Chapter 12 Emily
EMILY
“How are you doing, my girl?” William muttered beside Emily on the wooden bench outside the courtroom.
She took a deep breath, tried to quell the nervousness that was swirling in her stomach like a flock of starlings. She tapped the edge of the bench in time to the clock on the wall across from them, which told her they’d already been waiting three hours to see a judge.
“Wishing I’d eaten a bigger lunch, for a start,” she said, trying to lighten the mood. Her dad let out a reluctant chuckle.
They’d had lunch as a family at home, in relative silence as each of them contemplated the day, weeks, and months ahead. Afterward, Emily had picked up her handbag and said goodbye to her tearful mother at the door.
“I’ll write, if I’m allowed,” she’d said, embracing Bess tightly and breathing in the smells of Aqua Net and sugar. “I just won’t be able to be very direct. You’ll have to read between the lines.”
“William Radcliffe?” a deep voice called now, and Emily and her father looked up. A bailiff stood outside a set of double doors twenty feet away. “You’re next.”
“Well,” William said quietly. “Put on your best-actress-award face, my girl. Here we go.”
Emily stood, whispered “I love you, Dad,” and followed him, deliberately lagging and fixing an irritable expression onto her face, mouth pursed in what she hoped would be evident obstinacy.
The courtroom was small but grand, with shining dark walnut wood floors that matched the high bench on which sat a large and passive-faced judge.
He wore flowing black robes that hardly contrasted against the wood-panelled wall behind him, creating the rather disconcerting illusion that his head was floating in mid-air.
Emily had never been in a courtroom before.
The bailiff rattled off the judge’s name and credentials.
“Come forward,” the judge drawled, hardly looking up from a sheet of paper in front of him.
The bailiff ushered Emily and her father into place near a desk that, she thought, would have typically been reserved for the accused in a criminal trial.
Though the women taken before a judge under the Female Refuges Act had committed no crime, they were apparently still treated as though they had from the outset.
“My docket here says that your daughter, Miss Emily Carolyn Radcliffe, aged twenty-four, has been brought here today for reasons of incorrigibility, is that correct?”
Her father cleared his throat, and Emily’s gut twinged as the reality of what they were about to learn hit home. This was the moment they would discover just how easy it was to be incarcerated under the FRA, and whether she would, in fact, be going to prison for three months.
“That is correct, your honour,” William said, shifting his feet.
“State your case,” the judge said, making a note.
He still hadn’t even looked up. He could not have appeared less interested in her as a person. Was this the same judge who did all the sentencing under this Act? She hoped there were more. It could not all be down to one man.
“It’s uh, it’s my daughter, you see.” They had briefly rehearsed what William would say, but they had deliberately decided not to oversell it.
Part of the question here was whether it truly was so easy to be sentenced to jail time under this Act for subjective misbehaviour.
Emily didn’t want her father to convince the judge; she wanted to see whether it would be a fair fight at all.
“She’s old enough to be married now but has no interest,” William said, and Emily squirmed a little, thinking of her last conversation with Jem.
He’d been heartbroken. And, understandably, angry.
But he’d also shouted and made her feel small and ridiculous for taking the path she wanted, and she didn’t think she could ever forgive him for that.
“She’s at home with her mother and me,” her father continued, “but she stays out until all hours with no regard for curfew, or propriety at all. No respect for authority, your honour.”
The judge nodded, finally looking up at them. His eyes raked Emily up and down once, utterly dispassionately, as though simply confirming that yes, she was a woman. His attention returned to her father.
“And you feel she is in need of reform?”
William hesitated only a beat, and in it, Emily sensed his reluctance to say that she needed fixing. She loved him for it, and her heart swelled. “Yes, your honour.”
“Very well, then,” the judge said, gaze returning again to his docket. “I hereby sentence you”—he referred to his notes—“Emily Carolyn Radcliffe, to no less than six months in an industrial refuge. You will be transferred to the Mercer Women’s Prison forthwith.”
Six months?
Emily’s mouth opened, but her father beat her to it.
“Six months, your honour?” he asked. “I had thought maybe perhaps a shorter stay. I cannot imagine it would take more than—”
“Sir, are you questioning the authority of the Bench?” the judge demanded.
William cleared his throat. “No, your honour, it’s only—”
“You have told me that she requires reform. Six months is the standard sentence for cases of this type. Little of value can be accomplished in less time. My decision stands. She will be released back into your custody on the nineteenth of December.”
He then actually waved them out of his courtroom as though keen to be rid of them. William met Emily’s eyes, her own unpleasant surprise and fear reflected in his. This was a sham, hardly better than a kangaroo court.
She followed behind the bailiff and her father, cursing as her heart raced.
She knew her father could be relied upon to tell Doris of the change in plan, but her mother would be beside herself, and angry with William, no doubt.
And Emily…she hadn’t bargained for this long a sentence, and felt a little nauseous.
But she took a few deep, steadying breaths and willed herself to keep her head.
When they reached the large foyer, the bailiff told them to wait while he retrieved the paperwork “and a woman,” he said rather cryptically.
Emily puzzled for a moment, then recalled a section of the Female Refuges Act that declared prisoners were to be taken by a female bailiff to the industrial refuges.
What was the concern? That the accused women were so scandalously out of control that the male bailiffs might be wantonly seduced?
Emily refrained from rolling her eyes. This whole thing was so painfully obsolete.
“Emily,” her dad said under his breath after the bailiff had gone. “There must be something we can do, this—”
“No, Dad,” Emily said, her mouth dry. “I can do this.” Nellie Bly’s words came back to her, a line from her article when she began to question her own ability.
Did I think I had the courage to go through such an ordeal as the mission would demand? Could I assume the characteristics of insanity to such a degree that I could pass the doctors, live for a week among the insane without the authorities there finding out? I said I could, and I would.
“It’s fine,” she said. “I can do it.”
He shook his head, then reached forward and pulled her into a tight hug with his single arm.
She breathed in his aftershave and blinked hard.
“Will you tell Doris what’s happened, please?
” she whispered, and he nodded. “I’ll write as soon as I can, I promise.
Tell Mom I love her. It’s going to be okay.
Doris told me not to get into any trouble, and I won’t.
I’m just there to observe. It’ll be okay. ”
She wasn’t entirely sure why she kept saying it was going to be all right. Perhaps if she said it enough, they might both believe it.
“It’s an adventure. Keep thinking of it that way,” her father advised. “That helped me in the field. It’s an adventure and you’re there to tell the story. Just tell the story, Em.”
She thought back on her last conversation with Doris, two days before, when the details of the plan were finalized.
“This is a great scoop, and an important one. But get in, get the story, and get out,” her boss had told her, actually holding Emily by the shoulders with her large hands, locking eyes with her.
“Observe, but do not deliberately put yourself in harm’s way, or I shall chain you to your desk for the rest of your career.
I mean that, Emily. Watch, listen, learn, and take notes, not risks. ”
“I’ll be careful, I promise,” she told her dad now. “I love you.”
They quickly pulled apart as the bailiff returned with a stern-looking woman in uniform who beckoned to Emily.
“Come on this way. I’ve called ahead. They’ll have finished supper over there by the time we arrive, so let’s get on with it. I don’t want to be out all night.”
Emily was ushered forward, clutching her bag tightly. She glanced over her shoulder to see her father standing alone in the hall, his eyes conflicted, but also full of pride. He offered a tight smile.
Good luck! he mouthed.
She faced front again, swallowed hard on the irritating lump in her throat, and set her feet toward the next step in her career, the great leap into the rest of her life.