Chapter Twenty-Nine
The crowd was immense.
He had known that it would be. It was, after all, blasted Trafalgar Square, of all places.
“Do we really need to be in the bloody center?” Bancroft grumbled, pulling his coat tighter around himself. Breath escaped him in strong spurts against the frigid winter air, like an angered bull.
All around them, it seemed that the entire city of London had been enticed by the chaos of the rally, which thus far had been filled with noisy bluestocking women with megaphones shouting in the streets.
Having wound down the theatrics, the ladies had then expertly corralled the crowd toward the stage, ensuring a greater audience than Sebastian had ever expected.
And soon Augusta was to be their sole focus.
“Yes,” Sebastian said, moving aside as people around him pressed in even tighter. “I want to be equidistant to all sides, should anything happen.”
Bancroft pursed his lips, but had the sense to say nothing else. A man nearby said something gruff about the ‘medicine chits,’ and anger flared in Sebastian’s chest.
“Stand down, old boy,” Bancroft said quietly.
“Would you stand down?” he shot back.
“Absolutely not, but you have always been the better of us, and you shall continue to be so.”
That was the honest truth. Though he still was unsure as to how he could stand there whilst his wife prepared to take to the front lines. It felt useless, and therefore all he could do was get angry at the bystanders around them.
“There she is,” Bancroft said quietly.
Whatever foolish thing that Sebastian’s anger might have led him to do would remain unknown, for at that very moment he caught sight of her.
She’d appeared suddenly from behind the stage’s curtain - a thin, absurd thing that barely whispered of safety - and began up the steps. No fanfare, not even a clearing of the throat to garner attention. It was so unassuming. So…Augusta.
A modicum of stress left him at the sight of her, only to be swiftly replaced once more when he recalled the size of the crowd.
All week, possible scenarios of the impending rally had played endlessly in his mind.
Unruly crowds erupting into violence, or a single outraged attendee taking his anger out on Augusta as she exited the stage, or lightning arriving out of nowhere to strike her down for the sin of going against the grain…
Perhaps his imagination had begun to get away from him.
Now, as his wife came to face her audience, all he could do was hold his breath and wait.
She opened her mouth once, then closed it again, pausing to look across the faces of the crowd. She was nervous, he knew, and it was written in the rigid, serious lines of her features.
Sebastian’s heart thudded in his chest - a new feeling of worry not only for her safety, but for her damned speech.
“What if they cannot hear me properly?” she’d asked in the carriage on the way over.
One of those small moments of weakness that she had actually allowed him to see, one of those little hints she’d been dropping throughout the week that maybe, possibly, his efforts to rekindle her love had not been in vain.
“You will do fine, love. I am sure the Society has thought of everything.”
Finally, her voice reached the crowd.
“Good morning. I would like to thank the Society of Women in Medicine for inviting me to speak today. The experience of treating patients these past months has given me the understanding necessary to stand here and speak to the issue of women in medicine.”
A small rustling nearby caught Sebastian’s eye. He glanced over, but did not see a scuffle or any danger. His attention returned, therefore, to his wife.
“I have been told that I ought not speak today, but I have also been told that I ought not practice medicine, or read too many books, or commit to my studies, and I never listened to any of those commands, either.”
A soft tittering rolled through the crowd at that; not at her expense, but with her. These people were truly listening and liked her moxy. Sebastian saw her take notice of this, and stand a bit straighter. He could not deny his own ego boost at hearing his wife be so admired.
For the first time, a new possible scenario occurred to him: Success.
“Many of you in this crowd have come with the belief that a woman would not excel at treating a patient. I would like to push back on that. You all, once upon a time, were young children who fell ill. When you did, when we did, I believe we all reached out for the same person: Mother. That woman sat at our bedside as our first doctors, our first alienists, our first priests. She cared for us until our sickness fled, and then again when the next illness befell us.”
“That is an emotional ploy,” she’d said as they’d written that line.
“Yes,” Sebastian had said. “But it is also the truth.”
And that was what she was here to do; tell the truth.
Did he support her truth? Even still, standing there, he did not know completely. The image he’d had of their life together had been so different. Quiet. Respectable.
Before he could dwell on the thought, the sun chose to peek out through the clouds, whereupon it crowned Augusta’s black hair. He thought of a painting he had once seen of Joan of Arc, and in that split second, he thought perhaps this was better. Crazier, yes, but better.
“You may tell me that this is an unfair comparison,” Augusta continued, “but I disagree. You may balk at a female doctor, but you never once balked at the woman who gave you water when you were with fever, or spread balm on your burns, or who listened when you were unable to understand your own mind. It was uneducated and crude, but it was all medicine, and it is the only reason that we all stand here today to fight amongst ourselves about an issue which, in reality, has already seen its own resolve.”
“That was my line,” Bancroft whispered, giving Sebastian a self-satisfied nudge.
“Sod off,” Sebastian whispered back. “You don’t even care about the Society.”
Bancroft scoffed. “As if you do. You’re only here for her affections.”
“And you’re only here for the affections of Miss Greene, so perhaps you ought to become more comfortable looking in the mirror, Bancroft.”
“Well, I…” Bancroft said, his voice so deep that it was nearly a growl. “That is ridiculous.” After a short pause, he added, “I am here purely on political purposes.” After another, longer pause, he added again, “And to support a friend.”
“Surely,” Sebastian whispered with a roll of his eyes. Let his friend figure out his love life for himself.
Slowly, the world around Sebastian came back into focus, including Augusta’s voice.
“...might find yourselves in need one day. And if those of us who are part of the fairer sex, who have studied and worked and cared so deeply about our craft, might be of some use to you, then I believe it behooves you to give us a chance.”
So there it was - all that she had to say, and everyone she had to say it to.
It was over. She turned and exited the stage.
A low murmuring rolled through the crowd as attendees each turned to the person next to them, the immediate need to speak on the novelty of what they had just heard overtaking them.
“Finely done,” Bancroft commented, the barest hint of respect evident in his voice. “For a woman, I suppose.”
Finely done, indeed.
There was no applause, save for a few scattered fits and starts of clapping that died as quickly as they arose. Augusta paid no attention to them as she retreated with the same quiet grace with which she had entered.
At the bottom of the steps, Dr. Pinkton awaited her, taking her hand to aid her down onto the cobblestone.
Sebastian’s feet carried him forward before he fully realized that he was moving.
“What are you doing?” he heard Bancroft ask.
“Going to her,” he called back, though he was not sure if his voice reached his friend.
Were he being honest with himself, he would have admitted that it was the burning in his chest at the sight of Pinkton’s hand on Augusta’s. As he was not being so honest with himself, he decided that his hastening was merely a reflection of his concern for her.
One of the Society ladies had taken the stage after Augusta, capturing the attention of the audience as she spoke into a megaphone, which carried her voice much further. She urged the crowd to do something that did not quite reach his mind, but which seemed to bewitch everyone around him.
Still, heads turned as Sebastian pushed his way through.
He was near to the stage, finally, when he was jostled about by the men around him. Discontent rippled through the audience. When Sebastian righted himself, he looked about for the source.
“Damned bobbies,” he heard someone say.
Sebastian turned just in time to see five officers approaching. At first, relief flooded him - the police were here, which therefore meant that he would not be the only one with eyes on Augusta.
Then, he saw the looks upon their faces, and the barely contained rage that he recognized so well, and realized that it was directed upon Augusta. She, unawares, stood speaking to Doctor Pinkton as the officers approached.
“Bloody hell,” he grumbled as he continued to push through bodies with more fervor.
At that moment, the loud woman from the stage ended her speech and descended the stage, only to be replaced by Doctor Pinkton. The damned man had no situational awareness, no ability to see what was headed straight for the women - the woman - whom he had promised would be alright.
The woman from the stage now spoke to Augusta with great gusto, gesticulating wildly. She, too, did not notice the officers until they were upon them.
Whatever was said thereafter, Sebastian could not hear it. All he knew was that the woman looked furious, and the officers stood up taller with hands on their batons.
“Get out of my way,” Sebastian growled at a particularly beefy man blocking his view. He was so damned close, soon he would be able to…
An officer raised a hand to the woman, though whether it was to calm her or to threaten her, Sebastian was unsure. It would not have mattered, it seemed - the woman’s hackles were so raised that the officer had hardly made the move before she was shoving him back, red-faced and angry.
In horror, Sebastian watched as Augusta stepped between the woman and the officer, hands raised between them as she spoke fearfully. The officer’s fury, however, did not lessen. If anything, he appeared to prepare for a fight.
“Hey!”
Sebastian felt as though he’d shouted with all his might, but his words carried themselves away into the air as though they were nothing. No one turned their heads to even look at him.
Sebastian elbowed past several more men.
“Hey!” he tried again.
It meant nothing. In one swift motion, the officer raised his hand and cracked it against Augusta’s face. Sebastian watched her head snap back as she cried out and fell to the ground.
“That’s my bloody wife!”
Everything after that moved so quickly, it would not be until many days later that he would make sense of it. He was running, and then he was hitting, and then he was being hit. He did not hear the screaming, or the gasps of horror from the crowd.
Instead, he was facedown on the ground, a heavy weight at his back and his arms pulled behind him. The frozen cobblestone bit into his cheeks as a pair of handcuffs clamped down upon his wrists.
Around him, chaos erupted. The shouts and rushed steps that his mind had blocked out now came to him all once as a sea of bodies rushed past. His breath left him as a punch landed against his back.
It then returned to him when he saw her. Not so far away. Down on the ground just as he was, her arms pulled behind her and cuffed as she winced in pain.
When her eyes opened again they locked upon his own, and in that moment, it did not matter. Not the pain, or the cold, or even the fear of what was to come.
For there, in his wife’s eyes, he saw love again.