A Place Called Freedom - Ken Follett [78]
Grimly she pressed on. Inch by inch she was getting away from the fracas at the gallows. With each step she found it a little easier to move. Within five minutes she was no longer squeezing between tightly packed people but passing through gaps several inches wide. Eventually she came up against the front wall of a house. She worked her way along to the corner of the building and stepped into an alley two or three feet wide.
She leaned against the house wall, catching her breath. The alley was foul and stank of human waste. Her ribs ached where she had been punched. She touched her face gingerly and found that the flesh around her eye was swelling.
She hoped Jay was all right. She turned around to look for him, and was startled to see two men staring at her.
One was middle-aged and unshaven with a fat belly, the other a youth of about eighteen. Something about their stares frightened her, but before she could move away they pounced. They grabbed her by the arms and threw her to the ground. They snatched her hat and the man’s wig she wore, pulled off her silver-buckled shoes, and went through her pockets with bewildering speed, taking her purse, her pocket watch and a handkerchief.
The older man shoved the spoils into a sack, stared at her for a moment, then said: “That’s a good coat—nearly new.”
They both bent over her again and began to pull off her coat and matching waistcoat. She struggled but all she achieved was to rip her shirt. They stuffed her garments into a sack. She realized her breasts were exposed. Hastily she covered herself with the shreds of her clothes but she was too late. “Hey, it’s a girl!” cried the younger man.
She scrambled to her feet but he grabbed her and held her.
The fat one stared at her. “And a pretty girl, too, by God,” he said. He licked his lips. “I’m going to fuck her,” he said decisively.
Seized with horror, Lizzie struggled violently, but she could not shake off the young man’s grip.
The youth looked back along the alley to the crowd in the street. “What, here?”
“Nobody’s looking this way, you young fool.” He stroked himself between the legs. “Get those breeches off her and let’s have a look.”
The boy threw her to the ground, sat on her heavily and started to pull off her breeches while the other man watched. Fear flooded Lizzie and she screamed at the top of her voice, but there was so much noise in the street she doubted whether anyone would hear her.
Then, suddenly, Mack McAsh appeared.
She glimpsed his face and a raised fist, then he struck the older one on the side of the head. The thief rocked sideways and staggered. Mack hit him again, and the man’s eyes rolled up into his head. Mack hit him a third time, and the man slumped and lay still.
The boy scrambled off Lizzie and tried to run away but she grabbed his ankle and tripped him. He measured his length on the ground. Mack picked him up and threw him against the house wall, then hit him on the chin with a punch that came up from below with all his weight behind it, and the boy fell unconscious on top of his partner-in-crime.
Lizzie got to her feet. “Thank God you were here!” she said fervently. Tears of relief filled her eyes. She threw her arms around him and said: “You saved me—thank you, thank you!”
He hugged her closely. “You saved me, once—when you pulled me out of the river.”
She held him tight and tried to stop shaking. She felt his hand behind her head, stroking her hair. In her breeches and shirt, with no petticoats to get in the way, she could feel the entire length of his body pressed against hers. He felt completely different from her husband. Jay was tall and supple, Mack short and massive and hard.
He shifted and looked at her. His green eyes were mesmerizing. The rest of his face seemed to blur. “You saved me, and I saved you,” he said with a wry smile. “I’m your guardian angel, and you’re mine.”
She began to calm down. She remembered that her shirt was torn and her breasts were bare. “If I were an angel, I wouldn’t be in your arms,” she said, and she made to detach