Remember Me - Lesley Pearse [162]
‘I just wanted to talk to you, James,’ she said, backing away. ‘But it will keep.’
‘Too high and mighty to drink with us?’ Amos, the smaller of the two men, leered at her, showing his rotting teeth.
Mary hesitated. It wasn’t in her nature just to walk away silently from such a remark. But her hesitation was her undoing, for Jack, Amos’s accomplice, a six-foot brute with a face like raw liver, was across the room in two strides and caught hold of her round her waist.
‘I like ’em ’igh and mighty,’ he said. ‘They’ve always got the tightest cunts.’
He lifted Mary up, holding her in a vice-like grip, and tried to kiss her. Mary slapped out at his face, but he only laughed.
‘That’s right, you fight me,’ he roared out in delight. ‘I don’t like me women too willin’.’
Mary struggled, but he was holding her too tightly to let her get free and, spurred on by strongly voiced encouragement from the other drinkers, he wasn’t going to relinquish her.
‘Let me go,’ she shouted, pummelling him with her fists. ‘James, help me!’
Mary saw him lurch forward, but Amos caught him around the neck to hold him back, and she knew in that instant that she was in real danger.
The majority of men in Newgate, whether prisoners or gaolers, believed all the women were theirs for the taking. Mary had always considered herself reasonably safe because of her elevated status as an escapee and her four male friends who stayed close to her. But Jack and Amos clearly weren’t in awe of her, and believed she was easy game.
‘A woman who lets herself be shared by four men shouldn’t mind someone new having a turn,’ Jack hissed in her ear, before flinging her down to the floor. He unbuckled his belt and leaped on top of her, the sour smell of his filthy clothes making her gag.
Mary screamed to James again, and she caught a fleeting glimpse of him as the other drinkers closed round to watch what Jack was going to do. James’s face looked stricken, but she guessed he was still being held back by Amos and could do nothing.
Mary fought Jack, pulling his hair and scratching his face, but he caught her two hands with one of his, while the other groped frantically under her clothes. He was hampered a little by her heavy great-coat, and she was wriggling like an eel.
‘Get off me, you filthy bastard,’ Mary yelled, spitting into his face. She tried desperately to get a grip on the floor with the heels of her boots in an attempt to force his body off her, but the surface was too slimy. She continued to scream at the top of her lungs, but that only seemed to inflame Jack more, along with all the other men watching. Desperately, she remembered that screams in Newgate were too commonplace for anyone to come to her rescue.
She could feel the sudden charge in the air as the onlookers grew excited, and if Jack got his way with her, she had no doubt other men would follow him. But she wasn’t going to succumb to rape after all she’d been through. She’d sooner die.
She fought him with every vestige of strength, getting her hands free again to claw his eyes with her nails, and pulling at his greasy hair until a handful came away in her hand. As he tried to suppress her with a kiss, she bit his lip hard.
‘You little hell-cat,’ he exclaimed, almost in admiration, pausing for a second to wipe blood from his mouth.
Mary took the opportunity to buck under him, and managed to get a few inches away to her left. But Jack was too quick; he grabbed her tightly again, pinning both her body and her right arm down, and pulled off his belt with his left hand.
‘No, you bastard!’ she heard