“I know you’re in such pain, Claude,” she whispered as she stroked his forelock, “but you won’t need to be brave for much longer. I promise you, when they come for you, no matter how much it breaks my heart, I will stick by you. I’ll be with you at the end. I promise, I promise …”

When Maisie had first come to Paris, she had marvelled at the beauty of this city. Her favourite time was the early morning when the sunrise washed the dove-grey rooftops an iridescent pink and the River Seine seemed to be made of molten gold. As an artist, she loved the dawn and its transformative, divine light. But tonight, as she held Claude tight in her arms, she dreaded the sunrise with all her heart. For when the night had ended, and the guards of the Célestins returned, Claude would be taken from her. And the light would be gone from Paris forever.

Chapter 2: The Thirteen-Million-Dollar Horse

One year earlier …

The first horse I ever loved cost thirteen million dollars. And he wasn’t even real. His name was Whistlejacket and he was a portrait hanging on the wall at the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square. OK, so it was the painting and not the actual horse that was worth all that money, but even so.

My dad had taken me to the gallery to look at Whistlejacket one rainy Sunday afternoon. I was five at the time – too young, really, to take to a gallery, but Dad says that’s how he knew I was different from other kids, because instead of being bored I was in my element amongst all those famous paintings. I took in Van Gogh’s brilliant yellow sunflowers, Claude Monet’s soft and misty irises and Botticelli’s languid reclining beauties, Venus and Mars – and I explained to Dad, my little-kid voice brimming with authority, exactly what techniques I envisaged the painters must have used, and what I liked about the composition and the colours. Dad says I was always certain about what I loved and hated about art, right from the start. I didn’t get the abstract stuff, or the surrealists. I liked art that really looked like things – landscapes and animals and portraits.

There were some amazing paintings in the gallery that day, but when I saw Whistlejacket, they all disappeared, and he was everything to me.