The Wild Rose

by Jennifer Donnelly

  Josie took her arm once more and Jennie started walking again, desperately hoping that her friend was right, that there was something Dr. Cobb could do to stop the bleeding and the pain, but then another cramp gripped her.

  “Oh, God,” she sobbed. “It’s no use, Josie. I’m going to lose this baby.”

  “Now, you listen to me,” Josie said fiercely. “I’ll sort it for you, Jennie, don’t you worry. I’ll take care of you. I’ll take care of everything.”

  “How, Josie?” Jennie sobbed. “How? You can’t! No one can!”

  “Oh, but I can. You’d have to be a right git to have spent as much time around villains as I have and not pick up a trick or two,” she said.

  “I … I don’t understand,” Jennie said.

  “You don’t have to. All you have to do is remember something when we get to Dr. Cobb’s. Just one small thing. Can you do that for me, Jennie? Jennie, luv, can you do that?”

  “Yes,” Jennie said. “What is it?”

  “That my name is Jennie Finnegan,” Josie said. “And that yours is Josie. Josie Meadows.”

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  “Harriet, my dear,” Max said, as he entered her office.

  “My, goodness, Max. Is it noon already?” Harriet Hatcher asked, looking up from a patient’s file. She closed the file. Her expression was troubled. “Sit down, won’t you? Just clear the things off that chair.”

  Max did so, shifting a copy of the Battle Cry and a VOTES FOR WOMEN banner from the chair to a credenza. “How goes the struggle?” he asked.

  “Well, and not so well,” Harriet said. “You heard about the by-election in Cumbria, I’m sure. Labour won a seat that had long been held by the Liberals. So there’s another MP sympathetic to our cause, which is wonderful, of course. …”

  “But …” Max prompted.

  “There’s always a but, isn’t there?” Harriet said wryly. “In this case, the but is the sudden bout of war fever that’s gripped government. We in the movement fear that the push for women’s suffrage will take a backseat to military concerns.”

  “Even if it does,” Max said, “you must keep fighting.”

  Harriet nodded, a determined smile on her face now. “Oh, we will. Millicent Fawcett is like a glacier—slow but implacable. There is no stopping her. She will not give up and neither will the rest of us.”

  “Then you must be well fortified for the fight,” Max said. “Where shall we dine tonight? I was thinking of the Eastern.”

  “It’s a bit far and I don’t have long today. I’ve lots of appointments to get through this afternoon. What about something closer? There’s a nice pub only a street away.”

  Max feigned interest in her suggestions, pretending he was game for anything, but really, the very last thing he wanted to be doing right now was swanning off to lunch.

  A war of words was heating up between Austria-Hungary and Serbia. The kaiser had signaled his readiness to jump into the fray. Berlin was waiting on Max for crucial information, and yet he could get nothing to them, for he still could not come up with a way to get the documents from Gladys Bigelow to the North Sea.

  He had risked one meeting with her, on her bus, to tell her to keep bringing carbons out of Burgess’s office, but to hold them in her home for now, until she received further instructions. There were times when he’d felt so desperate, he’d nearly decided to put on his old disguise, the one he’d used to seduce Gladys, and get the papers from her himself. But he knew that would be foolish. He must not be seen in those clothes anywhere near Duffin’s again.

  Max knew he had to be patient, as hard as that was. He had always dined with Harriet on Thursdays, and so he must continue to dine with Harriet on Thursdays. He must appear to be as predictable as the English rain after the disaster with Bauer and Hoffman, and the one with Maud, in case he was now being watched.

  “And there’s always the Moskowitzes’ cafe, of course,” Harriet said. “What do you think of that? Max? Max?”

  “I think it’s a fine idea,” he said quickly, hoping she hadn’t noticed that he’d been miles away.

  “Good,” Harriet said. She closed the file she’d been reading and put it on top of a stack of folders on her desk. He glanced at the name on the file—Jennie Finnegan. “Suzanne!” she called out.

  A few seconds later, Harriet’s receptionist stuck her head in. Harriet handed her the stack of folders. “After you go to lunch, could you file these, please?” she asked. “But don’t file the three on top—Mrs. Finnegan’s, Mrs. Erikson’s, and Mrs. O’Rourke’s. Put those in my briefcase. They’re all coming in for appointments tomorrow, and I want to study my notes at home tonight.” Suzanne nodded, took the stack of folders, and returned to her office.

  Max had seen the slight frown on Harriet’s face as she’d read Jennie Finnegan’s file. Her reaction piqued his interest, accustomed as he was to reading people’s facial cues. Something in Jennie Finnegan’s file was especially bothering her. He remembered seeing Willa at the Coburg—how could he forget?—and discovering that it was Seamus Finnegan—Jennie’s husband—whom she’d gone there to see. He wondered what it was that was troubling Harriet about Jennie, and he wondered if it had any connection to what was going on at the Coburg. He decided to press Harriet, ever so subtly, to see if he could find out more. Other people’s private matters often proved useful.

  “Mrs. Finnegan …,” he said now. “Would that be the former Jennie Wilcott? I haven’t seen her, or her husband, since their wedding. What a lovely bride she was. What a perfect day that was. Blue skies. Flowers. All of us together. Who would think that only weeks later …” He let his voice trail off, swallowed hard, then picked up a wooden rattle that was lying on Harriet’s desk and fiddled with it.

  Harriet reached across her desk and covered his hand with her own. “It’s not your fault, Max. You know that. Everyone knows that.”

  He nodded, then said, “We should talk of happier things.” He held up the rattle, shook it, and smiled. “Like babies. What could be happier than a baby? Jennie and her husband must be very excited to have a little one due soon. How is she? Is she well?”

  “As far as I know, yes,” Harriet said, a bit distractedly.

  What an odd answer, Max thought, but he decided to push it no further. He knew Harriet was a stickler for doctor-patient confidentiality. He didn’t want to make her uncomfortable. Or suspicious.

  “Perhaps we should get going,” he said. “Before Moskowitzes’ gets crowded.”

  “Yes, I think we should. Let’s have a glass of wine while we’re there, Max, shall we? Let’s forget about struggles and sadnesses for an hour. Excuse me for a moment. I’m just going to go freshen up,” Harriet said, disappearing down the hall.

  As soon as he heard the door to the loo open and close, Max rushed out of Harriet’s office and into her receptionist’s, hoping that the woman had already gone to lunch. Luckily, she had—and she’d left all the folders Harriet had given her on her desk. Jennie Finnegan’s was on top. Max flipped it open and began to read its contents.

  He learned that Jennie Wilcott Finnegan’s due date was a bit less than eight months after her wedding. Eight, not the usual nine. Furthermore, he learned that she had been horribly injured in an accident as a child, an accident that had damaged several of her organs, including her uterus. There were diagrams of Jennie’s scars, sketches of what looked to him like a misshapen womb. There was a note that Jennie was taking time to rest quietly at her cottage in Binsey, Oxfordshire.

  And finally, Max learned that his cousin, Dr. Harriet Hatcher, did not expect Jennie’s due date to be reached. She had written in her notes that she did not believe the pregnancy would advance to full-term and that she had counseled Jennie on this very concern, telling her that she should prepare herself for the very real possibility of a miscarriage.

  As Max put the folder back exactly as he’d found it and hurried back into Harriet’s office, he found himself feeling newly optimistic.


  He’d learned so many valuable things in the past few days—and they all centered on Jennie Finnegan, the Reverend Wilcott’s daughter. He’d learned that she was pregnant before she was married, that she would likely never have the child she was carrying, and that her husband was making secret trips to the Coburg, where he was meeting Willa Alden. It was true—people’s private matters did prove useful.

  “Are you ready?” Harriet asked, as she walked back into her office.

  “I am,” he said, rising from the chair.

  He helped Harriet into her coat—a linen duster—and complimented her on her hat, a pretty straw affair trimmed with silk flowers. When they got outside, they discovered that it had started to drizzle. Max quickly put his umbrella up and took Harriet’s arm.

  “Of course,” she sighed. “How perfect. Dreary skies to match our dreary moods. I think we should cheer up, Max. What do you say? I think we should endeavor to enjoy our afternoon despite the gray clouds.”

  “Ah, my dear, Harriet,” Max said, smiling, “I’m enjoying it already.”

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Josie put another shovelful of coal on the fire. The summer evening had turned cool. She stoked the flames until they were burning brightly, leaned the shovel against the wall, and turned to look at her friend.

  Jennie was sitting in a nearby chair. Her eyes were open, but dull. Her face was gray. She had stopped weeping—that was something—but now she just sat lifelessly, staring into the fire, not speaking.

  The little life inside her had died this morning. And it seemed to Josie as if Jennie had died along with it. She was wrung out. Empty. A shell. There was no spark left in her.

  It hurt Josie terribly to see her this way. Jennie had been like a second mother to her. She’d made sure Josie had learned how to read and write. She’d coached her on how to speak properly. At least, she’d tried to. She’d encouraged her love of music and singing. When Josie’s father drank his wages, leaving nothing for food, Jennie had fed her. When he came home from the pub and started hammering on Josie’s mother, and Josie ran away because she could not bear it, Jennie had taken her in and let her sleep in her bed.

  Jennie was the only reason Josie was on stage. She’d saved her, years ago, from a life of drudgery in the factories of Wapping or Whitechapel, and she’d saved her again, just a few weeks ago, when Madden had put her up the pole. There wasn’t anything Josie wouldn’t do for Jennie—if only Jennie would let her.

  Josie took a deep breath now and pulled a wooden chair over to where Jennie was sitting. She sat down in it, so close to Jennie that their knees were touching, then she took Jennie’s hands in hers and said, “We can do this. I know we can. The two of us together.”

  Jennie shook her head. “It’ll never work,” she said.

  “Yes, it will. If we want it to. If you want it to.”

  Jennie said nothing, but her eyes flickered from the fire to Josie’s face and back to the fire again. Josie took this as a hopeful sign.

  She’d hatched a plan—a plan that was clever and perfect. She’d thought it up as she was rushing Jennie into Dr. Cobb’s, and then she’d refined it that afternoon, after she’d got Jennie home from the doctor’s and into bed. She’d made herself a pot of tea, sat down at the kitchen table, and thought the whole thing through once more, carefully and slowly, testing it for flaws, just as she’d seen Madden and his men do when they were planning some new piece of villainy.

  Only this wasn’t villainy. This plan wouldn’t hurt anyone. It would only help.

  Jennie, out of her mind with both grief and laudanum, had told Josie everything after they’d come home from Dr. Cobb’s. She told her about the accident and how it meant she couldn’t have children. She told her about meeting Seamus Finnegan and falling in love with him and marrying him without having told him the truth about herself. And she told her about Willa Alden.

  Josie knew her plan would solve both Jennie’s problems and her own, but she hadn’t been able to convince Jennie of that. She’d tried to explain it to her earlier, but Jennie, distraught and inconsolable, refused to listen, telling her it was impossible. Josie decided now to try one more time.

  “The hardest bit’s already taken care of, the rest will be a doddle,” she said. “Dr. Cobb thinks you’re Josie Meadows and I’m Jennie Finnegan. He’s written it all down and has his notes all safely tucked away in a file.”

  Josie had done all the talking at Dr. Cobb’s. She’d told him that her friend Mrs. Meadows was visiting her at her cottage for the week and had started experiencing terrible pains.

  It hadn’t taken Dr. Cobb long to confirm Jennie’s greatest fear—that she was indeed miscarrying her baby. He did only a cursory exam, gave her laudanum, and told her to expect cramping and bleeding for the next few hours, as her uterus expelled its contents. He told her that this was an unfortunate occurrence, but not an uncommon one, and that she would surely conceive again within the year.

  “All we have to do now is go on exactly as we have been,” Josie said to her.

  “How, Josie? I lost the baby. Even if I don’t tell a soul, everyone will know. My belly won’t be growing,” Jennie said.

  “Yes, it will. Because you’ll stuff a pillow under your skirt.”

  Jennie shook her head. “Josie, it’s impossible. It won’t work,” she said.

  “No, listen to me! It will work. We do it all the time at the music hall. For a gag. A girl goes off stage left, hand in hand with some rake, then comes back stage right crying and carrying on with a big fat belly. You start with a small pillow and change it for bigger ones as the weeks go by. I’ll show you how to do it. The only tricky part will be your husband. If he wants relations, I mean. You’ll have to put him off. Say you’re poorly and it’s bad for the baby. Doctor’s orders.”

  “That won’t be a problem at all,” Jennie said bitterly. “My husband doesn’t want relations. Not with me, at least.”

  “All right, then. So that part won’t be hard. You keep the act going for a few months, and you come here when you need to take a break from it. In a few months, my baby comes. Dr. Cobb delivers it and writes out a birth certificate for baby Finnegan. Just make sure to figure out a name well in advance, right? I’ll get word to you when the baby arrives. You come to Binsey immediately. You don’t write home for a day or two, then you ring your husband from the pub, tell him what’s happened—that you stumbled and fell, and your pains came on, and the baby came a little earlier than expected. He’ll probably throw a wobbly and say that he wants to come to Binsey straightaway to collect you, but you tell him that the baby came easily and that you feel fine, and that you’ve engaged a girl from the village to travel to London with you and help you with your bags.”

  “A girl from the village? What girl?” Jennie asked.

  “Me, of course,” Josie said. “I’ll get some sort of frumpy farm girl outfit together, put on a bonnet, and ride to London with you. I’ve never met your husband, so he won’t know who I really am. There’s always a chance he saw the Zema posters, but I had a wig on in those and not much else. I’m sure he wouldn’t recognize me. Before you ring off, you tell him what time the train’s arriving at Paddington and ask him to collect you. He does. I say hello and good-bye, then pretend I’m getting on a return train to Binsey, get on a train to the coast instead, and then on the ferry to Calais.”

  Josie paused to let her words sink in, then she said, “When your husband sees his baby, the baby he wanted so much, he’ll be happy, and maybe he’ll remember his wedding vows. And then you’ve got your child and your husband. And I escape to Paris, far away from Billy Madden, knowing my child won’t grow up in some horrible orphanage, that she will grow up with the best woman in the world for a mother.”

  “Do you really think it could work?” Jennie said, her voice a whisper.

  “I do.”

  “What if the baby looks nothing like me? Or Seamie?”

  “We’re both blond, you and I,” Josie said. “
And we both have hazel eyes. So if the baby looks like me, she’ll look like you, too.”

  “It’s ever so risky. So much could go wrong,” Jennie said.

  “No, luv,” Josie said. “So much could go right.”

  Jennie looked Josie in the eye then, and for the first time since they left the market, Josie saw a spark there—faint and struggling, but a spark nonetheless. “Well?” she said hopefully, squeezing her friend’s hands.

  Jennie nodded, and squeezed back.

  Chapter Forty

  “Good night, Mr. Bristow. Safe trip home,” Sir David Erskine, sergeant at arms for the House of Commons, said to Joe.

  “Good night to you as well, Sergeant,” Joe said, as he wheeled himself down St. Stephen’s Hall, out the door, and toward Cromwell Green.

  Outside, the air was soft and warm and the sky twinkled with a million stars. It was a beautiful summer night—a night to make anyone feel glad to be alive. But Joe didn’t even notice it. He’d just come from another late session in the Commons. Earlier that day, Austria-Hungary had declared war on Serbia. Fearing the worst—Germany’s imminent involvement—a wary Britain was now in constant contact with France and Russia, its Triple Entente allies, trying to determine a plan of containment should the kaiser actually declare war. Fortunately, the Entente had been put in place long before Franz Ferdinand’s assassination.

  France, who’d suffered a bruising defeat in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 and had seen her territories of Alsace-Lorraine annexed to Germany, had aligned with Russia at the end of the last century, both countries finding common ground in their shared mistrust of the kaiser. Russia was especially concerned about Germany’s warm relationship with Turkey. The tsar feared that if Germany gained a foothold in Turkey, the kaiser would try to take control of the Dardanelles and Bosporus straits—waterways that connected the Mediterranean to the Black Sea and which were crucial to Russia’s ability to trade with the rest of the world.