged. “It’s a simple procedure, like stuffing a turkey.”

  The preparations for her torture began as usual, but this doctor used a smaller tube and ignored her clenched teeth, shoving it into her nostril instead. The pain made her cry out involuntarily and struggle to free herself, but it was no use. She could only cough, and she did so over and over again to try to prevent the tube from going in deeper. But it did go deeper, until she felt a sharp pain in her chest, and at once the doctor poured the food into the tube.

  Something was wrong. She was suffocating. She kicked out at the doctor, freeing one of her feet and connecting with his leg. Momentarily distracted, he ordered the wardresses to hold her. One of them was crying even as she obeyed. Lilia couldn’t breathe, coughing and choking so violently that they released her and she fell against the wall. She continued to cough uncontrollably, and a dark-brown liquid came out of her mouth.

  After a while she was placed on the plank bed by someone with gentle hands and heard a new male voice speaking, but she couldn’t sort the sounds into words. She knew only that her chest was examined and she was injected with something, and that she was too weak to resist.

  She dreamed about blood. She was covered in it, and it filled up her tiny cell like Alice’s tears in Wonderland, or the blood-red sea plagued by God in Exodus. She thought she would drown in it. She awoke to a sharp, stabbing sensation in her lower abdomen, then a rush of blood that she knew was not caused by the force-feeding. But her brief moment of clarity was lost in the intensity of the pain, and she knew no more for a long time.

  When she awoke much later, she was no longer in the cell, but in a bed in an unfamiliar room with people she didn’t know. It was quiet, and light was filtering through the windows. She cried then, and a woman’s arms went around her, comforting her with words in a strange dialect. But she tried not to cry, for crying would bring on a coughing fit, and the coughing fit would bring on more pain.

  More than anything, she wanted to be with Paul, but she knew she had hurt him. In her feverish state she couldn’t remember what exactly she had done, but she knew it was bad and he might not forgive her.

  30

  Those who dare to rebel in every age … make life possible for those whom temperament compels to submit. It is the rebels who extend the boundary of right little by little, narrowing the confines of wrong, and crowding it out of existence

  —Sarah Grand, The Heavenly Twins

  FEBRUARY 1909

  After more than a month without seeing Lilia, Paul was frantic. She had told him not to worry about her—a useless injunction—and that if anything went wrong, he could write to Harriet for information. And nothing had seemed wrong—at first. Lilia sent him two letters every week, claiming to be fine, just busy with her plans. The letters were brief, but they were warm and loving, which comforted him.

  But after a while, he began to notice something odd about them. She never answered the questions he asked in the letters he sent to her. He knew she wouldn’t say anything specific about her plans for the WSPU, but she didn’t even reply to simple questions, nor did she respond to anything he told her about his life. He became suspicious enough to write to Harriet, but her reply was even more troubling: she said nothing about Lilia, only that the WSPU was trying to have the Walton Gaol prisoners released as soon as possible. He decided to go to London, intending to surprise Lilia at the WSPU office.

  Lilia wasn’t there, but Harriet was. There were only a few other WSPU members in the office, and Harriet ushered Paul to the large table used for meetings, well away from the others.

  She looked exhausted, and her face was an unhealthy grayish color. Paul was alarmed enough to temporarily forget his worry for Lilia, and he insisted on getting her a glass of water. Once he had brought it and she had taken a sip, a little color returned to her face.

  “I know you’re here to see Lilia, but she’s not here,” Harriet said.

  “I see she’s not in the office. Is she at the house?”

  “No.” Harriet pressed her lips together. “She’s in Liverpool, in Walton Gaol.”

  He shook his head. “That’s impossible. She’s been sending me letters from London. I received the last one only two days ago.”

  “I sent those.”

  “They were in her hand.”

  “She wrote them all before she went to Liverpool. She post-dated them, sealed them, and gave me instructions to post them at regular intervals.”

  Paul stared at her. “Why would she deceive me to such an extent?”


  Harriet sighed. “She knew you’d be worried. She wanted to protect you before she enacted her plan, and she also didn’t want to shame you, so she took a different name and disguised herself as a working-class woman.”

  “Dear God.” He pressed his fist against his mouth. “She led the deputation to the prison governor’s house, didn’t she?”

  Harriet nodded grimly.

  Perhaps Lilia did want to protect him, but he knew there were other reasons for her behavior. She liked to lead her troops, she liked to act on her plans instead of sending volunteers to carry them out, and her oft-voiced concern about the treatment of working-class suffragette prisoners would be enough to make her act as she had.

  “How long has she been in jail?”

  “Three weeks.” Harriet took another sip of water.

  “Has anyone tried to visit her? Is she on a hunger strike? Do you know how she’s being treated?”

  “She hasn’t been allowed visitors, but she sent me one letter, which I received today.” Harriet reached into her skirt pocket and pulled out a paper. She hesitated before giving it to him, and he had to restrain himself from snatching it out of her hand.

  Dear Harriet,

  I am being treated as we expected, but don’t worry. It is only pain, and I will endure it for the greater good.

  Joan Burns

  “The greater good!” Paul repeated in frustration. He read the letter multiple times, then looked up. “What does ‘as we expected’ mean?”

  “I can’t be certain, but… forcible feeding, presumably.”

  He frowned, studying Harriet’s face intently. Was she trying to protect him, too? Taking a deep breath, he looked at the letter again. “Joan Burns. At least she hasn’t lost her sense of humor.”

  Harriet smiled grimly. “She said I’d be the only one to get the joke.”

  “The first time I saw her, she was a twelve-year-old Jeanne d’Arc leading her army of brothers through a field. It’s not something I can ever forget.”

  “I’m sorry about this. It was my plan from the first to lead the deputation to the governor’s house, but she insisted on taking my place. And I can’t go to Liverpool myself because—”

  “Because while Lilia is being Joan Burns, someone must lead the London WSPU.” He spoke gently. “You are above reproach in this, Miss Firth.”

  For the first time since he’d known her, Harriet looked like she was going to cry. But after a few seconds of silent struggle, she managed to resume her businesslike mien.

  “Would you like the name and address of the WSPU organizer in Liverpool?” she asked.

  “Yes, thank you. I’ll take the next train there.”

  Harriet wrote down the information and handed it to him. “Unless Lilia is in grave danger, I know she’d prefer not to have her true identity known.”

  “I suppose that makes me Mr. Burns.”

  Paul’s train arrived in Liverpool early that evening, and he decided to go first to the house of the local WSPU organizer, Mrs. Feeney, who would have the most recent news of suffragette prisoners. The long day of travel and his worry about Lilia had strained Paul’s nerves almost to the breaking point. He forgot about being Mr. Burns and used his real name when identifying himself to the maid who answered the door of the imposing four-story mansion.

  He was left standing in the front foyer, a strange omission for a household as grand as this one, watching servants rushing to and fro. He seemed to have arrived in the middle of some commotion.

  Eventually a well-upholstered, middle-aged matron came to greet him. “I’m so sorry to keep you waiting, Mr. Harris. I’m amazed you received my telegram so quickly. I’m Mrs. Feeney.”

  “I didn’t receive your telegram,” he said, alarmed. “What was it about?”

  “Your wife is here. She was released from Walton Gaol unexpectedly this morning. The prison officials sent her here in a cab.”

  “Thank God! Will you take me to her?”

  “The doctor is with her now, but … come with me.”

  Paul followed Mrs. Feeney to an upstairs sitting room, where she frustrated him by playing the hostess instead of giving him the information he wanted or, better yet, taking him to Lilia. Waving off her offers of food, drink, and a place to rest, Paul said, “Where is my wife? I must see her.”

  Mrs. Feeney hesitated, then said, “She’s very ill. I believe she was released suddenly because the prison authorities didn’t want …” She didn’t finish, but Paul sensed the rest. Her death on their hands.

  “I must see her,” he repeated.

  Mrs. Feeney rose and knocked lightly at the door of the adjoining room, then opened it and motioned Paul inside.

  Paul entered the room, steeling himself for the worst. Lilia was in bed, her face as white as the pillows she was propped up against, and her eyes were closed. The doctor, a ginger-haired man about Paul’s age, was listening to her heart through a stethoscope.

  “I’m Paul Harris, her husband,” he explained in a whisper, in response to the doctor’s quizzical look.

  He had to take a deep breath to calm himself before he could look at Lilia more closely. Her breathing was labored and noisy, and there was a patch of dried blood underneath one nostril. She was terrifyingly thin. Her height tended to camouflage any gains or losses in her weight, so it was particularly alarming to Paul that he could see a difference even though the bedclothes covered most of her body.

  He sat in the chair beside the bed and took her hand. She opened her eyes and looked at him as if she didn’t recognize him. Then she tried to speak, but she coughed instead, a horrible wracking cough that seemed to go on forever. She collapsed back against the pillows.

  The doctor straightened up and beckoned Paul to join him in the far corner of the room.

  “What’s the matter with my wife?” Paul asked him anxiously.

  “She has pleuropneumonia and a fever of 102 degrees. She also has numerous injuries.”

  “Injuries?”

  The doctor hesitated, as if attempting to assess how much truth Paul was capable of hearing. “Your wife has been forcibly fed numerous times. Forcible feeding often causes lacerations to the throat when the tube goes down, especially if the patient struggles. In your wife’s case, she seems to have been forcibly fed through both the mouth and the nose, and the mucous membranes have been torn. The pneumonia, I suspect, was caused by her being accidentally force-fed into the lungs.”

  “Will she recover?” Paul asked hoarsely.

  “It’s too soon to tell, but I think so, as long as her fever breaks. She’s young and her overall health appears to be good.”

  “Thank you.” Paul turned to go back to Lilia, but the doctor stopped him.

  “Just a moment, Mr. Harris. I am sympathetic to the suffragettes, but I don’t think young married women ought to be risking imprisonment and putting themselves in danger as your wife has done, especially in her condition.”

  He stared at the doctor in confusion. “What condition?”

  The doctor looked uncomfortable. “I can’t be certain, but I believe your wife was pregnant.”

  Paul took a step back, his legs suddenly feeling too weak to support his weight.

  The doctor took his arm to steady him and guided him to a nearby chair. “I’m sorry.”

  Lilia was going to have his child and she hadn’t told him. Even worse, she’d engaged in her usual dangerous activities, had been arrested and gone on a hunger strike in jail, all despite her delicate condition. Paul was stupefied.

  “You said she was pregnant,” Paul managed to choke out. “Is the baby—”

  “I’m sorry,” the doctor repeated. “It would have been early in the pregnancy. Her miscarriage is likely what precipitated her release from jail. A wardress found her in a pool of blood on the floor of her cell and assumed she’d been beaten. The prison officials don’t want a scandal, so they let her go before she could be treated more brutally.”

  Paul stared at him blankl
y.

  “Why don’t you lie down and rest for a while?” the doctor suggested. “Your wife is being well cared for, and I’ll send for you if there’s any change in her condition.”

  Paul lay down in the adjoining room, but his mind was spinning. Had she known she was pregnant? Was that the reason for all the deception, not to protect him but to prevent him from knowing she was risking their child’s life as well as her own? No. She wouldn’t have started a hunger strike if she’d known.

  But how could she be so thoughtless? Hadn’t it occurred to her what her actions would do to him and to their relationship? He couldn’t go on like this, never knowing what life-threatening situation she would throw herself into next. Perhaps he wouldn’t have to, if she died. Guilt, anger, fear, and sadness took turns wrenching his insides.

  Paul spent a long night at Lilia’s bedside. He didn’t allow himself to think. He prayed from time to time, but his prayers were brief and fragmentary. He remembered his similar vigil at her bedside after the Parliament Square riot. This time, he was her husband and didn’t have to fight for the right to be with her, but this time there was also more at stake. His throat ached with tears, but he wouldn’t let them fall.

  31

  The pride keeps up,

  Until the heart breaks under it

  —Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh

  Lilia survived the night, but she still had a high fever, and Paul made arrangements to stay longer. He wrote to the vicar of a neighboring parish for help with his duties in Ingleford. He also wrote a difficult letter to Lilia’s family, trying not to worry them. He sent for some of his clothing, too, since he had boarded the train from London hastily and without luggage.