I would have screamed at that moment – I admit it. I was terrified. Luckily, I didn’t have the chance to make a fool of myself because before I could shriek or squeal, the gardians emerged behind the bulls. There were three of them too, mounted on great grey horses. The gardian who rode at the head of the three charged directly towards me, outstripping the bulls for speed, and then he turned his grey horse so that the sand skidded up from beneath his hooves. Reaching down, he plucked me out of my boat and threw me up behind him so that I sat across the horse’s flanks directly behind the saddle.

“Hold tight around my waist!” he instructed.

And he turned his horse on its hocks and rode out of the way of the bulls while, at the same time, the two remaining gardians used their capes and sticks to lure and herd the bulls away from us. At one point, the bulls actually ran into the sea. Even then, the horses continued to give chase, cantering as they hit the water, splashing noisily as they followed after the bulls who were now knee-deep in the waves ahead of them.

“These three bulls, they are trouble,” the gardian said to me over his shoulder. “They constantly run wild through the rice paddies and ruin the crops. Today it has taken all three of us to hunt them out of the forest so that we can take them home and reunite them with the herd. I tell the Maitresse that we should give them up to the matadors to be used for sport. They are bad bulls! We would be better off without them. But she will not listen. She is stubborn! She is impossible –”

“She is right behind you!”

Out of the forest now emerged a woman on yet another grey horse, almost identical to the ones ridden by the gardians.

“Antoine, we are not giving up my bulls to those brutes just because they misbehave from time to time. All God’s creatures deserve a happy life, even you!” my aunty Mimi barked in a good-natured fashion at her embarrassed gardian. Then, flanked on either side by Chantal and Pierre, also on grey horses identical to the rest, she rode towards me. I noticed how she rode with her legs long in the stirrups like the gardians did, and with her reins in one hand too – so unlike the Parisian style of equitation. Yet it suited her, and she looked so at home on that horse. And in that moment, as she smiled at me in a way that made me realise I was truly welcome in this strange, wild place, I realised I might somehow have found a home too.

“Beloved niece. Welcome to Flamants Roses.”

Chapter 11: Death’s Dark Spectre