“I’ll be sure to do that, Mr. Dankworth,” the compositor said, looking Mr. Dankworth square in the face. “My name is Gareth, by the way. It’s a pleasure to meet you.” He held out his ink-stained hand, but Mr. Dankworth just stared at it and rubbed his own hand up and down on the side of his trousers. Gareth lowered his arm and offered a slight nod instead. He glanced quickly to where I sat, then turned and left the Scriptorium.

I took a blank slip from my desk and wrote:

GARETH

Compositor.

I was standing just inside the door of the Scriptorium, reading an article in the Oxford Chronicle while Dr. Murray finished off some correspondence he wanted me to take to Mr. Bradley.

It was a small piece, buried in the middle pages.

Three suffragettes, arrested after a rooftop protest against Prime Minister Herbert Asquith, have been forcibly fed in Winson Green Gaol after several days on hunger strike. The women were gaoled for civil disobedience and criminal damage after throwing tiles at police from the roof of Bingley Hall in Birmingham, where Mr. Asquith was holding a public budget meeting. Women were barred from attending.

My throat began to constrict. “How do you force-feed a grown woman?” I said, to no one in particular. I skimmed the column of words, but there was no explanation of the procedure, and the women weren’t named. I thought of Tilda. Her last postcard had been from Birmingham, where, she’d written, women were willing to do more than just sign petitions.

“Something for Mr. Hart at the Press,” said Dr. Murray, startling me. “But visit the Old Ashmolean first; Mr. Bradley is waiting on this.” He handed me a letter with Bradley written on the envelope along with the first proofs for the letter T.

The Old Ashmolean was as grand as the Scriptorium was humble. It was stone instead of tin, and the entrance was flanked by the busts of men who had achieved something—I don’t know what. When I’d first seen them, I’d felt small and out of place, but after a while they’d encouraged a defiant ambition, and I’d imagined walking into that place and taking my seat at the Editor’s desk. But if women could be barred from a public budget meeting, I had no right to that ambition. I thought about Tilda, her hunger for the fight. And I thought about the women who had gone to gaol. Could I starve myself? I wondered. If I thought it would help me become an editor?