However, Sabine said nothing of the subject that dominated their waking hours, the relationship between Madame Ariane and the major. As they left the ruined farm, Suzie wondered why Sabine had kept silent. Had she not understood the opportunity, or was she still secretly uncertain of the facts? Or did she see that it was all really a game, beyond the boundaries of real life?

Chapter Twenty-four

Sabine led the way back to Bonnemort at a run. When Suzie called to her to wait and Sabine shouted her refusal over her shoulder, Suzie saw that she was crying. The path, steep and stony, still covered with the fallen leaves of last autumn, was dangerous taken at Sabine’s pace. Suzie kept her eyes fixed on the track, a narrow channel between tumbledown walls, afraid of falling, afraid of falling behind. She had no wristwatch, yet she could tell, by the texture of the depleted light, lying almost horizontal, shining through the trunks of the trees into their eyes, that it was late. When Bonnemort came into view on the other side of the valley, Suzie noticed at once that Madame Ariane’s horse was grazing in the field with Madame de Cazalle’s donkeys. They must have been away for a long time. Ahead of her, as they approached the clutter of farm buildings, Sabine had swerved off the track and was making for the thicket that concealed the secret entrance to the winepress.

‘Sabine,’ she wailed. ‘Let’s go home now.’ Sabine halted, but did not turn back.

‘I’ve got to think.’ She ducked under the branches and Suzie followed her to the rim of the funnel, which was a bowl of darkness in the weakening light under the trees. Sabine squatted down and lowered herself over the edge. They knew their way down by now, clambering from foothold to foothold with the ease of custom. Sabine had almost reached the bottom, with Suzie above her, wedged in the narrowest part, when the first sounds from inside the winepress reached them.

Suzie immediately thought that an animal was trapped there. Its heaving, angry breath rose up to them, amplified by the funnel, the air grating its way out of its body. Her heart began to beat faster in sympathetic anguish. The creature was suffering; it moaned in pain. She lifted her lower foot to climb out, but Sabine reached up to grasp her ankle, pulling her back again. She herself was moving down, as slowly and quietly as she could. The animal was trying to escape, for it was knocking, knocking, rhythmically, repetitively.

Suzie lowered herself alongside Sabine. They were now crouching side by side on the narrow ledge where the funnel emptied into the loft. Sabine had twisted round so that she no longer faced the rock wall. As Suzie dropped into place beside her, Sabine’s hand gripped her arm, not letting go, tightening and loosening in time to the ramming below them.

Now Suzie could hear not one animal, but two. Below the gasping breath of the furious beast was a counterpoint, the sobbing murmur of another. She could feel their frantic distress and growing fury. The beating went on through it all, at a faster tempo now and with gasps of agony. It was like listening to torture that nothing could relieve. The nail of Sabine’s index finger, driving into the muscle of her upper arm, pierced the skin, leaving a rim of blood. Suzie covered her ears, but it was impossible to blot out the cries of agony which echoed from the rocky walls, swelling to fill the space where Lou Moussou had died.