WSPU Summer Festival, 1913

Contextual Note:

This work has grown from my research on the WSPU’s militant suffrage campaign in Britain, specifically the life of Kitty Marion‒ a crucial yet under-remembered figure in the movement. The main thrust of my novel will cover the years of heightened violence‒ 1912-1913 ‒however the first chapter in this submission goes back to Kitty Marion’s childhood, a time when she was still Katherina Maria Schäfer: a lone, 15-year-old German migrant on the ferry to Harwich. 

Between the years 1886 and 1913, Kitty builds up a moderately successful career on-stage in music halls and theatres all around Great Britain. Kitty wrote an autobiography which was only published in full in 2019. This has formed the backbone of my research. I have taken the events of her life and worked them into a narrative, rather than lifting description or dialogue verbatim.

Kitty comes from a middle-class family, yet never marries and becomes financially independent from a young age. She joins the WSPU in 1908 after attending a rally in Hyde Park on ‘Women’s Sunday’. Katherina had a traumatic childhood at the hands of her father. This, coupled with abuse and exploitation by her acting agents, forms the main impetus for her involvement in the campaign for the Vote, which she believed would be a means to fight issues such as sexual/child abuse and financial exploitation. As a militant WSPU campaigner, she instigated several arson attacks and was considered one of the most dangerous women in the country by Asquith’s government. These chapters depict Kitty as a militant, talking with fellow militants at the WSPU’s Summer Festival in Kensington, and then carrying out an arson attack on the Hurst Park Racecourse in Richmond. The arson chapter cuts off on a cliff-hanger at around the halfway point.

Aside from Kitty Marion, the characters of Emily Wilding Davison, Mary Leigh and Clara Giveen are all also real. I found out via Kitty’s autobiography that she spoke with Emily the day before her widely-renowned actions at the Epsom Derby, although Kitty does not go into detail. The arson attack was carried out four days later in Emily’s honour. Ilse Brightwell is, however, a figment of my imagination drawn from passages in the autobiography where other ferry passengers showed a concern for Kitty’s welfare.

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3rd June, 1913 

“I’m thinking of making a protest.” Emily’s words land abruptly between the three of them.

Mary pauses, cup halfway to lips. 

Kitty arches an eyebrow. Making a protest, isn’t that all they ever do? 

In the hall, waitresses mill around with businesslike grace, carrying trays laden with tea sets and cakes to the eager customers. Their green high-necked dresses and white muslin aprons could look clinical if it weren’t for the purple ribbons fixed around their waists. A few have pinned pristine white flowers in their hair. The mood, aside from their little table, is buoyant. Most of the waitresses are smiling. 

Kitty’s attention turns back to the table. She looks Emily in the eye.

“My dear, you’ll have to be more specific,” Kitty lowers her teacup delicately onto its saucer. She’s had twenty-seven years to grow accustomed to these English habits.  

Above Kitty’s head, purple, white and green banners flutter from the rafters, streaming with ribbons. The colours are everywhere. She leans back and tunes in to the vibrant hustle and bustle of the bazaar. Laughter and chatter rise above more hushed and conspiratorial exchanges. To her left, a group of young women sit huddled around a map, heads almost touching. Towards the back of the tea-room, a group of upper class ladies’ pale necks groan under the weight of their extraordinary hats. At another table, a group of plainly-dressed women converse in the no-nonsense drawl of the East End. So many processions, depositions, marches, speeches, festivals; every time they gather, it’s astonishing. Over her friend’s heads, she can see clusters of schoolgirls pulling at each other’s sleeves so as not to lose each other in the throng. Maybe they’ve begged the entrance fee from their fathers that morning, claiming a forgotten field trip to Kew Gardens. They can’t have seen so many women in one place before, free of men. They must be overwhelmed.  

Emily has been quiet, but now her reply seems to burst from within. “Something dramatic. Something unforgettable. Something to make those bastards at Westminster really sit up and take notice.” 

“What are you planning?” Kitty asks. Her thoughts flash to the postboxes. To the severe burns up those postmen’s arms. It was all over the papers. An outrage, they said. That one wasn’t Emily’s work, it was up in Dundee. But the risks are the same every time.

Emily looks from her fingers to Mary, then Kitty, then back to her hands. They’re clutching her cup, knuckles turning the colour of aged plaster. Kitty wonders whether it will survive the assault. She imagines a brittle hairline fracture splitting and shattering. 

“I keep thinking about how the King will be there, and his wife. Standing in their box, surveying their fiefdom.” Emily’s lip curls, “We need a great tragedy. Every year, a new bill dies, and they do nothing. All the while, the Kaiser’s busy polishing his Dreadnoughts. We’re running out of time, and we have nothing to show for it. Nothing.” 

Her trembling threatens to swirl tea into her saucer like a Channel storm. Kitty sends a hand over the tablecloth in a rescue attempt. An awkward few seconds tick by. Mary looks at Kitty, cocks her head, eyes pleading say something. Kitty sighs.

“I know, Pem. We’re all tired of waiting,” Kitty uses her friend’s nickname to get her attention. Emily looks up. 

Kitty, encouraged, goes on. “We’re not young anymore. We can’t keep doing this forever,” she gives Emily’s hand a friendly squeeze, thinking back to her last great tragedy. A thirty-foot drop from the interior balcony of Holloway prison. A desperate protest, or a cry for help? They know, everyone knows, how she sometimes draws her curtains and doesn’t come out for days. She would never ask for help, but members still leave shopping at her door.  

Emily’s a ticking time bomb, Kitty thinks. She can see the headlines already: hysterical, crazed terrorist. But it doesn’t matter what they do, the words stay the same. 

“I have to disrupt the race.” 

That much Kitty could have guessed. So she asks another question. 

“How?” 

Emily doesn’t reply. Either she doesn’t know yet, or she doesn’t want to say… Kitty hopes it’s not the latter. And she doesn’t look well. Pale, worn. She’s left her head bare today. It’s better not to ask if she’s sold another of her summer hats. 

Mary, across the table, is hiding behind her teacup. Kitty tries and fails to catch her eye. She’s never been particularly tactful. But Kitty doesn’t know what to say, either. Didn’t they all swear to lay down their lives for the Cause? How far is too far? Kitty breathes out in frustration. 

“Pem, you’ve done enough.” Mary finds her voice.  

Emily shoots her a look. “It will never be enough. Not until the vote is ours.” 

“Nobody’s telling you to stop altogether. But you need some time to recover.” Mary’s warming to it now. 

Kitty nods in agreement. Militancy may unite them, but she’s not going to encourage her friend’s recklessness. Not this time, at least. The Cause is devouring Emily. Since Holloway, they can all see how her spine torments her. How she walks, hunched, like a woman twice her age. 

“I am as well as I need to be, Mary.” 

“They stopped paying you ages ago, Pem. They cut you off. They don’t listen to us. Why persist?”  

Kitty wonders who is meant by ‘us’.  

“You know I’m not doing it for the Pankhursts anymore,” comes Emily’s curt reply. 

“Neither am I. But who do you think will wade in afterwards? If you trust us, then you need to tell us what’s going on. Maybe we can help.” 

“I don’t think you can. Not this time, Mary. I’m sorry.” 

Kitty has been watching the exchange, eyes darting back and forth. But now she chooses her words carefully: “By all means, Pem, make a scene tomorrow. But we worry about you. We need you.” They need her alive.

A butter knife would be useless at cutting the atmosphere, it hangs so thickly. The women shift in their seats. A waitress comes to collect their empty teacups. Kitty and Mary look at Emily. Emily looks at nothing in particular. 

“I do not shrink from sacrifice,” Emily eventually replies. Her hands are in her lap now, wringing a handkerchief to death. 

Kitty can’t keep herself from thinking the word. Suicide. The mortal sin. A crime. None of them give a fig for legality, but this is something else entirely. Her heart clenches. Could she do it? Kitty has an image of Emily throwing herself from the grandstand, then one of a galloping horse. She squeezes her eyes shut. She doesn’t know if Emily could do it, and that scares her most of all. Not really knowing if she knows her friend.

Emily retreats back inside herself. She won’t broach the subject again. Kitty makes a few failed attempts at drawing her out. As usual, she has spoken so well yet said very little. Mary has her elbows on the table and is rubbing her temples.

 Talk slowly turns to innocent subjects, to the festival around them; they bury their misgivings under chit-chat. The Actresses’ Franchise League’s performance, the verdant setting. Kitty has been meaning to visit the haberdashery all day. Sweat has been pooling under her collar. She needs a new summer frock, but she hasn’t had work- paid work, not suffrage plays- in months. Earlier that day, Emily and Mary had laid a wreath in front of the statue of Joan of Arc. Emily brightens up at the memory, and proudly recants the words carved into its base: “Fight on, and God will give victory.”  

Eventually, Kitty makes her excuses and says her farewells. Mary pays for their tea. She used to be a schoolteacher, until the headmaster found out about her after-school activities. Luckily, her husband didn’t cast her out. Kitty wonders how they’re getting by. Her own savings are dwindling, and Emily’s threadbare dresses also tell a story.  

Mary excuses herself to go to the washroom. Kitty is passing Emily’s chair when she reaches out and grabs Kitty’s wrist. Emily presses a small, green purse into her friend’s palm. 

“For munitions,” Emily hisses. 

“Pem! What on ear-” 

“Take it.” 

“Where did you get this? Keep it!” What on earth is she up to? 

“Take it.” She’s clearly not in the mood for dissent.  

Kitty relents and tucks the purse into her dress pockets just as Mary reappears, threading around the crowded tables. 

On her way out, Kitty almost walks past the haberdashery, but then a white silk scarf catches her eye. Someone has embroidered it with a border of delicate violets and Votes for Women. It costs more than she used to earn in a week, back when mainstream theatres did not baulk at employing her. Careful not to look into the little green purse, she reaches for her own, opens it, and finds a few pennies for some plain fabric she can transform. She’s tired of hoping they’ll make her a paid campaigner. Her mind turns to the women who stand at Whitechapel corners, barefoot and desperate.  

She pushes her way through the crowd. The Empress rooms have been transformed into a summer garden, with borders of pergolas and rambling pink roses. The scent is cloying. Noise echoes around the high-ceilinged hall, and she’s starting to feel dizzy. She impatiently passes stalls selling buttons, jewellery, hats, stationery, sweets, books, tea sets, even board games. There is nothing these women’s hands cannot shape.  

A minute later, she bursts out onto the street. The early summer sunshine feels dazzlingly bright. Kitty breathes deeply. For a woman who spends so much of her time locked in crowds, she wishes she minded it less.  

She touches the statue of Joan of Arc as she passes, for luck. God save the women with nothing to lose. 

An Opening: Ferry

Autumn 1886 

Get thee out of Thy country, and from Thy kinship and from Thy father’s house, unto a land that I will show Thee  

Genesis 12:1 

Katherina is standing at the bow of a ship. A ferry. Eine Fähre. It’s evening, and the sun is inching towards the horizon, bleeding crimson. The air is salty and still. She turns her head. Behind her, yellow fades to indigo as a thin crescent moon appears. The stars shine sharp and cold over the continent, but Germany is behind her now. That new country, knitted together by willpower alone. She’s leaving everything. Tante Lisette, Tante Mariechen, Onkel Heinrich, her school-friends and the ruins on the hill behind her grandfather’s house. Can she still call it her country, if she never goes back? 

Around her, a few passengers take quiet evening strolls along the deck. She can hear smatterings of German mixed in with the strange new tongue she’ll have to learn. To her, English sounds indistinct, like someone talking around a boiled sweet. 

She turns back to look out to sea. West, towards her new home. Tomorrow, they’ll be landing in Harwich. For now, all she can see is the sea stretching for miles all around, mirroring the sunset. It’s eerily calm. She tries to picture Tante Dora in her head, but it’s been years since they’ve laid eyes on each other, years since Dora moved to London. Will she even recognise me? Katherina thinks. It’s the same every time she ends up on another relative’s doorstep. Katherina is that you? If you carry on like this, you’ll be too tall to marry!  

Her hand slides into the pocket of her coat and clutches at the crumpled paper covered in her uncle’s scrawl. She’s been taking it out, smoothing it, studying the words for days; the paper is limp and worn from so much folding and unfolding. Katherina could recite the address, directions and names backwards by now. But she’s unsure how to say the English words. London Liverpool Street. It has a strange rhythm. Lon-don Liver-pool Street. The ‘r’ is all wrong, too soft and slurring. She practiced with Onkel Heinrich, but she’s convinced she’ll never get it right.  

A breeze quickens and pulls at the strands of hair escaping from her hat. She stands with her back straight in her first long dress. She is travelling alone; she even has her own cabin. Her uncle has organised everything. 

Get off the ferry at Harwich and find the train station. It should be down the main road towards the centre of town and off to the right. If you get lost, ask someone to help. It’s not unusual to find someone who speaks German in a port town. If you can’t find anyone who speaks German, they can point it out to you. Once you’re there, take the train to London Liverpool Street. Get off at the last stop. Aunt Dora will meet you there. She’ll take you to her home in Epp- 

“Guten Abend, Fräulein.” Good evening, miss. 

Katherina jumps, her hands gripping the railings. A woman is standing next to her, staring out to sea. She is small and slight and elegantly dressed in wine-coloured brocade with a large bustle. The woman’s German has a distinct accent. English, maybe, but Katherina’s not sure. The woman smiles at Katherina over her high-necked collar. Her hands are tucked into a fur muff. 

“Guten Abend,” Katherina’s greeting comes out as an embarrassing croak. She coughs to clear her throat.  

“Aren’t you afraid?” The woman continues. 

“Entschuldigung?” says Katherina. Excuse me?  

“I said, aren’t you afraid?” The woman repeats. Katherina understood her the first time, she just hadn’t a clue what to say. She gathers herself. 

“No. Should I be?”  

“You are travelling alone, aren’t you?”  

Katherina wonders if the woman has been watching her. A hot trickle of anxiety starts to pool in her gut. She decides there’s no point in lying. The ship is neither large nor full. 

“Yes, I am.” 

“I would be afraid.” The woman says, frowning. 

“I’m not sure I follow. And we haven’t been introduced.” Katherina is starting to feel stupid, and she hates feeling stupid. 

“I’m sorry, my dear. My name is Mrs Brightwell. But you can call me Ilse. A pleasure to meet you.” Ilse inclines her head. Her eyes are a deep brown, like the coffee her father used to sip in the mornings. It contrasts with the blonde hair sticking out from underneath her elaborate, feathered hat. The knots and braids are starting to pull loose ever so slightly.  

Katherina has no idea what to do now, doesn’t know if Ilse wants to be greeted as an equal, or be deferred to. Her clothes hint at wealth. Should she curtsey like a girl? Should she offer her a hand? Incline the head, or bow? To get it wrong could be an affront, but so could doing nothing. It’s already too late, she thinks. 

Ilse seems to sense her discomfort, and briefly puts a hand on her arm. It’s warm under her soft leather gloves. She looks to be in her mid-twenties, so she’s not old, just a good decade older than Katherina. 

“Ilse’s a German name.” Katherina blurts out, then grimaces. But if Ilse is bothered by Katherina’s bald observation, she doesn’t show it. She only lets out a short peal of laughter that carries over the quiet deck and the sea. 

“Indeed it is. My mother was German. She fought to name me. She said it wasn’t fair if my father got both names, and I suppose she was right.”  

Ilse pauses for a while, seemingly lost in a memory. 

Katherina shifts from foot to foot. How to continue the conversation? “And your surname?” the question is out of her mouth before she can shut it. Her father always told her to speak less and think more, especially around strangers. But her father is far away now, and this woman has a presence. The warm kind of presence that makes you say things. 

“My husband’s. I haven’t been Mrs James Brightwell for long.” 

“Congratulations. Did you move to England recently?” 

“No. I grew up in London, where my father grew up. So, I’m not quite one or the other. My mother’s family are always imitating my accent.” Her face darkens for a moment, like clouds over the sea. “Actually, I’ve just been visiting them in Kiel. With James,” she adds. 

Katherina is a little surprised at how Ilse seems to take everything in her stride. From the scant details she’s picked up about the English, they’re supposed to be reserved. But then again, having barely spoken to anyone outside her own family, she’s out of her depth. Finally, she remembers her manners.  

“I’m Katherina. Katherina Schäfer.”  

Ilse smiles. She has pretty white teeth. “You might want to re-think being Katherina. Or are you content with it being pronounced incorrectly from now until eternity? By the people over there, I mean.” Ilse tilts her head towards the West, towards the sunset. “Katherina,” Ilse says with an exaggerated English air, drawing out the th. There’s a mischievous twinkle in her eye. 

Katherina grins. She turns away slightly, thinking. Ilse reminds her of happier times long ago, times she spent with Tante Lisette amongst her mother’s friends, talking and singing songs. They would let her try on perfume and tell her stories about her mother before her lungs gave up. Until her father came to take her back. She remembers the flash of sorrow in Tante Lisette’s eyes. Then, home was quiet again. Fraught. 

A nickname. It’s something she’s never considered before. Maybe she’s right, Katherina thinks. A new beginning. 

“I’m only speaking from experience.” Ilse tips her head conspiratorially. “Half of my receipts still have Lisa on them. Part of me curses my mother for not calling me Jane, God rest her soul.” 

A comfortable silence settles between them. Katherina is curious about her new friend’s mother. She wants to tell her that she lost hers, too. That she can hardly remember her mother, not even if she closes her eyes really tight and thinks as hard as she can. But something is holding her back. She hasn’t breathed a word of it for years, not to anyone.  

Ilse looks at her sideways. Part of Katherina wonders if she’s reading her thoughts. Katherina shakes her head. No, that’s stupid. 

“Katherina,” Ilse turns to her now and looks her straight in the eyes again, “be careful. If I’ve noticed you’re travelling alone, so have others.” Ilse darts a look around the deck. Kitty follows her gaze. A few metres to their right, an old man coughs into a dirty napkin. A seagull is perched on top of one of the stacks, squawking. The sky has now faded to a dusky pink.  

“Lock your cabin to-night.” Ilse squeezes her arm. 

“Why?” Katherina asks, frowning. Her mind has been too caught up in other things to give the matter any thought. But Ilse has jolted a vague memory of her uncle telling her something similar. 

Ilse casts her eyes to Heaven and crosses herself and mutters an English prayer under her breath before replying. 

“Have you ever travelled before?” 

Katherina hesitates before replying. She knows that Ilse must look at her and see a child.

“No, I haven’t.”

“I thought as much. And alone at that. Trust me. Don’t talk to any men, lock your cabin to-night, and you’ll be fine.” She smiles again, this time reassuringly. “Which cabin are you in?” 

I’ve already told this woman so much, thinks Katherina. There’s no hiding on this ship, either. She takes a breath. 

“Number four.” 

Ilse smiles. “You’re only two doors down from me, then. I’m in number two. If there’s any trouble, anything at all worrying you, come and knock for me. Any time.” 

All Katherina can manage is a tentative nod. 

“So, I really must be off.” Ilse has turned brisk and smooths out her skirts. “James must be wondering where I am by now. I told him I was only going for a breath of air. He gets terribly sea-sick, you know. Awful company.” Katherina could swear Ilse winks before she walks back down the deck, skirts swinging behind her. After Ilse leaves, Katherina feels strangely lost. The breeze is pulling at her and the air now has a cold edge. It’s September, but the nights are already drawing in. She runs through the conversation in her head, once, twice over. Is she missing something? Katherina doesn’t know why she should be afraid. Strangers had only ever been kind to her. The man stamping her papers had given her a strange look and asked her some questions, but that could hardly be considered an emergency. 

Eventually, Katherina returns to her cabin and undresses, careful to lock the door. She hangs up her coat and hat. In her loose white nightgown, she sits on her bunk in front of the tiny mirror and starts to pull out her hairpins, then brushes through her hair. The same as her mother’s. Katherina remembers it tickling her face as she put her to bed at night. The soft murmur of her voice. 

 She stares at her reflection. Long nose, full lips, tired eyes. At some point, someone must’ve come in to leave a small pitcher of water in the basin below the mirror. It’s gone stone cold, but she pours some out and splashes her face with it regardless. 

Through her porthole, she can see that it’s pitch-black outside. She can hear the gentle creaking and swaying of the ship. Footsteps pass above her and, in the corridor, doors open and shut. The small cohort of passengers are settling themselves in for the night. She’s pleased she hasn’t gotten sea-sick like she’d feared. She opens the drawer in her narrow bedside cabinet. In it, there’s two Bibles: one written in what looks like Danish, and one in English.  

Katherina picks up the English one, leafing through the pages. They’re thin, yellow, and well-thumbed. She wonders how many other passengers have opened this book and looked for guidance. The church in Witten had been a safe haven for her, and her grandmother was devout in the best sense of the word, but Katherina doesn’t often pray.  

If she concentrates really hard, she can guess at one word in ten. After a few minutes, she gives up and lays back on the bed. A wave of fatigue blurs her eyes and a pang of homesickness twists her stomach. What is she doing here? Thoughts of Onkel Heinrich flood her mind. The smell of his pipe tobacco clinging to his scratchy tweed as he hugged her. His kind, crinkly eyes as he waved goodbye to her in Deutz. Don’t worry, my child. It’s for the best. Katherina had cried until her head hurt, but knew it was the truth. Grandfather wouldn’t provide for her. Father had kept showing up on Heinrich’s doorstep, hurling abuse and threatening to pull her back by the hair if they didn’t give her willingly. 

She lays awake, staring at the ceiling, for what feels like hours. Time moves strangely at night. Every now and again, she can hear a passenger coughing or turning over in their bunk. The walls are thin.  

Her last thoughts before finally falling asleep are of seagulls, pearly white teeth, and Onkel Heinrich, dressed as Moses, parting the Red Sea. 

Book Review: Elizabeth Chadwick’s ‘Templar Silks’

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 4 out of 5.

A punchy story of sin and redemption.

Elizabeth Chadwick is a prodigious historical fiction author. She has dozens of books to her name, yet this was the first one of her which I read. It definitely didn’t disappoint, and I would go back for more, but it’s nothing groundbreaking either. It’s a good story told well, and based on sound research. Chadwick hit her stride when it comes to novels possibly even decades ago, so I’m not surprised that the storyline and character arcs are tight if not a touch formulaic.

I’m not sure why I’d never read something by Chadwick before. Possibly it’s because my historical fiction consumption tends to focus on later centuries- Tudor, Victorian. I have nothing against the medieval age but it does tend to be told as epic stories of knights and damsels, which is sort of the case here, but Templar Silks is also not completely typical of the genre. I studied the medieval age a lot at university, so I guess moving on to devouring Tudor fiction has been my way of rebelling since graduation.

I bought the book online, so I first noticed the reviews on the cover when I was about to open it up and start reading. They were certainly disconcerting. I saw the Times, the Telegraph and the Daily Mail. I swallowed, my mouth went dry. Oh dear, I thought to myself, what kind of lens is this story going to be through? Then I read the blurb and realised it was about the Crusading era, and one knight’s pilgrimage to the Holy Land. My hands were sweaty and my stomach twisted. I thought I knew why it had gotten such glowing reviews from such demagogic trash newspapers. Was this going to be another story of evil Saracens and turbaned foreigners with dark skin, glinting black eyes and scimitars razing villages of ‘innocent’ European settlers to the ground and eventually being cut down by the ‘worthy’ Crusader knights? Were beautiful blonde princesses going to be stolen away by the swarthy Moslems? Was it going to completely ignore the fact that people had been living in the Middle East for thousands of years before the Europeans rocked up and decided it was theirs?

Needless to say, I was rather anxious as I turned the first few pages. Fortunately, Chadwick does realise that it’s all much more nuanced than that. The book focuses much more on internal conflicts inside the court of Jerusalem, with different warring factions vying for supremacy in the face of a dying king. King Baldwin is slowly succumbing to leprosy in his early twenties. He is level-headed, wise and extremely intelligent, but he cannot help the fact that his body is failing and literally falling apart. The heir to the throne is six years old. Saladin, the bane of the crusader state, is lurking on the sidelines, really to take advantage of Jerusalem’s weakness. Guy de Lusignan, arsehole extraordinaire, is little six-year-old Baldwin’s stepfather and assumes he will be taking over the reins when King Baldwin dies. Leprosy Baldwin would do anything to stop that from happening. The Patriarch Heraclius is playing his own mysterious games, seemingly sitting on the fence and biding his time with his mistress, Paschia de Riveri. Most of the other princes and lords around Jerusalem would rather eat cold vomit than follow Guy de Lusignan. The city is on a knife-edge, it’s a tinder box waiting to explode.

And in walks William Marshal, whom history calls ‘the greatest knight’. His master, the Young King Henry, has died of dysentery, and William promises to take his cloak to Jerusalem and lay it on the altar at the Holy Sepulchre to make amends for their sins- the greatest of which was stealing from a Holy Shrine to the Virgin Mary to pay their mercenaries. Marshal arrives at court and has to play the game, which he accomplishes rather well until he falls into the arms of the mysterious Paschia…

I think Marshal’s character is written brilliantly. As ‘the greatest knight’, it would be extremely easy to make this character one-dimensional, to make him a bland, wholly morally good chivalric hero who saves the city- a Jon Snow-esque trope. However, Chadwick gives him depth and vibrancy. He sins, he makes mistakes, and he proves himself to be an astute political player as well as an outstanding warrior. Knights had to know how to do both – they had to manoeuvre for patronage and favours to survive. It was a delight to read in most places, and, despite it being around 500 pages long, I finished it in a few days. It’s a light read but still maintains beautiful description throughout. Chadwick is a great writer, but her prose is not as dense, complex or loaded as other writers such as Mantel. But that’s absolutely fine. Chadwick is great at world-building, giving us enough detail without the prose becoming bloated. Her development of the brotherhood between William and Ancel is one of the most touching aspects of the book.

So why four stars instead of five? I’m not sure. It was a great book. But it’s not Mantel. The baddies were obvious from the get-go. The affair was also obvious. Nothing came at me like a ton of bricks.

Book Review: Rebecca Stott’s ‘Ghostwalk’

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 4.5 out of 5.

A creepy, lyrical slow-burner that blends several genres: historical fiction and supernatural thriller.

Synopsis

A woman, Elizabeth Vogelsang, is found dead by her son Cameron Brown. She’s floating face-down in the river next to her Cambridge home, The Studio, clutching a glass prism. It’s ruled an accident, but the truth is far more complicated than it first appears.

Lydia Brooke, an author, is Elizabeth’s friend and Cameron Brown’s ex-lover. Cameron hires her to finish Elizabeth’s manuscript on Newton’s alchemical research. Lydia moves into The Studio and things start to get decidedly creepy once she starts poking around in the history of Isaac Newton’s obsessions.

There’s also a parallel storyline. A radical animal rights organisation (NABED) is busy threatening both Cameron and Lydia by association. Cameron is a neuroscientist whose laboratory regularly test on animals. Lydia and Cameron have been involved in an on/off adulterous relationship for years. Dead animals start turning up, and workers at the laboratory are attacked.

Highlights

Stott’s writing is beautiful. This is a brilliantly researched book with more layers than a matriushka doll. The book contains several extracts from Elizabeth’s manuscript, and I certainly found the exploration of Isaac Newton’s true-to-life involvement with alchemy fascinating.

The supernatural side of the book was extremely well-written. I love horror, I love creepy, so books with supernatural elements really appeal to me. Lydia begins to feel uncomfortable living in Elizabeth’s home, and the light start to play tricks on her. Manuscript sections start to appear and disappear. A dead can turns up on the doorstep.

The thriller side of the book is compelling, until the last few chapters. This is not a new book, it was released in 2007, and you can definitely feel the influence of Dan Brown’s the Da Vinci code. It contains historical mysteries and secrets, with clever people investigating them. It contains shadowy organisations with ulterior motives. Some of the main characters turn out to be the exact opposite of what they seem. Some doors are slammed in their face, other doors open. Despite the controversy, I absolutely loved reading the Da Vinci code, so this connection really didn’t bother me.

Stott’s writing is also very cerebral and philosophical in places. She goes to great lengths to paint a picture with words, and draws on a huge variety of sources and influences. There are references to a vast array of historical figures and authors, and Brooke and Brown’s snappy conversations are extremely interesting if you’re a nerd like me.

Lowlights

The plot twist was very predictable and also a bit too much of a stretch for me. I won’t ruin it for you, but it did ruin the last few chapters or so. Once I knew the twist, I didn’t really want to read past it, because the book already felt finished.

Book Review: Rebecca Stott’s ‘The Coral Thief’

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Rebecca is my tutor for the historical fiction module, so I’m glad I can be largely positive about this.

I got this book months ago but I’ve finally just had the chance to read something purely for pleasure: that means in English, a novel, and nothing to do with my modules. Who knew that studying literature and translation would mean that I barely get the chance to read for myself? Oh yeah, I did know that.

Synopsis

Daniel Connor is an anatomy and medicine student at Edinburgh University. He is sent by his tutor to post-revolutionary France, where Napoleon has fallen and the King has been returned to the throne. He starts a job under Professor Cuvier at the world-famous Jardin des Plantes, categorising species.

Upon arriving on the mail coach, Daniel realises the beautiful woman he met the night before has stolen his corals, manuscript and bones which were the references and gifts needed to start his job at the Jardin. He drifts around Paris with his newfound Scottish friend and fellow student Fin, unable to start work, and a bit lost.

But the mysterious woman hasn’t disappeared completely. This becomes a thriller as well as a historical novel, with spies, jewel heists and rings of thieves in hiding.

Highlights

Time and place were beautifully executed. early 19th-century Paris felt alive in my mind. I really enjoyed the first part of the book – the month in which Daniel gets drunk and behaves like most other twenty-year-old students in Paris with nothing much to do. Absinthe, gambling, phantasmagoria. Stott did such a good job of setting it’s making me want to go back and edit my own fiction, which is how it should be.

It’s an incredibly interesting point in time to set a novel. Twenty years after the Revolution, just after Napoleon has been defeated after escaping from prison once more. Napoleon is on his way to the tiny rock which will be his ‘prison’ (a rather beautiful tropical island prison) for the rest of his life: Saint Helena. The ethos of the Revolution is crumbling all around them. No more liberté, egalité, fraternité, but no more Terror either. The lions are being pulled from the top of the Arc de Triomphe and given back to Rome. Everywhere, the European powers are descending on Paris and taking back what had been stolen from them: including the beautiful collection of fossils, corals and bones at the Jardin des Plantes.

Time was evoked beautifully, naturally and not too often. Paris- a seething metropolis where nobody is as they seems – seemed almost a third main character in the novel.

Lowlights

So why four starts instead of five? The plot felt a little weak at times. Case in point: the climax of the novel, a great jewel heist. The characters repeat time and time again how impossible it is to break into the Jardin’s Museum, how well-locked, how well-protected everything is. I was curious how they were going to figure out a way in. And in the end, I never found out. The other characters just kind of abseil from somewhere in the roof just like any first, tacky mental image you get when I say the words ‘Jewel Heist’. We also never really found out how Lucienne, the mysterious woman, manages to fake her own death to get away from Paris.

Jagot, the Parisian police-chief-cum-spymaster, really wants the diamond. This felt kind of cheap for a baddie, I thought there would be some deeper motivations at play than just wanting a diamond. Blackmail, extortion? Deep-seated lusts? No, dude wants to get rich. Also, he lets Daniel and Lucienne run around the city for months, although Lucienne is supposedly in hiding. Hmmm.

And now we come to character. Daniel doesn’t warrant being the ‘I’-narrator. He’s passive, dull, and I honestly couldn’t give you many adjectives to describe his character after a whole book. Which is a bit sad, because ‘I’-narrators give you the most insight into their personality. Naive? Biddable? Maybe these two. At times, he’s infuriatingly passive, and for someone who apparently adores botany and biology, he forgets about it all pretty quick. His mental monologues on corals, fossils and bones in the first half of the book don’t fit with his treatment of his job in the second half of the book- as just going through the motions until he can swan around Paris with his older girlfriend and drink absinthe after dark.

Whereas Daniel is flat and underdeveloped, Lucienne seems to have more character facets than seems plausible. She is a fallen aristocrat during the Revolution, whose life was saved in prison because another woman stepped up and was executed in her name (why? No idea). She dresses as a man half of the time, she is a thief, a coral enthusiast, a philosopher. Nobody seems to care that she is a woman alone, with no husband, no real home, no honest income. It felt too modern. Nobody struggles with that. She didn’t seem to have struggled being a fallen aristocratic female cross-dresser who began a sparkling career in thievery.

Book Review: Toni Morrison’s ‘Beloved’

A heart-wrenching, eerie classic.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 5 out of 5.

This book is a modern classic, and rightly so. There’s nothing I’m about to say which hasn’t already been said. That said, let’s get on with my gushing (I’m not even going to include a lowlights section because there aren’t any).

Synopsis

The story starts in the late Antebellum period in what would become the United States. The scope is large- ranging from Kentucky to Carolina and Georgia, from the immediate pre-Civil War years, to the Civil War and its aftermath for black Americans. Sethe is a slave on a farm called Sweet Home, where she labours with a handful of men including Paul D and her husband Halle, her mother-in-law Baby Suggs, and her children, Howard, Bugler, (Beloved), and soon-to-be-born Denver. The story slips in and out of different places and time periods, though much of it is set in Cincinnati, Ohio, after Sethe’s daring escape from slavery. Her husband, Halle, is nowhere to be seen and presumed dead, but Baby Suggs, Sethe and the children have managed to make it out alive and start a new life in ‘freedom’ in the North.

They move into a house on the edge of town owned by some local white abolitionists. But a month later, and a month after Denver is born, the slave catchers, the ‘schoolmaster’ from Sweet Home and some hired help, find Sethe. They want her and her children. Instead of handing herself and them over and back into slavery in the South, Sethe cuts one of her baby’s throats. The child who dies has not been given a name at this point, but Beloved will later be written on her gravestone. The slavers give up and leave- their cargo is now either dead or insane- and Sethe goes to prison but is spared the death penalty via the efforts of the local black community and the white abolitionists, the Bodwins.

They live, shunned, until Baby Suggs dies and, 18 years after the awful events at 124, Paul D finds Sethe. Having known each other most of their lives at Sweet Home, they start up a relationship and he moves in with her and her only remaining daughter Denver, the boys having fled aged 13- understandably traumatised by the infanticide they had witnessed in the garden shed. In fact, had a family friend named Stamp Paid not stopped Sethe, she would have killed all her children rather than hand them back into slavery, and everyone knows this.

However, one day after visiting the carnival, Paul D, Sethe and Denver find a mysterious stranger sitting on a tree stump outside their house. She is around nineteen years old and wears a high-necked dress and brand new shoes. She introduces herself as Beloved.

Higlights

This novel explores the huge emotional trauma engendered by the enslavement and terrorising of black Americans in the 19th century. Each word is heavy with a melodic, keening sadness, and Morrison has beautifully captured the historical idiom and cadences of this community. She has been blessed with the gift of writerly genius, able to handle deep, heavy, traumatic topics with an incredible lightness of pen. Some chapters, especially from Beloved’s point of view, are incredibly experimental – using broken prose and poems to get her eerie, ethereal nature and raw emotion across. Morrison was inspired by a true story – of a woman who killed her child rather than hand her over to the slave catchers – and worked to humanise her into the character of Sethe, who is amazingly complex, traumatised, and suffering from PTSD and other mental illness – which, of course, didn’t really have a word back then.

The reader is left puzzled as to the true nature of Beloved. Is she an imposter who heard the story and is looking to cash in on Sethe’s guilt, like a cuckoo in the nest? Is she a ghost, a demon? Is she a figment of Sethe and Denver’s imagination, a collective projection? Is it really her daughter come back in the flesh like some kind of magic? Is it the house working some kind of evil over them? Beloved is intensely creepy- demanding, inhuman, charming, beautiful, ruthless and cruel – demanding attention and sweet things, becoming bloated on their emotion and attention.

This book is beautiful, haunting and infused with layers of intergenerational grief: of parents torn from children, scattered diasporas, helplessness and ultimate strength.

Deeds Not Words Scene 5

A girl skips home from school. Her long, red hair- the colour of sin- is gathered in a thick braid down her back. As soon as she is home, a tall, proud man – her father- has her knitting and practising her handwriting. He has a good hand himself, and she must learn it perfectly. She often sits by the window and watches the other village children playing in the street. Sometimes, all she can hear is the gentle clack-clack of her needles slowing building row upon row of useful fabric, a warm weave of knots. Sometimes, her father sits next to her, reading the newspaper. Then, the soft rustle of the pages mingles with the clicks of her knitting. But it’s only that quiet when it’s raining or winter and the street is dark or cold and empty. Other times, her father teaches her how to hold a pen. She tries to keep her fingers straight, how he likes it, but her hands are clammy with the effort. Her father stands over her, long and lean, smelling of pipe smoke and lye. He leans forward, supporting his pipe in his right hand and himself on the back of her chair with his left. He chews on the mouthpiece, grinding it between his teeth. He has piercing green eyes and a strong nose. He is a handsome man, the villagers say. The spitting image of the Kronprinz Frederick.

Kitty’s hand slips. Her index finger crooks up. Her father grunts with displeasure and sends the bowl of his pipe cracking down onto the crest of her skull. Kitty feels faint. Waves of pain throb through her, from the top of her head to the soles of her feet. She wants to cry, but that’s not allowed. Crying is weakness and girls are weak. Tears would prove it. She grits her teeth and carries on writing. A bead of sweat falls from her nose and onto the paper, blurring the ink. A shot of fear races straight to her heart. But this time she is lucky, very lucky. Her father hasn’t noticed because his eyesight is slowly failing him. 

There’s another noise in the room. She looks up. A woman is curled in the corner furthest from the door. She hangs her head, arms hugged around her knees. Her nightshirt has ridden up, revealing a delicate, lacy network of bruises up her shins. She is crying softly. She knows this must be her mother- her long, auburn hair just a few shades darker than her own. 

Kitty’s writing desk faces the window, so she has had to crane her neck around to see the sound’s source. She remembers her schoolwork and flinches, waiting for the pipe to come smacking down once more, this time for her insolence and unscholarly distraction. But her father is gone. 

Her mother senses Kitty’s presence. She raises her head and must be seeing Kitty silhouetted in the soft, afternoon light which falls through the window and illuminates the dust motes hanging suspended in the air. The room is panelled in dark wood, and bare except for desk, mother and child. She opens her mouth, and Kitty wants to run to her, to rub warmth into her blue-white hands, but she stops dead and the blank fear returns. Her mother is looking at her with her father’s piercing green eyes, full of contempt. It’s not right, it doesn’t fit, because her mother’s eyes were blue, weren’t they?

The woman in the corner raises a long, pale finger and points at Kitty. She speaks with her father’s voice.

“Unnatural child, why don’t you love me?”

Kitty screams until a creak at the door cuts her off. Perhaps her father is back, or is he in the corner? She doesn’t know where to look.

“Hello, Kitty.”

A tall man strolls in, but he is not her father. Her little writing desk has become something larger, more stately, poised on polished mahogany legs. There’s now a low couch in the corner where her mother was crouched just moments ago. An ostentatious chandelier hangs low from the ceiling. Through the window, Kitty can see that she is a few floors up, and that the street below is busy. Women stroll past, clutching decorative parasols or unruly children. Men in tall hats huddle together, moustaches quivering. 

Kitty turns away from the window, from a London both distant and familiar. The man has gotten closer, much closer. Why did she ever let him out of her sight? He has positioned his body between her and the door. His huge desk is behind her. She knows she is trapped, and he knows it too. He is so close she could count the crumbs in his beard and smell the day-old gin on his breath. Gin he keeps in the top left-hand drawer of his desk. She knows because she has seen him taking it out, pouring it and returning it with an almost clerical solemnity. She knows because he has offered her some, and she has seen the flash of indignation in his eyes as she declined. 

“How about a kiss, my dear Kitty? Just a harmless kiss.”

She backs away until her hips collide with his monstrous desk. She makes to slide over it, lithe as a river eel, but he catches her around the waist in one sly, practised movement ill-fitting with either his paunch or his advancing age. Kitty should be terrified. She knows she was the last audition that day. She knows that the others have gone home by now. She did not notice whether his secretary has also left for the day or whether she lurks somewhere, complicit.

“I don’t understand you, Kitty,” he remonstrates, “young girls like you like to be made love to, they like to kiss. You’ll never be a success in the music halls if you don’t, my dear.” There is a malign glimmer in his watery, bloodshot eyes. Her so-called agent presses himself against her, trying to plant his lips on hers, scratching her chin with his wiry bristles. She squirms like a polecat, clawing him and screaming, drawing her knee up to the one place she knows men are vulnerable. He gasps, withdraws, his breath catches, his face contorted with pain, but he still has a vice like grip on her wrist. He’s not going to give it up, he’s not going to be bested. Not by her. He’s panting, a hairline scratch underneath his eye seeping blood, and still he tries to pull her towards him. Kitty feels herself losing her balance in slow motion. She pulls back, tips, falling towards the desk, her leg lifting, wading through treacle. Or is the desk falling upwards to meet her temple?

The last sensations Kitty remembers as she loses consciousness are the running of water, a gushing, rushing feeling, and the ringing of church bells somewhere far off in the distance. 

Kitty wakes up on her narrow pallet bed. She’s glistening with sweat, and her cheap, off-white nightgown has gone almost translucent pressed against her legs and stomach. It’s cold in her cell, and already she starts to shiver. She draws her  scratchy, prison-issue woollen shawl around her. Her escapades the previous day provoked the wardresses to force her into regulation clothes. She looks up at the small, grated window. Weak morning light filters through, and she feels dirty. She feels the same outrage and wounded pride, clenching her fists around the bed frame. They’ve escaped from their drawer again.

She’d come to her senses that day fully clothed. Either someone had heard the commotion, or his predilections didn’t stretch to the unconscious. Either way, she hadn’t stayed to discover which. She remembers the moments after fleeing, after extricating herself from that man’s office. Dazed and bewildered, she had burst out onto the streets of London. She was not yet twenty. She had felt ashamed of something she was in no way accountable for. All she had wanted was to stand under a stream of scalding hot water and scrub herself raw with carbolic soap, but instead she had stood at the railing of Westminster Bridge and gazed down into the sluggish brown waters of the Thames below. She had pulled herself back. That was the day she realised that courage had nothing to do with men.

Deeds Not Words: Scene 3 Part 2

8th June, 1913. Kew, London

Clara is still clutching the carpet. They have no idea what to do with it. Kitty slings it over her shoulder, and they run hand in hand towards the nearby towpath. There’s a ditch and a copse of trees lining the furthest edge of the cricket pitch. They hurl it in and cover it with some hastily kicked earth and twigs. Luckily, it’s not a garish colour, but, sooner or later, it will be found. Their backs are now to the racecourse, but even from here they can feel an echo of its immense heat. Their cheeks are still flushed.

As they near the gas lighting, they stop to rearrange their hair and dress. 

“Do I look respectable?” Clara asks, plaintive. She’s brushing dirt from her sleeves and rearranging her hairpins. 

“Never!” Kitty beams. For practical reasons, they have opted to go hatless tonight. It only serves to make them more conspicuous. 

They set out along the towpath, being the natural choice and much quieter than the streets around Hampton Court Palace, although it is now after midnight – too late for respectable ladies to be out unaccompanied. Too late, even, for respectable ladies to be out at all. Aside from some figures in the distance, the path is empty. 

They finally have the time and inclination to talk freely.

“Did you see that! It went up like a Christmass tree! We barely made it out in time,” Clara squeaks, her voice tight. 

“Well, you know Betty, the best laid plans of mice and men…how could we know the fire would take so quickly?” Kitty’s rush is already beginning to fade, leaving an empty fatigue in its wake. She pinches the bridge of her nose and rubs her eyes. They sting with smoke.

“I wish Pem could see this. It’s spectacular.”

“Yes, but I wish that old turncoat would stop forcing our hand like this. Despite all appearances, I’m not a born criminal.” Deep down, she hates this whole business.  

“We’ll get our way, one day, for everyone’s sake. Until then, this is our duty. Pem may be gone now, but her words live on. Her beautiful words.”

Their boots crunch over the gravel. They are forcing themselves to take slow, measured steps. Clara’s eyes shine with tears. Kitty looks thoughtful. The river is on their right. It reflects the warm orange glow of the blaze, dancing and sparkling on its inky surface. By this point, clusters of onlookers are beginning to gather, men and women. Apparently, there’s no such thing as being out too late when there’s a jolly good spectacle. At first, Kitty can’t decide whether that raises or lowers their chances of getting caught. They may have a chance to blend in, but then she reflects on their hatless, dishevelled, manless condition. Tries to see themselves through a stranger’s eyes. There are now far more witnesses, far more people who could report having seen them, sticking out like sore thumbs along the Molesley towpath. The place is probably already swarming with police. A few men are already running towards the fire, eager to prove themselves. 

Kitty has been putting on a show her whole adult life. Feigning nonchalance is no great strain for her. She dawdles, gazing at the blaze, tipping her head to passers-by. Clara’s jaw, on the other hand, is clenched firmly. Her hair is plastered to her forehead with sweat. One of her sleeves is torn, revealing a flash of milky skin on her upper arm. They are a sight to behold.

As they begin to turn right over the bridge across the Thames, a fire engine screams around the corner, cartwheels screeching over the cobblestones, horses frothed and lathering. The ladies stroll over the bridge arm in arm. It would be easy to miss the conspiratorial gleam in their eyes. They walk in the direction of Richmond and Kew, ducking into sidestreets whenever policemen come dashing along on motorcycles. There really is something eternally enticing about fugitive status, about not quite legally existing in the world. Clara’s dark blonde hair threatens to spill down her back. She’s from a well-to-do family. Kitty effectively has no family at all, nobody to shame.

They meander through the streets of Fulwell, Twickenham and Kew for hours. They desperately try to remember Eileen’s instructions and not to look lost. By the early hours of the morning, they have covered almost eight miles from the scene of the crime, although the women have lost all sense of time. They are looking for the safe house, but London is huge, and neither of them have been to this area before. The suburban streets are quiet as the grave, and had Jesus rode in on a silver bicycle, he would have been less conspicuous than these two. 

“Excuse me ladies, are you lost?”

Kitty and Clara jump out of their skins, and then immediately go about disguising the fact. Kitty’s hand flies to her hair, as if checking it, although it now more resembles mistletoe growing on a tree branch. Clara places her raised hand demurely on her breastbone and looks up at the policeman through her eyelashes. 

“Why yes, sergeant, in matter of fact, we are a little bit lost.” For once, Clara is quicker off the mark. 

He doesn’t look like a sergeant, Kitty thinks. Far too young. He’s puffing up his narrow chest as we speak, and his chin strap doesn’t hide his acne. But there’s no harm in buttering him up. Clever Betty.

“Why are you two ladies out at a time like this?” 

He narrows his eyes. He knows they don’t look like fallen women. He shifts his weight uneasily from foot to foot. His boots look new, too stiff and shiny. Is he afraid of us? Kitty thinks. She almost laughs. Perhaps he thinks we’re going to pull out a horsewhip and start clobbering him with it, like plucky little Theresa and that oaf Winston Churchill a few years back. Unforgettable. Kitty pulls her thoughts back to the question at hand. 

“Sir, we’re music hall performers, you see. We’re often out late, it doesn’t bother us.” She flashes her most winning smile. 

The policeman begins to look mollified, but then clearly decides to put his extremely recent training to good use. 

“Which music hall?”

“The Prince of Wales on Tottenham Street, sir.”

You can see him calculating the distance in his head. 

“You’ve come a long way, then, girls.” Him calling us girls. The tenacity.

“We took the tram.”

“The trams are still running this late?”

The trams are still fairly new to London. Kitty desperately hopes that this green lad isn’t familiar with the timetables.

“It was still rather a long walk from the stop.”

“And why, after your shift, have you come this far?”

“We’d organised lodgings here. A much fairer price than in the City, you see. On West Park Road. But we couldn’t find them, and now we’re lost.”

The policeman nods, seems satisfied. He gives them directions to West Park Road, but the women know they have been rumbled. They hurry off in the direction of his pointed finger. He stares after them. For a few breaths, Kitty hears nothing but their heels clicking. Her feet throb, they’ve been on them all night. 

“We’re finished”, Clara groans once they assume he’s out of earshot. 

“I know.” Kitty grits her teeth. They’re both exhausted. They will be arrested the next morning at the latest. But the police want to see where they will lead them first. They want to know where these dangerous, violent women go to roost. 

They can feel their tail. The faint creak of a bicycle chain drifts on the still air. She wonders if he thinks he’s being subtle. They don’t really have a choice now but to lead them back to Eileen’s. Hopefully, she and her parents will be able to claim ignorance of the women’s actions. But for now, they have finally reached their safe harbour. Clara pulls at the latch key hanging on a chain around her neck, and it rises up from under her dress. They are now before a looming redbrick townhouse, framed by two pruned hedges. Its bay windows ape an unknowing stare. It’s a picture of solid, middle class English life, and here they stand, two free radicals. 

A low, wrought iron gate lets out a reedy creak of discontent as they push their way through. Clara fumbles with the lock before they can let themselves in. All is quiet. A grandfather clock ticks softly in the hallway. Kitty is shocked by her reflection in the hall mirror. She looks sallow, bedraggled. Maybe they are getting too old for this. The excitement of the last few hours has snuck off, taking her complexion with it. 

Kitty thinks of the policeman watching the house. He’s probably throwing himself into the saddle of his bicycle at this very moment, speeding off to the Kenley police station to deliver his prize nugget of intelligence, desperate to make a name for himself as a small fish in a big pond. I’ve got them! I know where they are! The Hurst Park Arsonists. Although, she does admit the title has a nice ring to it. 

She collapses into the soft white cotton sheets of the guest bedroom. As far as they are aware, they’ve slunk in without rousing Eileen, her parents or either of the maids. Kitty doesn’t even bother to undress. All she removes are her boots, still plastered with damp grass. She tries not to think of the ordeal ahead of her, to no use. Arrest, trial, imprisonment. Playing Cat and Mouse at His Majesty’s pleasure. 

Deeds not Words Scene 3 Part 1

8th June, 1913. Hurst Park Racecourse, Molesley, London

Emily has breathed her last in hospital. Kitty is attempting to scale the perimeter fence of the Hurst Park Racecourse with the aid of a piece of carpet. 

“Hurry!” Clara hisses.

Kitty is perched on top of a tool shed on the edge of the cricket pitch. She brandishes the carpet above her head like a hunting trophy, swinging it wildly back and forth and hoping it will catch on the spikes on the double layer of barbed wire which crowns the Racecourse’s perimeter fence. She is alternately laughing and panting with the effort. Clara stands by the base of the shed, taking in the spectacle. From this angle, she can see up Kitty’s skirts. She realises that she’s never seen another woman from this angle before. She looks away, and then sees that her friend’s boots are in dire need of a polish. 

Neither of them has much of an idea how they are going to scale the fence in their short skirts, coming in at just above the ankle. They should have gotten hold of some breeches, Clara thinks, and worn them under their clothes. But then what would they have done with their skirts? They would have been a gleaming beacon to any passers-by that something was amiss. Could they have hidden them in a bush? In the shed? The shed is locked, and there are no bushes for a hundred metres, at least. Too late now, anyway. We’ll manage. 

All the while, Kitty has been busy beating the fence as if it had just torpedoed the Conciliation Bill. Then the carpet catches. They want to whoop with joy, but they manage to stifle it to a high-pitched whistle of air from their noses. 

Kitty’s flushed face appears over the edge of the cricket shed. She looks every inch the warrior queen, coarse red hair tumbling from her loose bun. Her face is full yet well-formed, with a long, proud nose. Clara imagines her statue by Westminster Bridge, standing tall in her chariot and leading her tribe into battle. Their eyes are aglow with the first heady rush only risk can provide. Their faces are just inches apart.

“Bravo,” Clara giggles, “Bravo sister!”

The night is calm, sound carries.

“Hush, Betty. We can’t afford to forget ourselves.” Kitty feigns a stern countenance, but breaks into a grin. 

Now they must scale it. Kitty is the stronger of the two. She has been blessed with deep lungs and the statuesque figure so esteemed on the stage. She has been kneeling, but now she lays down, belly down, on the cold corrugated iron roof of the shed. She stretches out her arms, and Clara grasps them, shoulder to hand, hand to shoulder. She hauls Clara up. Her shoe finds purchase on a windowpane, and the glass cracks. Even that small sound sends a whisper through the night. 

It’s almost pitch black. They are surrounded on three sides, four including the track behind the fence, by a wide expanse of turf like a calm sea. The cricket shed is a lifeboat, and they are about to disembark. Far behind them, streetlamps form tiny pinpricks of light. They are completely alone. Kitty puts her hands on her hips, surveying her kingdom, elbows jutting. Luckily, Clara has thought to pass up their wicker suitcase of munitions before climbing onto the shed herself. 

“Well then,” Kitty sighs, “up we go.”

Kitty bends her knees into a slight squat and braces her shoulders. She forms a cradle with her hands, lacing her fingers together. Getting Clara over is their first priority. How they will get the buxom Kitty over afterwards is anyone’s guess.

Kitty pushes up Clara’s damp boot with a resolute grunt. Clara grasps at the carpet. She’s past the halfway point, momentum tipping. Gingerly, she tries to turn her body to face back towards the fence from the other side, but soon she has worked herself into a breathless muddle. 

A few seconds later, she hangs from the end of the carpet on the other side to shorten her fall, Kitty grasping it from the cricket pitch side of the fence so that Clara doesn’t take it with her. There’s still a good few feet to drop. The fence trembles dramatically, then Clara plops down onto the racecourse. Her skirt is rucked up around her thighs like a carelessly dropped china doll on a carpet of grass. She’s sitting in a cloud of white, lace-trimmed underskirts, boots sticking out at jaunty angles. She has survived, they are criminals once again. Clara looks back over her shoulder and giggles. It is catching. 

Now it’s Kitty’s turn. She stares at the fence, willing it to bend, break or melt. 

“Can I help?” Clara hisses.

“I don’t think so.”

Kitty hurls the suitcase over the fence like a champion shot putter. Then she jumps. Her hands miss the crest of the carpet. She slides back down, jumps again, and again. Just before she thinks her hands may start bleeding with the friction, she jumps high enough to grasp its peak. She can feel the fence’s barbs and spikes, menacing under the thick fabric. She hopes it holds. She’s not going to end this night in hospital, for Pem’s sake. 

Kitty’s legs are scrambling, looking for toe-holds. She’s slowly managing to pull herself up. She thinks to herself, this would make an excellent film. A dramatic comedy. Two ladies versus an unscalable fence. 

But seconds later, Kitty is clutching at Clara on the other side. They are indefatigable. No cuts, scrapes or bruises. A small miracle, sent by the Maid of Orleans. 

They stuff their munitions back in their suitcase. They scurry over the long grass, wet with dew, before reaching the Grandstand. 

“We’re here”, Clara whistles.

“What a marvelous beacon it will make,” Kitty winks. 

They race up the steps, drunk on adrenaline. In a southwestern suburb of London, under a clear, starry sky, their grand tribute to a fallen comrade begins to take shape. They pour out a gallon of oil, spreading it behind seats, in front of doorways. The wood is tinderbox dry, it hasn’t rained in over a week. They converse, when necessary, in stage whispers, hearts leaping.

Clara lights the candle stub with a match and places it on the oil-soaked rag. It should give them an hour to make good their escape, but no man or woman can bend fire to their will. They hear a whoosh as they scamper away from the pavilion. They don’t turn back at first, desperate to put a safe distance between themselves and the blaze. The whoosh becomes a roar. The two women start fleeing for their lives, silhouetted starkly against the blistering inferno. 

The whole Grandstand is aflame, crackling and chattering, and now the women are whooping with exhilaration and delight, skipping, driving themselves onwards. The clatter of falling roof beams muffles their cries. The stresses, strains and enforced silence of the previous hour find their release. 

They are just a few hundred metres away from the conflagration when an ear-splitting boom tears the sky apart. The co-conspirators spin around, skirts billowing, flames in their eyes. Some of the Grandstand’s roof goes flying into the air. The building’s gas piping has exploded. Kitty and Clara turn to each other, brimming with emotion. Fear and euphoria. Words fail them.

They escape the same way they broke in, a suitcase lighter. Kitty hopes all trace of their kit will be destroyed in the flames. It’s more difficult to scale the fence from the racecourse side, but Kitty finds that, after giving Clara a push, she can find toe-holds in the metal fence. 

A small grey purse drops from the folds of her dress. It lands silently in the thick grass, unnoticed. 

Once they are clear of the fence, they embrace. 

“We made it,” one of the women murmurs into the other’s hair. 

“We did.” Kitty can offer no insight.

Kitty Marion: The Most Badass Suffragette You’ve Never Heard Of

Since settling on the Suffragettes for my historical fiction project, reading into their lives has only proven to me how great an idea it is. This week I’ve been reading Kitty Marion’s autobiography, which has been as entertaining as it was enlightening.

I often find our modern historical and public focus on the Suffragette movement a bit distorting. Our perception of the period is too much based on the Pankhursts and the efforts of middle-class, educated women. Yes, the Pankhursts were the figureheads and forerunners of the Edwardian movement (although its roots stretch back much further), but we have overlooked the efforts of lower-class Suffragettes working at the grassroots and on the streets for too long. I think that the Suffragette’s militancy and violence is also often overlooked in our whitewashing of history. To this day, we still see female militancy and violence as something distasteful, and in our worship of the Pankhursts as icons of their time, we like to gloss over the nitty gritty, the window-smashing arson which helped to get women the right to vote.

Although Kitty Marion (Kathaerina Maria Schäfer) came from a solid middle-class background, she straddles the class boundary in an interesting way. As a music hall and theatre performer, she was self-sufficient and completely independent from the age of seventeen. She wasn’t formally educated past the age of fifteen, and she never married, so she certainly doesn’t fit the middle-class educated housewife image that we now have of the Suffragettes. I think more historical fiction needs to be written about working-class Suffragette activists to try to fill this gap in the public eye. Suffragette fiction is strangely lacking in any case- a search on Waterstones threw up only one recent novel, which, judging by the cover, situated itself firmly in the realm of the historical chick-lit.

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Katherina Maria Schäfer was born in Germany in 1871, the year of Germany’s unification as a nation state. Her mother died when she was a toddler, and her father was a moderately successful engineer. She had an unhappy childhood, although she doesn’t dwell on this much in her memoirs. She was passed between her father’s rough care and that of other relatives. Her father was emotionally and physically abusive, which helped to turn Kitty away from the attentions of men for the rest of her life. At the age of fifteen, she left Germany to live with one of her aunts in an Eastern suburb of London, probably Epping. She spent two years there as a kind of live-in unpaid skivvy, with her aunt discouraging her from leaving the house much, learning English, or finding work.

However, Kitty is anything but biddable. She is naturally inquisitive and self-motivated, teaching herself English by listening into conversations on the street and comparing German passages of the Bible with the English. After a few years of living in England, her written English is near-perfect and her accent has all but disappeared, a testament to her natural intelligence. She becomes a stage performer at the age of seventeen and begins to travel the country, finally tasting the freedom and independence she was craving. She spends years as an itinerant performer going from show to show in all corners of the UK. Her red hair and charm arouse interest in a few suitors, but she vows never to marry. After spending her childhood living under her father’s fist, she would never subject herself to a life of obedience and restriction. For the same reasons, she never has children despite enjoying their company. In short: a lesson in late Victorian badassery, when we think about how uncommon it was for a woman to travel alone, stay single and make her own money at the time, without resorting to prostitution.

Marion being badass in front of the police

Which is what we’re coming onto now. In her career as a performer, numerous managers and insalubrious types proposition her or try to force her into trading sexual favours for employment or promotion. She even has a few close calls with sex traffickers, such as a couple who promise her a shining future as an actress in Paris. Marion, kept in a state of natural innocence by her confined childhood, is shocked by this. Sexual abuse in the theatre industry is one of the reasons she turns to the Suffrage movement.

In her career as a militant Suffragette, Marion is involved in campaigning, from the innocent – selling their newspaper, Votes for Women, on street corners- to the extreme: arson and violence against property. After Emily Wilding Davidson throws herself under the King’s Horse at the Epsom Derby in 1913, Kitty and a fellow Suffragette go on a dangerous mission to set fire to the Grandstand on the racetrack at Hurst Park, a plan which both succeeds and fails. They manage to climb over the huge perimeter fence with the help of a carpet, and the pavilion burns, but they are captured the next morning. Marion also goes on window-smashing raids along Oxford and Regent street, and takes part in the heckling of Cabinet ministers outside the Houses of Parliament.

She is arrested countless times and sent to Holloway Prison, where she goes on hunger and thirst strikes which are ‘remedied’ with government-mandated force feeding, which amount to torture. A tube is forced down her nose or throat, and then various calorific liquids are poured in, resulting in immense pain and vomiting. Some women even died as a result of the torture, as some of the liquid could get into lungs and cause pneumonia. Marion underwent this procedure an astonishing 232 times. Later, she is continually released and re-arrested under the ‘Cat and Mouse Act’, after the force feeding episodes had proven themselves a PR disaster of momentous proportions for the Government. The public, largely opposed to the Suffragettes, were nonetheless incensed and shocked by these stories of invasive torture and subsequent health complications and suffering. Force feeding was largely stopped, but instead Suffragettes were released after they had weakened considerably due to their hunger striking and then re-arrested when they had regained some strength and weight on the outside.

The cycles of starvation and force feeding took their toll on her body and mind, but Marion possessed an exceptional iron resolve and continued her protests behind bars – once successfully setting fire to her furniture and bedding using the gas lighting, almost suffocating herself in the process. Ultimately, Marion’s militant activities stop at the outbreak of the First World War, along with all other militant Suffrage activism, as the Pankhursts urged mobilisation for the war effort and the futility of doing violence to property at home in the face of the mechanised slaughter of WWI.

Kitty Marion’s autobiography is a uniquely exciting and insightful source material for writing historical fiction. Some of the scenes described are just as daring and thrilling than the best of novels. Had I written a novel about this and the Suffrage movement never happened, I would be laughed off the stage. Impossible! they would say, write about something more believable!