because the strictness of his indentures prevented his visiting his parents very often, there was always a celebration when he did come home. His grandparents and a host of other relatives were coming from far afield. Esther and the twins were up another flight to change clothing and there was nobody around to think of her. Even the old manservant, who usually escorted her home after sunset, had been dispatched on some special errand.
Impatiently she went to the window and looked out. Dusk had fallen but it was not yet completely dark. If she ran all the way she could be home in less than five minutes. Already in her cape, she did not bother to fasten it or pull up her hood, but set off at once down the stairs and let herself out the front door. No sooner was she outside than she found it was a little darker than she had realized. There was only one city wall lantern alight in the whole seemingly deserted street, but it was too late to go back indoors now. She could see well enough and that was all that mattered.
Swiftly she broke into a run, unaware of the dainty, mothlike appearance she presented, her primrose skirt billowing lightly and her mass of soft, silvery-fair hair dancing about her head like a tinseled cloud in the half-light. A roughly clad man, unshaven and half drunk, watched her with a stirring of his loins from the arch of a house’s passageway on the opposite side of the canal. Draining the bottle he held, he set it down quietly instead of tossing it into the canal as he would have done otherwise. Tensely he waited to see if she would cross the bridge. If not, he’d take a quick sprint after her. There was nobody else about as far as he could tell and he’d take his chance. She
was
coming over to this side! He reached out a hand and tested the passage door to see if the house owner had bolted it yet for the night. He grinned as it swung open with a slight creak into blackness. He drew back into it, no longer able to see her, but able to judge her approach by her light footsteps getting nearer. Then, as she came level, he pounced.
To Aletta it was for one horrifying second as if a fairy-tale monster had sprung from the depths of the earth to seize her. Yet in the same instant she knew it to be a man. He had clapped a calloused hand over her mouth, muzzling her screams, and grabbed a handful of her hair down to the roots as if he would wrench it from her scalp. Terror possessed her utterly as he half swung her into the passageway and slammed her against the wall to pinion her with his body there. Already breathless from the pace at which she had run, she felt she would suffocate from the stench of foul breath, stale sweat and filthy clothing that filled her nostrils like the odor of plague. His chin rasped her forehead and her eyes threatened to start with renewed horror from their sockets as she felt him slobbering over her head. She thought in fear-crazed disbelief that he was trying to eat her hair and she could feel some strange part of him through her skirts. Her struggling arms and kicking feet had no effect and he was muttering hoarsely. His words, although breathy, were audible and in the dialect of another province.
“Your tresses! So fine a color is going to get you what you deserve!”
His saliva had begun running down her face. Worse—oh! much worse—she heard him pull the leather thongs of his breeches free and then his awful devil hand was bundling up her skirts. Her eyes rolled up and her mind went blank with shock, her whole body rigid against violation.
Then, without warning, the passageway reverberated with the thunderous voice of the furious house-holder as he shouted to them from the rear courtyard. “What in hell’s name is going on down there?”
Her attacker cursed, releasing her, and she fell to the stone flags as he bolted. The hostile interruption gave her no thought of help forthcoming from its direction. She was up and out of the passageway into the street like a homing